New hit album for star playing Sound Academy is just a diversion, she says, from dance music.

Ellie Goulding plays Sound Academy on Sunday, Oct. 14.

By: Nick Krewen Special to the Star, Published on Thu Oct 11 2012

 

You can take the girl out of EDM, but you can’t take EDM out of the girl — at least if Ellie Goulding has her way.

The 25-year-old British singer and songwriter is the first to admit that her new album Halcyon, released this past Tuesday, is less steeped in electronic dance music inspiration than Lights, her 2010 debut and the numerous incarnations in which it’s been released.

And although the “Lights” hit maker is just beginning the probable year-and-a-half promotional push for the more pop-oriented Halcyon, which includes a date Oct. 14 with her four-piece band at Sound Academy, Goulding can’t help but reveal her excitement about an as yet-untitled side project she’s releasing in 2013.
“I’ve been working on it for a year or so,” Goulding says over the phone from Heathrow Airport. “It’s more electronic and I’m really excited to bring it out.”

Time constraints prevent her from filling in the details other than to reveal the project is nameless — but she does say this:
“Not a lot of people know the places I have been in EDM with all the remixes (and) I’m really quite proud of that,” she says. “My passion for electronic music, I want to well and truly commit to something that I’m passionate about. And I’m not saying that Halcyon isn’t my passion, but I’ve always had an affinity with electronic music, and this project will bring out a different side of me.”

One wonders if this side project is a byproduct of her current relationship with Sonny “Skrillex” Moore, the Grammy-winning L.A. electronic music wunderkind whom she met when he recruited her for the song “Summit” on his acclaimed Bangarang EP, but Goulding says the newest music from that pairing will be heard on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2 soundtrack, out Nov. 13, and the song “Bittersweet.”
“It’s actually produced by Sonny,” she says. “We made the song together and the film producers heard it and they wanted to use it. It was as simple as that, really.”

Aside from her more recent work with Skrillex, Goulding established her EDM credentials early in her career working with Starsmith, the famed producer and remixer whose clientele has included Roby and Lady Gaga. For Halcyon, Goulding retained the services of Starsmith and also hired Joe Eliot (Kylie Minogue) to help give her hummingbird warble more stylistic latitude.

“I wasn’t intending to make anything really different, but I wanted to cut myself off slightly from Lights,” she explains of the album she recorded at her home studio in Herefordshire. The record, which varies from the tribal feel of “Without Your Love” to the synth-pop joyfulness of “Anything Could Happen” and the orchestral elation of “Joy,” finds Goulding reflecting on a few years of transition.

“I knew I had matured and that my voice had changed,” says Goulding. “I just went into the studio with a clean slate, really, and waited to see what would happen.
“This was the result of me running away by myself, writing lyrics, making the decision to be alone and completely separate myself from everything, and everything that life brought with it. I didn’t want to have that baggage anymore and so I got rid of it.
“Halcyon is the result of a journey, me being able to have freedom.”

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2012/10/11/ellie_goulding_just_passing_through_pop.html