When she was commissioning songs for her new album, “STICKLIP,” the singer Bec Plexus directed her collaborators to write about “what they wouldn’t dare to say out loud.”It’s a rule that Ms. Plexus seems to have followed when composing one of her own tracks for the record: “Busy Making Steps.” In the song’s opening lines, she omits the word “I” from lines like “Don’t know what / feel,” suggesting a struggle to achieve total transparency. But the emotional stakes are still clearly stated: “Don’t feel my body / can’t touch my body / am a sexual person / gotta make steps / busy making steps.”[embedded content]By encouraging other composers to use her inbox as a kind of digital confessional booth, Ms. Plexus hoped to elicit a diverse range of material from artists she admired on the contemporary classical scene. Her cast includes David T. Little — the composer of the opera “Dog Days” — as well as Arone Dyer, best known for her work as lead vocalist in the band Buke and Gase.“Individually, they all already had some way of mixing styles,” Ms. Plexus said in a recent phone interview from her home in Amsterdam. But there were through lines: She noted that “most of these people had a strong rhythmical language.”What started as a project of straightforward interpretations quickly evolved. As she received scores and MIDI sound files, Ms. Plexus began to hear spaces for her own creativity to flourish: “Suddenly I was adding all these parts and cutting it up and putting effects on everything.”After being initially nervous about broaching the idea of rearranging her collaborators’ works, she ultimately received the green light to adapt the songs that had been written for her voice. The resulting album — out now from the New Amsterdam label — surprises from one song to the next. While several of the composers have a clear affection for Minimalism-inspired motifs, their structures are winning in their peculiarity.Tying the set together are a range of studio effects that Ms. Plexus developed with her principal producer, the Australian composer and post-punk veteran David Chesworth. Contrasting his collagelike approach to percussion with the sound of a unified drum kit, Mr. Chesworth said that, throughout the album, “the different components spin around and do different things, in different spaces.”At times, the album can sound like a contemporary-classical relative of Fiona Apple’s similarly percussive new album, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” But unlike Ms. Apple’s deeply individual statement, “STICKLIP” incorporates the perspectives of several compositional voices. In separate interviews, Ms. Plexus, her producer and several of the collaborating composers described the work behind highlights from the album.‘Think Out Loud’“Think Out Loud” MIDI draft (excerpt)Molly Joyce[embedded content]Since Ms. Plexus’s initial conception of “STICKLIP” was focused on developing repertoire for live performance, the composer Molly Joyce contributed a chamber music score. “Originally I didn’t imagine electronics, just thinking more practically,” Ms. Joyce said.As the project turned into something that was first and foremost a recording, that changed. “It really blew my mind when she sent me back the produced version,” Ms. Joyce said. Citing her typical interest in “gradual evolutions,” particularly when using electronics, Ms. Joyce admitted that she was initially surprised by the “sharp attacks” of the finished recording: “Which I love about it, now.”Ms. Plexus described the piece as “just building, building, building — and at the end of the song, it doesn’t explode. So it felt like a good opening.”‘Waist High’“Waist High” (demo)Arone Dyer[embedded content]For the second track, Ms. Plexus wanted something else: “instant punch.” She got that from Ms. Dyer, who was one of the first composers approached for the project. “She’s such a smart and creative person,” Ms. Plexus said. “Just looking at the things she’s written with Buke and Gase — so complex.”In assessing the final version of her contribution, Ms. Dyer said that Ms. Plexus changed subtle elements in the vocalizations and overall structure. But she also cited the “exciting” production work: “It did things that I wasn’t expecting, and I appreciate that.”‘Dare I Dare You’“Dare I Dare You” (demo)Amy Beth Kirsten[embedded content]“It seemed to be some sort of crazy, avant-garde musical,” Mr. Chesworth recalled thinking after he heard the song contributed by Amy Beth Kirsten.In the opening moments of the demo that she originally submitted to Ms. Plexus, Ms. Kirsten said she “was using phonemes to improvise this little fragment that repeated over and over.”Ms. Plexus adapted that in the final version, so that the phonemes gradually landed on the word “William,” the name of a crucial character in the song.“I first heard that and I was like, ‘No way,’” said Ms. Kirsten in awe-struck appreciation, with an added expletive for emphasis.Ms. Plexus said, “I sing it as if it’s some sort of love song, where I sing to someone who’s kind of ignoring me.”‘Hold My Tongue’“Hold My Tongue” MIDI draft (excerpt)David T. Little[embedded content]Mr. Little “had a big score in mind” in his first draft, Ms. Plexus said. “And then I still needed to occupy my space and make it fit within my creative vision,” she added. “So we kind of had to move toward each other.”Ms. Plexus translated powerful electric guitar writing — a regular element in Mr. Little’s tool kit — into a part for a synthesizer. There were other changes, too. “I kind of treated the vibraphone as a non-pitched percussion set,” Mr. Little said. “In my version, it starts at the top and goes all the way through.”“In the final version, it pops in and out in interesting ways,” he added. “And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s great, of course!’ That’s a really cool idea, and keeps things kind of off-kilter in the right way.” More
