She has played New York City venues, built her own fashion brand, and roams the shores of a majestic land of witches and warlocks. Meet Vero Faye Kitsuné – the electronic musician, visionary, and multi-disciplinary artist known as CZARINA.
I connected with Vero as she puts the finishing touches on her highly anticipated second full-length LP, ARCANA, and release of the powerful music film for the epic single, “Wonderland,” a song that wakes the spirit and ushers a new way forward.
To know Vero today is to know her storied history, and her multidisciplinary art is a window into her mind and spirt the art expresses. Vero is an agent of change in all she does. Vero cultivates the underground electronic music scene. She steers ABSYNTH, for instance, an online space dedicated to unearthing hidden gems and bringing progressive, cutting-edge visuals and sounds to fans, and she uses her various platforms to share lessons in art and life to help others be the best version of themselves.
A Developing Artist
Vero was born in the Philippines and raised in Queens, New York by an artistic and creative family who encouraged and supported her exploration of arts, such as music, singing, dancing, drawing, and painting. Vero has Iberian and East Asian lineage, and upholding cultural heritage is important to her and her family. Her lineage is noticeable in her visual arts as well. For example, her East Asian ancestry (Chinese/Japanese) permeates her branding and music films, such as Silence & Surrender and Blaze: Dances of the Yokai. Vero said her new music film, “’Wonderland’ bows to my Iberian lineage (Spanish/Portuguese), in terms of myth, history, local legends and lore, and location.”
Vero has long expressed herself through art. The multidisciplinary nature of her art is drawn from a multitude of inspirations and built upon the chapters of her story that have already been written. As a tween, Vero began formal training for Broadway, studying singing, dancing, and acting for auditions, noticeable elements in her music films. Vero was accepted to the “Fame” school – New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts where, instead of majoring in music, she pursued her passion in Visual Arts. She began studio training in drawing, painting, sculpture, design, and photography.
While at LaGuardia High School, Vero began to develop a passion for the transformative, pioneering sound of alternative rock, metal, and industrial artists, such as Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Ministry, Stone Temple Pilots, and later trip-hop legends Portishead and Massive Attack. She soon began to write rock music on the side, using her first electric guitar, a Yamaha Pacifica, which her father bought for her.
Vero later attended New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, majoring in Footwear and Accessories Design, which undoubtedly added tools to her artistic kit. Her passion for music continued to grow, and something big was happening – she started a progressive metal band called Aikostar.
Before CZARINA Was Aikostar
“A great moment,” Vero described the few years she spent playing with Aikostar around New York and on regional tours. With only a few clicks of the mouse, Aikostar’s 2006 self-titled release can be found on Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon. New and long-time CZARINA fans will be delighted to find raw, energetic, and complex songwriting that dynamically comes and goes, meandering through spaces high and low, far and wide, with noticeable late 90s hard alternative rock influences, such as Tool.
With Aikostar, Vero navigated a large space with her vocals, often fast, slow, raging, and gentle, all remarkably within just moments in time, a quality quite noticeable on “For Charon.” While the vocalist we have come to know as CZARINA exemplifies a polished, channeled energy that is exceptionally powerful, the raw, youthful energy Vero exemplifies on Aikostar is equally attractive and, if you listen closely, CZARINA still embodies.
Writing Chapters in the Book of Life
While Vero was playing with Aikostar, she also began building her career in the fashion industry as a footwear designer. Her fashion blossomed, and she put her music endeavors on hold. Over the next decade, Vero crafted her skills designing footwear for trend setting brands, such as Dolce Vita, and was directly mentored by industry titans, such as the late Vince Camuto and Steve Madden.
If you follow CZARINA’s music and films, you know she sees around corners. Her fashion career was no exception. A quick Google search with the term “street style blog” will bring dozens of blogs to your fingertips, and Vero was one of the earliest street style bloggers, capturing future fashion trends that emerge from the bottom up, not the top down. After a decade long stretch working on the corporate side of the fashion industry, Vero hit the ceiling. By this time, however, she had acquired the skills to launch her own line, under the brand pseudonym Ivy Kirzhner New York.
Vero opened Ivy Kirzhner headquarters and showroom in the Soho neighborhood of New York, known as a home to artists, galleries, and shopping. Vero said, “That was the beginning of a shiny golden era for me – owning and running a thriving global brand that garnered a celebrity cult following.” Vero did it all. She said,” I ran all aspects of the business with a small, tight team and it taught me how to navigate and facilitate global logistics, finance, legal, sourcing and manufacturing, PR & Marketing on top of branding, design and product development.”
A dark future loomed, however. A “retail apocalypse”, as Vero described it, was on the horizon. Legal matters with a former business partner arose, and an associated downward trend amongst retailers ensued. Vero said, “During the peak of our success, I was met with several unexpected challenges. The stress impacted my well-being all around and also my life at home. Eventually, I had to do the hardest thing I ever had to do and say goodbye to what I built and started the process of folding and selling the company; I had to start life over.”
Vero quietly consulted in design and brand development, and she began to rekindle her love for making music, creating solace in it. She decided to make music once more. But now she was armed with a “gratuitous amount of life and professional experience.” And, soon, CZARINA was born.
Birth of CZARINA
CZARINA has shared the stage with synthwave and synthpop stars Nina, Parallels, Starcadian, Bunny X, Turbo Goth, and more. She produces award winning music films. Her upcoming LP, ARCANA, is highly anticipated. But it didn’t start that way. Bit-by-bit, Vero has built a coherent, boundaryless CZARINA brand around her sound, integrating film, fashion, and accessories into her art.
The name CZARINA feels epic, and that was intentional. Vero said, “When I started this project, I wanted an epic artist name like QUEEN or Prince.” Vero said CZARINA translates to “empress” in Russian. She added, “CZARINA is the nickname I received before when I was still at the peak of my young entrepreneurial days of building little “empires” in fashion, branding and design.” There’s another important piece to the CZARINA name, though. Vero wanted a name to transcend genres, musical styles, visual styles, and convey the progressive yet polished qualities that aptly capture the CZARINA brand.
Vero’s experience writing and composing music cut her music endeavor in half. But there were skills she had not yet acquired. She needed to learn enough about production to get going on her own. She dug into Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), sound design, and leaned on her friends with production experience and set to out write her first album, Painted Holograms. Vero also began to chip away at the performance side of CZARINA. She started playing shows around New York and sought mentorship from good friends who also happened to be members of Blondie, including Matt Katz-Bohen, Tommy Kessler, and Ismael Baiz. They helped Vero to shape her live sound. She forged new friendships in the scene and started to produce shows around New York, including at venues such as Knitting Factory, Mercury Lounge, Bowery Electric, and Berlin Under.
The visual side of CZARINA’s brand is futuristic, mechanical, yet classic and elegant. Vero said, “I’ve always been a lover of futurist culture and the ideology of how technology and machines will enhance humanity as part of the next stage of our own evolution and how spirituality is essential in centering oneself in order to maintain their own humanity with all these mechanical changes and upgrades.”
Vero also discovered a whole new passion of hers – filmmaking and production – which grew out of the visual aspect of her project and collaboration with her husband, the visual artist and director of photography DeadlyKawaii. The sights and sounds of CZARINA all come together in the music films Vero and her colleagues create, such as Blaze: Dances of the Yokai or Atomic: Ad Initivm. The couple has collaborated with seasoned filmmaker and friend, Missy Papageorge, and film partners Deliris Films in Spain to make music films. The films are garnering attention in International Film Fests, which Vero said the team is proud to have achieved.
CZARINA’s music is built around her vocal prowess that she courageously uses to convey deeply reflective and personally meaningful themes centered on beginnings, endings, awe, and transformation. To write an artist’s music is genreless feels cliché. Vero draws on sounds characteristic of many genres, such as trip-hop, dark electro, new age, progressive rock, and more, but these influences are only noticeable when intentionally listening for them. The CZARINA sound is unique.
Painted Holograms
There is something intangible about debut albums, and Painted Holograms is no exception. Vero said Painted Holograms was her phoenix record. Transformation is a salient theme in CZARINA’s lyricism, but there is a striking level of vulnerability on Painted Holograms. Vero said, Painted Holograms “essentially is a record about my own rebirth after going through my own personal and professional challenges and completing some profound chapters.”
Painted Holograms invites you to navigate new territories and can be transformative if you allow it to be. Pained Holograms opens with “Silence & Surrender.” It’s opening notes convey presence, and its sound fully encompasses and saturates the environment, maintaining its hold until the last notes on the album have been played. Vero said, “ ‘Silence & Surrender’ is a very sensuous song about heeding your own calling and surrendering to it in full faith.” Lyrics such as, viciously dismantle me, unravel me disgracefully, brace our hollowed bodies and corrupted souls, pleasure’s all mine, are a graphic display of a need to look inward and make a change. As the song comes to an end, layers of vocals elicit a sense of surrendering to the call in full faith. Read the lyrics for Silence & Surrender and all songs on Painted Holograms on the official CZARINA website here.
The lyricism and songwriting on Painted Holograms are noticeably intentional, constructed from dark electronic sounds that engage imagination, emotion, and thought. The sounds appear in a space that is black, empty, with no beginning and no ending. Sounds convey the nuances of their properties with great vigor before disappearing into the emptiness. This quality of the songwriting accentuates the vocals, letting them do their work in conveying the emotion with which the lyrics were written.
On “Hourglass,” for instance, the open vulnerability with which many songs on Painted Holograms were written is perhaps its most intense. Vero said, “ ‘Hourglass’ is my one and only ballad about shattering and breaking into pieces after reaching the limits within one’s own emotional and mental faculties, then desperately finding one’s way to healing – asking to be pieced back once more.” The vulnerable character of the lyricism is conveyed through vocals that travel up and down valleys steep and shallow in liberating fashion, an inverted reflection of the guitar that wails in the background, as if chained to the ground, all set upon a minimalist backdrop built from meandering neon sounds that appear and disappear in black, empty spaces.
The minimalism is noticeable on “Gravity” as well, where dark melodies float in the background alongside a steady, minimalist electronic beat that sticks just a bit as it lets up, unable to pull away. Vero said, “‘Gravity’ is my minimal trip hop track that is probably the most spiritual and poignant out of all the tracks. It talks about that precious sliver of time between a fall and a rebound, where one gathers and collects oneself, finding peace, resolve and strength to bounce back and start over again.”
The hard work the soundscape on Painted Holograms does cannot be overstated, working in concert with the vocals and poetic lyricism. On “Midnite Drive,” for example, the percussion at times elicits a sense of a collective, almost tribal call for change. This backdrop thoughtfully complements the meaning behind the song, which Vero said is about the “anger and frustration that comes with wanting to be free and be rid of an old life, leaving everything behind after living empty dreams and life unfulfilled, writ with shortcomings.”
A strong theme on Painted Holograms is relationships. Vero said the title track “reflects on how illusions are projected on relationships that often lead to their own failures in meeting expectations.” One of the most striking qualities on the title track – and a quality of CZARINA’s musical style – is her vocal melodies squeeze, with great force all the life just a few words can give.
On the title track, Vero sings, an illusion maybe, a reflection on the notion two people can be one. Though Vero paints a doubtful picture, there is still hope in love. For example, Vero said “ ‘Parallel Lines’ describes intimacy between two individuals who share perfect symmetry, alignment and synchronization with one another. It is the concept of “Twin Flame” or the two halves of one soul,” all built around industrial and post-punk qualities. And when that Twin Flame is found, there is blazing fire. Vero said, “ ‘Blaze’ is about finding that thunderous, special type of fiery love, which is something I never experienced until just recently.”
While Painted Holograms marks the completion of one chapter in Vero’s story, her upcoming release, ARCANA, marks the beginning of another.
ARCANA
Due for release in fall 2021 is ARCANA, the highly anticipated second LP from CZARINA. The album title was inspired by arcane mysteries. The lyricism is transcendental, centering around oneself and one’s relation to nature and to the cosmos. ARCANA is the culmination of a fresh approach to songwriting and life, a blossoming of Vero’s multi-disciplinary approach, and a journey across the Atlantic to a new place to call home.
When the Covid-19 pandemic began to strengthen its grip on the globe, Vero’s work in fashion slowed down. She didn’t feel tied down to New York and, so, Vero and her husband made a life-changing decision to move from New York to Galicia, Spain. While Vero’s husband – DeadlyKawaii – was born and raised in London, his family has maintained strong ties to Galicia. The couple wanted to spend their days there for some time. It’s one of the few places that still embrace its history of sorcery and magic which, as Vero said, has a vibe that suits them well. She described Galicia as “goth and epic, yet still very pure and untainted,” a magnetic gem that drew her in.
Vero described the move as “a giant leap.” The couple courageously uprooted their lives to start a new life in Spain, one that has come with exciting opportunities. One of those has been joining the darkTunes Music Group, a label focusing on goth, industrial, darkwave, and metal. Vero was approached by the label’s owner, Raphael Beck, and said, “Everything felt absolutely right, I went for it and have been really happy and thrilled ever since.” Vero has been busy writing songs in collaboration with other electronic artists as well, such as “Doom Puma” with Cat Temper, “No One is Getting Out Alive” with Elay Arson, and “Ghostly Whispers” with Mike Templar. She has also been playing live virtual shows, such as SYNTHAMANIA, where fans heard three live performances of songs from her upcoming LP, ARCANA.
But something more personal and transformative has been happening, too. Vero said, after the move, she “went through a personal shift in mindset.” She decided to develop a new sound for CZARINA, which she described as further exploring “darkwave, post-punk, dark electro, and work on some new fusions.” She went on to say, “It is a massive upward and outward step from where I started with my debut Painted Holograms, and it exhibits a lot of my own emotional, spiritual and creative growth. I wanted to push myself to develop a unique, massive sound I can call my own. I also wanted to explore a lot of cerebral songwriting, compositions and arrangements.”
Vero has built ARCANA around “chamber, symphonic and choir elements over electronic undercurrents with odd meters, polyrhythms, upbeat tempos and the songs fuse darkwave, post-punk, gothic new age altogether.” She said, “The songwriting and composition are my personal best” and “the results have been tremendously exciting.”
Vero described the production on ARCANA as “some of the most fun ever, and also the most massive in terms of sound, layers and dynamic parts.” Vero has leaned on her dear friend, Von Hertzog, mastering engineer at The Social Club “to help polish and tame the massive beast of a sound.” Vero said, “The result of the tracks on the record have been so unique and special.” Von is the “VH” of coldwave music group VH x RR and has had a hand in some of 2021’s most exciting releases, including Wild Imaginings by Frisky Monkey, Kitty Hate Machine by Cat Temper, Supersymmetry by Parallels, and more.
Atomic: Ad Initivm
Fans don’t have to wait for the full-length LP to be released to have a taste of the big sound Vero has been working to fuse on ARCANA. The first single, “Atomic: Ad Initivm” plays like a call to awaken the spirit from within, to bring life, to become conscious again. The anthemic, tribal call quality is salient, as we hear CZARINA begin to sing, wake me from deep slumber, followed by the summoning chant, Ad Initivm Ad Initivm. As the song closes, it culminates with what feels like the final call to at once awaken, to be reborn now in this moment.
Wonderland
“Wonderland” is a special song. It is the first song Vero wrote after relocating to Galicia. It was inspired by the magical vibe of the region, which Vero said she noticed as soon as she set foot there. She said, “Our house is by the water which brought a lot of much-needed calm and centering after living and hustling in New York for about 35 years. I wanted to honor that and all the changes it brought within me. I’ve never felt this type of strong connection to a place before, hence I was compelled to write about it.”
The song title is inspired by the wonder of nature and realigning oneself with it. Vero and her team created a music film shot during the Covid-19 pandemic in the natural beauty of the region where she lives in Galicia.
The scale of the soundscape of “Wonderland” is as massive as the natural landscapes that inspired it, which can be seen in the associated music film. The gothic character of the song is built from sounds inspired by chamber orchestra, including strings, brass horns, and windpipes. The scale of the soundscape is compounded by powerful new age and post-punk inspired vocals. The vocals play like one instrument along with the others and convey the transformational period of life and honor of the land the song is a tribute to.
All of That Weird Stuff is Only in Your Head
Vero uses her CZARINA platform to share lessons she has learned in art and life with others. I asked Vero to share some of these reflections to “bottle them up,” so to speak, in this article. Vero told me, “I’ve grown very spiritual over the years and I always encourage folks to always look back into their own lives and connect all the dots and see the patterns – how certain people we meet and certain situations we get ourselves into all play a vital role for very specific reasons for us to grow from as we will always encounter the same type of people and situations more than once.”
Vero shared empowering truths. She said, “All of that weird stuff is only in your head.” This is important reminder to set the imaginary barriers that constrain us aside. She also commented on the barriers social constructs can be to self-expression. Vero said, “Societal constructs are only there to limit you. Rebel if you have to and express yourself fully.”
Vero shared reflections on the journey our lives are as well. We experience life continuously. Even after we wake in the morning hours, there is a remarkable sense of continuity from the evening before. However, we sometimes need to zoom out to see the chapters in the book of life we are writing – the new job, raising a young child, a cross-country move. Vero said, “Life is a bunch of chapters and cycles. We always go up and down and nothing is ever solid or final. We’re here to experience, learn and hopefully become stronger and wiser for all upcoming chapters.”
Vero went on to say, “Where you are is a reflection of all the decisions you’ve made, both good and bad.” This is not the burden we must bear. It’s the gift of opportunity to grow individually and collectively.
The mind has to work. That’s what it does. It works. And it often it works on digging up the past and drafting the future. But life happens in the present, and we have to put in the hard work to enjoy every moment of it. Vero said, “Life is worth living and it is also damn short. Find the bravery to pursue your dreams and even more bravery to enjoy every minute without worry.” Almost nothing ever comes from the worry. As Vero put it, “I think we’re always going to be ok. We just need to allow it to happen.”
Introspection, reflection, and observation are the human toolkit to understanding how we function. Vero said, “We are all chemicals. Our compulsions and behavioral patterns are all triggered by chemicals, and they’re just like a drug. I think understanding this will make you look at your own feelings and emotional tendencies and patterns differently. How certain negative feelings get us ‘hooked’ and we can’t pull ourselves out of them. Find a way to put the proverbial whiskey down and sober up and always take note of things you take for granted daily.”
If you know Vero just a little bit you know she adores her four-legged friend, Hamlet. Not surprisingly, she added, “Have chubby pets. They’re great for your mental health.”
Never Rush. Never Cut Corners.
We can’t get to the top of the stairs without taking the steps, an inconvenient truth newcomer to any field know all too well. Vero has been crafting her multi-disciplinary approach to art since a child and successfully building the CZARINA brand bit-by-bit. I asked her what advice she has for those who are just beginning their artistic journey. She said, “Take your time, live life and experience as many things as you can as you develop your own skills. Part of being genuine and making genuine art is an amalgamation of all your experiences, perception and perspectives. It’s something that comes from the inside and cannot be taught. Be free and be true to your own expression – that’s what makes it art.” There is always a tension between quantity and quality in many fields, as we work to propel ourselves forward. Vero said, “Take all the steps necessary. No matter how anxious you are to succeed, never rush and never cut corners.”
With gratitude, Vero, for giving much time and effort to this story. Your art is an inspiration to the many who have discovered it and to those who surely will before long. Thank you for sharing yourself with the world. It is an invitation for others to look inward and be true to themselves. Your story is remarkable, and we await to read the chapters you have yet to write.