Lurking under the radar for the past 18 months, Lexington, Kentucky-based electronic artist Ellie Herring is back -- and this time she's white-hot levels of blindingly bright. Falling in line with the Internet's penchant for candy-colored, acid-tinged electronic as of late, Herring puts her very own spin on it, complete with a hefty dose arpeggiated horns, serrated synthwork and even an unexpected touch of D'Angelo, which all makes for a perfect song to close out the summer season. Peep the brand new Purple-drenched "Maze" below, all while getting some background from our Q&A about her wonky, maximalist reincarnation.
There are elements of bounce and acid here that are pretty new additions to your work. Why did you decide to go in this direction and stray away from the more introspective vibe of your Chipped EP et al.?
It definitely wasn't a conscious decision to move into a new direction, there's not a stand out moment that I remember thinking, "Okay, let's flip this thing completely now." It's so hard for me to chill in one style when I'm aware that creating music has the ability to pull my mood around with it, and from that point of view any style I'm working in is still fairly introspective.
Listening to the track feels like you're playing some manic, Special K-infused Mario Kart game, but what was your initial inspiration for "Maze"? Was the virtual reality video game aspect an important factor in its composition?
Haha, that's about right. Probably endless video game influence now and in the past. Although, most of the video games that I'm interested in now are definitely more cinematic and so are the sounds. The influence is there, but the sounds aren't intentional. If I produced a song that I felt would really show how influenced I am by video games, it would probably end up being a boring, literal recreation.
I'm intrigued by the sludgy vocals that pop up here and there, seeing as how it's such a jarring contrast from the , who provided those? Why'd you decide to manipulate them in such a way?
The vocals are from a late 90s hip hop song that I stumbled on about a year ago with a lot of clever pop culture references that I'm really into. They remind me of the 90s and most of what I was listening to in the 90s was hip hop. I pulled a piece of these to use a repetitious little vocal piece but ended up leaving in a verse about D'Angelo as well.
The entire song is very aggressive -- like sensory overload of these incredible techno-tinged, warehouse classic elements. I'm just curious to know what your writing process is like. How do you determine what's too over-the-top or if you need to amp something up etc.?
"Maze" is so close to being too over-the-top for me. I produce songs by layering a lot of elements and then going back to remove what's muddy. Or bump them around to different breaks in the song where they're blending a bit better. There are lot of happy accidents when I more or less reverse engineer something like this. "Maze" is me at an aggressive level of energy -- not in a Limp Bizkit "Break Stuff" way, but more of a "be really happy with me and dance a whole, whole lot" way.
Is this the beginning of a more upbeat acid-influenced Ellie? What's in store for you?
I think this the beginning of a more upbeat / abstract me. I've worked on a lot remixes this summer, most of those are upbeat and have helped me guide me through making some new moves.