office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
When I first sat down with front-woman Elita, aka Emma, she told me a story about the electric track Only Famous for My Tits which almost didn’t make it on the album as it’s a bit different from the rest. Amidst a crowded hotel bar in the Lower East Side, she recalled a time when she and Tim were back in their small town of St. John's, Newfoundland and their server was being noticeably rude towards her. When Tim got up to go to the bathroom he overheard the snarky waitress mocking Emma saying, “Oh, she’s just famous for her tits.” And thus, a hit was born. They went home and wrote a killer song about it.
In their latest era, Elita is basically a band living inside a video game building each new level bit by bit. We got a behind-the-scenes look at their latest music video, Ego, which is filled with nods to Trainspotting and rage rooms. In the interview below, we talked about everything from the video to their distinctly Elita sound.
How was making the video?
Emma: It was really easy. All we had to do was perform. Everyone was amazing. It was Trainspotting inspired with druggy dens. Then we just fucking trashed it. It was really fun.
How did the band come to be?
E: The dudes knew each other for a while but I met them both around the same time maybe around 2017. Tim's my boyfriend. We met through a mutual friend and went skateboarding. It was a really cute little first time meeting someone…and then we broke into an abandoned school.
No way is that something you would usually do?
E: At the time we were doing that, just getting up to whatever. We skateboarded through the abandoned school. Krank is the bassist and I met him at the same time.
So you guys formed your little gang in Newfoundland?
E: Yeah I never saw myself doing music. It was not on the radar at all. But one night I remember they sent me an instrumental and I wrote so quickly. Within a few hours I sent them back singing on my phone and it became our first song. It came together so quickly. We recorded it with super shitty equipment and in 2018 we put it out. We were thinking it was nothing, it was just fun. It was fun getting to express myself in that way because I never really did that. Did not expect it to turn into this.
That's wild but sounds so organic.
E: It was really cool. And then we have a North American tour coming up.
Do you feel like knowing each other so long makes it easier?
Tim: Me and Krank have played in probably 30 random bands together before we ever started this one with Emma. I sort of take it for granted but it adds to the spontaneity because we’re comfortable to just go for shit.
Have you had a favorite city you've played so far?
E: I love playing New York. No seriously, like I do. The people are always the coolest.
Mm-hmm I love to hear that.
E: Texas always gives us the most love. San Antonio and Dallas.
You guys have such a cool, alternative thing going. Maybe smaller cities are missing a bit of that.
E: Yeah, I think so. Small-town stuff. You just want to be seen and felt and I think that there's always some alt people in the crowd that connect with that. I'm originally from and I spent 17 years in a town of 700 people. So I'm from a really small town. I had to travel 40 minutes to go to school.
Do you have a favorite song from the album right now?
T: I like Hikikomori. It was done really carefree and I like the way Emma’s voice sounds in it. And Hikikomori as a topic is something that entrusts all of us and it’s always felt like an honest song.
What’s something you feel like people aren’t expecting from this album that might be a surprise?
Krank: The final track, Hell Hill. It's 10 minutes long and it’s basically a horror soundscape with a bunch of mini songs within it including one of our first unreleased songs called Cemetery that people have been trying to get since 2017. That is slipped in the middle of the song as an Easter Egg.
How would each of you describe the album in 3 words?
T: Spiky, soft, fun.
E: Gothic, electronica, Indie.
K: Foggy, pixelated, distorted.
Hell Hill is available on all streaming platforms, give it a listen here.
Her childhood in Japan as a “hāfu,” a term used for kids who are not fully Japanese, wasn’t easy. As a child, not being able to afford the things others could awakened a determination in her. Over time, she became an amalgamation of all her wildest dreams. All her interests and eras over the years have given us the Sukii Baby we’re getting to know now.
You might know her from a certain album cover or more recently her thriving streaming community. Yasuka’s love of video games has always been present. Her father is a computer scientist from the generation of Star Wars and Final Fantasy. “I actually grew up on every single console that there has ever been made…I pretty much played almost every game,” she shared. She started streaming more video game content after taking a half decade hiatus from screens in general including TV and movies. Her break came from another awakening and pivotal moment in her life—a loss of a loved one.
SUKII BABY wears TOP by WILLY CHAVARRÍA, JEANS by ACNE STUDIOS, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOES SALOMON XT-WHISPER.
“I had promised my grandmother that I would go to college in America, because it's easier. When I was on the plane, I had just seen my great grandmother, and she passed away when I was on the flight back to America. So I was like, ‘I need to lock in.’ I need to take life a little bit more seriously. I got multiple jobs, I wasn't living with my dad anymore, because you know how parent-child relationships kind of go. You get older, you leave the nest. It's different for everybody, but that was just not a place where I was able to live. So, I was living on my own, sometimes doing good, sometimes not doing so good,” she revealed candidly. “I don't come from money whatsoever so, I had to figure everything out by myself.”
In her early teens, she was dabbling in Adobe Photoshop and eventually became a master. After growing out of meme-making, she started gaining inspiration from unlikely sources ranging from her dreams, Animal Planet, the Cooking Channel, and the Travel Channel. Her cyanotype prints, in particular, have magnetic emotions tied to them with imagery from all over in hues melancholy blue. “I would just indulge in so much culture and everything around the world so much that I just wanted to start making photos that make you feel something.” Once she mastered Photoshop, she added video editing and creative directing to her repertoire of talents.
SUKII BABY wears JACKET and SKIRT by JORDAN LUCA, BRA by DSQUARED2, HEADBAND by RINALDYYUNARDI, SHOES SALOMON XT-WHISPER.
SUKII BABY wears TOP by PRO CLUB, SHORTS by CHAMPION, GLOVES by HANDSOME STOCKHOLM, NECKLACE by MARTINE ALI, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOES SALOMON XT WHISPER.
While in college, she changed her major thrice, a fact that many of us share in common with her, before ultimately deciding to go “full force” into art. First, it was architecture, then interior design then to animation. ”In animation, you can make whatever you want. It's not necessarily just focused on housing, focused on blueprints, focused on CAD, you can basically go anywhere,” she mused. She had wanted to work at Disney studios at one point, then even Adult Swim but ultimately started her own thing with taking commissions, printing designs on her 3D printer, using her computer and mechanics skills, and selling pieces on Depop. Clearly, she’s a self-starter, a go-getter, if you will. A characteristic you need to build success all from scratch.
She’s even into fixing up cars, a love that came from her grandfather’s work as a mechanic. You could call her an engineer—a fitting addition to her growing gifts in life. In high school, other kids had G-wagons, Mustangs, and Hellcats while Sukii’s old Forerunner once stopped in the middle of nowhere. “The universal joint fell out and I just heard a scraping noise on the ground and I got out of the car and looked underneath. A big, long pipe was just skidding across the concrete underneath. Ironically, the next question in the interview was if she’d work on a fixer-upper. She laughed at that.
Her art has been a grounding force for her throughout her life. In school, although she was an extraordinary student in other subjects, English was her Achilles heel. “I would be so frustrated that I couldn't speak English like everyone else could. I would spend so many days, so much of my time, just trying to learn. I had so much pent up frustration from that. I was never mad about boys, I was never mad about friends, I was just simply mad about English. I used to go mute a lot and I wouldn't really talk to people,” she shared. Yasuka kept art gifts often from her family in Japan and over time, her art became her main source of expression to cope with her frustrations.
“I've always definitely wanted to make novelty items. I guess that's what kind of artist I am. More novelty rather than traditional. I like things that are bigger than what they're supposed to be,” she said. “I really just enjoy using my hands, because I truly don't think I'm the best at using my verbal skills. I didn't even know that you can have these talents as jobs.” She wasn’t banking on being a famous or rich artist, she just wanted to be happy as her upbringing was the opposite. She cites designer Yoon Ambush and painter Egon Schiele as some of her favorite artists. Yoon’s influences from Japan have inspired Sukii’s artist journey while Schiele’s works make her feel like she’s in his paintings and feel the emotions of the images depicted.
Her mother is another artist in her own right that’s been a forever inspiration for Sukii. She noted her parents would jokingly argue about where she gets her creativity from—it’s definitely her mom. Sukii’s words, not mine. “My mom's always been like that girl.” She’s passed down so much to Sukii from her curiosity about the world to how she carries herself. She fights for what she wants and her strength and outlook on life has impacted the multi-hyphenate in a myriad of ways.
SUKII BABY wears TOP by MELITTA BAUMEISTER, PANTS by BRIGADE, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOES SALOMON XT-WHISPER.
Even her personal style is influenced by her mother’s. “She literally has rainbow hair right now. Like, that's crazy!” Eclectic is the word she used to describe her aesthetic. In Japan, she had her teen phases like many of us. We’re talking an emo-scene era. Think zip-up hoodies, heavy black eyeliner, and a beanie with that signature side bang peaking out. She recalls growing into her body earlier than the other girls in school and making clothes from unlikely fabrics due to growing up in a low income household. “I was cool like that. I didn't really care about people’s opinions because I was so worried about what was going on at home I was just trying to get through my day.” She still wears a lot of her dad’s clothes, though. “My dad had the craziest swag.” His archive includes pieces from Japan in the ‘90s ranging from FUBU to Timberland boots. “Nowadays, he just wears Sketchers,” she said as a giggle escaped. Now, with her eclectic style she’s wearing her pair Salomon XT Whispers with ideas to make them even more her by adding pearl beads. “Accessories on shoes, I think, are so beautiful.”
What doesn't meet the eye is how passionate she is about education and building community. “I’m getting loud overall about women in more fields and I’m definitely screaming, hooting and hollering about art.” She’s hoping to serve her community with multiple charities that make an actual difference from clean water to solar power. “A lot of people aren't teaching younger generations how to do anything. That's kind of really what I use streaming for. I use the stream to play games, but we also have real conversations, and I teach them how to do different mediums of art or engineering or just whatever else that they might want to learn that they didn't know about,” she asserted. “Sometimes I surprise them [the streaming audience], so they don't get so used to being comfortable, like thinking, ‘Oh, we're gonna hop on here and play a game.’ No, y'all are gonna learn something today! I'm getting loud about education!”
SUKII BABY wears COAT by SACAI, TOP by OAK & ACORN, SKIRT by SCULPTOR, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOES SALOMON XT-WHISPER.
She’s utterly limitless and is making sure the next generation is too. This year and the rest of her future looks like having a solo art exhibition featuring her pieces from cyanotypes to sculptures, launching her brand that will be reminiscent of souvenirs that can be held onto throughout life. “I hope people take souvenirs home that help them with themselves and their future, if that makes sense. And, you know, taking a little piece of me with them, that's such a blessing to even think about.” She’s also on a quest to be on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. Teaching is one of her greatest passions, and not just on one particular subject. She just loves teaching people about things that they didn’t know as she had a “bookworm” childhood. Spewing random facts is a hidden talent that keeps getting unveiled.
RIGHT:: SUKII BABY wears TOP by MELITTA BAUMEISTER, PANTS by BRIGADE, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOES SALMON XT-WHISPER. LEFT: SUKII BABY wears TOP by WILLY CHAVARRÍA, JEANS by ACNE STUDIOS, SUNGLASSES by BONNIE CLYDE, SHOE SALOMON XT-WHISPER.
She’s healing her inner child by having the freedom to make and do whatever she wants and taking note from her grandmother’s wise words, “You’ll never know if you don’t try.” That phrase is the definition of courage and boldness to the young artist. “Being courageous definitely means walking through the door of starting or being whatever it is that you're trying to be.”
(HAT Bluemarble, PANTS Mugler, BELTS FROM UP TO DOWN Commission, Racer Worldwide, Acne Studios, GLOVES Puma, BOOTS Ann Demeulemeester)
Tell us about yourself.
I grew up in Paris. Overall I think I had a hard experience of growing up. I felt a lot of anger and got into a lot of trouble. But I was also very outgoing and curious. I loved motorbikes and gangsters. I spent a lot of time playing in the streets, and during school vacation I stayed with my grandparents and played all day outside in the countryside with my sister and brother and our cousins. It was wild times, really free and messy. Through my parents and the context of Paris I was exposed to a lot of culture, architecture, art exhibits, things like that. I was not particularly interested in those things but I became educated to it. My parents are very critical thinkers, that definitely affected my a viewpoint on the world. Debate and argumentation is a big part of French culture in general. It’s ingrained in me to look for the flaws, to see what can be improved. There are positives and negatives that go along with that. It’s difficult to resume in a few sentences how I have been influenced by my family and environment. This is a big topic that can go in so many directions.
You mentioned previously in an interview that you see Berlin as a total universe, with a timeless and cohesive artistic language. Do you still feel this way? Any other cities, Paris for instance?
Yes, I think each city has a soul, something particular about it that makes it what it is. Some cities have such a strong identity, artistically it is difficult to not be pulled into their universe. Places evolve over time but a city with a history such as Berlin or Paris is heavy, it can’t be erased so easily. The glory days of Paris are long gone, but you can still find echoes of it. And who knows, maybe it can be brought back to life. Maybe it’s happening now.
You said before: “[Pop music] is popular. I hate elitism. A craft that everyone can connect to.” Do you think more experimental or alternative music is elitist? If so, why?
I think it can be. Oftentimes it is difficult to differentiate between what is subversive for the sake of subculture (emancipation, community, finding of self), and what is inaccessible for the sake of exclusivity (to create us/them, to exclude, to put oneself up and create a hierarchy). Experimental and alternative music may need a certain amount of education in order to understand it. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that there is a simplicity with pop music that is very generous, I like that about it.
(RIGHT: TOP Vintage AW 1996 Raf Simons HAT as belt accessory Egon Lab JEANS Acne Studios BELT Racer Worldwide GLOVES Puma BOOTS Ann Demeulemeester)
What’s your take on mental illness and the way it’s perceived and treated in the Western world? Have you found a community of people, with whom you can exchange experiences and perspectives on this with?
I think that there is still a lot to be discovered about mental illness that we don’t understand yet. I had very extreme mental health problems for over a decade, which I was very lucky to survive. All the clinics and doctors and medications I was prescribed did nothing to help me out of that. It took very intense personal work, and a lot of love, and experimentation to find a way to heal. Today I am very steady, I healed a lot. I’m much stronger.
You threw your poetry book at Pete Doherty? What’s the story here?
It was during one of my longterm stays at a clinic. I had been listening to his solo album a lot, Grace/Wastelands, and I asked for permission to leave for the evening to be able to go to his show in Paris. I brought a notebook of poems and lyrics I had been writing, and during the show I threw it on stage, and it hit him in the face. He picked it up and started reading to the audience. I felt like I wanted more, it wasn’t enough. So I screamed at him, “give me your guitar!”. I thought it would be amazing to have his guitar to write songs on. But instead, he reached out his hand and pulled me on stage, and then I had his guitar and I was in front of an audience for the first time in my life. I played one of the first songs I had written, and Peter watched from the side of the stage. After that he asked me to wait to go backstage after the show, and there he started to learn the song I had performed, asked me to write the lyrics down for him. But it was getting late, and my permission from the clinic had run out, I had to go back. He was confused that I was leaving so quickly although he had invited me backstage, so I explained that I was in a clinic for anorexia. He looked at me, very touched, and wanted to see me again, asked for my telephone number. So that was the start of a close friendship that lasted quite a while, before he had to leave to rehab. It was very meaningful that he believed in me. He made me promise to never stop making music.
You also were working with Hedi Slimane in fashion. What was it like for you to move a bit out of music into another creative industry?
Hedi found me through music, he probably knew that I was around Peter (who he was close to in the early 2000s) and that I was making music. He hired me as an exclusive model for Saint Laurent. It was far from what I wanted to be doing, but it was an experience that allowed me to travel and learn about how things work in the fashion industry. It was difficult for me, I was pretty naive and I didn’t understand that friends in the industry are not real friends. I was in very bad mental health at the time, I don’t think I was ready to handle it well.
(RIGHT: TOP & SHORTS, Loewe LONG SLEEVE, ROA SCARF & SHOES, Ann Demeulemeester GLOVES, Puma JEANS, Egon Lab) (LEFT: TOP, PANTS, SCARF & BOOTS, Kiko Kostadinov COAT, Ariuna GLOVES, Sf 1 OG)
What was it like when you first arrived in Los Angeles?
It was surreal. It felt like everything was a movie set. The context was so luxurious, it was very strange. I was in West Hollywood, Fairfax. That’s where Hedi had his Saint Laurent studio. I was deep in my problems, really struggling. I was trying to make music. I was smoking a lot of weed, driving around, eating tacos… living in a kind of glamorous, nightmarish loop. I was feeling really terrible. But I still had some kind of fantasy about LA.
What was it like to return to Paris after living in these different cities and things changing in your life along the way?
Not comforting. It was time for me to return and to come to terms with where I come from. It was a challenge, I had to find my place there, a city that had never felt very supportive. It took a few years but now I feel like I have my role here, this is where I’m supposed to be right now.
What is the music scene like in Paris? I'm fairly involved in fashion, art, design, but music lesser so.
I don’t think there is much of a music scene in Paris like there used to be. 10 years ago there was a big scene of live bands, an indie rock revival. Today artists are more isolated. But recently there have been a lot of artists moving to Paris. I do feel like there is something developing here right now.
Live music seems to have fallen off in New York for sure in the last maybe 10–15 years. Would you agree? Do you see that in other cities as well?
Yeah, I think that’s because of social media and also the cost and complexity of producing live shows. People are entertained on the phone so there is less need to go out, so there is less support for live artists, but long term I think that will change. It’s depressing to be too connected to the internet for too many years. I think people need real life experiences, real connection. And music is one of the most powerful ways to bring people together. It’s a ritual.
How do you want to be perceived visually? Your persona, how would you describe it?
I don’t want to be perceived in any particular way. I just want to live my lifestyle in a way that feels inspiring. My aesthetic is one thing, I think a lot of people assume things about me that aren’t true because of it. But I’m not gonna change to make it easier for people to understand me. I’m not one dimensional, I got a complex story, my life hasn’t been simple. So that shows in how I present myself, and that’s real. Evil for good. I let people figure out what that means.
Your upcoming album REV carries themes of revolution, revenge, and revelation. How do these relate to your personal life?
Revolution has always been relevant in my life. I never fit in to what society expected me to be, I’ve always gone against the rules because I had no other choice, I wasn’t meant to follow them. Sometimes I wish I could have, it would have been easier. But it just didn’t work like that for me, it’s like I was put on this earth to disrupt. I can’t avoid being who I am. Revenge is an energy, a powerful source of drive. I do want revenge, I want revenge for all the years I spent suffering, for the time I lost caught into endless cycles of mental and physical pain. I can’t accept that. I want revenge on the people that let me down. I want them to see that I made it, that their lack of belief or animosity didn’t stop me. I know revenge is dangerous, it can turn against me. That is one of the main narratives of REV. Revelation, because there is something bigger, something spiritual, that I can’t deny. It comes through sometimes to remind me, to give the keys, to make it all make sense. Those moments are rare and precious. Sometimes they come to me in dreams, sometimes it’s more conscious.
There’s a strong sense of mythology and world-building in REV. How did you craft this world, and what does it represent to you?
It represents my life. It’s an allegory for everything, from the city I live in to the industry I am part of, the relationships I have experienced. It’s a way to tell my story. I found that using fiction and allegory allowed me to be more truthful in a way. The world of REV is something that imposed itself, it was impossible to make it anything else. I think artists often have the experience that what they create is coming through them, channeled from somewhere. The world of this album was created like that.
The album’s sonic palette is more aggressive than previous works, blending post-punk, electronic, rap, and even witch house influences. What drew you toward this more intense, cinematic sound?
REV is an energy, a mindset. You can be rev, and that means that you don’t let anything stop you. The sound of the album needed to reflect that energy, needed to create an immersive world where the listener can enter into the story, become their own protagonist. The sound is intense and cinematic, but it has a range of opposite extremes that create a lot of depth and allow for the softer, soulful moments to shine through even brighter. I think that the aggression in the sound is something that takes getting used to, but once you get accustomed to it, you have learned the language of this world, you will understand what it means to be rev.
