Talking to: Ree
Producer & songwriter Ree has just released her debut EP Ree96. She reflects upon how interpersonal relationships are contorted by and interface with digital media and the EP promises an intimate look at companionship & human connection in a digital era where distance still matters, geographic or emotional. The familiar chimes & soundbites of the OS-driven user experience meld with her songwriter’s confessional habit like an open-source diary. It’s experimental, it’s pop, it’s old skool drum and bass driven in parts, but overall, it’s completely original.
Ree has supported DIY legend Crywank (or tear-jerk, as his mum would say) as Kim Leslie before moving to Bristol where she partnered with producer Kamil Henri to create Men Friends. Since the pandemic, Ree has been working with producer IdleGod who mixed Ree96. She is also one half of experimental electronic duo, Yada Yada.
Join us in conversation with Ree, where we talk proper pop music, the artists she channels, the joy of adopting different personas, stumbling across true love on Tinder, and why being a female electronic music producer is just all good.
How are you doing?
I’m okay, excited, it’s good to speak to you guys!
Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your music. Let’s start with the music you are making at the moment first of all.
With this EP I have just released, it’s a funny story, just to give a bit of background context. I was watching a video, a random one of Windows startup sounds. I am quite into that sort of thing, because, you know, I am really cool, so I just watch a lot of random things. As someone who likes all sorts of random noises, some of them harsher noises, it just kind of appeals to me. I actually found out that Windows 95, the whole thing was done by Brian Eno, which is pretty cool.
I just had this thought; what if I made an EP that is just comprised of Windows and computer sounds? I was gonna actually give it to a band I was in at the time but I thought, ‘no, what if you just did this yourself?’. I just wanted complete control of a premise, and then I ran with it, I ran with it for a whole year! It went through so many different iterations, especially the first song. At first it was very slow but then I decided after listening to a bunch of PC music and A G Cook I thought that I kind of wanted to make it go in a more speedy direction.
Tell us a bit more about more musical upbringing. I know you are making and producing your own music, but was that always what you wanted to do? Did you grow up in a musical family?
I feel like I grew up in a family of people who wanted to do music but ended up going to the daily grind instead as their only option. I genuinely think my biggest musical inspiration on my family was my sister; she did singing as a GCSE and she would try and get me to sing little songs with her, and I sang when I was three at a family holiday in Greece and thought “this is what I like to do” and singing turned into a bit of a comfort at times when I couldn’t get any comfort; it turned into a bit of catharsis.
Was your sister older than you?
She was eleven years older than me and she was kind of like my main caregiver at times throughout my childhood. I guess all my family were musical but never got the opportunity to do it. My dad only ever did one gig in his whole life and ever since, I think that if I can do more than just one gig I have done more than most of my family. I think I am the more musical one in the family nowadays.
And what sort of music were you listening to when you were growing up?
Most of the music was more rock-based, whatever was on my mum’s ipod at the time, a lot of Fleetwood Mac, I guess she liked a lot of songwritery stuff, Matchbox 20, Maroon 5, things that aren't really cool now. My sister was properly into r&b and a little jungle, my brother was into hardcore, my dad was a proper rocker and into post punk back in the day. My whole family had such a wide variety of influences, I ended up just swinging to and fro, having phases upon phases.
You are obviously influenced by the sounds that you hear around you, the sounds you stumble across. Have you got any other more traditional music references as it were, any particular bands and artists that stand out, that not just inspire you but who you think feed into your sound?
That’s a good question. I know on the EP I sound quite like Bjork, which is interesting. I was feeling quite frustrated in the recording sessions sometimes and when I feel like that I think of some of my heroes and how they would approach that song. It is genuinely subconscious but I think when I do that it kind of comes out like that.
I think one of the biggest inspirations for the whole EP was Telefone by No Name, in terms of actual production and arrangement ideas, and one of the main songs, Ree96, was inspired by listening to Roni Size and old skool drum and bass back at the start of last summer.
I wouldn't say there was one traditional artist who helped bring my sound along rather than a bit of No Name and Bjork, but that's it. I feel like, with the music I am making, my inspirations, and the music I admire are very much on my sleeve when I make my music. I have always just thought of myself as a sponge.
Did you study music and music production or are you self taught?
I originally had a background more in songwriting, I studied at the Academy of Music and Sound and then I went on to BIMM for a year, I did songwriting there. Then I ended up doing a course in creative music and technology, and I ended up enjoying that more, that really gave me a push. I originally have a background in musical theatre, very random.
Was that when you were a child?
I was actually more of a teenager. I always wanted to be a rock star but I was too scared to write my own songs, I would just perform everyone else’s. Then I went through a brief stint of wanting to be an actor; I still wouldn’t mind being involved in performance based stuff.
It sounds to me, listening to your music, like you are really gaining your confidence as a songwriter, but would you say that you are more confident as a producer?
Definitely, because I have the final control before I let that go out and be critiqued.
You are based in Bristol. Where do you fit into the Bristol music scene? How do you find it?
I don’t feel like I really do fit in, not in a bad way, but I struggle a bit with being an outsider, and it’s not cool what I do, or fun, it’s quite lonely in that regard. I see a lot of the Bristol music scene around me and I take it all in, but I almost feel like I am on the other side of the glass kind of watching it all roll along. You know on the internet there is a thing called a lurker? Well, I am a kind of lurker on the Bristol scene.
Have you got friends who are making music as well?
Kind of, yes. I am really good friends with Captain Rehab who is part of Nasty Fishmonger and they’ve actually brought me into a whole different side of the music scene which is less electronic. There is also fKHIA, who is a great female music producer in her own right.
How is it being a female producer in the music industry? It always strikes me as being quite male led, especially in the electronic music sphere.
You know what? It's actually really lovely at this time getting into the production scene as a female, or as someone questioning their own gender. As a woman, seeing other women banding together, making their own space, it’s really helpful. I think I would have been deterred earlier if we didn’t have places like Saffron and The Beatriarchy, which have been pivotal to my learning and getting resources and meeting people and doing stuff. I think as much as the outside influences are very male dominated there is a whole scene which is women taking space, and that’s what’s really important.
When did you become Ree? Were you making music before then under another moniker or have you always been Ree?
This is the first time I have produced music and put it out into the world. I was always just a little indie singer songwriter playing with her guitar just singing songs, back then I was just Kim Leslie. I just like to play with personas. I am not the biggest Bowie fan in the world, but I always thought that what Bowie did with that thing was really cool, a different era and aesthetic for a different sound. In fact, a lot of my favourite bands do that. I also like to separate my personal self from any social media platform that I tend to kind of present the world to. I am just a control freak!
I also just love the excuse to play dress up, honestly, I won’t lie! And it’s weird to think about how it looks from someone else’s perspective, because it is very different from the actual person.
What would you say your music is genre wise?
I have no clue. Every project I have done, friends have just said ‘oh, this is experimental’, but if I am completely honest with you from the heart all I have ever really wanted to do is make pop music in a way! One of my favourite bands is Kero Kero Bonito, and Mitski and The Garden, and they take that more palatable sound and just play with it. So I try to persuade people my music is more poppy than it may potentially be - it’s just Nerd Pop, can we coin it as Nerd Pop?
I like the term Nerd Pop! And I don’t get this snobbery around pop music, some of the most amazing music made is pop music.
I mean the Hyper Pop scene that is around at the moment is full of people who are inspired by the Max Martin sound; Britney, Christina, The Backstreet Boys, and they have taken elements of that sound and run with it. It was a whole London scene before everyone Americanised it. You almost listen to Hyper Pop, like a lot of early A G Cook stuff and think ‘oh wait, there’s a lot of garage influence in this’, a lot of the sugary, Gabriella type garage sounds, all the sweeter notes mixed in with a bit of traditional pop. I guess it’s pop that takes a lot of reference from what the artist is inspired by or was inspired by and that is what I am trying to do as well. So it still has that root in songwriting, but trying to assimilate into a certain culture or a certain vibe.
Talking of songwriting, tell us a little bit about the stories behind some of the tracks on the EP.
I’ll give you a good one actually, the story I have been dying to tell the world! It’s Lo0ser Jerks. It’s just me reading a message verbatim from a guy who is very well known on the music scene here. He is, like, ten years older than most of the people on the scene, and he is calling me a bitch, accusing me of stealing his baccy (for the record I didn’t actually do that, it was my friend who did)!
The reason I wrote it is because there are so many men who think it is okay to hide behind a veil of innocence in a way, to then be really mean, to women especially. This guy has rumours about being a really nasty man, the way he has treated other women. He will be really nice to people and then just instantly snap when he doesn’t get any sort of validation or female gratification, using a very veiled term there. What he said to me was very benign in comparison to his treatment of other people.
EPIMP and Lo0ser Jerks are the two tracks which are very angry about men. I won’t go into EPIMP because that is too personal, that is a bit of a darker one, but L0NGhALL, which is my most popular song, is really lovely. It's just a love song basically, almost hinting at a more sort of clandestine love; it's just a big shout out to my partner. I guess it's about encouraging more affection, because I met my partner on Tinder, so it went from that to being a more long lasting five year relationship, which is quite wild.
Yes! I met my last long term partner on Tinder, everyone was always completely surprised that we met on Tinder.
It's completely blindsiding isn't it? I kind of want to make a special shout out to Tybr, that's my partner I wrote L0NGhALL about, but they also did all of my album art, all of my photo shoots, they are kind of like my creative director; he is like the mastermind behind what I present to the world. He does his own art too, he is just an amazing artist in his own right. He is even more nerdy and cool than I am.
What's coming up next then? You have got your EP out, we are getting to the point where we can start getting out and doing stuff, have you got any plans coming up in the near future?
I’m recording a video at the moment and working on a single with a label, which I can’t go into yet as it hasn’t been announced, it's a secret song!
I want to gig. I don't know how I am going to get there yet, but I guess I just want to be a musician who can work on it full time and get out of the call centre, you know? I think the original goal when I was a kid was that I wanted to travel the world with it; gig around, go to new places, meet new people, have fun.
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