Press

Bio:
Nuda Veritas is an avant singer-songwriter and expert looping artist out of Burlington, VT. Her music ranges from quiet songs marked by classically-trained vocals to raucous synth-driven loop pieces punctuated by fractured answering machine tape rhythms.

Press praise:

Really excellent profile aired on VPR January 17, 2012

Interview on Portland, ME-based blog Alright, I'm Wrong

As Nuda Veritas, Rebecca Kopycinski makes minimalist folk, with an emphasis on layered vocal melodies (all her own voice, on loops). The backing music is a melange of acoustic guitar loops, simple synth lines, and percussive vocal loops, sometimes including ambient conversational voices underneath everything. If you’ve listened to Cocorosie, you have an idea of the aesthetic.

Kopycinski's lyrics are posted to her website, which is a treat because they are fantastic: constantly straddling the literal and the far-out metaphorical and hitting on homey domestic and relationship themes with a reflective tone that ranges from sad to tense to cathartic. Some songs on her new LP, Verses of Versus, are wordy, bookish songs in the tradition of folk music with something of a narrative. Others have very spare lyrics and feature lots of repetition and meditation on a single phrase or melodic idea. Both lyrical forms feel natural within the aesthetic developed on the album.

Kopycinski’s ear for a great vocal melody (Autonomy Isn’t Automatic has a hook that’ll give you chills) and knack for heart-wrenching lyrics keeps the album well within listening range for anyone who likes standard folk or indie.

--Alexander Pint, The Deli Magazine

The cover image of Nuda Veritas’ latest album, Verses of Versus, offers two opposing impressions of the Burlington-based songwriter, whose given name is Rebecca Kopycinski. On the left is a quiet, contemplative woman whose gray-blue eyes are piercing yet warm. A thin smile creeps toward the corners of her lips, her inviting visage framed by a pixieish hairdo and brightened by a white sweater.

Standing next to her, in profile, is a hellion in black. Unkempt hair hangs in limp, greasy strands above her shoulders. She sneers while exhaling the last drag of a cigarette held loosely between her thumb and forefinger, perhaps readying to flick it toward her twin in white.

“It’s about paradox and irony and opposites,” says Kopycinski, 27, explaining the central themes of her new record — though she could just as accurately be describing its cover art. “So many times, two extreme opposites can coexist as one. So this was supposed to be a picture of how that happens.”

Her debut double album, Songs for Doing Dishes/Still Lives, released on local “other music” label Aether Everywhere, was also an exposition of opposing aesthetics. Dishes featured largely accessible, folk-based songwriting accented by ethereal experimental flourishes. Still Lives dove fearlessly down the rabbit hole, challenging listeners with an unwieldy assortment of ambient noise, drones and loops. Gestating for nearly two years, Verses of Versus is the offspring of those two discs and represents the artistic nexus where they intersect.

Sonically, the album melds the varying disciplines explored on her debut. On the a cappella opener, “Tension/Release,” a blooming, unadorned chorus of Kopycinski ebbs and flows. The following track, “Sheets,” employs ambient noises and loops of unidentifiable voices — perhaps taken from an answering- machine tape — to create a foreboding undercurrent of uncertainty beneath a bed of otherwise simple, pretty acoustic guitar and voice. Other songs, such as “L-I-V-I-N,” are based almost entirely on constructing and then deconstructing repetitive electronic loops. Still others are mostly au naturel. “Zodiac for the End of Time (aka Lion’s Share)” is entirely built on guitar and voice, while “Anachronistic Heart” comes to life in a swell of layered voices and harmonica.

“It’s chaos mixed with beauty,” Kopycinski suggests.

“Opposites Attack” is emblematic of her approach. A clean, staccato acoustic- guitar progression fights for space with a grimy and equally aggressive synthesizer line. The singer alternates between anguished wails and a controlled but exquisitely emotive melody. The song is Verses in microcosm.

“She has a great musical instinct,” says Mars Pyramid Records founder Jay Blanchard. “And if the emotions she is trying to express require both a hand-plucked harp and a reversed loop of synthesizer noises, then she does it.”

Blanchard is as intimately familiar with Nuda Veritas’ growth and evolution as anyone, other than Kopycinski herself. He served as her recording engineer on Verses. He was also the public-relations director at Aether Everywhere when the label released her debut in 2009, though he views releasing that album under the AE banner as a double-edged sword.

“Rebecca gets lumped into the ‘Burlington experimental scene’ too often, usually to her detriment,” Blanchard says. “While her affiliation with Aether Everywhere probably didn’t help that, it did hopefully open her up to a new fan base that probably wouldn’t have been interested in another female singer-songwriter otherwise.”

He adds that while Kopycinski takes risks with her music, bewildering the listener is never the goal.

“The most important thing is always the music,” Blanchard says. “The experimentation is only useful if it helps to accentuate her lyrics and melodies. It’s never a superfluous flourish.”

Verses is lyrically dense. Kopycinski says she initially intended to write more broadly. But she ultimately turned inward, using conflict in her own life for inspiration.

“I’m a total extrovert and, at the same time, a total introvert,” she explains. Kopycinski lives alone. And she prefers to work and, especially, make music alone, calling herself a “complete creative control freak.” Conversely, she admits a strong need to connect and surround herself with other people.

“Sometimes when you spend all that time with yourself, and don’t foster those relationships … they might not be there anymore because you’ve neglected them,” Kopycinski says, revealing the inspiration for “Sheets.”

“I washed you right out of my sheets / so I could be alone when I sleep. / I don’t need you, / Most, most, most of the time,” she coos on the song. Then, at its conclusion, “When I need you you’re not there, / Most, most, most of the time.”

Blanchard says Kopycinksi’s lyrical depth has evolved since her debut.

“While she has always been a great writer, her works have been becoming more and more intensely personal and … oddly, more universal as a result.” He adds that she has adapted her poetry to suit her vocal style, consciously considering how words will sound when she sings them. On “Sheets,” her lyrics are elastic. She bends and massages words so they become less traditional prose than simply part of the fabric of the larger tapestry. Like synthesizer loops, layered voices or guitar, lyrics are simply another weapon in Kopycinski’s sonic arsenal.

“Rebecca is one of the most daring artists I know,” says Blanchard. “She makes beautiful personal and creative songs. And the fact that she doesn’t have a larger audience both locally and beyond is mind blowing to me.”

-- Dan Bolles, Seven Days

To some (jerks like me, for example), the phrase nuda veritas calls to mind the famous Gustav Klimt painting that depicts a nude female gazing starkly back at the viewer; a look in her eye suggesting that she knows, relatively speaking, a whole lotta stuff. On the other hand, to those who don’t really know any Latin (or just plain don’t care about art history), the term nuda veritas refers literally to the “naked truth,” or rather, the bare and utter rawness of reality. The title, therefore, aptly fits up and coming electro-acoustic composer/performing artist/singer songwriter Rebecca Kopycinski (aka Nuda Veritas) out of Burlington, whose haunting yet stunningly beautiful vocals and minimalist approach to music force the listener into hearing pure sound: plain and simple.

The experience of listening to music can be, under certain circumstances of course, truly transcendent to some; Nuda Veritas attempts to achieve the same transcendence through her music, and surely succeeds. She uses an array of instruments, most notably her voice, looped creatively and methodically to create a sound distinguishable among many. Fans of Sufjan Stevens or Imogen Heap will rejoice; while everyone else will be simply amazed by the Goddamned gorgeous sounds she creates.

-- Pat See, The Deli Magazine

Nuda Veritas, the pseudonym of Burlington-based songwriter and cable access TV impresario Rebecca Kopycinski, refers to her minimalist soundscapes as “music for people who like pretty things.” It’s an apt description. With hi-tech prowess and natural acoustic tones, the aural aesthete concocts hypnotic gusts of sound that are both fragile and forceful….

-- Dan Bolles, Seven Days

The music is Beautiful and the soundscapes are wonderfully intriguing. Nuda Veritas oscillates very smoothly between a more conventional style of vocal-centric song writing and abstract sound manipulation that create a wavy, transcending experience. Rebecca, the voice and musician of Nuda Veritas, is noted as being a minimalist interested in conveying emotions through sound, softly and clearly, and she does just that. Not that you need to bring a pen and pencil to take notes at the show, but it will be a bit more than just nice sounding noise. The layered looping instrumentation and vocal harmonies coalesce into a gentle hum reflecting the attention and complexity of Nuda Veritas.

-- Peter Spartos, The Deli Magazine

“Please don’t let the fact I’m on the Aether Everywhere label plant the evil seed of ‘experimental’ music in your mind. It’s really quite listener friendly.” So reads the email sent by local experi . . . um, electro-acoustic songwriter Rebecca Kopycinski, a.k.a. Nuda Veritas, regarding her debut double album, Songs for Doing Dishes/Still Lives. The two-disc epic presents a tenuous blend of folk sensibility and electronic dalliance, tempered by solid and, in several cases, powerful writing and some truly stunning arrangements, both vocal and instrumental. In a way, it could be regarded as the local “other music” label’s first crossover release. And yes, it is indeed “listener friendly.” Although that may depend on just who is listening.

Dishes should appeal to a wide swath of fans across both the folk and experimental spectrums. If genre tags are your thing, I suppose it would fit, though not exactly neatly, into that nebulous gray area known as indie-folk. Or better still, chamber-folk. But if you’re looking for neat and tidy, you’ve come to the wrong place. Because the good stuff in life usually requires you to get a little dirty, right?

From the opening salvo, “Captain,” it’s clear we’re in for an unpredictable journey. Backed only by a chorus of voices — all hers — and a sprightly bassoon, Kopycinski’s lead pirouettes around the tune’s shanty-ish lyrics like some siren combination of Joni Mitchell, Leslie Feist and Ishmael.

“Drive” follows with a more conventional, soothing guitar-voice folk sound. While it’s a seamlessly pretty number, it almost feels as if Kopycinski is buttering us up for the following tune, “Conflict of the Flesh.”

Very simply put, the allure of “experimental” music stems largely from its purveyors’ appreciation of and willingness to play around with the building blocks of music: sounds. On “Conflict,” Kopycinksi takes the practice a step further, applying it to her poetry as she contorts her considerable vocal prowess to render her words into near-imperceptible syllables, the emotive qualities of her voice delivering their meaning.

Listeners, friendly or otherwise, would do well to keep that playfulness in mind when approaching the second volume, Still Lives. The disc is an approximate meld of Aether Everywhere’s stated bailiwicks: “drone, ambient, sound collage, heavy psych, noise and all the points where they intersect.” Or to put it in layperson’s terms: far out, man. Put yet another way, the album is the musical manifestation of its handmade cover art. Each copy’s jacket was sewn together from pieces of recycled LP covers — mine: Robert Plant’s Shaken & Stirred. Not for the faint of ears, Kopycinski’s sonic abstractions — vocal and otherwise — challenge the listener to pay attention. But those who do will be rewarded with a glimpse into the stirring creative soul of a visionary local artist.

-- Dan Bolles, Seven Days