Formerly Leann Grimes, master mixer Shane Conerty has been diligently working on new music under the name Color Collage. This new project is a healthy blend of doo wop and electronic beats that’ll get even the heaviest of foot tapping to the music. “2048” is a marinade of soothing percussion and uplifting melodies, but with the subtle message of just how embedded we’ve become to technological advances. This will be the first single off Color Collage’s full length album, Pieced Together, on Paper Garden Records. Shane tells me they’ll also be releasing two remixes along with the original track — he remixed one and his longtime friend, RBTS WIN, did the other.
We caught up with Shane just before the music video premier to discuss life in Brooklyn, the new song “2048”, hover boards, and much more.
Tell us a little bit about Color Collage. Where did Color Collage get its start?
The project came about almost two years ago when I moved back to Brooklyn after living down south in Asheville, North Carolina. I had been making electronic music under the name Leann Grimes as a sort of hobby in the down time from touring with my old band, Now You See Them. The band broke up, and when I relocated back to NYC I started making arrangements of songs on my computer to take the place of a band. I fell in love with the notion of creating these huge sounding tracks as a way to show people how I pictured the songs sounding in my head.
Your sound is considered as ‘electronic doo wop.’ Can you describe how the marriage of electronic and doo wop music came to be?
I’ve always been partial to older music. I think that the pop music from the 50’s and 60’s has such a strong subliminal effect on people. I feel like those melodies and chord progressions are ingrained in everyone’s DNA, and when you hear them, it evokes this kind of nostalgia that you can’t help but be moved by. I think it’s been passed down through the years into new generations and we’re not even completely aware of it, but when you hear music from that era, it just does something to you. I wanted to capture that feeling and apply it to modern music while still paying tribute to all of this amazing music that’s paved the way to where we are now with pop music. It’s just more electronic, but the principles are still rooted in those old formulas.
Tell us a little bit about what inspired the latest song “2048?”
Color Collage: I’ve always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and I’m obsessed with futurism and the advancement of modern technology. I think the pace that humans are developing these technological advancements is terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I mean there’s the obvious allusion to Orwell and 1984, and how much of his predictions have come into fruition. He didn’t really predict how insanely reliant human beings are to their computers and devices, though. That’s the main theme of the video — how easy it is for us to lose touch with reality nowadays because we’re staring at a screen. The lyrics of the song are mostly inspired from things that are being developed right now with modern technology. Self-driving cars, uploading your consciousness to a computer, etc. I feel like this reads like the ramblings of a lunatic ha. I chose the year 2048 partially because of that number game that was really popular a while back, and partially because it seems like a year that was far enough into the future that most of those things that I’m singing about could be a reality by then. I had my iTunes on shuffle the other day and the song ‘2014’ by The Unicorns came on and it made me laugh out loud and think about how long ago it was when they wrote that song about the future and how quickly it snuck up on us.
Any standout influences that helped stimulate the creative process of making the song?
I watching a lot of that show Black Mirror when I was working on 2048, and a lot of those vibes found their way into the lyrics. There’s the one episode where everyone’s had this thing implanted in them that allows you to replay all of your memories and rewind the footage that your eyes captured. Maybe we’ll have that by 2048.
What would you like to see in the year 2048?
Color Collage: I would love to able to finally ride a fucking hoverboard without everybody teasing and pranking us about it ha. Hopefully by that time you’d be able to upload your consciousness to some sort of database and you could just ditch your tired and wrinkly old body, too. Is anyone going to even listen to my music after reading this?! I’m really pegging myself as some weirdo wearing a tinfoil hat just mumbling gibberish strumming a guitar under a bridge.
Where did the idea for the video come from?
Color Collage: I had the idea for ages, and it was inspired by things that you see on a daily basis living in New York City. A Facebook notification takes precedent over walking with your head up, an Instagram “like” makes you block the train turnstile, a retweet makes you bump into someone because you’re not paying attention, you sacrifice enjoying a concert so you can have a video to upload to YouTube later. Everyone’s guilty of that kind of stuff. I wanted to try to convey those instances in the video to match the futuristic vibe of the song.
What was the process of making the music video like? Where was the video shot?
It was really simple and painless, really. We shot it over two days in my neighborhood in Bushwick and where I work in South Williamsburg. The building that I live in has a DIY venue in the basement called Bohemian Grove, so we decorated the basement with a bunch of lights and shot the performance stuff there. The video was directed by Dan Shogren and edited by my friend Kate Bennis, who has recently worked on a lot of awesome videos. She worked on the awesome Pete and Pete themed video for the Diarrhea Planet song “Platinum Girls” and she’s also in a righteous band called Ghost Punch. Check them out. They rule.
One of the focus points of the video is “the reliance of technology in modern society.” What message do you hope people get from watching the music video?
I’m not trying to preach or deliver some sort of cautionary warning, I just wanted to make a video that addresses the dumb things that people do while they’re caught up on their phones. What if someone’s reading this interview on their phone, and they end up almost getting hit by a cab or something? That would be the ultimate “2048” moment.
What has been one of the best things that has come from relocating to Brooklyn from North Carolina?
I miss a lot of things about living in North Carolina. The people, the mountains, the music scene. It’s just that there’s so much more opportunity and so much more going on in general. I feel like there’s only so much you can do in Asheville, and it would take you a lot of years to have that same sentiment here in NYC. I wish all of my friends from Asheville lived in New York. That would be the best of both worlds. Maybe in 2048 we’ll be able to teleport between cities just by thinking about it really hard.
With a vibrant name like Color Collage, we have to ask… What is your favorite and least favorite color(s)?
Color Collage: Oh man. That’s a tough one. One of the reasons why I settled on the name Color Collage was so the artist that does all of my graphic design could have a lot of freedom to go nuts and make a bunch of crazy colorful images to visually represent the music. His name’s Pen Williamson, and you should Google him. He’s the real deal. To answer your question, I’d have to say thumbs up for blue, and thumbs down for yellow.
