Interview with Audi Martel

I Break Stallions is a single performed by Le Blonde. It’s directed by Le Blonde’s lead singer, Audi Martel. You can stream it on Spotify and Apple. Even better, you can watch the video on YouTube.

IAG: What’s the origin story of your band? 

AM: The origin story of Le Blonde is bizarre magic. I was literally singing in the car noticing what joy it brought me and thought to myself, “Why did I never join a band?” At that very second, I got a text from my music producer friend Gabe McDonough who recommended I meet up with Eric Stamile, his music producer friend, to sing on a new project he had in mind. I’d never been in a band before. I’m not formally trained in music, but the serendipity of the moment solidified its certainty. I was simultaneously terrified and emboldened by the fact that anyone in music recommended me. Especially dudes. I’d only ever sung at school or karaoke and played guitar by myself for myself. The whole idea was pretty intimidating—even more so once I found out that Stamile had produced Janet Jackson (with Jermaine Dupri) and CeeLo Green back in his Atlanta days. As you can see from the music video, my vibe isn’t exactly hip-hop & R&B. I had no idea what to expect. Like I was wondering, should I come into his studio singing Mariah Carey to show him my chops? Lol. Honestly, we both blew it off for a while because we’re both really shy. Once we finally got together, he kept it really chill, like “Let’s just meet for some beers in the studio.” That first night he came with an idea he’d already worked on that felt a little Blondie meets Kate Bush and we worked on that-- which eventually turned into our song “The Voices.” We recorded it at Search Party. A couple of friends came that night too, to hang and support me. There was no vocal booth and they were all in the room. I was so green. I had no idea that when I was recording vocals with headphones on no one else could hear the music. Just blasting. Giving it my all in a quiet room. Stamile was like “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?” I would’ve been mortified if I’d understood what was happening. Most of my successes have been like that—I didn’t understand the stakes and was just being myself. When I know what’s at stake, I freak and fail.

 IAG: You wrote the song, performed it, filmed the video, and edited it. What was the hardest part?

 AM: Besides not understanding my editing tools as I should? The hardest part is what inspired it. Being a woman. By the time I wrote “I Break Stallions,” we’d been a duo for a while. I understood what it meant to be a songwriter, thanks to Stamile. He lifts me up creatively and in life itself. Le Blonde songs are always an equal collaboration, but this one is the most “me” --as in a woman owning her power (with a confident man in support of that). Initially the lyrics for IBS were a poem I wrote. At the time Trump was running for president, Hilary was “that woman”, Brock Turner raped a woman next to a garbage dumpster in front of people and got away with it because he was a white “promising” swimmer. I felt violent defiant rage. Like possessed righteous Joan of Arc energy. During that same time, I was compelled by the world around me to publish an extremely difficult and vulnerable essay about being raped as a teen and the guilt and shame that comes with it. I was paid the most at that time that the publication had ever paid anyone for a personal essay. It was an open metaphoric call to arms for all women to rise up with an army of voices that refuse to remain silent about the unmerited shame bestowed on us. Silence in any injustice makes us complicit. So much shame is rooted in religion, a tool used by the patriarchy to control women. I’m a good witch and bow only to the force of life that lives in all living things. That essay was the visual inspiration for the video. A poem I will get into later turned into I Break Stallions’ lyrics. It was an all-encompassing spell I wanted to cast on anyone who touched it. I’d like to think it worked. A year after I published my essay #metoo happened. 

IAG: Where did you shoot “I Break Stallions”?

AM: It was shot at Šiauliai, The Hill of Crosses in Lithuania—which is my matriarchal homeland—and in Upstate NY in the Catskills, Hudson River Valley—my happy place. 

IAG: I can’t help but notice an Adam-and-Eve motif. Would you describe this as a “religious” song?

AM; There’s a lot of intentional symbolism, meant in an ancient way. I think that is how I work as a filmmaker. I consider this an anti-religious song. As I mentioned, it’s a spell I cast with intention. It’s a demand for respect and the resurgence of the matriarchy. Nature/Life is my religion. One could argue women are more innately in touch with those things. Periods are moon cycles. Births and gestations, moon cycles. We create life in our wombs. The church is terrified by this power. A power they claim to understand, but don’t. LIFE is GOD. Christianity is so fascinated with blood and wombs and suffering, “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” I mean so much repressed fruit and apple talk in the bible.” Riddle me this, Is the tree that gives life not as important, if not more important, than the apple itself? These metaphors of sexuality have been used to vilify women. Women don’t need to seek this fruit of knowledge in a garden, we are the garden, we are born with it, and bleed in so many ways because of it. The patriarchy loves to hide our strength through sexuality with everything from head scarfs to abortion laws. Our strength is shame Instead of acknowledging the powerful essential divinity that lives within it. The Hill of Crosses in Lithuania, my motherland and the last pagan stronghold in Europe, is obviously religious imagery, but also a symbol of defiance and resistance. The Soviets mowed it down so many times, but the crosses kept coming. The cross is a pagan symbol of the directions and a biblical symbol of suffering. In the video’s symbolism, the cross is the tree of the old religion and that tree represents the woman, being cut down for her apples. The ax symbolizes man cutting it down, or noosing it up. Mowing down the divine over and over again like a soviet army. Man is always literally killing trees. The bible talks of Christ’s suffering on a tree, but it also talks of women’s cursed suffering in child birth and the two women by his side in death. Mary’s statue symbolizes suffering—along with the that idea of the virgin is a stolen goddess from the pagans-- as is the Norse goddess of the apple, literally named Idunn long before Christianity existed. She was free and eternal. In IBS’s video I’m running back into the orchard, where I wear a crown of flowers, not thorns. In our own culture, the snake is a sign of and call to defiance, “Don’t Tread on Me”, but more importantly it's an ancient symbol of fertility, sexuality, and rebirth. To the Hopi, the snake is the umbilical cord joining us to Mother Earth. At the end of the video there’s a single shed snake skin left in the place of a “woman” who seeks the mushrooms, forest, and the ouija--obvious symbols in the search for spirituality and higher knowledge on other planes.

IAG: Who are three musicians that have deeply inspired you?  

Ah, the choose your favorite child question. Are we talking songs for fucking or songs for church? Songs for dinner or starting a riot? Context is everything…

1. Context: Childhood Influence. The Beatles dominated my childhood —they’re the first thing I can remember on earth and the nucleotides to my helix. My definition of experimentation and diversity in music and songwriting.

2. Context: Some musicians who authored the same three songs I continually reference when Le Blonde is in the studio are: 

• 8 Miles High by The Byrds

• Reptile by The Church

• Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. 

Each has a unique dreamy ethereal quality I aspire to. 

This interview is about the video for “I Break Stallions,” so only in this context will I say that Bill Callahan has indirectly influenced me—or least “I Break Stallions.” I own none of his albums. I know only two of his songs: “I Break Horses” and “Dress Sexy at my Funeral” (the latter is fantastic) I only became aware of SMOG in an irritating conversation at a get-together with one of those guys who never has a girlfriend, but always has 10 girl “friends.” As it played, he boastfully described its supposed inspiration as though he’d written it himself—Callahan said (in an interview) that it was about explaining (mansplaining) to a girl how easily guys can blow off their one-night stands afterward. The recounting of Callahan’s song and implied takedown of the powerful talented females he’d dated (Cat Power and Joanna Newsom) was told with such glee and ownership and that mojodojocasahouse bravado that I found myself fantasizing about all the ways I could break him. While also wondering why he was telling me this in the first place. I’m a girl dude. I guess because I’m a bit of a “dude”—sometimes the dudes forget. The idea that a song that bragged about hurting women and inspired male listeners to proudly emulate it just left me seething. I didn’t say anything. Women generally don’t. But I felt the same defiant rage I mentioned earlier. I went home and wrote a poem that has shape-shifted into a song and a video and who knows what next. It’s written from the perspective of a fully formed woman who knows her power and uses it. One who WOULD actually “dress sexy at your funeral,” then dance on your grave, and couldn’t be broken by anyone.