Interview with Susan Muranty
How would you describe your music?
Ethereal, celtic, hauntingly beautiful, poetic and chilled … Ruby Ruby is fiery red romance taken to its limits but there's something oddly laidback and spellbinding about it too. It's very sensual, full of freezing nights and open fires. Slow motion beauty and intense personal drama. Seduction by sunset. Ruby Ruby was also my first duet with the violin. UnConquered Sun was my second. It's a mystical journey into an enchanted realm. Adult faery drama lol.
Can you tell us about your new album?What was the inspiration?
I'm always excited about my new projects - but this one is incredibly special. Fire Dove is a collection of mystical songs and soundscapes studded like party lights through a single dark, glittering night of beauty, magic and transformation in the wake of a relationship breakdown. It brings together my triple passions for visual art, music and writing and is the closest thing to an exhibition of musical landscape paintings I've created. It was my absolute honour to be inspired in the making of it by my producers Barbara Griffin, Sven Tydeman, Ritchie Neville, Matt Fell and Adrian Hannan - and by the heart-turning mystical sounds of Clare O Meara's glorious violin. Everyone contributed their own piece of magic.
What are you musical influences?
For this track, it was every haunting Celtic song I've ever heard - all those beautiful old laments - but also REM with their hypnotic Irish rhythms and compelling rhymes. And The Corrs of course!!! Sublime. I've loved Dylan's Hurricane forever - Scarlet Rivera's violin blew my mind the first time I ever heard it. Music has never been the same for me since - it blasted the roof off my musical consciousness and showed me the musical universe in all its glory.
Do you prefer performing live or recording?
Hard to say … they are both so very different. In the studio, you're crafting the music from your own private artistic vision - on stage that vision is visible to everyone. I love both for very different reasons. I ADORE the comaraderie of the studio - working with people I love and respect and conjuring genius from absolutely nothing. And of course, honing the craft of it until it's perfect. But the energy of an audience is amazing - you really are taking the world in a love embrace.
What should we expect from your upcoming tour?
Good question - that's what I keep on asking my fellow musicians!! We're getting organised ;) Watch this space.
What is the story behind the band name?
The story behind Susan Muranty the name lol? My Dad is Polish but the first Muranty goes back to late 18th century Italy - Venice in fact. He was an artist who travelled with his family in the wake of Italian painter Canaletto to Poland in search of work as Venice began collapsing as a cultural power in Europe. Amazing we can even know these things isn't it? Muranty is Italian Polish - the "y" got added later.
As for Fire Dove, it's sacred love, the flame of pure feeling that comes from real creative and romantic passion. It's straight out of the Ruby Ruby lyrics.
How did the band come together?
As mentioned, I was haunted by the violin long before I recorded Ruby Ruby. Barbara Griffin, my producer, listened to my ravings and immediately called on the fabulous Clare O Meara to bring that amazing violin to life. And Barb herself was absolutely instrumental in conjuring the Ruby Ruby vision. She's like a magician in the studio!! I went to the Australian Songwriters Conference soon after and pitched Ruby Ruby to Sven Tydeman and British boyband Five's Ritchie Neville at Kitty Groove and they absolutely loved it - they got my music in the most amazingly beautiful way. We worked on the rest of the Fire Dove album together, co-writing and creating UnConquered Sun, Bright Star, Fire & Cloud and Child of Night. Sven gifted me with the beautiful interlude pieces and I gifted them back lol so they're very much "ours". All our souls are bound up in those little musical pieces. They are inseparable from this project. Paul Stefanadis from Viking Lounge did the superb mastering - and that led us to creating the UnConquered Sun and Ruby Ruby videos. We are creative family.
What motivates you most when writing music?
Love and beauty and the torrents of passion that come with pure creating. I don't care if it sounds corny. You've got to be pretty bad ass to live your life that way, not compromising for anything less in everything you do!!! It makes for a lot of hard choices about life every moment of every day. But the rewards are amazing.
Which music/artists are you currently listening to?
Anything my nieces and nephews are listening to - my beautiful son too!!! Florence and the Machine, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift. I love Harry Styles. He channels the times like no other artist.,
What or who was your inspiration to go into the music industry?
I fell into it!!! I woke up one morning with songs bursting out of me after a long period of stress, writing lyrics like I'd been doing it all my life. It was the strangest thing. And then I started putting them in world level competitions - and they started winning!! I thought there might be something in this … and then I realised if I wanted my songs to keep their artistic integrity - to be fully realised artistic visions - then I would need to sing them. Other people, producers especially, pushed me into that too. And - here we are!!! There was no plan. It's just kept revealing itself to me ever since.
If you could collaborate with another artist, who would it be?
Harry Styles 100 per cent.
What is the biggest challenge you have faced in the music industry?
The predators. People with minimal talent on the hunt for gifted artists to exploit. They just want to be able to put their names to what someone else has done, without doing the work. It's as shameless as that. Songwriters in particular are among the most under-represented and unprotected creative workers in the world. You wouldn't think so would you? That's why I'm so incredibly lucky. There's a hidden power in being a singer-songwriter. If you can take the heat, especially the uncertainty of the lifestyle - and you know what you're doing - the creative rewards are enormous. You get to own and create your own songs!!!! You don't have to sell your song-children for medical experiments lol.
What's next, for you?
I have a beautiful new video coming out in the next few weeks - Ruby Ruby!!! And I cannot wait to share it. It's absolutely stunning. I think it's probably one of the best things I've ever done and I have director Paul Stefanidis of Viking Lounge to thank for it!!!
Can you share your socials? (links please)
Website http://www.susanmuranty.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/susan.muranty
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/susanmurantyartist
Instagram http://instagram.com/susanmuranty/
Twitter https://twitter.com/susanmuranty
Linktree https://linktr.ee/muranty
