Since getting married to longtime love Lenny Nicholson, Ameriie has been busy working in the studio on her fifth album ‘Cymatika Vol 1.’ The singer recently sat down with Billboard.com’s The Juice to talk about some exclusive details about the forthcoming project, including the sound, the subject matter, collaborations, and even some specific songs on the LP.
The songstress reveals that she has been working with different producers, but she does have plans to work with Rich Harrison again. Two main producers she’s been working with closely on the project are Andre Harris (of Dre & Vidal) and Riley Urick. And as far as collaborations go, Ameriie is sticking close to her Korean roots.
On working with Rich Harrison again ⦠“We spoke about it not too long ago and I think we wanted to do something with this project. I went over it with him, what I was looking for in general, but we didn’t go too in depth because he’s been working a lot with his artists. I think that would be something a lot of people have been waiting for and something we’re ultimately going to do. It’s just a matter of when and in what way. We have great energy. We’re going to have to have a block of time where we can sit and really create.”
On collaborations ⦠“I did a Korean version of “Outside Your Body” with Drunken Tiger’s (Korean/American hip-hop group) member, [Tiger] JK and his wife (Tasha Reid). Those are my collaborations. JK is like the Korean Jay-Z. She’s (Tasha) also a rapper.”
And with Ameriie being a married woman who is at a different point in her life compared to her previous album ‘In Love & War,’ she talks about how much the album content has changed, including the sound shifting towards “trance and electronic.”
On the album subject ⦠“This particular album is different as far as the subject matter. I kind of went in a place I didn’t go before. Relationships are very important to talk about but I also want to go a little deeper in to what it is that makes us human and what we have in common. Not just only from a romantic aspect, but what it is that makes us tick. I consider myself to be a very spiritual person. I love science, I love quantum physics and metaphysics. I just wanted to put that into my music.
You can figure out how to include anything in music, you just [have] to make sure it sounds good. I don’t like to be too preachy, so a lot of the stuff is subliminal or it has such a driving beat so that if you don’t want to hear the message, you don’t have to. You’ll either recognize what it is immediately because you’re into the same thing or you want to investigate it further.”
On the main sound of the album ⦠“Trance and electronic. 80’s new wave, but not in the sense of the sound, particularly, but more so the song structures themselves. I really wanted to try different things. Even with vocal approach, some of the songs my sister listened to and she didn’t even know it was me. I wanted to experiment with androgyny. Some of the ways I was singing, it’s kind of androgynous. I felt like, if we strip away who we are on the outside physically including gender⦠ultimately, we are spirits that have no gender. To me, putting that androgyny into some moments of the songs was able to bring that in. It was a lot of things that I believe, feel, and my outlook on life put into this album, but not just in lyrical ways. It’s in the lyrics, it’s in the song structure, it’s in the vocal approach. I’m really excited about sharing it.”
She also reveals that the album is roughly “80% finished” and that her first single “Firestarter” will go to radio before summer is over. Though we’ll have to wait to hear the single, she does give fans a sample of what to expect from two album tracks â “Run For Cover” and “Sodom and G.”
On “Run For Cover” ⦠“It’s kind of like a metaphor [for] self suppression. We’re suppressing who we really are or our ideas. We’re truly not living 100% authentically with ourselves and representing ourselves to the world as who we really are. We’re always running. But we’re not running from someone else, we’re really running from ourselves. Ultimately you’ll run out of places to hide because you can never really run from your true self.”
On “Sodom and G” ⦠” â¦like Sodom and Gomorrah. The song on the surface is about a broken relationship. It’s destroyed. I compare that to the fiery destruction the city of Sodom and Gomorrah [faced]. I used the biblical story as an example as far as looking back that, I’m looking back at everything I left behind. The twist in “Sodom and G” is that, because I’m so into ancient astronaut theory, [I included] the theory that extraterrestrials were here in ancient times and helped build the pyramids. It’s also the idea that Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t destroyed by a fire ball, but was actually destroyed by nuclear weapons from extraterrestrials. People might be like, “What?!” but I use a lot of layers when I’m writing; I like to really layer. Its fun for me as an artist and it really allows me to get into it and tell the story I want to tell.”
The singer goes into more depth in her interest in recording in “DNA repairing frequencies” as well, which you can read more here. Ameriie is still aiming for a Spring 2012 release for the project.
