After spending the last few years building ad cultivating their sound, London-based outfit Ciinema recently introduced themselves to the world with their vibrant debut single 'Planet Eyes'.
Now accompanied with a wonderfully cinematic new video, 'Planet Eyes' makes for a wonderfully warm and dreamy listen. With its rich and lofty aesthetics perfectly set against a progressive production throughout, this lot are kicking things off with a brilliantly fresh and enjoyable opening number here.
So with the new single available to stream now, we sat down with them to find out more about their origins and what has been inspiring them most over the years.
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What was the first instrument you fell in love with?
Liz: For me, it’s piano/keys. My Dad taught piano while I was growing up and he still wakes up the whole house at random hours of the day or night by jamming out medleys which are jarring in their transitions between 70s rock, religious organ gospel, strange German avant-garde pieces, 80s New Wave, and then classical tunes. As a kid, I used to make him play Debussy’s “Girl With The Flaxen Hair” for me as I lay on the scratchy lounge carpet in the sun daydreaming. Cos you’re never too young to start acting dramatic, ya know? But yeah, I love the kind of timeless moodiness piano can elicit and then the totally contrasting inventiveness and modern feel of synthesized keys sounds.
Lane: The first Instrument that I fell in love with would have to be the voice. When I was a kid growing up, long before I had touched a guitar I was singing in choirs, school shows, things like that. I’ve always found a lot of joy and freedom in singing, and although I would no longer consider it my ‘main instrument’, it was definitely what made me first fall in love with music.
What kind of music did you love when you were younger?
Lane: I had an interesting blend of music when I was growing up. My dad would often play crooners on the car radio, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and also artists like Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley. My mums favourite band was the Rolling Stones so there was a fair amount of their music too. As a teenager, I became obsessed with playing the guitar, and so my music taste switched to a lot of the prominent rock bands of the time (The Strokes, Kings of Leon, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, My Chemical Romance, Queens of The Stone age). However in my adult life, my taste has expanded to a somewhat undefinable mixture of electro, rock, hiphop, and folk.
Liz: In my family, we seemed to always be behind the times in terms of being allowed to buy casette tapes or CDs even though we are a very musical so myself and my three siblings would scratch our way through our parents’ record collection with vinyls from the 60s onward until the online musical age came about. My favourites were the 70s female artists like Lulu, Carole King, Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, and my Mum’s 1960s rock n’ roll and soul compilations. The more angsty half of me then got into Nirvana, Radiohead, No Doubt, The Cranberries, Jewel, Sublime, and Smashing Pumpkins. But no doubt, I can belt out all the words to some Spice Girls, Britney, Whitney, Shania, and Mariah. Once I could start downloading music, I was pretty into that 2000s kinda indie pop like Stars, The Shins, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Lily Allen, Florence and The Machine, City and Colour, and The Postal Service.
What was the first album you remember owning?
Liz: I remember being 9 and having all my birthday presents in a line from big to small and knowing that when I got to the small rectangular brown paper bag, I would be opening my first cassette tape. It was an album from a 90s Eurodance group called “La Bouche”. Not sure how these guys came into my 9 year old New Zealand orbit but that’s the beauty of pop culture, I guess. I played it until the tape kept coming out and I had to wind it up with a pencil.
Lane: Curtain Call by Eminem. This one was quite questionable listening content for 12 year old.
What is the one song you wished you could have written yourself?
Lane: Leave the Door open by Silk Sonic. I just love the way that this song blends the old and the new. It’s simultaneously so many things; Cheeky, earnest, passionate, joyful, but also with clear overtones of unrequited yearning. It’s musically intricate without being pretentious. I dream of a day when I write something this iconic and unapologetically massive.
Liz: “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell. It’s poetic, melancholic, and smart - both in its melody and its themes. The lyrics are metaphors of holy wine, constellations, and art intertwined with a story of love across distance. As a kid, it felt like an exciting possibility of adult life and now it feels like a nostalgic memory. I love songs like that - the ones which can kind of slot into any point of your life and feel relevant and fresh.
Do you have any habits or rituals you go through when trying to write new music?
Liz: In terms or inspiration - I used to need some kind of psychological event to be able to write lyrics and music but sometimes in those emotionally charged situations, we are not in a songwriting phase. So now I tend to write as much as I can when I am inspired - which could be at two in the morning or on the tube somewhere or lying on the beach on holiday etc. And then I just do the more conscious crafting (almost like a job) later to put the song together. On a practical level, I break the song down into its rhythmic metre e.g. how many syllables and what the inflection is line by line and then look up poetry which is similar to that metre for inspiration. Iambic pentameter is the rhythm of natural speech and pretty easy to write lyrics to but Lane often writes songs that don’t fit this and it’s not such a natural way to compose lyrics so sometimes I need examples of common words or phrases that writers use for those less common rhythms. I also use a rhyming dictionary when I’m really stuck and record voice memos which I listen to over weeks to decide what the best ideas are. Sometimes you can overrationalize the creative process and then with a bit of time and space, things just become more obvious in terms of what is actually working.
Lane: Usually I’ll leave my phone recording, and just play guitar and sing jibberish. Then I’ll listen to these raw recordings as I go about my life in London, and try and listen for the gold moments that can be developed into something more. Another ritual I do is I'll sit down and actively try and think of songs that I love, and try and isolate something from them in the abstract and use that as a starting point for my own idea.
Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
Lane: Balu Brigada, these guys are some mates of ours that are smashing it in the states right now. Every tune they’ve put out recently has been an absolute heater. I’ve also been vibing Arlo Parks, and a soulful London indie artist called Natsuma. She's got a beautiful voice and is a force of nature on the electric guitar.
Liz: In 2023, it does kind of feel like that cultural shift into cherry picking artists and listening by playlist has really cemented for me. So it’s tempting to just list 25 artists here for whom I’m really only listening to a song or two of. But in terms of the artists I would listen to a whole album of lately: I’ve been getting back into St Vincent who we saw at Primavera in Portugal recently. I really enjoy artists who mix it up with genre and enjoy the range of energies across her songs and albums. Parcels are a Berlin-based Australian band and I’m obsessed with the lush indie rock/nu-disco layers they build in their songs. I’m also loving The Beths latest album. They’re a Kiwi band who do really clever indie-rock full of melodic and lyrical hooks that have you getting ear worms just as much from the backing vocals as the lead lines. I’ll second Lane on being enamoured with UK up and coming artist Natsuma - her track Liquid Gold is 10/10.
If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?
Lane: I’d have to go for Gavin Turek. She’s a Nu-Disco/funk artist that’s been a big influence on Ciinema, and opening for her would be pretty special.
Liz: Since Lane has already taken Gavin Turek, I’ll go to my (very close) second and say Phoebe Bridgers. Although, we are less folky than her, I get a lot of inspiration in my vocal approach and timbre from her. I feel like we’re a more electro-pop version of her music in terms of storytelling and mood so I think we’d have some potential fan crossover.
What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?
Liz: For me, it’s just the high that I get from being able to express a story through lyrics and melody. Some people spend their whole life seeking their own form of bliss and this quest can be elusive, costing money/time or requiring sacrifices. I feel lucky that I get to just sit down at the keyboard or put on my headphones and instantly access that kind of feeling. Obviously, this is heightened into full-on joy when you get to play live or hear your compositions fully fleshed out when a track is recorded and mixed.
Lane: I’d definitely have to say the process of playing live and getting that instant feedback from a crowd is when I feel the greatest reward. I think it’s quite beautiful that you can take this thing that is super personal to you, and then give that to a room full of people and connect to them with it.
And what is the most frustrating part?
Liz: My 9-5 job is being a radiographer. 20 times a day, I set up the machinery and position the patient for an x-ray and within less than a second the tangible success of these efforts is up on the screen in front of me in black and white. It’s very gratifying and quick. Music is a slow burn. You can have an idea in a minute but it may not eventuate for weeks, months, even years. It may never eventuate. And the parameters of sucess are far more vague and subjective. Music also requires so many levels of collaboration for any kind of result. Be it, working within the band to compose the song in all its layers, working with all the people who help a song get recorded, or the logistics of playing a gig. Of course, when these things work well then the collaboration and journey of the process is a beautiful thing. But the highs, lows, and pace of development can be frustrating.
Lane: The admin of organising everything, basically everything that isn’t either creating or performing the music. You have to wear a lot of hats that don’t necessarily fit you the best, but it’s kind of crucial when you’re starting out as an unsigned band.
And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?
Lane: The best advice I think ever received was from a friend who encouraged me to to make music more similar to the music I love. He pointed out that the music I was making wasn't anything like the music I was listening to, which might seem like an obvious observation, but it really made me realize that I was going about music the wrong way.
Liz: I once asked a New Zealand poet I worked with (Hinemoana Baker) how she was able to be brave enough to share such intimate thoughts and feelings in her work and she said something along the lines of “Everything you’ve ever felt or thought has been felt or thought before. So where’s the shame in that? As creatives, we’re just brave enough to own up to the sentiments we all share”. I tend not to think twice now about exposing those parts of my brain to the world whether it be with lyrics or musical mood but it used to be terrifying. I feel like I replayed that idea in my head so many times that it’s just a default point of view now which helps encourage much more fearlessness as a musician than I originally had.
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Ciinema's debut single 'Planet Eyes' is available to stream now. Check out the new video for it in the player below.