Today we catch up with bdRm (pronounced “bedroom”), a sometimes solo and sometimes collaborative music project lead by Jeremy Wilkins. The Portland, OR-based musician operates out of his home studio while often collaborating with his We Are Parasols musical partner Alec Yeager. bdRm is currently readying a new EP entitled “Are You Alive?” for release on April 24th, and in advance of that the project has a new single entitled “Her Pupils Are Always Dilated.”
Initially conceived as a quick, four-song effort, the now six-song EP ended up taking four years to make.The extended time it took to make “Are You Alive?” can partially be blamed on the fact that the pair was busy with their other project We Are Parasols. However, the upcoming EP also came together as a collage, with its various puzzle pieces of melody, rhythm, and atmosphere being collected over time, until a glimpse of its whole could be arrived at. bdRm’s entrancing new track “Her Pupils Are Always Dilated” is a great illustration of this process. Wilkins explains that the track was never intended to be the EP’s first single, but quarantine orders interrupted completion of the video meant to lead. Being the only cut on the collection with vocals, though, also meant it best summed up “Are You Alive?”‘s thematic.
Concerned with how we find consensus with each other among our myriad relative truths, “Her Pupils Are Always Dilated” enacts this search with a dialogue between two people trying to hash out where their emotional realities join–and it’s a process naturally fraught with difficulty. Wilkins explains:
“The song is about the push and pull between two characters, maybe lovers, friends, family members, or even therapist and patient. It’s about one person not wanting to accept the version of reality that is thrust upon them by the other, and in turn, the second person struggling to understand the first person’s reality and emotional needs. It’s admittedly a very earnest and sentimental song, but I feel like it’s probably more relevant now than it was while we were writing it.”
Like the album, the song came together in pieces. Starting with improvised synth parts, the musician reports that he then “sat on that recording for a year or so” until inviting Yeager to add live drumming. From there he asked new friend Gino Mari, from the Portland band The Gentry, to add vocals. He goes on to explain:
“Gino and I decided that a duet with a female vocalist would be perfect both to lift the song up and to tell each side of the lyrical story, but we needed someone that we could work with very closely. The obvious choice quickly became D, my wife, and vocalist for my main band, We Are Parasols. The three of us had a group studio session where Gino and I co-wrote the lyrics to match each vocalist’s chosen melodic phrases and then Gino and D each went off to record their individual parts alone and sent the tracks back to me to mix.”
Below you can listen to bdRm’s new single “Her Pupils Are Always Dilated.” In addition, Live Eye Tv recently corresponded with Jeremy Wilkins to ask him a few questions about the project and upcoming release as well as life during quarantine…
Let’s talk about your latest release “Her Pupils Are Always Dilated”; how did it come to be, what inspired it, what was the recording/writing process like?
JW: The first two seeds of the song were the title and two improvised synth parts that play the basic chords and melody. For some reason I was thinking about this thing my father had said about one of my friends years ago; that her pupils were always dilated. He was suggesting that she might be on drugs but she was actually my only sober friend at the time. Something about that thought lead to me playing what I thought were very Twin Peaks sounding synth parts. I recorded the idea and filed it away for a year or so. Once I dug it back up Alec and I worked out the drum arrangement and additional synth parts and I quickly realized it should have vocals. My idea was that it should use words to express in a more defined way what the first 5 songs on the EP were suggesting through mood, texture, and movie samples. I was already in the studio working with Gino Mari from The Gentry on another track so I played him “Her Pupils” and asked him if he’d like to sing on it. Gino did a demo that I loved, but I felt like his voice was too heavy to be a constant presence. I suggested that an 80’s style duet with a female vocalist would be perfect to counterbalance his voice and to tell this story of two people essentially arguing about reality. D, my wife and vocalist for my main band, We Are Parasols, volunteered and the three of us had a studio session where Gino and I co-wrote the lyrics to match each vocalists chosen melodic phrases.
Any favorite artists of the last couple years that you dig who are more underground that people need to hear about?
JW: My favorite three artists from the last few years, and none are super new, but all should definitely be heard by more people are Gazelle Twin, Bloody Knives, and Youth Code. Gazelle Twin is just amazing, abstract, very conceptual, electronic music from England. Bloody Knives are a perfect mix of industrial, shoegaze, and metal from Austin, Texas. Youth Code are an industrial-punk duo from LA. There are also some great artists in Portland right now; Darkswoon and Xibling are two bands who, like us, are sort adjacent to the post-punk scene here and I’ve had the pleasure of working with both of them. D and I made a video for Darkswoon and I just finished recording and mixing a single for them. I also recorded and mixed the last two Xibling EPs. So yeah, I’m biased but people should check them out.
We have to ask, how are you coping with everything going on in the world right now?
JW: I’m honestly not sure. I’m healthy. My friends and family are healthy so far. Somedays I wake up and it’s crystal clear that we’re all suddenly living in exactly the sort of dystopian reality I’ve been writing music about for years and it’s deeply unsettling. Other days days I feel totally calm and relaxed, almost meditative. But then, almost out nowhere, little stresses will push me over the edge and I’ll go full on panic attack over something that I could normally cope with easily. I was talking to a friend the other day about how there’s this low level hum of stress and anxiety going on constantly for everyone and it’s not leaving very much emotional bandwidth to handle anything beyond Covid-19 and social distancing. I think it’s gonna take a long time for all of us to process this as individuals and as a community but the repressed optimist in me really hopes this crisis somehow leads to something good, like fundamental cultural, societal, and governmental changes. We can only hope.
