The Electro-Pop Artist Turning Light Into Another Instrument

Mara Venn writes electro-pop songs that seem to glow from the inside. Her music pairs glassy synthesizers with close, emotionally direct vocals, while her live performances transform those sounds into shifting fields of color. For Venn, the lighting is not decoration added after the songs are finished. It is part of the arrangement.

The Montreal-based singer, producer, and visual programmer builds her own light sequences from a laptop beside her vocal effects and drum machines. Every pulse, blackout, and saturated wash has a musical purpose. A bass drop might trigger a sudden white flare; a whispered verse might leave the room in a dim blue haze.

That hands-on approach places Venn in a long tradition of independent artists who make their limitations useful. Without a large touring crew or a major-label production budget, she has learned to turn technical control into creative freedom. We spoke with her about songwriting, stage design, and the pleasure of making an audience look up.

The Song Comes Before The Spectacle

Lady Indie: Your live show is visually striking, but the songs remain at the center. How do you begin building a performance?

Mara Venn: I always begin with the track. If I start by thinking about colors or effects, I can lose the emotional thread. I ask what the song is doing physically. Is it tense, suspended, restless, euphoric? Then I find a visual language that responds to that movement.

For one song, the answer might be a narrow beam that slowly widens as the chorus arrives. For another, it could be a series of quick flashes that never quite settle. I want the lighting to make the structure more visible without explaining everything. The audience should feel the shift before they consciously identify it.

Venn’s songs often develop from a small electronic phrase rather than a complete chord progression. She records fragments on a compact synthesizer, then layers percussion and vocal harmonies around the most persistent sound. That process gives her electro-pop a tactile quality: polished surfaces with a handmade grain underneath.

Programming Emotion In Real Time

Lady Indie: What does it mean to program your own light show?

Mara Venn: It means I am translating the arrangement into cues. I map parts of the song to lighting changes, but I leave some room for performance. A programmed cue can tell the fixtures to change color after eight bars. It cannot know whether I am singing that line with confidence or barely holding it together.

Her setup combines MIDI information, lighting software, and a small control interface positioned within reach during the set. Some changes are automatic, linked to the tempo or a specific musical event. Others are triggered manually, allowing her to respond to the room.

That balance matters to Venn because electronic music is often associated with rigid precision. She enjoys precision, but she does not want the concert to feel sealed shut. A delayed cue, a longer fade, or a sudden decision to leave the stage almost dark can make the performance feel present rather than reproduced.

“I like the little imperfections,” she says. “If every night looks identical, I feel like I am operating a display instead of playing a show.”

A Montreal Practice With Independent Roots

Venn’s approach grew out of small Montreal venues where artists routinely handle several jobs at once. In those rooms, a performer may be responsible for the set list, cables, merchandise, social media, and the person pressing play on the opening track. The lack of infrastructure can be exhausting, but it also encourages experimentation.

She found inspiration in local musicians who treated performance as a complete environment rather than a singer standing in front of a backing track. That spirit is visible across the city’s independent scenes, from synth-pop nights to the Montreal punk community, where intensity, resourcefulness, and collective support have long shaped live music.

Lady Indie: Does working outside a large production system change the way you think about ambition?

Mara Venn: It makes ambition more specific. I am not waiting for someone to give me a huge stage before I decide what the show can be. I ask what I can build with the room, the fixtures, and the people who are there. A small club can still have a strong visual identity.

She also values the intimacy of independent venues. In a crowded theatre, the lighting may need to communicate across hundreds of seats. In a basement or narrow club, a single side light can reveal the expression on her face to someone standing a few feet away. The scale changes the vocabulary.

Inside The Live Setup

Venn’s equipment is compact enough to travel without a dedicated road crew. Her vocal processor, synthesizer, laptop, and lighting controller share a table at stage left, while pre-programmed scenes provide a foundation for each song. She keeps backup files on multiple drives and carries spare cables in what she calls her “emergency shoebox.”

Element	Function in the show	Creative purpose
MIDI controller	Triggers lighting scenes and transitions	Connects musical gestures to visual changes
LED bars	Create horizontal color fields	Define the room’s atmosphere
Focused spot	Isolates Venn during quieter sections	Brings attention to vocal intimacy
Strobe or flash cue	Marks climaxes and rhythmic breaks	Adds physical impact to electronic peaks
Manual dimmer control	Adjusts intensity during performance	Preserves spontaneity and human response

The system is deliberately modular. If a venue has only two usable lights, she can reduce the show to contrast and timing. If the room has a fuller rig, she adds movement and depth. The songs do not depend on expensive equipment, even when the finished performance feels expansive.

This flexibility has helped Venn play galleries, small clubs, outdoor events, and improvised spaces. She makes a point of visiting the venue before a show whenever possible, looking at sightlines and power outlets alongside the stage dimensions. The practical details often suggest new artistic choices.

Building A Visual Vocabulary

Lady Indie: Do you assign colors to particular emotions?

Mara Venn: Not in a fixed way. Blue is not always sadness, and red is not always anger. Context changes everything. A pale green can feel hopeful in one song and unsettling in another, depending on the tempo and what I am singing.

She begins each new visual treatment by removing color altogether. A black-and-white version reveals whether the timing and intensity are working before the palette creates an emotional shortcut. From there, she introduces one dominant shade and a contrasting accent.

Her current set moves from cool silver and violet into amber and deep red. The progression mirrors the record’s emotional arc, which travels from self-protection toward a more complicated kind of openness. The final song uses almost no movement: a warm field, a single silhouette, and a gradual fade that lasts longer than the audience expects.

“I used to think the biggest moment had to be the brightest,” she says. “Now I think the biggest moment can be the one where you take something away.”

What She Wants The Audience To Notice

Venn is careful not to present her technical process as a novelty. Many musicians use visual technology, and the tools themselves are less important to her than the relationship between sound and attention. She wants the lights to guide listeners toward details they might miss: a harmony arriving late, a beat dropping out, a breath before the final chorus.

That philosophy carries into her recorded work. Her upcoming EP contains short instrumental transitions designed to suggest changes in atmosphere without turning the project into a soundtrack for the live show. The recordings stand on their own, while the concert offers another route into the same emotional world.

For independent electro-pop artists, that distinction can be valuable. A self-programmed performance creates a direct connection between the songwriter’s decisions and the audience’s experience. It also invites fans to see the craft behind the shimmer: the rehearsals, failed cues, tangled cables, and quiet revisions that make the finished show feel effortless.

The Details That Make The Difference

Venn shared a few principles that have helped her develop a coherent performance without losing its human pulse:

• Start with the emotional shape of the song before choosing fixtures or effects.
• Build a reliable basic version that can work in any venue.
• Use darkness and stillness as active parts of the arrangement.
• Leave a few cues manual so the show can respond to the room.
• Test every transition at performance volume and from the audience’s viewpoint.

Her advice reflects the wider appeal of independent music: creativity is often strongest when it remains close to the artist’s hands. Venn’s light show may involve software, cables, and carefully timed commands, but its purpose is deeply physical. It makes a synth line feel like a movement across the room and turns a vocal pause into shared suspense.

The next time Mara Venn performs, the audience will see a singer surrounded by color, but the real achievement is harder to spot. Every glow has been considered, every blackout has a reason, and every visual interruption serves the song. Follow her releases, seek out her live dates, and support the independent spaces where artists like Venn can keep turning sound into something you can see.