Grimes

“I wanted to make an escapist dream world,” says Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Montreal electronic artist Grimes, on the eve of her first cross-Canada tour. “During recording, I was taking a lot of science classes, and became obsessed with the book’s aesthetic.” That book, as it turns out, is Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune, referenced in the title of her debut cassette, Geidi Primes. She’s re-arranged the name of one of Dune’s fictional planets, but it’s also a fitting analogy for the extraterrestrial never-never land she’s created.

Geidi Primes has a strange air of being created unconsciously while the artist herself was asleep. It is a vastly intriguing set of pop tunes highlighted by its amazing fifth and sixth songs: "avi" and "Feyd Rautha Dark Heart", which are each frighteningly reminiscent of an unaccountable psychic experience I may have never had. As an album it touches on many different tones without exploiting any. It manages to be playful without being precious, clean without being sterile, cryptic without being obscure, and operates in a deceptively complex melodic structure without calling attention to the artistry therein.
It reminds one of being a small child, listening to adult contemporary radio in the back seat of your mother's minivan when a special kind of song comes on. You are still maddeningly susceptible to the sympathetic rise and fall of a maternal voice, yet this is a different sort of mother, one more primeval and distant. Icily it falls over your entire body, begging for an escape you know you cannot give it. You are strangely moved. It seems like an album made for very tall people about what it's like to be very small. It calls to mind the glowering of a child king amidst the many vestments and decorations of his coronation. Listening to Geidi Primes is what its like to suddenly realize you are being watched while taking a cold shower...on the moon.

Emily Kai Bock's 'Human Heart' is a documentary short on GRIMES.

Halfaxa - If Grimes’ tour CDR (to be officially released via Arbutus on September 30th at Pop Montreal) is any indication, the cosmic-pop deity is transcending into a vocal-cruising eidolon of celestial proportions.