Suite101.com

Current/Independent Music

By Adam McKibbin. Published On: January 15, 2002

The Divine Nine: Silvia Ryder of Sugarplum Fairies

THE DIVINE NINE: Casual Q & A

Adam McKibbin / Suite 101

Silvia Ryder is half of the force behind Sugarplum Fairies, who will be releasing a follow-up to their fine album Flake this coming summer. Read Adam's review of Flake at

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1198

ADAM: Thanks for doing this interview. How’s life treating you these days?

SILVIA: Pretty good. We’ve finished setting up our new home studio and are currently working on the follow-up album to our debut CD Flake,which will be released this summer.

ADAM: You’re in the process of working on a new album. What can fans of Flake expect from this follow-up?

SILVIA: The new album will be titled Introspective Raincoat Student Music which is pretty self-explanatory. There’s going to be only slow and mid-tempo songs on this album and we deliberately tried a more lo-fi approach since the last album was a bit too overproduced and clean sounding for my taste.

ADAM: What led you to forming your own label—Starfish Records—instead of finding a compatible label you were comfortable in signing with?

SILVIA: Simply put, there was no other label wanting to sign us when we shopped "Flake’ around. However, we initially were approached by a couple of producers who wanted to work with us and pitch the finished product to the majors. But after some meetings we quickly realized that we would have to comply with a variety of stylistic and even songwriting requests that we felt were not consistent with our artistic vision.

ADAM: Can you tell us a little bit about Bloom 05, the other band you’ve signed to Starfish?

SILVIA: Bloom 05 is a European band, who is often characterized as a bare bones version of Tindersticks or early Lou Reed. Their singer, Pablo Rocket, has a very unique raspy low voice and I actually recorded a duet with him which is kind of in the vein of Nancy Sinatra / Lee Hazelwood and which will be included on the new Sugarplum Fairies CD. Starfish has just recently released a new Bloom 05 CD titled Stills & Honey.

ADAM: Getting back to your music, is there any interest in bringing a permanent bassist or drummer into Sugarplum Fairies?

SILVIA: Our current drummer, Keith Mitchell, is actually on loan from Mazzy Star and our bass player, Miiko Watanabe, is doing a lot of studio work and is touring with Dave Navarro right now. Though it’s certainly not very cost effective to hire a drummer/bassist for every recording session or live show it turned out that this was the right direction for us to take, since we usually have the songs and arrangements pretty much worked out before we go into recording. This also takes care of any possible commitment problems on the part of full time band members, because people usually show up when they know a check is waiting.

ADAM: Your music has found a home in both film and television. Do you see yourself ever taking the plunge into a full score or soundtrack?

SILVIA: Until now this has not been an option for us, because we simply did not have the technical requirements for scoring film music. But now that we’ve made the change from analog recording to Pro Tools we are definitely looking into that, especially since this a totally new field for us and it would definitely be a great challenge.

ADAM: Los Angeles is, of course, the land of the major label and the big deal. What’s it like playing in an indie band and running an indie label in L.A.?

SILVIA: The problem is not so much with running an indie label/band but with the term "indie" per se. A lot of so called indies are in fact affiliated with major labels who provide distribution and financial support. Starfish Records and it’s sister company Candyking Publishing are truly independent one-woman- operations with the obvious advantage of providing 100% creative freedom in regards to the songwriting, recording and marketing process. On the other hand, financial instability and limited means often proof obstructive to the actual execution of your artistic vision; this was actually one of the reasons for the big gap between our last album and our upcoming release.

ADAM: OK, the world ends tomorrow and the Ticketmaster Upstairs has to start recruiting for Heaven’s