London based singer, songwriter, and producer ROCH is today sharing a self-directed video for ‘T-Rose’ – lifted from her recently released debut album ‘Via Media’.
Bringing together ROCH’s hushed vocals with a moving piano motif, on ‘T-Rose’ Miller contemplates childbirth and motherhood: “What happens if I have a child, or lose a child?”
Speaking a little more about ‘T Rose’, ROCH said: “The song is about an absence of a child / loss of one and a common feeling of once someone/thing is gone you feel you have more to say to them. This is the most intimate and pared back song on the album. I wanted to capture the domestic setting where I made the album by recording conversational dialogue between the people (young and old) in the studio. This theme will carry on through a visual that will accompany the song.”
Fascinated by crossovers of space and language, and by rethinking the “mundane and ubiquitous ideas” found in every day life. The bridging of grand scale and domestic scale is a concept Miller has been exploring in her work since her time studying performance and sculpture at University of the Arts London’s Central Saint Martin’s college, and continues to probe in the impassioned synth pop she makes as ROCH.
Miller’s interest in the lofty versus the mundane stems from her religious background as well. “Roch” was Miller’s confirmation name, after St. Roch, the patron saint of the plague. Miller grew up going to Catholic school and studied 13th and 14th century medieval art history in school. She’s captivated by medieval art, patron saints, and religious paraphernalia, and the way those emblems manifest in every day life. “The music is influenced in a lot of ways by sacrifice,” Miller explains. In line with depictions of Catholicism and sainthood, the songs on ROCH’s debut album, Via Media, often deal with sacrifice of the body—taking that quintessential religious image into the every day. Instead of the sacrifice being for God, it’s for family, career, or comradery. “Rather than this saintly sacrifice being these dramatic Catholic ascension-type scenes, it’s work, labour, pregnancy.”
