TyLean

Between 10 And 2

Fearing they might alienate their fans and potential new audiences, most singer/songwriters would be afraid to reveal to the world their conclusion that everything is ultimately meaningless. For the uniquely twisted, emotionally compelling self-described “vocalist, pianist and cello rapist” TyLean, however, discovering she was a nihilist was a liberating creative flashpoint in a lifelong creative journey. Fast becoming known as eccentric and daring, willing to sacrifice popularity for the sake of art and musicality for atmosphere, TyLean’s haunting voice is the emotional centerpiece of the full-on “despair art” (which she once referred to as “Piano Goth”) recording Between 10 and 2, the haunting but strangely compelling follow-up to her 2005 debut EP When All Else Fails.

Admitting without reservation that her “deviacoustic” music—acoustic music of a sinister nature—is too classical for rock and too rock for classical, and probably not everyone’s cup of tea,

TyLean’s powerful voice cannot quite alleviate the quagmire of despair in her songs of human cruelty or her recreations of nightmares and insanity. Beginning with a sound recording of a television broadcast signoff from the 1980’s - a crucial element in setting the scene - the seductive eight track collection chronicles a descent into insanity. Via ethereal and tortured vocals, dark and sometimes atonal piano chordings and crazymaking soundscapes, the pieces explore waking insanity, hallucinations, loneliness, and even the subject of nightmares in the self-proclaimed masterpiece, “Rosalyn.”

Discussing “Rosalyn,” her trademark piece that singlehandedly captures the fullness of her artistic expression, TyLean says, “One night, while I was insane, I had a horrible nightmare... Since I was 15, I have been detailing my dreams in journals, every detail I could remember, down to the colours of the cars going by. Being in the habit of doing this made dreaming something entirely different for me than it is for most people.  My dreams are memories. The nightmare was as I described in the song.  After Rosalyn burns the orphanage, I go back to a previous time, back to her tortures, and realize that what I was about to see was far off the charts of disturbing. I couldn't go back to sleep. I had to write it.  Some people freak out, turn it off and apologize.  But there is never anything to apologize for!  If ‘Rosalyn’ got to them so much that they had to turn it off, then I have successfully recreated the dream, because I couldn't take any more or it either. Rosalyn is my proudest accomplishment to date.”

Between 10 and 2 was literally finished hours before TyLean departed the United States to live in England while she studied for her Master’s degree in Music Composition for Film and Television at the University of Bristol. TyLean scored several short films and documentaries while she lived abroad—including several student films and the short film “Snap,” which has made the rounds on the festival circuit--but more importantly, she utilized the distance to reflect on a childhood of horror growing up in rural Pennsylvania. The result of these self-analyses is The Unforgivable, the Unforgettable, the follow-up to Between 10 and 2 she will release later in 2009. 

She is also wrapping a project she began writing in 2006 called 22 Morbid, which evolved into Thus Far, a fictitious song cycle of a gothic nature with strong undertones of TyLean’s political and religious opinions. The album has undergone many transitions and periods of abandonment as TyLean has struggled to find the best articulation for the album, which is musically entirely different from her solo work.

TyLean is currently living in London, where she is performing live and is in pre-production to shoot a music video for the song “Corner of My Eye.” The song is about being completely paranoid and insane and hallucinating. The clip will be shot along the south bank of the River Thames, inside of the cool vaults that go several stories underneath the London Bridge. She says that while it may not be apparent to the viewer that it’s being filmed there, the location has a certain look that is very institutional, old and creepy—the perfect spot to convey visually the dark essence of the song. The video will be YouTube and other online outlets by late summer.

“I am also performing again in London, for the first time in 2 1/2 years,” she says, “and feel that I’m still coming into my own in the live performance area.  It’s very hard to get up there as a one-woman-band and perform to people who are probably not going to “get” your music. Yet the more I do it, the less I care who is there to see me do it. I just get into my own world, re-create the songs and get lost in them, which I love.  Everytime I perform them, they come out a little different, and I love that, too. It makes them more like entities that change over time.”