Singer/visual artist Michelle Xen will add to the batch of talent at the Containerval Festival on November 9.
Following the release of her last single, 'Lose My Cool', earlier this year, Michelle has since made plans for an upcoming EP, On For You. A crowd funded project, the proposed record would bring together five songs, each sporting an artistic, homemade film clip. “The On For You project started as a collection of songs. Over two years I've stitched these opportunities together and it’s more cohesive than anything I've ever done,” she says.
With her experience in both the art and music industry, Michelle has used the best of both worlds to help create unique performances, videos and songs. “I use images to sometimes figure out what I’m doing in a song, if a song doesn’t make sense. I’ll look at an image and go back to the song. I kind of like to crush things together and then it’s a challenge,” she says. “You have to push a bit harder to work past what you’re expected to do as a musician or artist, and it was fun to play with that.”
Since rocketing into the music industry, Michelle has grown to appreciate music more. “Working in different disciplines, I find that music reaches people fastest and works directly with your emotions before you have time to think about it. It’s got such a capacity for creating feelings in people,” she says. “My favourite musicians write music that changed something that I saw in myself or changed the way I felt about something. There’s a desire to make people feel something unusual or amazing or challenging.”
While her budget for making music videos is not exactly limitless, Michelle has come up with some creative work-arounds. “I don’t have millions of dollars but I can still do cool things with technology,” she says. “About half the videos are funded reasonably but the others I'll make for, like, 300 bucks and just do myself. That's why the call for the crowd funder is needed. I want to learn more innovative ways of performing through technology and audiences and interactivity and really try to create a vision for how music might look in the future and be a part of that. It’s a really powerful form of art.”
Michelle Xen will perform at the Containerval Festival on Saturday November 9.
