Martha Skye Murphy and Joanna Gemma Auguri are Homesick for Another World

Martha Skye Murphy is a singer-songwriter based in London; Joanna Gemma Auguri is a singer-songwriter based in Berlin. Both coincidentally have new records that are inspired, in part, by the untranslatable Welsh word “hiraeth” — meaning, “A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was.” Martha’s Um is out tomorrow on AD 93, and Joanna’s Hiraeth will be out June 28. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Martha Skye Murphy: Hi, Joanna.

Joanna Gemma Auguri: Hi, Martha. 

Martha: It’s so nice to talk to you, and to meet you.

Joanna: Yeah, what a pleasure. I was really surprised because I got your record and your bio, and I haven’t heard of you before. Yesterday I took the evening off to listen to your album, and I was really surprised about the similarity of contradictional landscapes in [our] music. I really enjoyed it a lot. Something that stuck with me was also that, on the very last recording, you’re kind of closing the door saying, “Alright, that’s it.” I do something similar on my very last song on the album — I’m closing the accordion. It’s like the breath out of the instrument, and then it’s done.

Martha: Yeah, I also felt the same when I was reading your bio. And, I mean, obviously the immediate connection with your album title, Hiraeth, and with my record also kind of being summarized by [producer] Marta Salogni, when she heard it, with that word — there seems to be a huge amount of crossover. I read in the bio how you trained as an actor, and that you knew all the lyrics to Bertolt Brecht and and Kurt Weill; I also have long been obsessed with their work and the playful performativity of it. When I was younger, I watched a lot of old silver screen musicals — you know, Fred and Ginger and stuff — and I think then when I came to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, they feel like a postgraduate version of my childhood interests. That tail ending of the album — for me, it was a reference to a self-awareness that you have, say, with watching a play or an opera where you’re jolted out of that space as soon as the lights come up. I just wondered how that still influences your work, that acting training, or the words of Kurt Weill?

Joanna: Well, I’m not sure if I ever think about a drama concept when I write music. I rarely think about concepts for songs or poems. They rather come from a thought or an emotion. But I guess as I was playing theater for such a long time, and I was singing these songs, it must have been stuck somewhere inside me, that way of expressing songs as stories. What I like so much about the music of Kurt Weill is the peculiarity in it, and that the lyrics and the stories are really transported by the music as well in the compositions. And this is something that I’m also looking for — for me, the music very often starts basically from a picture or a story with the lyrics, and then I try to underline the emotions with the music.

Martha: Yeah, I’m the same. I write in fragments, I think, in a sort of collaged approach. Lyrics will appear to me from notebooks that I wrote years ago, and suddenly really resonate with something that’s happened or I’ve overheard. I’m quite fixated on that concept of how memory and things from the past, whether it’s a feeling or a smell or an image or a film, resurface. And like you, I don’t think I ever set out to write a song about anything in particular; it’s more that something presents itself to you. Then I really struggle when being asked to kind of summarize a song. Like, “So what’s this about?”

Joanna: It’s an impossible question.

Martha: It’s impossible. Because actually, I think you don’t really ever want to know truly what it’s about, do you?

Joanna: Yeah. Sometimes the message reveals itself way later after recording, writing the song, and it’s a bit like a message from the subconsciousness or, I don’t know, some other higher spirit.

Martha: A sort of ghost or something.

Joanna: Yeah. From my perspective, music and art is a refuge, and it’s also a place where you reflect yourself as well, regarding your position in this world and all the topics that cross your path. 

Martha: Completely. Also, I think [it’s] creating a space where meaning is mutable, and it can reinvent itself according to who’s listening or the time in which you’re listening to it. Both when you record things and listen back, but then also when you’re writing, I think it is this space which transcends the boundaries of language, or the structures that we’re habitually used to living in. It’s a freeing space. Which comes down to as well: your record is called Hiraeth, and that in itself is an untranslatable word.

Joanna: Yeah.

Martha: Which I find fascinating. It loosely means, “the longing for a place or a time or a person,” and I feel like what we’ve just described music as to us, it encapsulates that word in itself beyond just your record — the progress that music has in allowing us to strive for whatever this place is that we can never arrive at. So how did you come to that word and when did you first hear it?

Joanna: I first heard it from a friend. He’s an archaeologist. He was listening to some of my new demos and he said, “You know, how it sounds — do you know this word?” And he said this word to me, and I was really struck because I thought, Wow, this is exactly the place that I’m looking for. A place for solace, a place, maybe, of innocence and purity that never can really exist in a human world.

Martha: Wow. So we were both we were both given that word by someone else in response to our records. That’s so interesting. [Laughs.]

Joanna: Yeah.

Martha: But also, you speak German — you moved to Germany from Poland when you were younger.

Joanna: Exactly.

Martha: And so there is kind of quite a literal connection with this word and its meaning to your journey.

Joanna: Yeah, growing up in two worlds… I would actually like to ask you, as well, something about that. Because I saw that you were recording in Wales and in New Zealand. What brought you there? 

Martha: Well, just the remote nature of recording. The record was recorded over quite a long period of time. I recorded in studios — Ethan P. Flynn, who co-produced the record with me, his home studio — then we also tracked in more slick spaces for cleaner recordings. And then spread throughout the record are these recordings from various contributors and musicians across the globe. Roy Montgomery, the guitarist, is based in New Zealand. And actually, it’s interesting, I’ve never been to New Zealand, but when I look at pictures, it strikes me as looking quite a lot like Wales. So he offered not only his guitar recordings, but when I sent him my songs, I said, “Maybe try a bit of this here, and otherwise just do do what you will, feel free to go wherever.” He sent back a recording of him revving his 1968 Chrysler engine. I just loved this idea of him recording a car across the other side of the world in a completely different time zone. I have no idea what I would have been doing at the time that he recorded that and where I would have been. And then meanwhile, I was making recordings myself, of just sounds that caught me. One of them was a rainstorm in Wales, and walking around some damp moss. Then also, Claire Rousay — I have no idea where she recorded her recording, but she is based in Dallas. So there’s this interesting spread of locations in the record, which actually really feeds into the whole feeling of seeking some kind of single space but being torn between multiple environments.

Joanna: That is really beautiful. You can really sense the the places in the music as well. I was curious about this because I’ve traveled to New Zealand three times in my life already — I’ve been there touring, and I wanted to live there. I was like, “Oh, my god, this is the place to be.”

Martha: Really?

Joanna: Yeah. The reason for that was not only that it is one of the most beautiful places in the world — it’s the furthest away from the rest of the world, something that I really enjoyed a lot. [Laughs.] Of course, you also have political issues and stuff, but at the same time in the news very often they have like, “Oh, Jimmy has lost his cat in the tree!” There was not such huge turmoil. I mean, in the end, I did not go. I stayed in Berlin. And now I feel that I should be going to Wales, especially after hearing your recordings.

Martha: Wow. But Wales, there’s definitely a connection. Do you know Aldous Harding? 

Joanna: Yeah. 

Martha: She’s from New Zealand, and now I think she maybe lives between New Zealand and Wales. You should go and live there, maybe, for a bit. Whenever I’ve been recently, I’ve just felt this very pure, innate connection to what it means to live on a planet. I know that sounds really wishy-washy and a bit woo-woo, but the air is so pure in comparison. I live in London and have always lived in London, but [Wales] is just rural in the most literal sense. I think there’s something very calming about feeling solitary, and sort of held by the landscape. There’s something very mystical about that landscape. It’s quite scary at times. I feel like there’s something melancholic there.

Joanna: OK, sounds like I should be feeling at home there. Scary and melancholic — that sounds good. [Laughs.] Especially in those intense places, you feel some kind of spiritual connection to the whole thing.

Martha: Yeah. But you’ve stayed in Berlin for how long?

Joanna: I’m living in Berlin for 23 years now. But I will be moving to the countryside in two years —  already planned!

Martha: Oh, really?

Joanna: Yeah. I mean, it’s not far away from Berlin. It’s, like, 60km away. But I really feel that I want to have some peace and quiet around me, and to build up my little studio where I can record new stuff. I still keep being connected to the big city, because I think we need the community feeling, being connected with other artists. I think that is really important.

Martha: Do you record purely in studios? How do you record your records?

Joanna: The last record was recorded in a studio, but I do all the pre-production here at home. Then I take it to the studio and we record the whole thing. The very first album was recorded in an analog studio, with really old analog gear, which was a fantastic experience, but really complicated. You need to keep going and playing, if you make mistakes, they’re just there.

Martha: I quite like that though. I mean, I’m very analog in the sense that I just don’t know how to use Pro Tools. My language is limited to maybe a small spattering of knowledge of GarageBand, but I really like this Tascam recorder called a DP-08. It has eight channels and you record track by track, so you have this ability to layer things up. But also, if you make a mistake, it’s difficult to go back and rerecord from that point. So for me, it really embraces a process-driven recording that is raw, and it just maintains that innocence and purity. You were talking about innocence earlier and I think that’s something that I strive for in my recordings. I don’t really mind small mistakes. I mean, obviously you don’t want a complete dud note in there.

Joanna: I don’t know, maybe you do. 

Martha: But I guess with analog, there’s something more human about it, because error is kind of inevitable. Whereas when you record things digitally, anything is possible. You can get rid of everything, you can change your pitch. You could completely mutate into someone else.

Joanna: But it sometimes really kills the soul of the music. Very often when I discover a new artist and I listen to their first record, I really like it because they’re still searching. It has still some kind of magic. It is still very raw. And then they start to get bigger and bigger, and then they have the money to go into a really good studio or get themselves a nice producer, and sometimes it loses its spirit.

Martha: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that’s so true about searching. You always want to feel like there’s an element of wondering in there, or there’s still curiosity at what the self is even capable of. It kind of comes back to what we were saying about not knowing, necessarily, the origin or the root or the meaning of your song — it’s keeping that essence of intangibility or the ineffable, I think. You want the soul still to be present in the music, for it not to have been sapped out by too much knowledge or awareness.

Joanna: Yeah. How do you actually deal with the question of being authentic in a world where you have to sell yourself?

Martha: I hate it. I feel insane a lot of the time. I think it’s awful. I think we know far too much about what’s happening around us and and how many people there are making music. I think you’re almost encouraged by the industry — especially as a woman — to measure up against what else is out there. 

Joanna: You’re constantly in competition instead of having a community feeling.

Martha: Yeah, which is not the same for men. There are so many different all-male bands that exist and there seems to be space for all of them. Whereas I think as a female musician, you’re made to feel like there’s only space for one version of things. That question of authenticity is obviously really important. You want authenticity, but I’m more concerned about having integrity to what your purpose is. I don’t think anything, anymore, is completely and utterly unique to itself. Obviously, we’re constantly referencing things, and that’s beautiful and that’s what makes it authentic. But I think this conscious knowledge of what is going on around you is not necessarily helpful, and also is a new thing. Maybe you would know the music you listened to 20 years ago just by the natural processes of discovering music, but you wouldn’t be so aware of every possible musician that you could be put next to or paired with. What do you think about it? How do you deal with it?

Joanna: I’m trying to really find a balance in the whole thing. I find it, for example, very interesting that Beth Gibbons just brought a new album out, and she took 10 years for the whole thing.

Martha: Which is so refreshing

Joanna: I want that. I would love to have the time for just writing, discovering, letting it drop. It feels like a way more natural process than, you have to keep going every second year. Which is possible when you’re totally in your thing. It is possible, but it’s a different approach.

Martha: It’s not necessarily the best way. I think that being constantly active, where you have to sort of prove that you’re a musician by being this machine of output, completely goes against the integrity of work. Because some musicians can do that, and that’s amazing. But not all artists make at the same rate. When you do see someone like Beth Gibbons doing that — obviously she has the the privilege of her history and she can afford to do that. But also, who says you can’t do that at the beginning of your career? I mean, “the industry,” in inverted commas, but…

Joanna: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I feel that it’s not even about the quality of the music. It’s more about, how do you get the attention of your audience? You have to bring out lots of material to trigger the algorithms. I don’t think that most of the audience is aware of what it means to be a musician and earn a living off of that. I find it sometimes really difficult. It turns down the magic. For the last album, I wrote some of the songs quite a while ago and had some time with it, but some of them had to be recorded very quickly. I think it worked out, because I had fantastic musicians in the studio in the end. But for the whole release now, I feel very often in the position of having more administrative tasks than being creative. At this point, I’ve started to go back to the rehearsal room and setting up the band for playing it live, and I’m really looking forward to it. Because I know that this moment when you step in front of your audience and you connect with the people and you see what it does to them, and the emotions that come back to you — this is where the circle closes and you know why you’re doing this.

Martha: Yeah, exactly. I think that connection with people is so important in affirming why you do it. Otherwise, it is quite a lonely place, isn’t it? Especially if you’re like us — writing as solo artists, you spend a lot of time in your own head, in your own space. So the reward is when you’re able to make something and then share it. And I think sharing it online is not the same as the physical connection with people in front of you. So that’s why it also seems mad to reduce music to the numbers. It’s just a really weird way of quantifying music’s effect on people. Being put on a coffee playlist doesn’t necessarily mean that your music is affecting people. It’s completely changed the whole nature of your own relationship to what it is that you do.

Joanna: Exactly. I mean, it does not only have downsides. Sometimes I try to see the positives. Of course, you can make your music accessible to more people, and this is probably the good side of the whole thing.

Martha: Yeah. There’s lots of positives. I mean, for me, the most positive thing is just the feeling of being able to go into a space that is only achievable when I’m writing. It’s this very strange, magic space that I can’t get to in any other way. It feels like at once the purest essence of my self and also the furthest away from it. Because when I finish writing the song, or I come out of the space on stage, it feels like I return to this normal realm of of living. It’s like, back to the version of me.

Joanna: Yeah. It’s a little bit like a ritual, or like a prayer. It’s like it opens the door into a very special room that you share, either with yourself in the moment of creating, or with the world and the people who are there with you.

Martha: Yeah. Do you write in characters, or do you feel like it’s just you speaking?

Joanna: It’s very much myself, I guess. But sometimes I can see situations from outside. I observe situations that [other] people are in, like saying goodbye to someone or being in a fight or something like that. Then I try to bring my inner self to the situation, and think about how would I feel, what I would do. And that’s how I can work, maybe, with a character that is not really me.

Martha: And do you write in English or German?

Joanna: I start in English. I find the language way more suitable for the music that I’m doing than German. It’s just a question of the sound. And as I was growing up between two countries, I did not choose to either stay in one nor live in the other one, and I had the feeling that I really wanted to use my own language.

Martha: I watched this film that really stuck with me, this German film. When I was thinking about the cover artwork for my record — what I wanted to communicate about the essence of it visually — this film kept coming back to me, called The Lives of Others. I love it so much, and it’s in German. I feel like part of what really was effective for me was that I watched the film in subtitles, and it’s so much about listening and reading and interpretation. There’s the Stasi officer falling in love with their existence and their ways of talking to each other, and it felt quite significant for me that I was watching this film but also reading the subtitles. And the language was obviously my not my mother tongue. So it just really stuck with me, that film.

Joanna: Have you ever been to Berlin?

Martha: I have been twice, but I don’t feel like I’ve been substantially. I went when I was younger for a couple of nights on tour. I was singing with someone else, and we performed in this building — I can’t remember what it was called, but I was doing a small promotional tour with Nick Cave for his album Push the Sky Away, and just before we went on, he was like, “Ah, yeah, this space is really great because it was where Hitler used to watch children singing choirs.” So I performed there. But then the rest of the time, I was very lonely because I was just wandering around the city on my own. But I was kind of too young to properly go out.

Joanna: Alright. The next time you come, you have to go out. I will show you around. Or, we meet in Wales and we do a project together.

Martha: [Laughs.] Yes! We absolutely should do that.