Manchester based enfants terribles, The Vanity Project, are preparing to unleash their own brand of surrealist soundscapes to a wider audience through the release of single Centaur, out now via Eve of Creation.
Combining propulsive EDM beats and effected vocals, with fuzzy guitar segments and time changes galore, The Vanity Project have created their very own brand of counterculture. Centaur sounds like the discordant psychedelia of The Flaming Lips fused with the Pet Shop Boys in a shapeshifting body horror movie set to the backdrop of a manga anime. The duo’s shared experiences and unique outlook on life have provoked a sardonic, surreal sound giving a whole new meaning to the phrase folie a deux.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with The Vanity Project about the release, challenges, technology and more.
Full Q&A alogn with links and music below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
We’re both very fidgety people and are easily distracted, so with most of our songs we tend to start with something resembling a hook or even a whole pop song, and then stick a knife in and twist its insides around until it’s only just recognisable. Ultimately we want people to be a little bewildered by us but still get our songs stuck in their heads.
What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?
Both of our Dads had dreams of being musicians, so we think sometimes that they pushed us into it so that they could live vicariously through us. As for the drive to push it out into public, we’re both theatre kids, so we were given way too much attention when we were younger. This is all our parents’ fault really. We could have been accountants. I guess they’ll pay for it when we can’t afford to support them in their old age.
Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?
Some of our big musical heroes are XTC, Kate Bush and Sufjan Stevens. All 3 of those artists are insanely versatile and completely change directions between albums. We might well be making folk rock in a couple of albums time. They’re also all very theatrical and have the ability to spin on a dime between devastating and downright hilarious. We saw Sufjan on the Carrie and Lowell tour and it was one of the most intimate and beautiful live experiences we’ve ever witnessed. A few months later, he’s smashing up a banjo against a synthesiser with enormous wings on. As for our tastes changing, there isn’t a tonne that we listened to 10 years ago that we wouldn’t listen to now, but we are ravenous consumers of music, so we’re always finding new stuff. Flora didn’t like hip hop at all 5 years ago; next month we’re going to see De la Soul, Public Enemy and Wu Tang Clan on the Gods of Rap tour.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
We partly chose this song as our label debut because it was one of our strangest, which may not have been savvy from a business point of view, but we figured, why not release something impactful? Our live show is pretty manic; we wear costumes, frantically swap instruments while building up a loop and it all culminates in Flora furiously attacking a cowbell amongst the audience. We wanted to capture The Vanity Project madness in a song and we thought this track did it best.
What was the last song you listened to?
Centaur by The Vanity Project. The clue’s in our name.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Honestly, if I closed my eyes I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Neither of us are audiophiles, nor do we have the money to be collectors, so we’re totally neutral on that one.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Bandcamp is an amazing platform which genuinely gives power to artists in an era where streaming services have completely eroded everyone’s value of music and forced artists to distribute everything they do for almost no money. That said, Spotify is so damn convenient. So we’ve come to a happy medium where we both use Spotify, but feel really guilty about it.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?
Money! Sad and dull but true. Since streamageddon no money comes into music and yet everything, from recording to touring to PR, costs a kidney and a half. So building the sort of momentum that will get your music more widely heard is just constant investment. We’d love to get an album together, or book a decent tour, but more and more it feels like those are luxuries set aside for established bands or the landed gentry.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?
If you want to get in touch with us your best bet is through Facebook. We’re getting better at Instagram but we’re not Twitter-savvy at all, so we might accidentally ignore you forever if you try to contact us through there. At the moment we don’t have any other music out that we haven’t already disowned, but if you want to stay on board with us you can follow us on all the usual social medias, follow us on Spotify and if you’re especially invested, sign up to our mailing list. We’ll send you emails and real mails too. With paper and everything.
Anything else you’d like to add before signing off?
Our pals down in Norwich, Birds of Hell, just dropped their self-titled debut record. Go listen to it. It will probably be your favourite album of all time.
