Bristol-born and Manchester-based producer BUFFEE has released her new single ‘Heaven’ via Spinny Nights. Building on her unusual, industrial soundscapes, on ‘Heaven’ BUFFEE takes her sound further and sees her create a catchy, almost dancy pop song.
BUFFEE’s music is best described as a collage of sorts – she takes influences from hardstyle and electronica, her lived experience and underground Soundcloud producers to make her very own trademark style. Most of her songs are based on samples of her voice, which are compressed and distorted to make something completely new.
On her debut EP Victory Lap, BUFFEE said: “I started most of these songs when I was 19, hence the sharp swings between melodrama and hedonism. The EP explores the desire to fictionalise your experiences when on an emotional downturn, and how addictive it can be to do so.”
When playing live, BUFFEE often tries to “leave her comfort zone” and try to improvise on the spot – making it a unique experience that can’t be repeated. While a lot of her tracks on her debut EP Victory Lap deal with angst, heartbreak and anger, she is happy to explore other topics on stage and in her new projects, like “happiness and forgiveness”.
BUFFEE is a young artist who has found her very own sound, and might very well be someone other people will begin to emulate. I sat down with her to chat about knowing when a song sounds right, leaving your comfort zone, and being bad at music technology in school.
Your music feels like it is very much your own. How did you get to where you are with your sound?
I think it comes from sitting at my computer and doing things my own way. I tried doing a music technology A-level when I was in college and I was kicked off because I was too bad. I was a bit angry about it, I didn’t really want to produce music the way I “should”, with clean mixing. I started off wanting to write choral arrangements and I was doing that on Audacity, but I was really bad at it. So I started just putting effects together with tiny, chopped up bits of my voice and I realised that it made good instruments and it’s not as brain-achey as writing a whole choral arrangement. I think that’s where the core of the sound comes from, most songs are built from my voice being re-sampled.
So you recently brought out a new single, ‘Heaven’. Tell us where that came from – what inspired it?
It’s a song I started years ago. I wanted to make a pop song, that was the only thing I’d set out to do. It’s quite different to most of my other music, because most of the time I set out when I feel a certain way and I’m like “I need to get this out of me, I need to encrypt it and make it into something”. But ‘Heaven’ was very much like “I want to make a pop song”. I made loads of pop songs and I couldn’t get it right, it was driving me mad. Eventually I pulled out different bits from these different pop songs and I put it together. It doesn’t really mean anything but it’s a happy accident in a way – I thought, “this sounds catchy!” It doesn’t mean a lot, but it means something as a process to me because it was made in so many layers.
How do you know when it sounds right for you? How do you know when to stop?
It’s really hard. I find I know I want to stop when I keep opening up my computer to work on the song and all I’m doing is listening to it. A lot of the time I’ll open it up to tweak it but at some point I’ll realise I haven’t actually opened it up to work anymore, I’ve opened it because I want to listen to it. Then, if I play it back on my speakers and it makes me feel good I’m like: “yep, okay, it’s alright now.”
I’ve seen you play live before, at Crofters Rights in Bristol, and it seemed like you came up with some of the music right then in the moment. How do you differentiate between tweaking on songs for ages in your bedroom and how you play live?
So my approach to playing live is usually more pre-prepared than that, so going the other way was quite terrifying. It’s something I’m trying to do more because I think it will make me a better musician. Some of it happens in the moment, I like to do vocal looping, and hitting the buttons at the right time. It can have catastrophic consequences, if it goes wrong. I think in the age of fake electronic music, I think a bit of consequence adds to the fun.
Yes, I think that’s what I liked about it. It wasn’t just making it on your computer and then playing it, it felt more like music played by a band, that can also go wrong in the moment.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, I was just so out of my comfort zone and I decided to do it because I knew it would put me really far out of my comfort zone and that is hard.
So when you’re not playing at Crofters Rights, you’re normally in Manchester. How do you feel as part of the Manchester scene?
I don’t feel that much a part of the Manchester music scene. Oddly, even though I haven’t lived in Bristol for three years now, I feel more part of its music scene, maybe because I started out doing things there. But I’m being pessimistic, I do feel part of it.
It’s interesting because I’ve spoken to people before who say they prefer the Bristol music scene to the Manchester one, because it feels more inclusive.
I would agree with that. There’s a lot of high flyers and ballers in the Manchester scene. The little venues feel more student-y or like “post-punk-man-pub”. If it’s not that, you have your own promotion company and are making bank. In Bristol, it feels like you don’t have to be established but you can do something pretty interesting.
Tell me a bit more about the themes in your music, what is it you’re trying to convey with it?
I think as with most songwriters, I’m preoccupied with love and relationships and sex. All of that is always going to subconsciously be on your mind when writing. But generally, I’m trying to abstract and distil feeling intensely about things into songs to sort of let go.
Is that what music is like for you, almost therapeutic?
I think so. I think it’s becoming less so, maybe because I’m in less need for therapy than I was (laughs). Now I’m trying to figure out how to make music in a way that’s not sad or angry. I’d like to write songs about other stuff, but it definitely has been that way for a long while.
Do you have any plans coming up?
I want to put out an EP, I’ve got one in the works. I want to get out of my comfort zone and away from my computer. I’ve written a bunch of songs and I want to go find a church and find a piano and some real instruments and see what happens. It could be a disaster, but I’m hoping I’ll learn something and it might be quite interesting. It’ll be songs about happiness and forgiveness on piano.
Words: Clara Bullock // Photos: Beth McDermott
‘Heaven’, the latest single from BUFFEE is out now via Spinny Nights. Stream or purchase the track via Bandcamp.