![\"civvie\"](\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/civvie-500x333.jpg\")
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By Rachel Narvey<\/strong><\/p>\n Often, the act of listening to music is like trying on a costume. We all have songs that help us to transform, whether that means bolstering our confidence or softening the stress of a long day. Rarely does music get under our skin and shake us up a bit, or force us to turn inward and confront ourselves. Enter Winnipeg experimental band, Civvie. Together, the three-piece creates tracks that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck in a way that you didn\u2019t know you wanted. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u201cPeople have described it as cinematic in some ways, and listening to it, it\u2019s very atmospheric,\u201d says bassoonist Alex Eastley. \u201cIt lets people create their own visuals to accompany what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s dark but hopeful at the same time,\u201d adds cellist Natanielle Felicitas. \u201cWe move from delicate sounds to a noise that\u2019s gritty and aggressive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While Felicitas and Eastley play classical instruments, the third Civvie member, Kelly Ruth, brings an unconventional element to the band\u2019s instrumentation. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a visual artist,\u201d Ruth says, \u201cbut I also have a musical background, I play trumpet, sing, and write electronic music. I\u2019m a weaver, and I started to notice that process sounded like electronic music. I thought \u2018I want to write electronic music with the loom!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Her instrument, constructed from a loom, contact microphones, and loop pedals, creates sounds comparable to machinery, to breath, to horses\u2019 hooves against the earth. If this sounds outrageously cool, you\u2019re not alone in thinking so. All three musicians expressed their admiration for each other before they began working together. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe ended up doing just the loom and cello for a little bit, and then I met Alex around town,\u201d Ruth says. \u201cI happened to meet her on a day where I was really excited about what I was doing, and when I told her about it she said \u2018Oh! I would really like to jam with you!\u2019 But because she played in the symphony I was too intimidated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYeah!\u201d Eastley adds. \u201cI kept suggesting that we play together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes!\u201d Kelly laughs. \u201cShe was courting me for a year.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Not only are the band members excited to work together on this project, they\u2019re also excited to do it in a city they love.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have a big crush on Winnipeg,\u201d Felicitas says. \u201cThere\u2019s just this genuine interest in collaborating without a lot of pretension. It\u2019s not that people want to know your credentials, it\u2019s like \u2018Oh, you play?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s also different than a bigger city like Toronto, where there\u2019s a greater opportunity to make money,\u201d Ruth says. \u201cI think the economy here facilitates creation for creation\u2019s sake… you can be creative without as much pressure to be commercial.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That kind of creative freedom is important to the members of Civvie. Although each are versed in multiple genres, they\u2019re all especially passionate when it comes to making experimental music. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSince I play in the symphony this is something completely outside of my job,\u201d Eastley says. \u201cI find it liberating. It\u2019s another way of making music, it\u2019s a new scene and a different way of thinking.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI guess similarly, I play a classical instrument,\u201d Felicitas adds. \u201cSo the expectation when people see it is that i\u2019m gonna play something classical. Most of my work has been in pop, rock, and folk, so i\u2019m often accompanying a singer\/songwriter, or a band, or playing a wedding or something like that. As Alex said it\u2019s just so liberating to not have to worry about what\u2019s written on the page or what someone wants you to do. It\u2019s more conversational. You can stretch the limits of what\u2019s expected of your instrument.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Civvie<\/span> plans to release their first album, <\/span>Inheritance,<\/span><\/i> this coming year. The images that will appear on the album are from a recent trip of Ruth\u2019s to Chernobyl. There, she visited the exclusion zone where the power plant had exploded and was able to see the state of the land three decades after the devastation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of philosophy and ideology behind what we\u2019re doing,\u201d she says. \u201cWe might not all be having the exact same philosophy in there, but [for this album] we were talking a lot about the destruction of the earth, what\u2019s left over for the next generation. It\u2019s this tension of the land taking back what the people took from it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Rachel Narvey Often, the act of listening to music is like trying on a costume. We all have songs that help us to transform, whether that means bolstering our confidence or softening the stress of a long day. Rarely does music get under our skin and shake us up a bit, or force us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}