GOLI by Michael Bloom
I’ve seen Fluttr Effect a few times, though not as often as they deserve. They’ve always been the kind of band that invokes both hemispheres of the brain with equal enthusiasm, embraces all sorts of contradictions, and just plain gets away with an awful lot of peculiar experiments. Their instrumental lineup has always advertised exactly that: on the one hand, a couple of guys rockin’ out on guitar and drums; on the other, a cello and an electronic marimba—actually a MIDI controller that looks like it was designed by NASA (and Vessela Stoyanova, who plays it, jokingly refers to it as the massage table)—both played by women. They couldn’t have symbolized more yin/yang union of opposites if they’d hired Stanley Kubrick to direct.
Goli turns out to be the two women and their improbable instruments as an independent entity. And it turns out that, though they’re not as loud as the larger band, and they miss a little of the contrapuntal texture, they lose none of the intensity, none of the vibrancy, and arguably outstrips the determinedly eclectic Fluttr Effect in scope, both stylistic and emotional. Notably, since there just aren’t any role models for cello or marimba in rock, they get to make up their own rules—indeed, they have to—so, among other ideas, they’ve tried to absorb every extant popular tradition that might contribute to a solution. Their tunes draw from a world of dance traditions, from raucous Motown house party to that high and lonesome country twang, from odd-meter Balkan clogs to sultry tango. Their songs are playful and intimate; listening to one is not unlike the experience of a beach day, complete with the appropriate trashy novel, distilled into three minutes.
Recently they opened for Birdsongs of the Mesozoic at Johnny D’s (they’ve sat in with Birdsongs in the past, typical of their musical elasticity) where, in the middle of one unusually confessional song, the cellist suddenly stopped and declared, “My name is Valerie Thompson, and I really like coffee!” Since I myself am a caffeine-based life form, I got to do the interview.
Noise: Let me ask the naive questions first. How did Goli come to be?
Valerie: There’s two answers to this.
Vessela: There’s probably two answers to everything! My answer is that when Fluttr was on the road a lot, we would find ourselves kinda not doing anything on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights, because a lot of small towns wouldn’t have big venues. So Val and I, and Kara at the time, started what we used to call Fluttr Effect Acoustic, and we would take the Fluttr songs and make them into more of an intimate thing, and play coffee shops, those sorts of places, and that way we wouldn’t leave our money on the road. And then when we split up with Kara, then Val and I found ourselves, just the two of us—the guys from Fluttr at the time were not as excited to play out. The original idea was to have a different singer for each show, do you remember that?
Valerie: We were ambitious!
Vessela: Yeah, we thought we could have, like Sarah Rabdau would come and we’d do half her songs that we’d learn and half of our songs that she would learn. We thought it was a genius marketing plan, because her fans would come and our fans would come. But then Valerie started writing all these awesome songs and she started singing, and the next thing we know, we’re like, we don’t really need anyone else, we’re perfectly fine on our own! And we found a lot of creative fulfillment in just doing it as it was. So at some point we decided to come up with a name that’s not Fluttr, because honestly, the music we were playing was not Fluttr music.
Valerie: And I don’t think as a duo we realistically did anything that was—like we did some of your original and my original instrumental stuff that was part of the original Fluttr Effect Acoustic, but all the songs we were doing were just completely different material, different direction.
Vessela: At this point if we were gonna do a Fluttr song, something like “Transmission,” we would have to credit it as a cover, because it’s become so far away from it.
Valerie: And then the other answer is, we’ve been playing together for ten years. We went to school together—she recently found an old picture of us, literally from ten years ago. And for me part of us playing together was, here we are, and Fluttr was kind of taking a break and figuring stuff out, and we were jonesing to play. And I think there’s a very sympathetic background, we’re both classically trained on our instruments but have influences, obviously from Fluttr Effect, from rock and contemporary music in that sense, but also from different folk styles—Vess is obviously influenced by Balkan folk music, seeing as how she grew up in Bulgaria, and for me, kind of my folkie Americana interests, Celtic music and stuff like that.
Vessela: It’s extremely organic too, I think the two of us have a kind of telepathy, we rarely have to even discuss things. Usually if we have an issue or something to be taken care of, I would call her with three sentences into the conversation already, ’cause there’s no need for the beginning to even be there.
Valerie: Sometimes I just ask her questions to hear her say what I was gonna say. So Vess, how do you feel about this? when I know the answer is the same as the answer that I have.
Noise: Interesting to hear you say Americana, I get a very European vibe from your songs, kinda Left Bank, cabaret...
Valerie: I think a lot of that comes from my classical background. There are a lot of colors and chords that I gravitate to that totally come from Romantic classical music. I don’t talk about it so much, it’s not so much a part of my everyday existence, I didn’t sing for quite some time, but when I was younger, I was classically trained in voice, and I did study Kurt Weill and other art songs, and those sounds are definitely an influence, and the theatrical element of some of the vocal stuff that I think I gravitate towards comes from that classical influence, and those songs that (sigh) I sang back in the day.
Vessela: The new song we’re working on, there’s a direct quote from Bach...
Valerie: The fifth measure of the Bach cello suite, it just shows up. And I did it on purpose, I was like, I’m totally gonna rip this from Bach, right here! It’s always about the homage, to whatever influences you.
Part of this project isn’t just whatever original stuff we’re working at in the moment, but we’ve had the opportunity to put together little satellite ensembles based on this duo, and get exposed to other styles of music that we love the sound of but have never played. We were the pit band for a vaudeville show that a friend of ours put up in February this past year, and we did a bunch of these Tin Pan Alley songs, which are cute as hell! And so much fun to play—who wouldn’t want to play them? We seek out those opportunities sometimes, to be forced to learn music that we love the sound of, but we don’t have any other reason to play.
Vessela: And before that we were the core for a tango ensemble, we did about a half hour worth of repertoire and we arranged it for guitar, violin, viola, the two of us, accordion and percussion. We went out and actually took tango dance lessons, and did the whole thing, got immersed in it for a month, and did a show, and it was very successful. For us it’s just a way to give ourselves a reason to really sink our teeth into something.
Noise: I wanted to ask about your Bulgarian folk music heritage, were you presented with this music all your life?
Vessela: Yes, I started on piano when I was six, and I started with regular classical music, and by the time I was nine I had switched on to percussion. And the professor who had developed the school of percussion was a very adamant supporter of Bulgarian folk music, so his entire school, how he taught music in general was through Bulgarian folk music. And in addition to that, my mother is an educator in Bulgaria whose biggest work is preserving Bulgarian folk music and incorporating it into regular school. So between those two influences, I grew up listening, playing, dancing, analyzing, singing, really being immersed in the tradition.
Noise: Is it common for Bulgarian kids to get that kind of upbringing?
Vessela: Not really. Actually it wasn’t hip at all, it was kind of a dorky thing to do. We’d have these folk ensembles that were the pride of the nation, you know, the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, and there were a few other ensembles that were sponsored by the state at the time, the communist regime, whatever. So you would hear it on TV during holidays and stuff, but it still wasn’t hip, it wasn’t cool, everybody wanted to duplicate Western music, and it was forbidden. American music was not allowed.
Nevertheless, it just stayed in my system all these years. And then when I moved to the States, very quickly, within a semester or so at Berklee, I realized how precious of a thing I had that I never really even thought of, or that I considered an asset. But then Berklee so concentrated on world music and there’s so much appreciation for it that very quickly I realized that I have something special, and I actually started a band called .wav at the time, that had nine people from six different countries, that did all kinds of folk music combined with surf rock, like Dick Dale stuff, and jazz. That’s when I actually started to realize how much of a heritage I had, that I had completely taken for granted. So now it’s a combination of still having that background but now I’m active in seeking good interpretations of that sort of folklore. Because the folklore itself is starting to die, it’s not part of the culture any more, it’s an obsolete art form that you see in a museum.
But there are a few people out there who are doing really cool stuff with it. We recently got the luxury of opening for Theodosii Spassov, one of my heroes from when I was 18 years old, he plays a Bulgarian wooden flute called a kaval. And Val and I were able to open for him in Boston, and it was one of those dreams come true, my life is just now making the circle complete. He’s a good example of someone who’s making the folklore, fully immersed himself into it, really knows what he’s doing, and then taking it a step further and connecting it to contemporary people, and found a way to make this music to not be obsolete. And that’s part of my goal with it too. And Goli does a few of my tunes that are heavily influenced by that.
Noise: Tell me about singing while playing the cello.
Valerie: Playing cello and singing at the same time is hard. It’s not impossible.
Vessela: It seems to be getting easier.
Valerie: It is getting easier, but that’s because a part of my brain is eating another part of my brain!
Noise: Where do the songs come from? Do you actually have imaginary friends?
Valerie: I talk to myself all the time when I’m walking down the street, and it’s really awkward! I don’t know that I have imaginary friends. I have imaginary conversations of future interactions that will never occur. There are totally characters from “Imaginary Friends” that are my real friends.
I think for most songwriters it is that way, and the balance is making sure it’s not so you-you-you that it doesn’t connect with anyone, you know? I’m heavily influenced by Paul Simon, and I listen to him all the time, and one of the things that I appreciate is, there are songs that he sings that may be about experiences that he had, but he presents them as complete and total stories: here are my two characters, I’ve presented them, I’m just watching this, and there are moments where I might be speaking from this person’s voice, but I am just telling you the story that I witnessed.
Vessela: The thing I love about the songs is that nothing is ever too literal, so nothing feels too corny or too direct. But I know what she’s talking about all the time. And it’s one of those shared experiences where if I know, coming from a completely different culture and all that, if I know what she’s talking about, then other people are gonna know what she’s talking about. And it makes me excited to want to play her songs, it makes me excited to want to contribute with whatever skills I have to her songs, so much so that very soon they become our songs. Even if you wrote it, I feel very connected to it in ways that I appreciate.
We’re also very fortunate to be part of a community of artists and other musicians and people who are, one, very interesting and two, very dynamic. So a lot of our common experiences have to do with friends, and people who are going through a lot of different things. So it’s not an isolated thing, the way that we relate to other people, there’s a lot of friends and musicians that we know a lot about. Sometimes too much! We’re immersed in a lot of really interesting, really creative people’s lives, and I think that helps. We don’t live in isolation, even though we spend a lot of time practicing our instruments. If you don’t live life, then you have nothing to really talk about.
Goli’s next show is Thursday, October 1st at the Lizard Lounge. It’s Valerie’s pre-birthday bash.
