There is nothing phony about Class Actress.
If you go
Class Actress with Solid Gold
Where: DC9, 1940 Ninth St. NW
When: 9 p.m. Tuesday
Info: $10; 18+ show; 202-483-9000; dcnine.com
When Elizabeth Harper, aka Class Actress, started creating music she didn’t know how to formulate the drum/synth sounds she wanted, but she was determined to find someone who could show her how. “I couldn’t nail the drum sound; that was what was bothering me,” she said. “I didn’t have the right stuff, the untechnology of it. I needed to go back even further in technology than I was.”
It all came together when she began to work with producer Mark Richardson whom she met about five years ago on the New York music scene.
When Richardson remixed one of Harper’s songs she immediately thought it had the elements she had previously sought but couldn’t create. So Harper invited Richardson to visit her in New York and work on more music, which eventually became the album soon-to-be-released album “Journal of Ardency.”
“For this record, I would write songs and sit down at the keyboards and not worry about all the parts and the chords. It was really more about the melodies, and the hooks, that kind of thing,” Harper said. “I would basically give it to him and … he would start on the beat. It was great. We’d make coffee, the listen to Prince records and then work.”
At the same time, Harper began to unravel some of her lyrics writing simpler verses in keeping with the straightforward electronic/pop music from the late 1970s and early 1980s — recorded by bands such as Depeche Mode — that she listened to as a teenager growing up in Los Angeles.
“I was missing the simplicity of a good pop sound,” she said of her earlier acoustic guitar music. “I had to get out of my own way. I know maybe I wouldn’t sound as smart as I did [when writing songs with intricate word play] but I knew I would sound more real.”
Although an EP has been released, Harper is enthusiastic about sharing more of her sound through concerts. The full album should soon be available, she said.
“I want this record to come out as soon as possible. I really can’t wait,” she said. “I really want as many people as possible to hear it, enjoy it.”
