Q&A: Murray
By Meg Smith
Photos By Isabel Camille
MURRAY REFUSES STAGNATION - encouraging the full feeling of emotions for both herself and listeners. From her current home base in Washington, DC, 23-year-old Sabrina Movitz writes, records, and produces all the music of her indie-pop project. Named in honor of her father, Movitz’s MURRAY is an experiment in catharsis, harmony and trust. MURRAY aims to create space for connection with her listeners through rich layers of vocals and found sounds over instrumentation.
After releasing her latest single “Ask for Me” on May 1, MURRAY donated all proceeds to the Cheyenne River Youth Project to support the provision of meals for indigenous youth amidst COVID-19. She expects to finish her first EP in the coming months, and we can’t wait to hear it! Read below to learn more about her writing process, what’s been inspiring her lately and more.
LUNA: What are some of the main sonic elements that make your sound?
MURRAY: I have a few sonic elements I find myself returning to. I'm in love with "found sounds"-- I'm always recording voice memos on my phone of birds, random snippets of conversation, clanging machinery, anything really. No sound is a bad sound. Sometimes I'll go on walks and leave my phone on record to try to catalogue my walk. For that reason, John Cage's 4'33 is a piece of art that I'm perpetually inspired by; art is about observation and synthesis, but we often think of that as only visual observation. I try to make aural observation a regular part of my habits. On a more concrete level, I sang a cappella throughout high school and college so I think I'm always drawn to lush harmonies, which is good because they seem to really be having a moment. I can never get enough of vocal layering and will end up with way too many vocal tracks by the time a song is finished.
LUNA: Can you talk us through your creative process lately?
MURRAY: My creative process has been going through quite an evolution lately. My perpetual goal is to strike the right balance of inward reflection and outward stimulus. I tend towards inward reflection (probably like most other artists) a bit too much. To get some more structure, I finally bit the bullet and bought the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and have been doing the exercises regularly. I'm on week 3 right now, which is about recovering a sense of power. I also do the Morning Pages, which is a three-page stream-of-consciousness writing exercise right when you wake up. The book and its exercises are helping me stay fresh right now and explore some topics I haven't really touched from my past. That's the "in" portion. The "out" portion of my creative process is taking regular walks and trying to go to new places during them. Right now things are really weird and it's hard to rebel against stagnation, so I try to let "new places" mean many different things and not get too rigid with it.
A lot of people right now are having crazy quarantine dreams, and I feel very blessed to be spared of that a bit, but I have been waking up in the middle of the night more lately with melody or lyric ideas and I always reach over and record a voice memo when that happens. Sometimes I don't even remember having done it when I wake up the next morning.
LUNA: Do you find yourself having a common theme or narrative when writing?
MURRAY: One theme that seems consistent through a lot of my songs is time, and change within myself. My family has quite a generational spread: I'm 23, my sister is 31, my half brother and half sister are in their early 50s, my mom is 60, and my dad is 85, so I spent most of my childhood surrounded by much older people who were all growing and struggling in different ways. And I was keenly aware of death, of preparing for it. I think it makes me live in the future a bit too much.
Now that I've graduated college and have in some ways moved into the "real world," I also fear being minimized or dulled by structures that seem inevitable to the process of growing up. I think it's a struggle for artists (and we are all artists) to envision ourselves in a desk job or, god forbid, being "normal", so another theme I often write about is assimilation and cherishing your individuality.
LUNA: How has music served as an emotional outlet for you?
MURRAY: I think independence is one of the most important and hardest qualities to hone in life. In past relationships, I've found myself slowly becoming less independent over time and outsourcing my emotional processes to another person, which is not healthy for anyone. I tend to write less music when I am in romantic relationships for fear that they will think I am "pulling away." The process of both listening to and writing music has allowed me to process my emotions in a much more independent way. When I cry, I don't immediately phone a friend or partner for support, but rather sit down at the piano or a journal and try to help myself first. It makes my art more honest, puts less emotional labor on others around me, and heals me better than any other tactic I've found. When I perform those songs at shows, it feels like I'm chipping away at those chunks of pain and letting them float into the ether. Music, and art in general, is my most cathartic process for that reason.
LUNA: Who have you been listening to recently?
MURRAY: I've been obsessed with Caroline Polachek and Rina Sawayama's debut albums recently. I know minimalism a la Billie Eilish and FINNEAS is really big right now, but I have way too much going on in my head and am not cool enough for that. I love Caroline and Rina because they are unapologetically maximalist and weird. One of the things I'm working on personally right now is not judging my work before it's done (very hard!) and just letting strange creative urges follow the path they want. I look up to both of them for having a great grasp of that. Obviously Fiona Apple and Fetch fall into that category as well, and it's reassuring to know some people still truly do not give a fuck about what others think. I love her for that and find strength in it. Finally, I discovered a new artist recently named Ayoni who has been featured in a lot of smaller publications. She has an incredible voice, a ton of passion, and a really fresh songwriting style. James Blake will always be my bread-and-butter as a musician, songwriter, and producer, but those are some people I've been listening to recently.
LUNA: Are there any non musical elements or individuals that have shaped you as an artist?
MURRAY: I think the biggest non-musician individual who has shaped me has been my dad. My stage name, Murray, is his first name, and my tribute to him. When I feel afraid of assimilation, of growing up and becoming dull, I use him as the blueprint for escape. He has been retired my whole life and is constantly writing, reading, singing around the house, doodling, etc. He is one of those people who is a natural artist and brings a lot of whimsy to life without really trying. He believes in me a lot.
On a different note, I'm often inspired by the magical realism of Haruki Murakami; he has made me more attuned to the mysticism all around us, how supernatural ordinary life is. I look to Georgia O'Keefe often for feminine inspiration--her flowers and landscapes have so much capital-W Woman in them. I habitually return to Virginia Woolfe like a pilgrimage, to remind myself why my perspective is important and why I should keep creating. The late photographer Ren Hang fills me with electricity and courage. The painter Valerie Favre has a series of paintings called Balls & Tunnels, of which she makes one every year until her death. It's a simple but grand process, and when I saw her 2015 piece in Switzerland I cried. The movie Moulin Rouge is one of the first movies I fell in love with as a child, and I watch it every year because I'm a hopeless romantic and love its shameless maximalism. I could go on.
LUNA: How are you taking care of yourself during these crazy times?
MURRAY: Taking walks, taking long showers, taking deep breaths; drinking tea, drinking coffee, drinking wine; I'm growing many things in my apartment to keep my indoor environment constantly changing; I've been doing a lot of redecorating, DIY projects, upcycling; we just started a compost bin today! Been doing a lot of watercolor painting as well as mixing my music. So many projects and so little time. I also call my parents and my friends a lot. They are probably sick of it by now.
LUNA: What do you want people to take away from your music?
MURRAY: I guess I want people who connect to my music to feel the same thing as with any effective piece of art--that moment of "you too? I thought I was the only one." I think human connection is the most important thing we have in this world and I hope that my music fosters some form of it. Especially for kids that are in their early 20s that are also scared shitless about the world we're entering into, and the challenges ahead. I'm just feeling around in the dark when it comes to my future, as we all are, but the most important thing I know is that we have to keep creating and not letting the immediate feedback loop of this world silence us.
LUNA: Do you have any goals or plans for 2020 that you’d like to share?
MURRAY: My most concrete goal of 2020 is to release my first EP. I have one single out now called "Gearshift" which I wrote a few weeks after graduating college (out on all streaming platforms!) and have another song called "Ask for Me" coming out on May 1st. I have three more songs off of the EP -- Crescendo, Horizon Line, and Say My Name -- that I need to finish up. I write, record, and produce my music alone so the process takes longer for me. Plus I have a full time job and full time insecurities. But that is the plan so far!
My big dream/goal is to one day play an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. After that I can probably die.
