How did Reliquary V come to be? Although I can’t recall exactly when I started using it for my instagram handle, I started using this alias for music officially in 2020. Prior to that, I had been making music under the name Kayla Guthrie, which for years had consisted of experimental songs presented as intimate and vulnerable performances. I was not super strong at many technical aspects of music, but the stripped-down sounds were delivered with a performance style that conveyed a strange and bleak poetry. People frequently told me about their emotional responses to the music, and although I didn’t gain a big following, the fans I did have were strangely ardent, considering my music was not backed by much industry or press interest.
I was feeling my way in the dark as I began, and I leaned on my connection to words, as well as my familiarity with onstage improvisation gained from “singing” in mostly noise acts in my youth. It took me a long time to learn how to write music on my own because I was usually – as I wrote in the liner notes for the first Kayla Guthrie record, Blue – a “frontperson”, someone who wasn’t necessarily even a musician but who served as the bandleader or visual focus for the crowd. I had the confidence to stand in front of a crowd and use my voice, but I didn’t have the confidence to actually write the songs.
A note about my voice: I didn’t know how to sing. I could hold a tune, but not always in key, and I didn’t have much control or understanding of the sounds I was making. I frequently got a sore throat after performing due to incorrect technique. It was only when I started recording Blue that I began taking singing lessons, in an attempt to properly perform a (not super challenging) cover song as well as prevent the sore throat.
I wasn’t exactly proud of this lack of skill, although the fact that I wasn’t the greatest at singing became part of the affect of the music, the vulnerability and rawness of the emotion. Looking back, though, I do think that, being a “girl” singer, my voice was held to a different standard than that of a dude: guys could sing in bands like Can and Wire without having traditionally perfect or beautiful voices. I had always loved strange, unsettling “female” voices (Nico, Glass Candy, and Get Hustle were my favorites at a young age), but I struggled with my own.
It seemed like the successful female artists in the “dark songstress” vein (Zola Jesus, Chelsea Wolfe) were appreciated for their unique yet still traditionally mellifluous voices, but although I took voice lessons on and off for years, I just couldn’t sound anything like that, and didn’t necessarily want to. And in spite of having a small group of supporters who encouraged me, my lack of musical skill and isolation from the music scene (due to performing and socializing mainly in the art world at the time) made my artistic progress painfully slow. My confidence was so bad that when I used to sit down in front of my computer trying to work on songs, I’d become so overwhelmed with negative emotions that it was difficult to get anything done.
Over time, I slowly became less isolated, and began connecting with other artists who were on a similar level to me that were willing to share tips on music production. I took a few Ableton classes here and there, but had bad experiences with both of the male instructors that I worked with. I also began playing a lot of shows in the local community, and I started hosting a weekly internet radio show, which gave me the opportunity to invite other artists to perform and be interviewed, as well as giving me a larger platform for a time. I ended up quitting the show when the owner of the radio station was called out for sexual assualt. Ironically, I’d already had my own creepy experiences with him that I’d kept silent about because I didn’t want to lose my show.
There were other obstacles to navigate, but I just kept deepening my involvement and skill in music. In the past five years, I’ve branched out from working exclusively on Ableton to learning to write on hardware, which I was inspired to start after attending so many live hardware techno shows while living in Brooklyn. I found opportunities to DJ and be part of things in a way that was different from this almost confessional mode of performance I’d started with.
At this time, I was still performing as Kayla Guthrie, but I was playing a hybrid set, singing with an Ableton controller and hardware gear. It was a difficult period for me and I often came away from performances feeling drained and unhappy with myself. On a personal level, I had begun exploring and questioning my sexuality, and my queer identity formation began to intertwine with my involvement in the music scene. I became very devoted to the culture of underground nightlife in Brooklyn because I felt like I could be a certain way in that environment, and that my queer identity was embraced and supported unquestioningly. New creative forces were awakening in me that allowed me to set aside the struggles of the past and start on a fresh path musically.
Just as this was happening, my life became tumultuous due to visa issues and, ultimately, relocation to Canada. I ended up in Vancouver only months before the pandemic lockdown. I’d already finished two new releases, one of which was the first Reliquary V album, Clairvoyance, the other being the poetry album Dematerialize. 2020 was the debut of Reliquary V, but I didn’t play my first show under the alias until late 2021.
It feels like I’m only now able to look back on the past two years and see what has changed. Reliquary V feels like something that I made to fit me, instead of the feeling I used to have of trying to (inadequately) fit a mold made for someone else. The style of music is different: it has been, at least so far, instrumental, and although there’s a vague air of “techno” in the component parts, the tracks often have more of a “song” structure different from typical club tracks. When I’m writing these days, sometimes I feel like I’m channeling emotion in a way that I used to, but instead of needing to convey it through my voice or body, I can express it via sounds.
There’s still a lot for me to learn, but I don’t feel like music has to be a form of ritual self-exposure anymore. I feel a sense of control and competence in place of the extreme vulnerability I used to place myself into. I also now see that a lot of the pain I was experiencing and expressed through my music at the time stemmed from being forced into a role that didn’t suit me and which was based on, among other things, assigned gender and compulsory heterosexuality. Being myself as an artist and person presents a new set of challenges, but in doing so, my creativity flows much more readily.