Name: Christeene Vale aka CHRISTEENE

Nationality: American
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, rapper, performance artist
Current Release: CHRISTEENE's MIDNITE FUKK TRAIN is out now. It is available digitally via bandcamp and as 12inch via Spaceflight.
Recommendations: Listen to tha audiobook THE TWILIGHT WORLD written and read by Werner Herzog about Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda.
Read SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury, especially if u seen that film as a kid cuz tha book is siiiiick. Dark poetry and far surpasses tha film experience.

If you enjoyed this interview with CHRISTEENE and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



[Album art by Brett Lindell]

When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

It was around 2008 when tha bird in mah throat really started talkin to me in mah sleep and singin me mah songs.

Before tha songs there were poetic expressions and a deep fascination and appreciation for tha skill of writing creative structures and comical rhymings and shapes.

Poetry naturally has a song and a sway to it that is inescapable and u can't help but feel tha need to expand on it if you have burnin demons and desires inside urself. When the sound of that expansion happens, it is like a crack in tha universe and you have created somethin pure and all fukkn yours. That is uh powerful addiction I luv to feed.

Film has always been uh major influence on mee, oftentimes more than music. Fassbinder was a big influence on me. Cocteau too. And musically I have always been in awe and appreciation of tha structures and rhymes of Missy Elliot handz down. Pure fukkn joy, absurdity, sexuality, and deep intelligence of lyrical laydowns.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I'm listenin to tha reeeeel deeeeeal kinda music I git those quick intakes of breath, like when u are bout to have a deep hard soulful cry. My eyes tear up, just a bit like when u have just felt tha presence of a ghost in a room. I get goosebumps all over my body.

These physical attributes serve as road signs when I'm makin my own jamz. If my body don't goosebump up and my eyes don't water … I know it ain't there yet. If I don't smile or laugh at whut I'm makin, that tooo is a sign it ain't there.

Geometrical shapes of light and surreal landscapes hold strong in my mind when I'm mentally composing my songs and I always click my teeth together to tha beats in my head while I'm creatin songs which makes folks think I'm on sum heavy drugs butt I'm not …. mostly.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I am a patient fukker and I do not care to rush anything, especially when it cums to personal evolution and developement. My main interest in tha beginning was to be like uh switchblade. Fast, easy and effective. No hard prep, just one hard push to tha gut. It has served me well.

Biggest challenge was shuttin all tha garage doors of my mind down on tha public and tha critical fukks out there. Too make sumthin that was wholly mine and what I felt tha fukkn world needed cuz I couldn't find it in tha world. Sumthin pure without tha noise of peoples' opinions or problems over what I was servin.

I'm not a messiah singer. I don't wanna git up there an tell u how to do your life, tell u how I know this and u don't, how I got this an u don't. That shit is commercial crap and I don't subscribe to it.

We share too many collective feelings in this world and all I wanna do is lay them out on the stage and burn through them together with the tools I can share to do just that.

It really began too personally click for mee tha day I told myself that I can't say these things on stage to people if I ain't practicing it all myself. Walk tha walk and talk tha talk ur preachin 100 fukkn percent. If I can't do that then I shouldnt be takin tha stage nowhere.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I like how u say please. That's sweet and polite. Thank u for that.

I don't feel as though I am of this human realm. I come from tha dirt. Tha woods. I feel fluid in my identity and gender and expression. I am a conductor of tha human experience. a vessel to lay yourself in and release.

I naturally wanna connect and plug into other fluid expressions of sound and identity from other artists and I wanna make soundscapes that can wrap around infiltrate and hold anyone willing to let themselves into my realm.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Make it pure, make it cheap, make it reachable, make it memorable.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

When I start to git nit picky with my producers I call it gettin all Streisand and I back off quick and shut tha fukk up an try to let tha magic and tha damage happen naturally. Perfection is a beast and it usually ruins u. Like money.

I'm much more interested in creatin original sounds and expressions but I must admit that them sounds and expressions have been influenced by other works of art in some way or another. Is it continuin a tradition? I don't think so. Is it makin tha sound of tha future? I don't want that job.

Let's just say it is me eatin all yalls sugar coated crap and then shittin it back on tha table real and raw for yall to eat. Mangia. Mangia.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

First and foremost is to be thankful of, respectful to, and crediting towards those who have helped u get that fukk where u are today. U do that and u will burn golden thru your creative years. It's easy to git in ur head and devour tha love and care from others and keep goin with no respect to how u got to that next patch of experience. I had to teach myself that rule after some burns and bruises. U would be wise to doo tha same.

All u got is ur name and how folks react when they here it. Patti Smith says that. I ain't gonna question Patti.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My cat Tickles Pickles triiiiies to wake me tha fukk up around 6am then fukkn goes back to bed around 8. I finally git up, I piss while tickles waits for me meowin a shit load. Then we got this mornin routine where I follow him to tha other side of tha shotgun apartment where we live to where his food bowl is and I feed his piggy ass.

Then I make sum sugary creamy coffee and I try my best to go directly into writin or readin or some sort of crafting before letting my eyes an my soul git eaten by these modern machines of phones and computers where tha logistics of work lie. This happens pretty much every fukkn day.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

On my new album is a song called “LO PAID RUNWAY MODEL.” It is extremely dear too me.

It was a very tricky and difficult birth cuz when u begin to write a song off of a feelin towards a person or a experience it can sometimes change if u wait too long to catch that fish in tha net. Well this song began some years ago and it was a slow slow burn. Then Covid happened. Strangeness took hold. Tha reasons upon which tha song began shifted and new feelings began to seep in.

It was tha first time I had to very delicately and carefully care for a song through a very tricky volatile timeline all tha while main'taining tha pure origins of its sound and feeling while recognizing that new feelings had to be included as well.

I am very fukkn happy I took that journey and stuck with it.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I gotta be solitary at tha beginnin of creatin a song. However when I get that special hook I always like to swing it into that ear of my nearest and dearest and see how it catches them. I can tell real quick if I got a good fish and I then try my best to stick to that song and finish it.

That to me is tha hardest part. Not gettin distracted and allowin urself tha personal time to develop and create new music. I start somethin but will put it down to do tha other shit and it gits lost in tha pile of dreams.

That's where collaboration cums in and why I love it so fukkn much. When ur bangin with another creative mind u don't have tha time to allow urself to lay that shit down and walk away. U got responsibilities to someone else which is always easier and more enjoyable to me than havin to do it all for and by yourself.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

My work and creativity allow folks to disappear from themselves for a hot sweaty moment and fall into a realm where they can lay it alllllll tha fukk down and reflect or rage or laugh or cry, no matter who tha fukk they are and that to me is very fukkn important. Tha experience does tha same for me when I'm in there with u.

Music is just tha honey that makes it all tha more easy ferr you too slide that fuck in.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Tha minute I hit tha stage, shit starts gettin dealt with between me and my audience and understandin usually takes place when it's all over and ur layin in ur bed sayin to urself what that fukk just happened and who tha fukk was that sexxy opossum that I was strangely attracted too ahahahaaaa.

Same thing usually happens when I see someone I respect. If I don't feel understandings of life happenin in a show or a film I fukkn leave and go home and watch murder she wrote.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other? 

Huh?

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

A cup of fukkn coffee is not gunna move me through emotions and tremors that music can. But it will move me to tha bathroom to take a good mornin dump.

Music is what gets u through them mundane tasks. Why u think most people play music at a party, when they cookin, at a funeral, at a wedding, at a sacrifice.

Music is tha black matter of our mundane daily universe.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

If I could explain that I would just call myself god and sit on some big chair up on a mountain'top and eat raw oysters and drink champagne all day.

That vibration and exchange only proves that it is all a great mystery and no fukk can ever tell you how to do it right. U just gotta be fluid. Be a part of it.