Band der Woche: Factory Fire

Factory Fire ist das Solo-Projekt der US-amerikanischen Musikerin Emily, das düstere Emotionen und elektronische Energie zu einem fesselnden Klangbild vereint. Nach ihrer Zeit als Bassistin der New Yorker Band Hyperdolls entschied sie sich, ihren eigenen musikalischen Weg zu gehen. Mit Factory Fire erschafft sie einen Sound, der zugleich melancholisch und energiegeladen ist, Musik, die Schmerz in Bewegung verwandelt und Melancholie auf die Tanzfläche bringt.

Im Interview spricht Emily über ihre Einflüsse, die Entstehung ihrer aktuellen Veröffentlichung  Goodbye March und darüber, wie persönliche Erfahrungen und Orte ihren Klang prägen.

Who is behind Factory Fire? What made you decide to start the project?
Factory Fire is a solo project, so it is just me behind it. My name is Emily, and I started the project when living in New York City. I had been the bassist for a band there called Hyperdolls for a few years and left the band in part because I couldn’t tolerate the misbehavior of certain band members. When I left, I decided that I didn’t want my departure from the band to be the end of my involvement with music. I had been playing around with music production software and decided to start releasing some of the stuff I was working on under the name Factory Fire.

When did music first become part of your life? When did you first fall in love with sound?
Music has always been a part of my life. My dad is a big music lover and a guitarist, so we always had music on in the house and the car. I also grew up listening to him play in church bands, so I heard live music very often (though it was a very different genre from what I listen to now). It’s hard to say when I fell in love with sound because I have always loved it and made music in some way, whether that be starting piano lessons in elementary school, playing in marching band in high school, or learning the bass and joining a band after graduating college and moving to NYC.

If you had to describe your music in terms other than music, what would you say?
I would describe it as somber but energetic. I cover a lot of dark topics like illness, grief, betrayal, etc., but I still want there to be an element of fun so that my music is still enjoyable to listen to.

What are you looking for in music? What are the boundaries that you look to explore with music?
I’m always looking for something with a good beat in the music I listen to and that I could enjoy dancing to in the club. Danceability is something that I am really trying to explore – how can I take songs that are about heavy feelings and topics and make them something that could be fun to dance to in a goth club?

What is sound to you?
Sound is what I have going on in my head at all times. I always have a song playing in the back of my mind.

Which person, artist or incident inspired you when you first started making music?
When I first picked up the bass, I was inspired by the early post-punks and goths like Bauhaus and Joy Division because they were so inspired by the music they loved that they decided one day that they were just going to figure out how to do it themselves and be a band. I decided to teach myself bass during the pandemic and joined a band around a year later when I moved to the city. When I left the band and started my solo project, I was inspired by music like that of Boy Harsher and Bragolin since they were creating heavy-hitting music electronically that could be done with minimal equipment but still leave an impact on the listener.

What themes are you currently drawn to in your work?
Currently grief has been a big theme in my work since I went through the loss of both my grandmothers back to back a few years ago, and then shortly after that had to leave New York for various reasons after my life fell apart there. Goodbye March is about that grief. „Fry Sauce“ is about coming home to a place that I don’t like very much after not living the life that I thought I would in New York. There are also other topics covered, like betrayal and consumerism.

How do your surroundings impact your art?
My surroundings impact my art in a very direct way, whether it’s incorporating the history of NYC into Architects & Serial Killers or making references to a popular dipping sauce in my home state of Idaho in the track „Fry Sauce“. My life experiences also make a large impact on my music, often becoming topics for the songs in my releases.

Tell us a bit about your new release, Goodbye March, which came out in September. How does the birth of a new composition happen for you? How does your compositional process work?
The concepts in Goodbye March came from certain abstract visualizations I had in my head that I turned into lyrics and then later into music. „New York’s Gone“ came from a thought that I had often about how it seemed that most of the people around me were figuratively drowning from how expensive the city was, which turned into this visualization of New York City being picked up and dropped in the ocean. „Goodbye March“ was created as a concept when I sat down and thought about how weird it must have been for my grandmother to experience the stream of neighbors, family, and friends all coming to her bedside to say goodbye in her last few days. „Bled Dry“ came from the idea that my ex-partner fed on me like a vampire, and I let it happen even though it ultimately hurt me (I also happened to be watching season 2 of Interview with the Vampire when I wrote the lyrics).

What artistic influences, outside of music, have had a significant influence on how you approach your art?
Visual art, like paintings and architecture, has the most impact on how I approach making my music. One of my favorite paintings is Dali’s Corpus Hypercubus. There’s an interesting reverence in it with the way that Mary is looking up at her son, who isn’t wounded, but has transcended beyond everything around him into some surreal plane of existence. I want to capture that feeling of reverence and ascendence in my more ambient tracks.

What’s next for you? What are you most looking forward to?
I am looking forward most to performing live, which I want to start doing in the next year or so. I am also looking forward to learning more and more about music production so that I can better translate what I hear in my head into song.

Thank you for interviewing me, it has been a pleasure to answer your questions!
Best, Emily

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