Some albums don’t just capture a moment in time—they signal a quiet return. On My Inner Rest, Briana Marela offers something unguarded and deeply felt: a portrait of creative reawakening shaped by grief, self-doubt, and the slow work of beginning again. These songs unfold with care. They hold space for uncertainty, for inner reckoning, for the fragile act of trust. Recorded live in a concert hall and shaped through custom-built tools and tactile gestures, the album pulses with presence. I spoke with Marela about her earliest sonic memories, the long path back to her voice, and how learning to build her own instruments helped her find her way forward.
In addition to this interview, I am thrilled to present the premiere of Briana’s video, co-directed by Chris Farstad, for “Vibrant Sheen.”
My Inner Rest will be released on June 6 by AKP Recordings. Pre-order it HERE.
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As always, to start, let’s go all the way back. What are some of your earliest memories related to music and sound? Was there a lot of music around you and in the house growing up?
My earliest memories of sound are my dad playing these cassette tapes of Peruvian/Andean folk music. I remember being really little, sitting on a colorful rug, being entranced by the sounds of the quena, especially. My dad especially was a lover and appreciator of music; I associate much of my early childhood music listening at home with him. He had eclectic taste. I wouldn’t have heard of Sade or Donna Summer so young without him. My mom, however, was my biggest supporter of me being a musician from a young age, and because of her, she got me involved with singing in groups and playing music since I was 5.
When did you start playing an instrument? And what prompted your first adventures into writing and playing original pieces?
I started singing in a children’s music group when I was 5, so voice was my first instrument. My grandmother’s house had a piano, so I would tinker on it and make little “songs” and then proudly show off little things I had written to my mom and grandma. I never got very good at piano. I can get by enough to play a little, and it is a helpful compositional tool, but not something I do very often. I later tried learning guitar in high school, I also was never that connected to that instrument either, but I wrote a fair amount of songs that I used to play. I also used to play violin. Learning instruments always felt like something that I did in order to accompany my voice, nothing ever felt more gravitating than that to pursue without voice being involved. In undergrad, when I learned how to make music on my computer was the first time that I felt deeply connected and inspired by an instrument other than my voice. Yet still, my voice has always been my primary instrument; most of everything I have ever written has started off with just a vocal melody and words plucked from the ether.
My Inner Rest feels like a deeply personal and emotional work. Can you talk about how the process of reconnecting with your creative spirit shaped the music?
After putting out my 2017 album, Call it Love, which was a pop release, I felt really discouraged. I had been given a platform to release my music on a larger scale, and I tried to rise to the occasion by trying to make something that I thought other people would like. I still liked it, but I realized I had sacrificed some of my own desires to try and appease this imaginary “other.” I felt further away from understanding who and what my inner self was and wanted from playing and making music. I also felt like a failure from losing opportunities I had gained by my own lack of success. I was struggling with self-doubt and didn’t feel very inspired. In my MFA, I had the opportunity to take the time and space I needed to figure out why I still wanted to make music, and why it was important to who I am. Feeling free of having to please a label or an audience, and being true to the music that was within me and letting it truly be an essence of my inner self helped me create all of these pieces.
How did confronting self-doubt and redefining your relationship to artistic practice influence the sound and structure of this album?
A fair amount of the songs relate to self-doubt in different ways. The first song on the album, especially, “Selfless,” is where I try to confront my self-doubt head on. I talk about the feeling of selfishness present in being an artist, wanting to be remembered, wanting to be more like artists I admire, not believing in myself, and wanting to create something that’s never been created before. The realization I had in those lyrics culminates in the lines, “I only have myself. What can I bring you when I have nothing else?” I can only ever be myself in this lifetime, and if I only have this self, there is no need to doubt it. If I trust that I can find a way to follow my creative spirit, it will only lead me down the path I am meant to walk. Almost in a mediumistic sense, yet you can’t just sit around waiting for inspiration to take over your being. It requires an act of being in motion and listening to the inner quiet of your mind. The album is mostly vocal-based, as that is my truest self and instrument, allowing the voice to be a main trigger of other sounds and relying on the strength of the voice and lyrical narrative to shape what are other complementary sounds.
The album is described as an act of self-compassion—how did that intention manifest during the recording sessions?
I realized I had for many years been writing love songs for other people, and that my love for others was a fruitful and inspirational well to pull from. But I had no real love for myself. In fact, I realized in grad school that I kind of hated myself and was intensely critical of myself in a way that I would never be towards anyone else, and that was a challenging time to confront such an intense realization. Trying to write pieces/songs that aimed to figure out how to love myself and understand myself better was crucial for unlocking the feeling of compassion I could have for myself. In the recording sessions, I realized I wanted to record the songs as they fully were in the live sphere and how I wrote them, and that felt staying true to who I was in the moment when I wrote them.
Can you describe the process of building your own tools with a visual programming language? What challenges or discoveries did that unlock for you?
I first learned how to code in Max in undergrad from my professor and now friend Ben Kamen when I was at Evergreen. I feel grateful to have learned from him a strong foundation in learning that program, and a way to think creatively in Max. But it’s been a slow process for me, I am not naturally a math and logic-based person. I also abandoned Max for a while and was just purely working in Ableton. But after going to Mills and getting back into Max with my professor John Bischoff, it felt like getting back on a bike I hadn’t ridden for a while, but was just waiting for me to dust off. I felt like things I hadn’t understood in the past suddenly clicked. I had ideas I had never had before, and it felt like I was suddenly more fluent in the language of Max. Building new tools can be both quick and slow, and I am often repurposing past ideas, so the more that is already built, the more I have to draw from. It’s just the initial time it takes to make anything new from a blank slate. The biggest challenge is always what I don’t know yet or understand in Max, yet that is kind of the perfect sort of unknown to have a relationship with. It keeps me curious and longing to push myself further. I get stuck in plateaus, but if I push myself, I can usually climb out. My biggest problem right now is that I really need a new computer.
How did working with sensors and neural networks affect your sense of control, improvisation, and vulnerability in live performance?
Working with sensors and using Wekinator’s neural networks gives me the freedom to use my own gestures as a part of my performances, as well as to turn non-musical objects into instruments. I was drawn to working with these tools and with Max as a way to seek an embodied physical experience on stage as a person who doesn’t play regular instruments very proficiently. It helps me be able to do what I am naturally good at and focus on being an engaging live performer. I have both control and parameters to take some risk, and that allows me to have the freedom to be vulnerable in what I am communicating.
My Inner Rest was recorded in a concert hall rather than a studio. How did the physical space of Littlefield Hall (Long Live Mills!) influence the sound and feel of the album?
Being on that stage in Littlefield is just a magical place. Just standing up there and looking out into the empty hall made me feel connected to something that is a little hard to describe. There are some shadows of the past that are still reflecting off the walls. I also like the way it sounds in there, and these songs especially felt at home there. Recording while standing on stage facing the “audience”, not wearing headphones, and hearing the songs echoing out through the hall helped me tap into the feeling most accurately of how they sound when I perform them live. The feeling of liveness was crucial to being captured on this album. However, I couldn’t let the album be a “live album,” I wanted to sculpt them a little afterwards and figure out how they could retain some of their rawness yet also feel more polished as a record.
After the death of your father and the disruptions of the pandemic, what led you back to Oakland and to finishing this album?
Honestly, it was a little bit of a magical synchronicity. The very talented and inspirational artist Spellling had asked me to come open up a show for her in August 2021 at The Lab in SF, and it was the first show I played after the pandemic had shut everything down. I had moved to New York with my partner, Joel, after my dad died, seeking a feeling of newness, and yet I was missing my mom too much, so then I went back to Washington state (where I grew up), and I was deeply depressed. Tia asking me to play that show made me remember how much I have felt loved and appreciated musically in the Bay more than I have anywhere else. Staying with my dear friends in Oakland, too, helped remind me that I missed them so much and wanted to be back in Oakland to be in community with them again.
How does the album serve as both a farewell to Mills College and a return to yourself as an artist?
This album features songs that were either composed or started being composed while I was at Mills ( and then finished later). My Inner Rest is the culmination of my work that I made during that time of my life and at the end of the life of the institution. Shortly after I finished recording these songs, the school transitioned to being a completely different school, with no music program or MFA. This album feels like the beginning of a path I am now headed down, and without this vital document, I wouldn’t have the foundation to stand on.
And to close, as always, what are some of your favorite sounds in the world?
My favorite sound in the world: walking by a big tree on a windy day and hearing all of the leaves rustling together in the wind, the cascading softness of every leaf brushing against each other, and branches bending.
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