I'm very curious to learn the details of the production -- was it an Ashlee-style collaboration with a (semi-)professional producer? Was it mostly the work of the producer with Farrah providing spoken and sung vocals somewhat indiscriminately? Was it Farrah playing around with beat-making software? My guess would be somewhere between the first and second with a dash of experimentation from Farrah herself in concept and vocals.
That would probably change the frame in terms of influence -- a producer working with recorded vocals and making them work is a lot different from someone playing around with software for themselves. In that case, there would probably be separate influences on the lyrics (Farrah's) and all aspects of actual music production (producer's) -- Farrah's might be no more inspired than the influences of emo and confessional song lyrics, poetry from high school literature, and more spontaneous stuff picked up from the air, the kind of things that children and teens replicate without really knowing "where it's from."
The production is some combination of dubstep, minimal, and EDM -- would guess that Skrillex is a touchstone. But one question I have is whether this was a project like Rehearsing My Choir by the Fiery Furnaces, where they did an oral history from their grandmother and edited it into song forms, with some occasional involvement from grandma providing a hook (IIRC), or whether it was something more amorphous or even accidental -- a kind of mutation of the 808s and Heartbreak or Rebirth strategy.
What's complicated, too, is that a lot of artists are doing experimentation in programs like Garage Band and then polishing the work after playing around -- Erykah Badu did this for New Amerykah Part 1. Would be interested to hear what the "demos" and experiments from Erykah sound like -- would they be in conversation with FLA? Is this what a pop album sounds like at the "trying things out" stage?
Re: Outside Looking In
That would probably change the frame in terms of influence -- a producer working with recorded vocals and making them work is a lot different from someone playing around with software for themselves. In that case, there would probably be separate influences on the lyrics (Farrah's) and all aspects of actual music production (producer's) -- Farrah's might be no more inspired than the influences of emo and confessional song lyrics, poetry from high school literature, and more spontaneous stuff picked up from the air, the kind of things that children and teens replicate without really knowing "where it's from."
The production is some combination of dubstep, minimal, and EDM -- would guess that Skrillex is a touchstone. But one question I have is whether this was a project like Rehearsing My Choir by the Fiery Furnaces, where they did an oral history from their grandmother and edited it into song forms, with some occasional involvement from grandma providing a hook (IIRC), or whether it was something more amorphous or even accidental -- a kind of mutation of the 808s and Heartbreak or Rebirth strategy.
What's complicated, too, is that a lot of artists are doing experimentation in programs like Garage Band and then polishing the work after playing around -- Erykah Badu did this for New Amerykah Part 1. Would be interested to hear what the "demos" and experiments from Erykah sound like -- would they be in conversation with FLA? Is this what a pop album sounds like at the "trying things out" stage?