White Sea explores the horizon on ‘This Frontier’

Kevin Bronson on
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Whatever shape her solo music ended up taking, Morgan Kibby was determined not to play to expectations.

“I’m a woman who plays keyboards, and there’s the whole Tori Amos sensibility,” says Kibby, the singer-keyboardist who joined French popgazers M83 for their last album “Saturdays = Youth.” “I know I could have written the girl-at-a-piano record, but I really wanted to challenge myself.”

Mission accomplished. On “This Frontier,” the Los Angeles singer’s first EP as White Sea, Kibby takes on the dual roles of songwriter and producer and fashions five songs that sparkle like constellations in the galaxy of electronica. Neither aping the aesthetic of her M83 mentor Anthony Gonzalez nor settling for one vibe, White Sea dabbles in indie-pop, ’80s radio fare, brooding techno and desert disco on its initial outing, which was distributed for free download in October. [Stream/download the EP after the jump.]

“I really wasn’t trying to emulate anything – I’m exploring,” says Kibby, who instead of retiring to her familiar station at the keyboard to write the songs built them out of programmed beats, sounds and loops over a yearlong period during which she basically taught herself Pro Tools. “It’s also why it took me a year to write five songs.”

Kibby embarked on her solo venture after M83 went on hiatus after touring behind “Saturdays=Youth,” for which she co-wrote four tracks. Among other things, she was asked to do some remixes, and she took on Solid Gold’s “Synchronize,” School of Seven Bells’ “Dust Devil” (on its “Heart Is Strange” digital single) and “The Shallow End” by L.A.’s Seven Saturdays. In many ways, it was baptism by fire.

“I had no idea what I was doing the first time I programmed drums, but so many happy mistakes happened because of that,” she says. “For me, doing a remix is a chance to bring a fresh perspective to something.”

Some of her happy mistakes ended up being elements in her own songs – some chopped-up screams here, an arpeggiated harp sound there. The sonic shifts between the poppy “Mountaineer,” the darker “Ladykiller,” the almost-twee “Overdrawn,” and the Ennio Morricone-indebted “Cannibal Love” and “Oljato” signal an artist who, by her own admission, “is just getting started.”

“Stylistically, the songs may be different,” Kibby says, “but I hope that my voice and the production sounds tie everything together.”

In her only live show to date, Kibby’s voice and ace backing band of Jonathan Bates, Ray Suen and Amy Wood carried the night, White Sea even delivering a wink to the frontwoman’s embrace of the ’80s by covering En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go.”

As for M83, Gonzalez has been sequestered in L.A. working on the next album. “I feel very lucky that Anthony has asked me to work with him again,” Kibby says. “I’m so excited about this record.”

||| Also: Check out the White Sea remix of Seven’s Saturday’s “The Shallow End”

||| And: Read her interview with Music Mondays here.