Name: Aimée Portioli aka Grand River
Nationality: Dutch-Italian
Occupation: Composer, sound designer
Recent release: Grand River's "In The Present As The Future" is out via Editions Mego. It is the final single to be released before the publication of her new full-length All Above on February 24th 2023.

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



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Many diverse things inspire me, constantly and often also subconsciously. I would not be able to say which one is predominant as it depends on what I am surrounded by in that specific period.

A person’s subconscious is absorbing and receiving inspiration all the time. Ideally every piece I listen to, every museum I visit, every piece of art I see, every conversation I have with a friend or stranger, every other book cover I see or text I read, all that auditory and visual information turns into a big collection of data and memories stored in the brain. If I get triggered by that information, it will affect what I am doing consciously.

This means that when I start working on a creative project, all those facts and details will create waves and currents and affect my work and output.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

It depends on what the project is. If I am working on something that has a precise concept, then there is a concrete idea of a workflow and of the finished work. This is necessary to stay on track and to directionally work towards a specific result.

On the other hand, if I am working on a piece with no particular guideline I like to move and work freely without any reference and allow myself to be guided by the development of the process itself. Both methods, even if very different, are equally exciting and stimulating to me.
 
Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

There is not a particular preparation phase for my process, but if I am composing and recording in my studio I will first make sure that the instruments I am working with are set up in the way that is needed in order to avoid technical hiccups later on. I really don’t like to stumble into technical issues while I am composing as that breaks the flow, even if sometimes that’s understandably unavoidable.

Occasionally I like to move instruments around or isolate them from the others and work singularly just with one particular device.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I don’t have any specific ritual to get into the right mindset. It is important for me to be rested, though. A good night's sleep and having the right energy is necessary for me to have a good and enjoyable time while working.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

The first notes are always exciting. They are the beginning of something, from whence I will shape the rest. It is like laying a foundation, a load-bearing portion of a structure that can potentially be completely subverted afterwards.

The first note can either be difficult or easy to write - it really depends and it’s always different.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

After the start sometimes the rest of the work emerges quickly or, at other times, very slowly. There is no fixed procedure or rule for the development phase.

On occasion, a piece evolves very naturally without much thought and at times it takes much longer. It might also happen that I need to take a break from a piece and distance myself from it in order to come back to it after multiple listenings and a long period of time in order to be able to continue and give it the meaning and the intention that I wanted.

Nothing is linear. And that’s the beauty of the process.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I like and need to keep a kind of strict control over the process only if I need to work towards a precise concept or a concrete idea. Let’s say for example in the case of a concept album, a sound installation or when I work on an A/V show with a visual artist.

If that’s not the case I like to let myself be guided by the evolution of the composition and see where it takes the piece and let myself be surprised by that.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

It happens yes, and when it does I'll take the decision whether to integrate these alternative paths in the composition I am working on or rather to exclude them and letting them become the beginning of something completely new.

It is quite interesting when that happens because it means a new compositional idea is generated from an existing one.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

In 2008 Dr. Charles Limb and Dr. Allan Braun discovered that there is a part of the brain that is responsible for selective attention and impulse control which is called the ‘dorsolateral prefrontal cortex’ (DLPFC). This part of the brain shuts off when the creative process takes place.

I indeed often notice that the best ideas come when I am completely detached from work and when I am doing a relaxing or mechanical activity that doesn’t require much thinking and focus.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

Unless there is no deadline marking the end of the process, it's my own feeling of completeness. I can only get this feeling by distancing myself from the project and listening back to it after some days, weeks or months.

I will get back to it and make some changes if necessary, and when, after several times, I don’t find anything else more to modify and I like what I am hearing and and it communicates what I wanted, I'll consider the piece completed.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I don’t really have a limit to this, probably the limit is my patience. I'll continue working on the piece until I like it and I would not want to change anything anymore. Sometimes though this brings me further away from what I wanted to obtain and what my initial idea was and I would end up by setting the whole project aside and restart from scratch.

It’s like cooking a nice meal. If the ingredients are not right at some point there is no point in fixing it anymore. You have to start over.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Mixing is extremely important for me as I consider this part of the creative process. I do this along the way, continuously. I would never want someone else to mix my pieces, it’s simply not possibile as I can not compose without mixing.

I don’t do the mastering of my own pieces, I like to work with mastering engineers I trust and admire. It’s important to have someone you rely on to work with and that can give an external opinion about the overall sound of a composition or record.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

The time that passes between composing an album and seeing it published is most often tremendously long. So before seeing an album published, I am likely already in the process of making another one. I’m always working on several projects at the same time, which means that processes are often combined and influencing each other and the publication of it would therefore never really give me a sense of emptiness.

When a record is released I feel exited to give meaning to a defined period and I am afterwards happy to move on to another project. Working on an album is as satisfying as the final result, so I am usually grateful to share it with the world. After the work is released I like to use the feedback I receive as a tool to convey insights. Sometimes the experience of others, their feedback and reaction gives me new awareness and perspective.

I find subjectivity in art fascinating and I like to see how individual people respond to a work of art in entirely different ways.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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?

I would say it is different in my case as I am not able to express as much by making a cup of coffee as I can through writing a piece of music. I probably have not spent enough weeks or years making coffee as I have making music. So I am simply less familiar with communicating through a cup of coffee. If I were to make ten cups of coffee in a row they would probably mostly all taste the same. Coffee making is not my art, just like the majority of other arts besides sound.

There is a saying in Italian with which I fully agree which says “ad ognuno la sua arte”. There is no equivalent in the English language so a a literal translation of this would be "to each their own art”.