Press

Bio:
Rebecca was born August 4, 1983. Leo. Rebecca was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and spent the first nine years of her life there. The youngest of three to a blue-collar working class family, she attributes her down-to-earth character and "sisu" to her family, especially her parents, who are unceasingly supportive of her endeavors. She's been writing music as Nuda Veritas since 2005, and playing shows since August 2006. Classically-trained in vocal performance, her voice is the center of almost all she does. Loops play a big part, as do spoken word tapes and guitar. She believes that when the given standard of doing doesn't suit you, you should find your own methods and means to an end. Nuda Veritas was added to the Aether Everywhere label in July 2008, under which she released "Songs for Doing Dishes & Still Lives," a double CD debut that covers both the singer-songwriter style and the more experimental side of her music. The combo was named one of the 10 best Vermont recordings of 2009. In January 2009, she "restructured" her job description with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra to facilitate a greater focus on her music, namely bringing it on the road. "This is what I do. This is all I want to do. My music is my medicine." She lives in Burlington, Vermont with her cat, Nyla. She loves food, Vermont, thrift shops, piles of free stuff on the side of the road, that cat, family, free time, Bukowski, designing posters, and anything that gets her blood pumping. She doesn't like vices, hanging said designed posters, fakes, pretentiousness, and writing biographies in the third person.

Press praise:

To some (jerks like me, for example), the phrase nuda veritas calls to mind the famous Gustav Klimt painting that depicts a nude female gazing starkly back at the viewer; a look in her eye suggesting that she knows, relatively speaking, a whole lotta stuff. On the other hand, to those who don’t really know any Latin (or just plain don’t care about art history), the term nuda veritas refers literally to the “naked truth,” or rather, the bare and utter rawness of reality. The title, therefore, aptly fits up and coming electro-acoustic composer/performing artist/singer songwriter Rebecca Kopycinski (aka Nuda Veritas) out of Burlington, whose haunting yet stunningly beautiful vocals and minimalist approach to music force the listener into hearing pure sound: plain and simple.

The experience of listening to music can be, under certain circumstances of course, truly transcendent to some; Nuda Veritas attempts to achieve the same transcendence through her music, and surely succeeds. She uses an array of instruments, most notably her voice, looped creatively and methodically to create a sound distinguishable among many. Fans of Sufjan Stevens or Imogen Heap will rejoice; while everyone else will be simply amazed by the Goddamned gorgeous sounds she creates.

-- Pat See, The Deli Magazine

Nuda Veritas, the pseudonym of Burlington-based songwriter and cable access TV impresario Rebecca Kopycinski, refers to her minimalist soundscapes as “music for people who like pretty things.” It’s an apt description. With hi-tech prowess and natural acoustic tones, the aural aesthete concocts hypnotic gusts of sound that are both fragile and forceful….

-- Dan Bolles, Seven Days

The music is Beautiful and the soundscapes are wonderfully intriguing. Nuda Veritas oscillates very smoothly between a more conventional style of vocal-centric song writing and abstract sound manipulation that create a wavy, transcending experience. Rebecca, the voice and musician of Nuda Veritas, is noted as being a minimalist interested in conveying emotions through sound, softly and clearly, and she does just that. Not that you need to bring a pen and pencil to take notes at the show, but it will be a bit more than just nice sounding noise. The layered looping instrumentation and vocal harmonies coalesce into a gentle hum reflecting the attention and complexity of Nuda Veritas.

-- Peter Spartos, The Deli Magazine

“Please don’t let the fact I’m on the Aether Everywhere label plant the evil seed of ‘experimental’ music in your mind. It’s really quite listener friendly.” So reads the email sent by local experi . . . um, electro-acoustic songwriter Rebecca Kopycinski, a.k.a. Nuda Veritas, regarding her debut double album, Songs for Doing Dishes/Still Lives. The two-disc epic presents a tenuous blend of folk sensibility and electronic dalliance, tempered by solid and, in several cases, powerful writing and some truly stunning arrangements, both vocal and instrumental. In a way, it could be regarded as the local “other music” label’s first crossover release. And yes, it is indeed “listener friendly.” Although that may depend on just who is listening.

Dishes should appeal to a wide swath of fans across both the folk and experimental spectrums. If genre tags are your thing, I suppose it would fit, though not exactly neatly, into that nebulous gray area known as indie-folk. Or better still, chamber-folk. But if you’re looking for neat and tidy, you’ve come to the wrong place. Because the good stuff in life usually requires you to get a little dirty, right?

From the opening salvo, “Captain,” it’s clear we’re in for an unpredictable journey. Backed only by a chorus of voices — all hers — and a sprightly bassoon, Kopycinski’s lead pirouettes around the tune’s shanty-ish lyrics like some siren combination of Joni Mitchell, Leslie Feist and Ishmael.

“Drive” follows with a more conventional, soothing guitar-voice folk sound. While it’s a seamlessly pretty number, it almost feels as if Kopycinski is buttering us up for the following tune, “Conflict of the Flesh.”

Very simply put, the allure of “experimental” music stems largely from its purveyors’ appreciation of and willingness to play around with the building blocks of music: sounds. On “Conflict,” Kopycinksi takes the practice a step further, applying it to her poetry as she contorts her considerable vocal prowess to render her words into near-imperceptible syllables, the emotive qualities of her voice delivering their meaning.

Listeners, friendly or otherwise, would do well to keep that playfulness in mind when approaching the second volume, Still Lives. The disc is an approximate meld of Aether Everywhere’s stated bailiwicks: “drone, ambient, sound collage, heavy psych, noise and all the points where they intersect.” Or to put it in layperson’s terms: far out, man. Put yet another way, the album is the musical manifestation of its handmade cover art. Each copy’s jacket was sewn together from pieces of recycled LP covers — mine: Robert Plant’s Shaken & Stirred. Not for the faint of ears, Kopycinski’s sonic abstractions — vocal and otherwise — challenge the listener to pay attention. But those who do will be rewarded with a glimpse into the stirring creative soul of a visionary local artist.

-- Dan Bolles, Seven Days