Cross Record

“Take Five” focuses on Chicago’s ever-growing music scene by giving you insight to the city’s best local acts via the best source possible: the artists themselves. Here is the latest installment featuring Cross Record.

Is there a talent worth envying more than one that is natural? Given that people will stop at nothing short of God as an explanation for it, I argue not. It’s this sort of inexplicable prodigy that is part of what makes Cross Record, the moniker by which Emily Cross records, such a compelling story.

If you read my review of her debut EP Magnetic Current, you know I heavily praised its repletentness. What I didn’t mention was that Cross has only been seriously making music for about a year and a half. In that amount of time a new band might get a decent set of initial songs written, let alone a near-perfect record recorded.

Similarly, Cross has a whole back catalogue of collected home recordings, great in their own right, leading up to Magnetic Current. But the growth from then to now, from there to here, is astonishing, especially when you learn, as we did in a recent interview, Cross only recently got her hands on a guitar.

LLP: Your early recordings are rawer and lighter. What changed going into “Magnetic Current?”

When I first started making recordings, the whole process was extremely private. I was trying to sing for the first time, to keep a beat, and form melodic structures, all of which I was pretty embarrassed about. I was on a study trip at the time making drawings in a studio, so I was approaching songwriting somewhat in the way I would approach a drawing. I would form a concept, draw out a sort of sketch of how it was going to happen, and then slowly start layering this very simple idea. I was limited to what instruments I could play, which weren’t many. I had just starting messing around with guitar, and the only other instrument I had available to me there was a terribly out of tune piano in one of the main rooms.

When I got back to Chicago, I carried on with this stripped down process. I liked its directness, rawness, and reference to early folk and gospel recordings I love so much. I was also interested in creating more atmospheric, instrumentally diverse, and percussive recordings, which was difficult for me until I started to collaborate with other musicians.

LLP: How did you construct your sound?

The sound itself is constructed sort of by trial and error; I add and subtract, add and subtract. I draw out maps of different ways I could make it sound. Since I don’t technically “know” anything about music in the traditional sense, I write the songs in very wordy descriptive terms and pictures. They start to evolve and simplify as I scrap some of my ideas. I tend not to think too much about the overall structure as I’m writing. I try to trust whatever is coming out, and assess it on a deeper, more critical level later on. Most of my recordings thus far have been made in my tiny room with one microphone. Things can get pretty intimate.

LLP: Tell me about your song writing philosophy.

I don’t think I have a particular song writing philosophy yet. At this stage I feel open to trying just about anything that strikes me as being potentially interesting. There are a few things that come out intrinsically when I’m writing, of course; certain preferences or themes. I enjoy starting with very limited instrumentation and seeing how I can get that to work out. The lyrics come about in a variety of ways. Sometimes I am struck with a clear image of what I want to write about, or a more direct narrative; they come from dreams, sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes improvised, sometimes a meditation on an idea.

LLP: What are you inspired by, music or otherwise?

Inspirations… that list is long. Well, anything that falls under the category of metaphysics, paranormal research, or pseudoscience is fascinating to me. Near-death experiences and the research that accompanies them, death, ceremony, unexplained phenomena, psychic phenomena, precognition, all that stuff. I am also inspired by the notion of coming back to the earth, coming into a deeper understanding of where we are exactly, and moving towards a more simple way of life, literally.

LLP: What did you grow up listening to?

Choral music is tremendously moving to me; group singing, or chanting. I love listening to music for the purpose of praising something…the people making it are really feeling it, you know? I grew up listening to lots of Fleetwood Mac, Karla Bonoff, Jethro Tull, the “classical station” on the radio, Chicago, and I was obsessed with Gloria Estefan for a period of time.

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CROSS RECORD
“Magnetic Current” Record Release Show
2:00 p.m., Saturday, April 23
Saki Records, 3716 W. Fullerton Ave.
FREE

Handmade copies of Magnetic Current will be on sale for $8 or can be purchased from Another New Calligraphy for $10 (including shipping).
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