You Are Steve: Art-Punk, Fuzz and Doing Things the Hard Way

Jane Parker has spent decades immersed in music, whether fronting bands, releasing records through respected indie labels or crafting her own strange and wonderful sonic worlds. Now operating under the banner of You Are Steve, the Stockport-based artist has fully embraced the freedom of solo creation, producing music that sits somewhere between art-punk, electronica, DIY experimentation and glorious chaos.

Unconcerned with trends, algorithms or genre labels, Parker creates music entirely on her own terms, blending homemade beats, distorted guitars, synth textures and looping performances into something refreshingly unpredictable. Equal parts musician, producer, visual artist and self-confessed noise enthusiast, You Are Steve is driven by curiosity rather than commercial ambition, resulting in a body of work that is raw, inventive and unapologetically authentic.

Ahead of more new releases and a potential return to the stage, we caught up with Jane to discuss creativity, imperfection, ignoring the rulebook and why sometimes the best thing you can do is throw your music into the void and see what happens.

What do you enjoy most about creating music as You Are Steve compared to being part of a band?

There’s a moment in a band, when you’re rehearsing and it all bonds together and everyone knows it, then you take it out live on stage and stars align, if only briefly. Now, I sit alone in my muso hovel (spare room). I take the imperfect sounds and broken ideas and don’t have to explain or dilute those ideas to anyone, and that’s also a lovely thing. There’s a lot of amazing, beautifully recorded stuff out there and that’s fine, but it’s not me. How we marvelled at the desk used for Bohemian rhapsody in Rock field studios, how we admired the sheets of glass in the plate glass reverb room, well now it’s just me pretending to be a prog rock band or maybe an electroclash warrior in a room in Stockport and now, amazingly, that is sort of do-able. I rarely use midi and just hand carve my own cut-price beats and crappy homemade samples, Les Paul and the Korg often pop in. I seem to make music that if I attempt to play live will be a sodding pain to re-create. I cut and paste some DIY videos, I mangle some art and I call it done. Ah well…But I do like that, as it’s just my call, for better or worse.

How does a typical You Are Steve track come together?

I often have a drum sound or noise idea that I’m running with and after that I just throw more sonic stuff at it and see what happens, which is the fun bit, then it runs off on its own and I chase it and beat it into submission. Vocals often go last nowadays. Am I in the boiler room arsing about with filters? Am I Pink Floyd live at Pompeii, fiddling with synths n foot pedals? No, neither, but I like that I can feel those ideas. I used to sit and make proper songs on acoustic guitar, maybe I'll go back to that one day.

Your music seems to pull from a huge range of influences while refusing to fit neatly into one genre. Is that something you consciously embrace?

I love rough edges, I also admire production perfection, electronic repetitive beats, distorted guitars, delicate acoustic songs, wispy synths et al. But I am some of these and none of these. The music “industry” can sort of sod off. It has plenty of perfection n polish to keep it fed for eons, and now anyone can throw up a digitally sleek tune in 10 minutes, so music biz can eat that. It’s amusing when people are so keen to define themselves and how important that seems to be to people, is that for marketing purposes? I neither know nor care what I am any more. I cherry pick what I like from my musical cabinet of curiosities and do what I want when I want to hear it, without obsessing too much about eq and compression (actually that’s a lie, I do obsess), genre and perfection blah. So ready or not, here, woolly bass n crappy recorded muffled drums, I am…

What inspired you to start releasing music again under the You Are Steve banner?

I heard a lot of music that made me go, mmm should I throw my knackered hat into the ring? Or maybe not? I’ve had music/video/artwork released by record co’s which I created with my own self, that now I can’t even really access, should I give in to that? Do I start writing a novel? Do I maybe make whimsical fairy folk from acorns to sell at a local craft fair? Darn it, everyone needs a hobby, there’s no money in it and that’s ok by me, I gave my mini muso earnings to charities last year (very mini!) A lot of stuff I hear out there is amazing, and a lot of stuff is banal, so hey, what a great time to jump back into the massively over crowded pot of on-line musicians. I can’t wait to fire it into the void and let the algorithms ignore it! Though maybe some of it should have been left to die on my hard-drive, sad face emoji…

What can audiences expect from a You Are Steve live show?

Playing live is a bit chaotic, I use my own “human” timing when looping, so yes, a bit random. I once left my own gig whilst on stage to pop downstairs to get some new batteries for my little Kaosillator, what a fool, I think I left on some nice loops playing for the audience though, maybe they didn’t notice. I’ve been around a few blocks, and maybe that’s a good thing. Leave a You Are Steve gig knowing part of your brain was left on the sticky dance floor, if only for a while You Are Steve was doing it her way. X