Lydia Ainsworth Takes On The 70s Dance Style 'Waacking'

Lydia Ainsworth took an odd path to songwriting, and her music is all the more rich and captivating for it. The Toronto-based musician started playing cello in an arts high school and eventually studied film scoring at NYU. Along the way, she she began writing songs in private using the programming and vocal skills she developed while learning composition. Not one to share an unfinished product, she finally revealed her songs to friends after mastering and quickly found herself as the newest singee on the famed Montreal-based Arbutus Records.

The four songs on her debut EP, Right From Real, Pt. 1, interweave nuanced string arrangements with electronic samples and enchanting vocals. They show off her cinematic songwriting abilities, coming across like soundtracks for dreams. We spoke with her recently about her background in composition, her slow transition to songwriting, and the visually stunning music video for "Malachite," which makes use of a 1970s dance style called waacking.

Noisey: You've had a long musical career that only recently turned toward songwriting. When did you first start playing instruments?
Lydia Ainsworth: I went to ESA (Etobicoke School of the Arts) and they sent me home with a cello when I was ten. I learned how to play myself, so my technique is all wrong. It actually hurts me to play. I didn't bother correcting myself because it got to the point where there was no turning back unless you want to play scales for ten hours a day. I never really thought of myself as a classical performer - that was never my dream - I just enjoyed it.

How did you get involved in scoring for films?
I moved to New York to study composition for film at NYU four years ago when I got a grant from the Canada Council of the Arts. I've scored a lot of short films. In 2011 my first feature that I scored, called The Woods, went to Sundance.

How did you transition from that to songwriting? Do the two overlap for you?
At NYU, I studied with this teacher named Joan La Barbara who is a specialist in extended vocal techniques and she really encouraged me to sing in my work, so that was a huge influence on me. The moment when I actually started to perform, that was really the turning point for me. I really loved the idea of bringing a whole bunch of people together to see music live. At that point I thought, "Oh, I need more songs, so I can do this."

Both inspire each other. It exercises different parts of the brain, and it introduces new ideas, so to experiment in different realms is great and inspires my songwriting. But ultimately, when writing for film, you're fulfilling someone else's vision, while writing an album is totally your thing

How did you start writing actual tracks for Right From Real, Pt. 1?
Initially I didn't really know what I was doing. I hadn't set out to actually make an album, but in between writing for film projects and other multimedia projects, I started using my voice more and it turned into a collection of songs. I guess it happened so gradually. It started from, number one, using my voice in film scores in a more of a textual way, and singing for other composers and people's demo songs, and getting asked by friends to perform at parties, and I started increasing my repertoire. Plus my love of pop music.

What kinds of pop music were you listening to at the time?
At the time, I was listening to a lot of different types of music, but in terms of pop, I was listening to a lot of Peter Gabriel's So, and to Verdi's Requiem, which is my favourite requiem, and just a whole lot of other stuff. Also experimenting with Bulgarian singing, which my neighbours hated, because it's really loud. It's really amazing because of the close harmonies involved and the intensity of singing in that style. It's really fun, but yeah, if you're living in New York, people don't really like that. I didn't sing like that on the album, but that's what I was listening to.

So you had all these bedroom recordings. Why did you wait so long to share them?
I was just continually working on them and they never felt finished. I just didn't feel like it was time to share them. I didn't really share them until they were mastered. I sent the masters to David Ertel from Solar Year, who I had shown some pieces to earlier on. Then he showed them to the people at Arbutus.

Did you know anyone at Arbutus before you got involved with them? Were you a fan of their music?
I went down to play for Pop Montreal last year and I met up with them then, but before that, I remember telling Sebastien Cowan that I loved all the bands they were releasing and I really respected their support for these artists. I'm really thrilled to be releasing through Arbutus.

You've had orchestras play your music before, but what about your own performances? How have you adapted your music to the stage for live touring?
It's something I'm continually working on. I don't know if it's my strength yet, I feel way more comfortable behind a computer in the basement. It's been really fun, though. I've been performing with a violinist and a cellist, and sometimes we have dancers join us. I'm playing keyboards and triggering things on my computer and I have a vocal looper harmonizer. It's really great to bring the songs to life in a different environment and get reactions from the audience.

The dancing in the music video for "Malachite" is incredibly interesting. What is "waacking," exactly?
It's a style of dance that originated in 1970s LA around the same time that voguing emerged in New York. Waacking is normally a dance for disco and it picks up on the music through arm movements and hand movements. The woman who choreographed my video, Princess Lockeroo, is a genius. She was picking up on intricacies in my music that I hadn't even noticed, and adding them to the dancers' movements.

Where did you film it?
The video is totally DIY. I brought together all my friends, and we filmed it in a glass studio in Brooklyn where my friend was working and they loaned us all these neon lights. Basically, it was meant to be one long shot, but it was so hot when we filmed it that our camera melted and we had to come back the next day. It was the only one in the city that fit on our rig, this weird Swedish weird camera, so we had to get a new one. Those poor dancers! Everything was kind of melting and falling off the dancers as they were doing it.

See Lydia Ainsworth on tour:

June 12th | Montreal, QC | Picolo Rialto (Slut Island Festival)
June 14th | Brooklyn NY | Shea Stadium (Northside Festival)
June 19th | Toronto ON | Edward Day Gallery (NXNE Festival)

Photo by Jessica Upton Crowe.

Greg Bouchard is a writer living in Toronto. He's on Twitter.

---

Dearly Beloved debuted a video that's best described as a hot mess

Wrong Hole loves Rush so much, they ripped off their album art

How the closure of one Toronto venue revived the local punk scene