Humana Maelstrom Zine: 2008

'Helen Trevillion is a British composer, arranger, songwriter, performer and producer of eclectic, modern ethereal faerie pop and neoclassical-influenced songs and soundscapes. Heavily inspired by poetic imagery, ancient mythology, fairytales and philosophies, she uses music and lyrics to build collages of poignant life experiences.

Helen fell in love with writing music as a child, enthralled by how many worlds were contained in sound, how profoundly it spoke of the feelings there are no words for. She fell in love with magical stories and metaphor, symbols of raw beauty and transformation and with these ingredients she built her own secret language. What began as a hobby in early childhood became a necessity, a passion and an alchemic path, a way of sharing and expressing a deep-rooted personal mythos.

She is a self-taught producer and prefers to work alone in her home studio, enjoying the charms and idiosyncrasies of DIY production and the freedom it offers to her imagination. She has also offered her talents to the independent video game and film industries as a composer and sound designer and has been involved in a number of freeware video games, animations and audio dramas.'

'Helen Trevillion is a British composer, arranger, songwriter, performer and producer of eclectic, modern ethereal faerie pop and neoclassical-influenced songs and soundscapes. Heavily inspired by poetic imagery, ancient mythology, fairytales and philosophies, she uses music and lyrics to build collages of poignant life experiences.

Helen fell in love with writing music as a child, enthralled by how many worlds were contained in sound, how profoundly it spoke of the feelings there are no words for. She fell in love with magical stories and metaphor, symbols of raw beauty and transformation and with these ingredients she built her own secret language. What began as a hobby in early childhood became a necessity, a passion and an alchemic path, a way of sharing and expressing a deep-rooted personal mythos.

She is a self-taught producer and prefers to work alone in her home studio, enjoying the charms and idiosyncrasies of DIY production and the freedom it offers to her imagination. She has also offered her talents to the independent video game and film industries as a composer and sound designer and has been involved in a number of freeware video games, animations and audio dramas.'

But most importantly Helen is a dear fairy friend to me and a wonderful inspiration, her voice is very touching and like someone I've already met in a previous era or something.
Her fae pop music and her magical piano could be the music soundtrack of several of my paintings.

I respect and admire her a lot, plus I adore her genuine ways to deal with her art business, she is unique and real, a beautiful sister of name :)

1) How would you describe the universe around you, what you music ismade of? the secret ingredients of Helen Trevillion's faerytale work?

Secret ingredients... ahaha, what kind of chef gives away the secrets of her cuisine? ;)
Ha, well no seriously and truthfully, I feel a bit clumsy answering this question. The universe of Helen Trevillion is a messy, matted tangle of metaphor and feeling. We all have our own perception filters, we all have our own personal mythos. Mine is an intensely emotional language, filled with pieces of my past and future decorated in fairytale and poetry. I yearn for the sort of everyday magic that you find in ordinary places, the kind that leaves you breathless and vividly alive and renewed - it's really no coincidence that actual fables and folktales are so close to my heart! I romanticise and glamorise everything, through music, through words, through images, whatever I can tune into - I always need to immortalise the things I feel and the ways in which I change from moment to moment. To me there's something inescapably beautiful about intangible human experience.

2) How do you work with music, do you begin with finding the melody and you put words onto it, how do you create a song?

The process varies from song to song, but usually everything sort of collects together at once. I'll be playing something on the piano, and there's this whisper of a melody there, and certain words, sounds or syllables that just feel right and real and organic, so I work from there and look for a way to flesh it out. Lyrics come much more easily than they used to. These days I just sing about whatever imagery I'm obsessing over.

I choose the instrumentation depending on the emotions. The voice and the harmonies will carry the song. The rest of the arrangement is there to add colour and amplify the feeling.

I feel blessed in that I can carry music around in my head that doesn't exist and yet sounds so complete. In a sense I don't even consider what I do to be creating because I feel I'm tuning into something rather than actually creating it from a blank canvas. It's just that sometimes it's hard to really hear it and to make it real in a way that does it justice. That's the most frustrating thing, feeling that you haven't quite done it justice.

3)Whatis the feedback you receive from people who know you and like yourwork?what do they say? how do they see you and appreciate your work?

People who know me always give positive feedback. Sometimes it's hard to gauge whether they genuinely love the music or whether they appreciate it because it's a part of me! The feedback I get from complete strangers gives me more confidence because a stranger can listen objectively and feels absolutely no obligation to enjoy it! So when a stranger listens to my music and finds something beautiful and worthwhile in it, I know I'm doing OK. :) I don't make music for entertainment, I make it to communicate my experience of this world, so I love it so much when people can get beyond technical skill and pretty melodies and really connect with it and understand it. And I love it when people are inspired by my work!

Not everyone will connect with my music or love my voice, but there are enough people who genuninely believe in me to keep me determined and believing in myself. I think I owe it to them as much as myself to keep doing it. Belief is a precious and powerful thing. When people give that to you, you pay attention.

I have made a lot of new friends through my music, some really amazing people. When you share your creative work on the internet, you leave yourself wide open, and I've been fortunate enough to discover nothing but warmth and kindness in reaction to that.

4) Tell us about your Muses, all the places where you find inspiration? is it books? art? love? fairytales?your inner heart?

In the external world, I look to poetry and literature, people and relationships and of course music and sound, but I think inspiration is found in the way I internalise these things rather than in the things themselves - it's observing how I react to all these sources that really inspires me. The internal world is where my Muse lives. I'm an introvert with a very rich and dominating inner world, so I am always fascinated by the way things translate from inner to outer, and then again from outer to inner.

In poetry and literature I connect most with rich imagery and fantastical themes, because those are littered with associations, in universal experience and in my personal mythos. Fairy tales are treasure troves of symbolism! I like language that sounds pretty to say, and I find that sometimes even the sounds of words, or how they look on the page, can set something off!

As a musician, I'm inspired a lot by other musicians. I'm very picky with the music I choose to listen to. I like music that cuts me emotionally. Most music doesn't blow me away but when I hear something that does, this is the typical series of events:

1. Oh.... WOW.
2. *hopeless fangirling*
3. I wish I'd written that song.
4. GAHHH, but I'll never be that good!!!! EVER!
5. *angst angst angst FLAIL*
6. *little puddle of woe*

...and then, because that is all quite woefully unproductive, I tend to just let it wash over me and enjoy listening to it (but not TOO much) and hope that at some point my internal world will find an honest way to borrow the essence of this treasure. ;)

5)Wouldyou say your music/lyrics talk about you, or are more like a prolongation of yourself and thus creating a persona and talking or revealing many different sides of you?

I would say both! I think of my songs as freeze-frames of me. They're little pieces of a jigsaw, or threads in a tapestry. Everything I write is me, but not the whole me. A lot of my songs are about real things that have happened in my life - those depictions of me are real in a very human and relatable sense. Other songs, such as the ones I've been writing for The Cocoon, express identity in a much more fluid way. To me, it's just as important to express myself more abstractly as it is to express myself in terms of the things I've been through, because I have a very vivid idea of who I am and I am definitely more than the things I've said and done.

Do you feel your work as an artist is telling you more about who you are, who you're becoming?
Yes definitely! I've always thought the creative arts are the perfect tools for self-exploration. I have learned so much about who I've been and how I've changed (and, more notably, how I haven't changed). Writing music tells me about my potential, it tells me about the person I hope to become, who I perhaps could become if . . . All the different possibilities present themselves - you are a canvas, you can create yourself and sculpt yourself. I think the reason art is so natural and so important for humans is because it's externalising a process that's happening internally all the time! My music has changed my life and the way I see myself more times than I can count.

6)When did you begin to play music and why did you choose the piano, what is your connection to the piano? Is she your best friend or a half of you you can tell anything and feel comfort while playing?

I've played music since I was tiny. My parents recognised that I had a gift and hastily sent me to pre-school music classes. I learned the recorder and the violin first, and then piano, I think, because my older sister played it and as a child I always wanted to be just like her, she was my idol. ;)

I didn't have much interest in playing the traditional repertoire. I learned new pieces almost exclusively by ear and was terrible at sight-reading, so reading music was stressful and frustrating, and I hated performing. I found it a bit weird that everyone wanted to play the same pieces from the same books - there was much more reward in teaching myself to play other songs by ear and giving life to the tunes in my head! And the exams... oh... the exams terrified me!

I played the piano a lot as a child but didn't have a strong emotional connection to this instrument until I was a teenager. Then, yes, she became my best friend, the one who knew all my secrets, who understood my fears, my hurts, my dreams and my confusions better than anyone. The piano is almost a sister to me. She's been my comfort through every shadow and there's really not a single thing I haven't shared with her - sometimes I think I must have dropped my soul between those keys once upon a time... ;) Yes, when I play I do find relief and comfort and strength and understanding somehow, a way to open myself, to amplify my emotions and break down and feel the storm and move on through. To me the sound of a piano is strong and feminine, soothing, full of life and love and wisdom. It's a lovely instrument regardless of any deeper connections I may have.

7) What kind of artist would you like to collaborate with if you could?

In music, I'd most like to collaborate with artists who make music that contrasts with my own, artists who have different strengths. It's more interesting when each party can contribute something unique and new to the work of the other. In the arts as a whole, I'd most like to collaborate with animators and experimental short film makers. I think music and film can have a real magic together! I would love to do more work like that.

8)how would you describe yourself today and your life at the present time?

'Messy' would be the answer that fits best on most days. ;)
No, really, I think the most accurate description of me and my life right now would be 'in transition'. There is definitely change going on. I can't read the future (sadly!) but I'm trying my best to steer my life in a direction that's good for me and my art because I believe that you have to do what makes you most alive, and this is what makes me alive. There are so many obstacles, money being the biggest and most stressful at the moment. I'm sure many people can relate to the struggle of trying to balance out their dreams and their security. It's tough sometimes. There are days when I think I must be insane. (And there are people in my life who make it abundantly clear that they believe this to be so! It's up to me to prove them wrong. At least it keeps me on my toes!)

9)How was your first cd release experience? how does it feel to complete something and have one's cd sold at cd baby and itunes?will you play live and release soon another cd?

Ha... well it was a very mixed experience. I went through just about every emotion you could imagine.

While I was preparing the final mixes and the CD artwork I was so excited.
When I paid for the pressing and ended up with boxes of CDs on my doorstep, I panicked. A lot.
Suddenly it seemed real and I faltered and started to believe that nobody would buy it. I thought it wasn't good enough, I thought no way would I ever sell all of those CDs... it got so that I couldn't even bring myself to listen to the CD or look at it because suddenly all I could think of were the imperfections and I thought I had failed. I was really upset about it. Then release day came and people started buying them. Oh my. MADNESS! I'd expected only my closest friends to buy it, but people I had never heard of or spoken to before were buying it. I sold over half of them in the first week :) So then, of course, I was euphoric. Insufferably so. Ahahaha. Well it was a massive relief. And I started to feel genuinely proud of myself, because for me it was such a brave thing to do. And I felt so incredibly grateful.

I put off that CD for years because I felt as if I was only pretending to be a musician and an artist - there was always a huge abyss between me and all those 'real artists' of the world, in my mind. Going ahead and actually releasing a CD helped me to get over that silliness.

I'm proud of my work and what I put into it. I am enormously grateful for my gift. I know it's not an everyday thing and although from my perspective it is always so imperfect, it doesn't matter because there's a beauty in it that is mine alone.

I've never performed live. I thought about it this year, but I finding suitable musicians is not easy. I think this will remain a future project. But I do know that one day I will do it.

10)Is the art of music to you made of healing energies? Are you aware of the way it can make other feel and how you inspire them?

It is, yes. I think music offers a kind of empathy, a path to self-acceptance. It is an amazing amplifier. Sometimes it brings us peace, sometimes it brings us to tears, sometimes it unearths old sorrows... it can affect us in different ways but I've never found it hindering, it always works towards release and resolution.

A couple of times I've had people email me to tell me that one of my songs helped them through a struggle and brought them peace. I thought that was beautiful. Although I write music for selfish reasons (as my own unravelling and release) it's good to be reminded that it can affect others and become personal to them too.

11)what are your dreams for the near future?
I want to get another album out! :)
I want to reach more people, and I want to work with more people.

I'll mostly be working on The Cocoon, because I want to release it next year and I have a lot of songs to write! Apart from that, I have an EP coming out and some collaborations too.

So, just very simple dreams for now. I just want to get more music out, music I can be really proud of. I view my first album as a test run in many senses, and for that reason I have been hesitant to go all out with the promotion for it. Actually I'm a little bit daunted by the prospect of finishing The Cocoon, because I've set myself such high standards, and I know I will not be happy with it unless it matches my vision exactly! But I will do my best!