Planningtorock is the stage persona and creative form of Bolton-born Janine Rostron, whose powerful and haunting electronica was born in Berlin where Janine has lived for the past ten years.
Rostron has been playing an array of instruments since she was eight and has been writing music since she was sixteen. And now she has self-produced her new album, the bewilderingly simply titled ‘W’ – as a follow up to her 2006 album ‘Have It All’.
Watch planningtorock on Vimeo.
Working with percussionists Pat Mahoney of LCD Soundsystem and Finnish musician Hjorleifur Jonsson, Janine says the music in the new Planningtorock album explores, “Feminism, gender and relationships – not just on a one-to-one basis but with society too. The rest I will discover when I start performing the songs live.” Planningtorock’s music takes on another life on-stage where Rostron synchronises her style and stage performance to the music and in turn the performance acts as a catalyst for the music to evolve.
Listening to W is a frightening experience – it is dark and melancholic and sounds as if it was written as a soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Clockwork Orange’. But Janine argues, “Yeah – there’s melancholy in there but also a lot of love and ideas which I think bring some pretty uplifting moments – like in ‘Milky Blau’ which I think is my favourite track on the album – it’s so euphoric.”
Janine is reluctant to summarise or try and explain her music. She says, “I like to leave people free to come to their own feelings about the music.”
It’s rare to hear such a unique sound in the overcrowded world of electronica, and whilst electronica artists are starting to experiment with nightmarish sounds, no one does it quite as authentically as Planningtorock.
