Real Trvth
Visual and artistry with abstract and surreal aesthetics, Centering around an alien element which is the materialization of sexual-romantic fantasies and obsessions. Chris Genn, (Stage name Real Truth) is a Brussels-based music artist who released his first hybrid electronic music project recently.
“These have taken control of the mind so strongly that they evolved into a parasitic outgrowth on the human body. Its appearance is alien because it emanates from the spiritual plane that breeds dreams, fantasies, desires, and paranoia. It is made of flesh because it has a human mind as a womb and a human body as a physical root.”
Real Trvth, How did this name come to life? What's the story?
During a lucid dream, the words carved themselves in my mind’s eye and never left. Sometimes when the sun hits at the right angle, I can still see a faint trace of the ghost writings in my vision field.
Also, the words ‘real’ and ‘truth’ put together to have an instant mutual cancellation effect, and being erased from the world is kind of what I ultimately seek through music.
Have you ever felt like an outsider? Why an alien concept why such surrealism? What is the inspiration
Almost all my life.
The alien concept is a materialization of a process that took root in my psyche. It is a desperate try to banish ‘demons’ that are twisting my reality tunnel into self-harming mental habits.
You use the word ‘surrealism’ yet these things are very real to me.
I have always dwelled in these lands where there are more obscurity, more complex structures, deeper layers of understanding, and therefore more potent phenomenons.
How was life for you growing up? What influenced you?
Isolation on an old farm near a forest, health disorders at a very young age, insects, and someone visiting me in my dreams.
Your first album was released on the 15th of last month. How were the overall process and journey for you? Please take us through your creative process…
This album exists for a very long time already, maybe 5 or 6 years.
As for everything I produce it was very difficult for me to share it with the world. I think it would still sleep on a hard drive if it wasn’t for my brother and other people who listened to it and encouraged me to release it.
It somehow helped me to believe in it, and meeting people who were eager to help in the creative process - such as Delphine Lejeune who helped me craft the object, or Julien Bernard Simmons with whom we created the video - was a fulfilling experience. It was actually the best part of the journey because it made me go out of my cave and share a creative experience with similarly attuned minds.
Can you describe the mental and emotional states you work through while processing your artwork?
I don’t do much, I am trying to let the inspiration flow without giving it too much time or attention. It is like tuning an instrument to get a good sound or an interesting vibration.
When it clicks I immediately feel it. Sometimes the artwork influences the music, and sometimes the opposite.
How did music happen to you? I'm eager to know what made you pursue it in the very first place and How was covid lockdown for you?
Music revealed itself to me as a powerful transcendental activity, not especially an art or a technique.
I think I started with a guitar. I never studied music or music theory. I feel that I have a very strong connection with the sound and the instrument and what I seek when I play is to lose control, to let the sound play the instrument.
Of course in the case of this project, there is also another part of me that is intentionally fine-tuning the sound, building a structure, etc.
The covid lockdown was a blessing to me. I was in a difficult work situation at the time and it provided a much-needed break to breathe and re-discover myself, socially but also artistically.
What are your environment and ambiance like when you work? Do you have an altar that guides you throughout or maybe some parallel creative outlets that help you to stay authentic and aligned?
I have none of those. The environment does not matter in my case. Inspiration usually comes to me without warning, in the form of a melody that gets stuck in my head for example. I never try to trigger it, it can come in times of rest as well as in times of turmoil. The important thing is to make a draft and record it, the rest comes naturally when I focus on it. The feeling of this exercise is similar to when you are trying to put together bits and fragments of a dream you just had.
I also never use drugs.
Your music has an ambiance of transcendental space. What it is like for you to build an atmosphere that resonates with your conceptual integrity?
I feel that I exist in the form of my music and art as well as being a physical person. I am attempting to birth elements and beings who inhabit my inner mythos and who are knocking at the door, begging to come out.
What future do you imagine for the music scene in the concurrent digital space? What scope of evolution do you envision for electronic music from this point onwards?
I am not sure, I really don’t feel like an expert on electronic music. I think that as long as someone has a personal story to tell, things can keep exciting and interesting. I also feel that a lot of exciting and interesting projects remain unheard of because of this concurrent digital space situation.
The alchemy of music has to do a lot with having a deeper sense of the intangible. Describe your take on the multidimensionality of sound and waves. Have you discovered anything about yourself as an artist?
Yes, music is part of this realm that you can only feel, a bit like colors. I don’t really know about multidimensionality; but the movement, the appearance, and the texture of music often come with a world surrounding it, an atmosphere from another world to be more precise.
Last but not least. Why this particular style and genre?
This project is all about emotional troubles, and I guess it is appropriate. I did not intend to achieve a hyper-pop sound or something like that, it built itself that way spontaneously.
interview JAGRATI MAHAVER
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