Morgan Kibby’s message on women in music is direct, even pointed.
“I feel like the conversation is just very shallow when it comes to women in music,” she told Radio.com. “I think if you venture to ask a lot women who are in electronic [music] bands, they are making and producing music, it’s just not being talked about properly.”
Certainly, Kibby–a Los Angeles native known as her synth-pop artist and production moniker White Sea–wants to continue and deepen the conversation about how women are talked about in music, namely production and electronic music. She’ll have her biggest role yet in that conversation when her full-length debut, In Cold Blood, comes out May 19.
At the beginning of this year, Kibby took public issue with an L.A. Weekly story on her Twitter, which put the spotlight on five–and only five–“Women Producers.” Among other things, she called it “reproachfully shallow” and rattled off a string of notable female producers as a defiant response.
“There was no representation of the women in today’s music landscape that are making and producing exceptional music,” Kibby said. “It didn’t feel representative of what’s actually going on in music right now. I feel very proud to be a part of a laundry list of women who are producing their own material.”
And it’s not like Kibby is just working on her own stuff. Before her current solo run, she acted as a kind of secret weapon of songwriting and performance for M83. Kibby started with the Anthony Gonzalez-driven, “Midnight City”-famous synth-pop act during its Saturdays=Youth incarnation in 2008. Her voice became like a siren, an atmospheric backing vocal and, on “Skin of the Night,” a momentary lead. She was an integral part of M83’s 2011 breakout record Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and its respective tours in 2011 and 2012, during which Kibby performed face-to-face with Gonzalez nightly around the world. Her co-writing credit on the gangbuster single “Midnight City” earned her a platinum plaque last year, her first.