Blemishes - I want to be water

Having practically come out of nowhere, Texan artist Julienne Ceron is yet another intriguing product of the American underground, an artist whose music is a fine blend of different genres, synthesized and structured into songs that aren't necessarily convoluted, but are always unpredictable. Intrigued by "Ambivert", his debut album, we put a few questions to Cerone about his music, his influences and, more generally, his world.

So, Julienne, tell us a bit about how the Blemishes project came about and how you first got into music.

Blemishes rose from the ashes of an old industrial project, Pneumatic Heart, which dates back to my teenage years; while I loved the sounds and experimentation of that genre, I felt less interested in sticking to a strictly industrial rock sound, and I didn't want the weight of carrying the Pneumatic Heart name, so I decided to rename it, giving rise to Blemishes with a much more ambitious outlook.

What do you mean you didn't want "the weight of carrying the Pneumatic Heart name"?

Around 2017, when I was fourteen, I started that project with my best friend at the time, Madison, and we experimented with Audacity, producing only noises/soundscapes; it was a very rudimentary project, one that aspired to be the next Crystal Castles record, but ended up sounding like the worst of Throbbing Gristle from the Seventies. After a few releases, at the age of sixteen, I decided to record a covers album, which turned out to be dreadful, and so I thought about starting a completely new band. Back then we were foolish kids, so I have little interest in revisiting that project, which carries a rather heavy emotional and creative baggage.

The name Blemishes belongs to the semantic field of imperfection. What led you to choose this name? Perhaps there's also some deeper, maybe existential, meaning behind it?

I chose the name Blemishes because nobody likes having imperfections on their face, but I've always found the word itself pretty charming. It was catchy and I liked that dichotomy, there's not much more to it.

The album title is also very interesting: "Ambivert", a name that suggests a personality caught between introversion and extroversion…

"Ambivert" as an album is built entirely around the concept of opposite extremes: noise versus ambient, electric versus acoustic, natural sounds versus artificial sounds. It felt like the term "ambivert" fit exactly what I was going for. I don't consider myself an introvert or an extrovert, so choosing "ambivert" as the album title felt like the natural choice.

As a Texan, what's your relationship with the glorious scene, especially the noise-rock and psychedelic one, from your home state? A native of your own Houston, for instance, is Mayo Thompson, leader of the legendary Red Crayola…

I've never really felt, in the traditional sense, a very strong connection to my local scene. A good chunk of the current Houston rock scene is dominated by shoegaze and hardcore punk rooted in the Do It Yourself ethic. I respect both genres and admire them, but from a distance. I don't go to shows or anything like that, mostly because I usually don't have the time. A lot of my local influences actually come from much older, now-defunct bands/artists like Jandek, DJ Screw, Culturcide, Pain Teens, Geto Boys, and so on.

What Texan rock records (let's say 10 titles) would you recommend to an outsider looking to get a feel for the music of your home state?

This is where I'm pushing past my own limits, because, ironically, I don't listen to that many Texan musicians myself — I'm more influenced by artists from other states or even other countries. Either way, here are my ten picks, the ones that in my opinion best capture Texas as a strange, messed-up kind of place.

1. "Locust Abortion Technician" by Butthole Surfers – An incredible noise party, blending psychedelia, tape experiments and punk into a package that, by today's standards, would probably be dismissed as total garbage.

2. "Tacky Souvenirs Of Pre-Revolutionary America" by Culturcide – A completely dated satirical album, built on pop songs of the era sung and dubbed over by someone who can barely sing. It's a wonderful record and it influenced me in ways I can't even fully put into words.

3. "Hi, How Are You" by Daniel Johnston – A lot has been said about Daniel Johnston, but I'll tell you the most obvious thing: he was extremely talented. Listen to him if you haven't already. He's someone who tried to make quality music with whatever means he had available.

4. "Relationship Of Command" by At The Drive In – A major influence, one that surfaces again and again on "Ambivert", especially in the more unhinged, delay-drenched guitar tones that break through across the whole album. A powerful, relentless record.

5. "Goat" by Jesus Lizard – Thirty minutes of anxious post-hardcore and esoteric lyrics: a pretty reckless piece of work.

6. "The Psychedelic Sounds Of…" by 13th Floor Elavators – Obviously. Psych-rock was born in Austin.

7. "Heroin Man" by Cherubs – A dark, angry album that doesn't bother with polished production, focusing instead on atmosphere.

8. "Spred Luv LP" by B L A C K I E – In several ways, this album was ahead of its time. B L A C K I E is an incredibly underrated musician, one who paved the way for the noisier hip-hop of the last decade.

9. “Tres Hombres” by ZZ Top – ZZ Top are one of those bands you'll hear somewhere around Houston. It's just a few guys playing riffs and very catchy melodies. The whole thing is like comfort food.

10. “The Power Of Failing” by Mineral – It always surprises me that Mineral don't get mentioned more in conversations about Houston bands, and I think it's always because they're so far removed from the way rock music gets made in this city. I respect them a lot for what they did.

I find your definition of Texas as “a strange, messed-up place” really interesting. From a distance, I've always had a perception pretty similar to yours, so I'd love for you to expand on it a bit…

It's pretty hard to explain. Texas is an extremely vast area, encompassing almost every ideology you can think of, to the point that a surprising number of people genuinely believe Texas should be its own country. There are big cities like Houston, where you can live your whole life and still keep finding new places to see and visit, and then there are even bigger open areas, made of land and fields, that you never come across. Once, I was traveling about an hour outside of Houston with a close friend of mine… we were driving and ended up in a small town that looked like it came straight out of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (horror film directed by Tobe Hooper in 1974, ed. note), with rickety old trucks, an even more rundown “souvenir shop”, and small ramshackle buildings all around us. Now, since my friend was a very white-looking girl and I'm a very Hispanic-looking person, I didn't want to take any chances, so we got out of there as fast as we could. There are places where you just can't take the risk. I don't mean to say all of Texas is like that, of course, but it's more the idea that Texas has this huge range, from the friendliest areas to some of the most run-down places you can imagine, hiding just outside the city limits — that's what makes this place so strange, even from a purely regional point of view.

Your music doesn't belong to a specific genre, and in fact, among the genres listed on your Bandcamp page there are several: electronic, art-punk, art-rock, experimental, neo-psychedelia, noisecore, post-rock, sound collage, tape music, etc. Is it because you're still searching for a specific “voice”, or because you feel you need to embrace complexity instead?

Ween are one of my all-time favorite bands, so when I think about the music I enjoy making, I end up going in that direction.

In some tracks on “Ambivert” you can also hear echoes of grindcore, which isn't exactly a genre the average rock fan is into. Are you a fan of that genre?

I love grindcore, especially noisecore. Recently I've gotten really into Today Is The Day, and they're wonderful. When I was a young teenager, grindcore was almost exclusively what I listened to, aside from the first-wave industrial music of Throbbing Gristle in the '70s.

Speaking of Today Is The Day, they're one of my all-time favorite bands! Have you already listened to the massive double album “Sadness Will Prevail”? As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the best records of the last three decades…

Actually, that's the very album I found most compelling! I really admire the ambition of the record, especially when it comes to the production techniques and the experimentation in the arrangements; you barely notice its length, and it's a blast to listen to, despite the circumstances under which it was made. I can't wait to dig into the rest of their discography.

The most abstract track on the record is definitely “I Want To Be Water”. In what sense do you “want to be water”, and how should we interpret this escape into abstraction and mystery?

The idea of being water is something I resonate with deeply, especially during the intense bouts of gender dysphoria I go through from time to time (I'm transfeminine). It's a kind of mantra, in the sense that everything is formless and I'm not entirely tied to a single identity or way of being, just like water, which can take many forms and dynamics, and can be calm or violent, but is always still itself.

What albums have most inspired your music, and which ones do you love the most?

I have too many influences to count, but the three deepest ones, the ones that pushed me to create “Ambivert”, are the following:

1. “Low” by David Bowie

2. “Vision Creation Newsun” by Boredoms

3. Faust IV by Faust

All three albums were blueprints for the emotion and the kind of production I was trying to aspire to, especially early on, during my high school years, when I could only dream about the sounds and ideas I would eventually create.

I find it really fascinating when you say that “all three albums were blueprints for the emotion and the kind of production I was trying to aspire to”. Tell me more.

I'll go through them in no particular order, so it makes the most sense.

David Bowie's “Low” was made during a period of personal crisis, as many fans of that record will know. There was a stretch when I listened to that album constantly: I had just broken up with an ex, and I immersed myself in a lot of the depressing loneliness you can hear throughout the record. In the lyrics, alienation is evident everywhere, and even when there are no lyrics, as on “Warszawa”, which is made up entirely of invented words, that alienation still cuts deep — and that made me realize I didn't need to focus on lyrics to make music I loved, even though, in hindsight, there are still moments where I feel I unfortunately held back.

Boredoms' “Vision Creation Newsun” really opened the door for me to neo-psychedelic production, and it kept me from focusing entirely on guitar riffs, pushing me instead toward layering effects and noise. The deep rhythms on that album are so raw and unfiltered, and its tracks feel like they could genuinely go on forever.

Faust's Faust IV, finally, is probably the record that influenced me the most. I admire its ambitious experimentation in terms of arrangements and the kind of ideas the band was trying to convey. Of all their early albums, “Faust IV” is the most appealing, because it's the most “rock” one. Some of its tracks even sound almost shoegaze, and that drove me crazy the first time I heard it, so much that I tried to capture that “hazy” feeling that wraps around the whole album, obviously filtering it through my own influences and inspirations.

I'm curious about one thing: what does the cover photo of “Ambivert” represent?

What you see are my mother and her biological father, from one of the last times she saw him. Without getting too personal, I've always seen parallels between them and my own biological father, so I decided to make a small tribute to her in that sense.

What should we expect from your next record?

Blemishes will be a constantly evolving project, with sounds I'll never “revisit” the same way twice. We'll be doing something closer to Daft Punk than Black Midi, closer to Fleetwood Mac than Sonic Youth, and closer to Lcd Soundsystem than Chrome. I think you'll be happy with what we have in store.

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