Interview By Elvy

Planet Bones is an experimental recording project grown out of Southern California. Their latest album SAMSARA uses layered vocals and sonic collage to explore death and reincarnation. 

Early this Spring I sat down with Diya, the face behind Planet Bones to talk songwriting.  

When did you 1st start releasing music under the name Planet Bones? 

I first started releasing music when I was 16, for Planet Bones specifically

Was Planet Bones your first time songwriting, or had you done much songwriting before that for other projects? 

I've always been a solo project just as far as I can remember, but prior to Planet Bones, I did drop an EP, you know, 1st name, no other context. I think I really wanted to shift away from [the music] being tied towards me as a person in real life and more towards the conceptual aspect of my work. So very early on I'm like, this whole 1st name thing is not going to work, I want to start fresh. I want something so divorced from any identifying information. So I chose Planet Bones, and then that's when I really started honing the vision,
and releasing things from there. And obviously I was really young when this happened. Planet Bones has definitely been a thing for a while now. 

Can you tell me about the ritual of your songwriting? 
Where do you usually start with a song? 

Mm, I don't really know if there is a ritual. I like the way you phrase that, but I don't know if it is as practiced, or as constant or regulated that way. It's really contingent on what I'm making. A lot of times, it'll be two separate things within one framework. I really do like planning concepts a lot, and I will compose instrumentation and vocal composition, within that framework if I'm going for a theme. Like with SAMSARA, it is very conceptual, and focused, and then on the side I'll also be writing lyrically. I think it is kind of just 2 separate practices, that bridge, and it's more of an intuitive thing, like, certain melodies and harmonies will go better with more or less lyrics, and there'll be lyrics that just fit a composition really well, and that's kind of where it melts together, but I don't think I really go at it, like, ritualistically. 

How many different instruments do you play on the new album? 


That's a good question, this is actually my most minimalistic album. There's not that many instruments. On Drones of the Desert, my previous album, there's a lot more going on instrumentally. This one, I tried to restrict it to a few elements and really focus on them. So violin is a big one, there's a lot of detuned, really heavily manipulated violin sounds. There's vocals, which do a lot of heavy lifting, on this album. And then lots and lots of programed drums, and then a little bit of FM synth as well, harmonically and accompaniment wise. There's also oddball pieces here and there, a lot of field recordings and things I've sampled.
Faithful vultures is an interesting track because that one has a lot of things going on sample wise. There's a bell tower that I sampled, chopped and looped in reverse and it's this weird, chromatic, sliding sound. I also sampled a harmonium, chopped and looped to oblivion. Yeah, lots of eclectic sounds, but also just a few instruments. And there's one guitar.

So would you say your main instrument is just the way you electronically put everything together? 


It depends on the project, sometimes yes. A lot of it is really the quilt aspect of it, the production aspect of it, but it really depends on the setting. Live a lot of the times, it’s my voice doing the heavy lifting and sometimes I'll have the synth in front of me, or just a keyboard or even a guitar. I would say for this particular album, the main instrument is just the vocals, because there are so many ways that I like to translate songs from Samsara into vocal forward arrangements or even just voice and drone. Even a cappella, a lot of the time, I go in with the looper pedal live, and maybe like a delay reverb unit, and just sing on top of myself over and over again. So at that point, the voice is the main instrument, if not the only instrument. 

That makes sense to me that you talk about your voice being the main instrument here, because I remember when I first listened to Samsara, it was mostly the sound textures that drew me in. 
I was like ‘oh, this is like a sound texture based thing’ Then once I listened to it a bit more I realized, oh, no, there's lots of thematic things with the lyrics at work here too. Could you talk a bit about those themes?

Yeah, so there's 3 characters in Samsara. We've got the deer and the snake and the vulture. They were all selected because of their relationship with death and reincarnation. That's super central. The deer with chronic wasting disease drew me in the most, the idea of something so earthly being in limbo between being alive and just being dead. That was the most literal example of a zombie I could think of, the most earthly example that's not supernatural. And then we have the vulture whose job, or whose way of surviving, is very related to death. The appetite for death, the most literal sense, is where the vulture's coming from. The idea of living off of death, which is kind of paradoxical. Then the snake, the Oroboro specifically. That symbol was a big deal, because across mythologies and across traditions there's always an underlying concept of reincarnation, or self consumption to the point of rebirth, to the point of re-death. And then the idea of the snake eating itself was also interesting because there's a big theme of introspection to the extreme point of self-consumption, and I think the snake, the orboros, was a really good example of that. 

Those are the most prevalent in terms of what you can directly see within the songwriting. I do tend to switch perspectives a lot, maybe like an ensemble cast. Faithful vulture, you're in the vulture's perspective, the altars is [from] the deer's perspective, and so is chronic wasting disease, Then ouroboros is in the snake’s perspective. 

I think I was also really fascinated with the idea of cyclical decay and reincarnation. Finding reincarnation in everyday things like waking up and going to sleep, or digesting food, maybe.