The Elke Experience

In a New York minute, anything can happen. You can go from forming, to dismembering, to reforming a rock band with random people you meet in random countries, and then creating an EP at 14 years old. For Wade, Austin, Sabrina, and Orazio this is applicable, but the minute stretches longer for a rollercoaster of a beginning, middle, and ending in their evolving story.

Ahead of their EP, an angelic and nostalgic sonic biography of what it’s like to be a kid toughing it out in NYC, they premiere a depiction of downtown New York in the form of saturated heaven for the "Allen Street" music video. With depictions of waking up in a blood-bath haze to cruising down familiar streets, crying out, “Nothing’s gonna last forever!” Manon Macasaet—friend and director to Pretty Sick—captures it all.

Read our conversation with Sabrina, and watch the "Allen Street" music video, below.

I know Pretty Sick started when you were really young, can you elaborate more on that story?

Pretty Sick started when I was like 13 with my friend Eva Kaufman. We met at Willie Mae Rock Camp for girls. And then the next year, I think we were teaching and not camping. We were just like teaching guitar and drums. And we met Ella Moore, I think, and then she joined the band. So, we met when we were like all 13, 14 and started playing in the city and writing lots of songs and music together. We recorded our first EP after winning a battle of the bands. We won recording time. So we were able to  go into a studio and actually lay down some tracks when we were really young. And that's what our first EP is. And then, Ella and Eva unfortunately moved to different states to go to college. But we all talked and they were like, "You should keep doing Pretty Sick, blah, blah, blah." It's because they were both going to music school in different places, and like wanting to start new projects anyway. And I wasn't sure if I was going to stay in New York or not. I thought I would, but I didn't end up doing that. But then I was like, 'Okay, well I guess I'll keep doing this for a while and figuring out what I need to do.'

But I had a really hard time finding bandmates after they left the city, just because we like grew up together, we were so attached to each other, and we had so many of our first show experiences, so many of our first victories and moments to be proud of together. I had a really hard time finding new people, so I didn't really play that much. But the year following them leaving I met Wade, who is our guitarist now. I write songs with him sometimes. I met him through Richard Kern, who was shooting me and shoots a lot of familiar No Agency models. Still, he shot with me like a few days before I ran into him with Wade. And Richard was like, "Oh wait Sabrina is trying to start a band. You guys should hang out." And then I met Austin, who drums for us through my friend Adam Zhu and Isaiah. And yeah, we really hit it off. Me and Wade started playing together like before I met Austin. Just me, him, and a drum machine. And then we opened for Onyx Collective on Halloween. One year,  Austin and I thought we really blew. I thought we did such a bad job, I almost cried. And then Austin came up to me after the show, he's like, "You guys are so good. I really want to be in the band." And I was like "really?" And that's what we've been doing ever since. Then I moved to London to go pursue studying music at university. And I met Orazio, who plays bass for us. Now we have two basses, one guitar, one drummer, and we did some touring. I've been bouncing back and forth in London and the city a lot for shows. And also just, you know, like any free time that I have, I'm here pretty much.

So growing up, I'm assuming that a lot of the music you listened to is aligned with the music you make now. who were some of those people?

My parents always get mad at me for saying this, but I'm going to keep on saying it because it's true. But, they didn't really listen to that much music when I was a kid growing up. They had like a few core bands that they really liked, they were kind of like dad rock or like radio rock. The only one that really stuck with me in the biggest way was the Smashing Pumpkins. I feel like most New York kids grew up listening to a lot of like classic rock and I just really never heard that stuff until later in life. But yeah, I grew up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Hole, Pixies, basically like all that grunge stuff, all the obvious ones, for sure. But as I got older, kind of got more into like indie stuff, garage rock, punk and post-punk. And then finally, classic rock and stuff. It really took me a long time to get there. Basically, It was like the Beatles and Pink Floyd, but outside of that, I didn't listen to it. Like, I didn't listen to Led Zeppelin until later in my life.

So obviously, it's been like a full long journey, having a band, dismembering, and then making a new band, traveling, etc. Did you ever see yourself doing this in a sense? Did you always know you wanted to do music or did you have different interests as a child?

Interests as a child? I wanted to be a paleontologist, just like a dinosaur scientist or entomologist, which is like a bug scientist. But mostly, I just wanted to be a musician and dig in the dirt. I always liked doing music. Kinda the only thing I ever really cared about. I'm a bit obsessed.

The music video for "Allen Street" obviously nods to downtown New York culture. How has downtown shaped you?

I mean, I feel like downtown and the whole city just has shaped me as a person and given me all the opportunities that I've had, you know? It's been a privilege to live here and to grow up here. It's just like, it's really a different world. And you realize that when you move away. Like, living in London is so different than living in New York, socially and community wise. And like, the way things work here, it's just like very unique to anywhere else in the world. Like, you just don't really see communities that function in the way they do in New York, anywhere else.

Yeah. It seems like the whole downtown scene has your back in a way. That's what I got from the music video. What does that feel like to have your whole community in one music video and have them constantly support you?

It feels really good. I'm really grateful every day for the friends and collaborators I've been able to have. And it does feel like in a lot of ways, like a lot of New York has my back. I think that's just kind of part of growing up here, actually getting to know people, and like really being—you know, you're just there throughout people's lives. It's like living in a small town, you know? It's like there's all these people I've known or known of since I was like a little kid, basically. Like, some of which helped even raise me. And it's just like, I don't know how to describe it. It's something I'm incredibly grateful for. I'm glad I was able to like to find the artistic community I needed. As a young teen, I didn't feel that comfortable in like the teen band scene. And my family isn't really artistically inclined, besides me. And, I really had to kind of like dig and look for a long time to find people who like the same stuff as me. I think that's something everybody has to do. I think anybody who's been handed like a community of people who are really dope, don't really understand what they have until they've had to fight for it.

Obviously, when you have your own community and when you kind of know the ways of how things work in New York, especially like downtown, you kinda go to certain streets or you avoid certain places. So on the every day, let's say you're doing your whole 'New York Scene' rounds, what places are you going to?

I always get really worried about answering these questions because I feel like I'm just going to keep doing the same thing for the rest of my life. And it's going to be really easy for stalkers to find me because I've had stalkers before, but I'm gonna answer it.

Okay wait, maybe don't then.

I don't know. I just can be found in any part that my friends live around or that I live around. I like spending time outside mostly. I hang out in the parks even in the winter, and I have since high school. Because in high school, it's like you can't really—or I could because I had a fake ID, but most high school kids like can't really go to bars. They don't have an ID or their ID is always going to get taken away. So they have to like buy it from delis that they know won't take their ID, and then drink outside or in someone's house. But if their house isn't available, you just have to drink outside. In the winter, it gets really fucking cold in New York.

That's why you have to go to the "free's," or be like, "Who has a free?"

Yeah, exactly. So if no one has a free you're just chilling in the park. And you'll just be like drinking 40s in the park and passing around like one spliff. It's like a bonfire. I just like being outside. I feel like I've met so many people just walking on the street. I walk all day and barely take the train or the bus. I actually really never take the bus, but I rarely take the train unless I'm just taking it to come all the way downtown and then go all the way back uptown. I'm just always in the parks. I just always have mosquito bites in the summer, and I've always have frostbite in the winter.

So going back to "Allen Street," like I said, it kind of has a nostalgic and saturated picturesque feel. With Manon Macasaet's direction, where were both of your heads at during production?

I mean, when collaborating with visual artists, I kind of like letting the visual artists get their own idea of the song without me telling them exactly what it's about. And Manon knows me really well, so obviously she's been my best friend for years, so she has more context. But even so, we were talking about it recently,  she has this like really uplifting, like party, like kind of teen - New York vibe for the video, which I love. It's definitely like true Manon in a lot of ways. But then as she was like listening to the lyrics, she was like "what does this mean?" and I was explaining and she's like "Oh, it's actually kind of sad." And I was like "Yeah, it is a little sad." And we were just thinking out loud about how that would have affected the video even I would have had to give her like a word for word description of the song.

And so I think that the way the videos worked out and the way it's been made — just like, it's like optimism and like naive in a way. It has that naivety that Manon's work tends to have, and like this like youthfulness. And that's paired with a song that I wrote when I was pretty young, and going through a lot of shit. And then revisiting as I was older with Wade, who's also older and has like a different kind of mature look at these subjects, otherwise undeveloped could seem really youthful and naive. But, I think now that they've been developed sonically, they sound a lot more well rounded and like less youthful and more like nostalgic. But yeah, the video's definitely more nostalgic and youthful, and the song is a little bit melancholy at times. 

Do you feel like you do this in your everyday life? Like you put on the appearance of naivety and optimism, but in reality, you have these symbols and systems within you that are like a little bit  deeper and melancholy?

I think in person, people have always known or thought of me as mature. From the age of like 14 to 17, I like really didn't have any friends my own age. All my friends were like adults that I've worked with or met through work. And I always felt very grown-up and people always really treated me like a grown-up. And so, I grew up really fast because of that. I think the music, I don't know — I have such a problem with self-expression. I don't know how to handle my emotions freely. And I think that like children and like youthfulness is like very emotional in it's purest state. And I'm not that emotional of a person when you're talking to me face to face. So I think music is like really where that youthfulness comes out for me. It's where I like to kind of allow myself to be a kid because in everyday life I'd never have.

A lot of people often say that they use music as a form of therapy of what they can't express in real life. Or even a way of escape. So, what would you say you're escaping that you put in your music?

I don't know. I've never been great at expressing my emotions or like even really knowing what my emotions were and identifying them properly. I don't know, life moves so fast in general, but especially in New York. And it's rare that people take moments to like slow down and process  what's going on around them. And I think I use music to do that a lot. It's like meditative and therapeutic for sure.

With every form of art, I feel that people are creating their own world. So in Pretty Sick's world, what are you envisioning? Like what are you looking at? What color is the sky?

Pretty Sick's world is chaotic, but benevolent I'd say. And colorful and accepting. It's colorful, accepting, chaotic, benevolent, and fun.

How will you ensure that this manifests into reality?

I'm never gonna allow the community around me to be anything but that. I'm going to hold myself and my peers to being the best versions of themselves they can be.

Gotta hold the homies accountable!

And yourself, and yourself.