Isaac Dunbar Takes Our Pop Quiz
office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
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office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
office sat down with the creative duo to understand their constant collobration and the inspiration behind it all.
How long have you two been collaborating?
Barbara Braccini— We met a year ago, but we had friends in common. Just never met in real life.
Igor Pjörrt— I remember hearing Barbara’s name and then that she made music and everything. I started following her two music projects, but at the time I didn’t know it was the same person actually. I was a huge fan. When she contacted me the first time I was really happy. It’s just such a pleasure when something that makes sense comes to you. To be able to respond to music for once was really rewarding.
How would you guys describe your creative style together?
BB— Chill.
IP— Chill but also maybe coy. It’s hiding something. There’s still some self awareness to it. There is a vision of timeless luxury. We are both attracted to these images of beaches, sunsets, or whatever. I think it’s this thing of wanting to be somewhere ideal like paradise.
What drew you to each other, how did you meet and end up working together?
BB— We kind of knew of each other because we had friends in common, so for a long time, for years, im talking almost 10 years or something.
IP— Ya I think so.
BB—Just knew of our names I guess and then one time I was asked by Fact Magazine to have this interview and nice photoshoot, they asked if I could think of a photographer and I couldn’t apart from Igor. I had seen one of his photos it was just a photo of the sunset, it was a scan on some random instagram account, some library I think. I just had this sunset photo in mind and knew we kind of knew each other and thought it would be the easiest person/ the one that made the most sense visually.
IP—It was interesting for us because Barbara has always been in charge of her visual identity. She built this whole persona with her music, thats how I see it at least, but the visual identity was a huge part of that. I felt really honored to be let in, that process is usually so controlled. It was nice because it happened so naturally, we trusted eachothers sensibilities and we kind of just went from there. We didnt plan each shot, we just shared images all the time, and went to the studio. It was super nice because, I went to the studio with my best friend and Barbara went with her best friend. They were kind of assisting us with dressing her or throwing feathers on her. It felt really intimate, like a safe space, not like suddenly Barbara was in front of a whole team and vulnerable. It felt really nice, like we were just getting to know each other at the same time.
What is the creative process like?
BB— The nice thing is that, first of all, we do share a very similar, if not the same mood board, so that was a nice way to work. It’s not as if I wasn't sure about some of the potential ideas, we literally had the same ideas or liked the same color schemes. In that sense it’s really nice, I get to let go of the control a little bit, but not too much. I know I can trust Igor. I just know it is going to work out.
IP— I think for me, this exchange marked a sort of transition in my own work where Barbara exposed me to a certain sensibility that I hadn't explored as much. That moment when we worked on the Fact Magazine shoot it was kind of a turning point where I realized this is what I really like doing. To work with artists whose work I like and also to work on peoples visual identity. In my work, I have always had music as reference, more than photography. With Barbara everything made sense. The background I come from, where my photography comes from, has a lot to do with where I grew up, an island. It is very connected to the same feelings as her music, or I guess you could say ambient as a genre. Tied to subjects of distance and longing, its very meditative and turned inwards yet outwards at the same time. This attitude I felt in Barbara’s music was really important in activiating this inspiration to make work together. That’s why I feel like it was so easy for me, she triggered something that was there already.
BB—The images that Igor made for me, for the Fact Magazine interview, then we went on to doing the whole photography for my EP; It brings to life the music. It gives it a physical sort of world that doesn’t exist. I mean it exists, most photos are made in Madeira island. The way we selected the photos just gives hints to where it could be, but it could be anywhere. It is perfect with the music to give it some life and visual representation that I couldn't do myself. There’s only so much I could do with my Iphone or blurry selfies.
Can you talk about your relationships to Madeira Island and how you picked it for the photos?
IP— Technically we didn't even choose to shoot there, I was moving out of Madeira to Paris but I knew I was going to do that shoot so I shot a bunch of landscape in Madeira, then we did collages. We shot Barbara in studio to kind of make it look like it was shot on location. Then in the summer we were discussing the EP and I just went to Madeira for summer holiday. I proposed to Barbara to come. Not necessarily for that but just to visit. I would carry my camera with me everywhere and we would just shoot everyday. That was the fun part, it was very spontaneous in the sense that we would go to the beach and try this idea we discussed before. It wasn’t a one-day production. Each day was different. It was a slow process. It was so extended. To me thats what it’s like being home, time feels so stretched. There’s no urgency and people live so differently than in the big city like Paris.
BB— All the feelings he described with being in Madeira, I can sort of relate to because I’m from a small town in the south of France, very suburbian. Time passes similarly, I get the idea. I share that with Igor, time is very long and you do things differently with the people there. It just felt like when you're a teenager, you're starting to be a bit artistic and you're starting to explore. It felt like a little project, to pass time somehow, no pressure. We just tried things out, time would pass, we would go eat with Igor’s mom... drive around... it was just like holiday. The EP images are our holiday summed up.
IP— I remember you described your new EP as boring, I feel like that’s a luxury we had. That we could afford to be bored all the time. Just be bored together and listen to music all the time. I feel like those moments are also important, not just in the music but in life— its part of making a connection with someone, being comfortable in silence.
Malibu, how does Igor bring to life the vision you have for yourself and your art?
BB — I do have a mood board of just images, old fashion ads or renaissance paintings. I feel like my mood boards are always the same maybe the color scheme changes a bit but not that much. I’m not going to reinvent myself just now. For this EP I wanted to be wearing a black dress standing slightly turned to the camera but in the end we did something different. We go from my moodboard and Igor seems the vibe then he just proposes ideas. We had a sort of meeting in a cafe and he had drawn some little ideas. We were surprised by what we did in real life, we let ourselves be surprised.
IP — Our point of deprarture was very much the Prada ads, especially the FW ‘98 one. The cover of the EP is a direct reference of that. Another revelation to me about Barbara was how both the visuals and music she's attracted to are kind of muted down. I started to understand the richness in doing very little, very well. Her music is the same, it is very hard to not be a maximalist and imstead use the right sounds just enough for something to awaken someones sensibilities. The same happened with the images, I used to be so into vibrant colors but the moment we started toning the images down everything gained a timeless quality. We were concerned about the aspect of something being timeless, already thinking about the images in retrospect. What will they look like in ten years, what will they mean for people in ten years, or even what could they have meant ten years ago?
What are you guys up to? You’re back from tour, back home…
Rod Wendt— We're on a break right now, at least for January and February, for sure, just to record and hopefully get some new stuff out. That's the plan. We're working on a new record at the moment. There's a lot of songs to go through and try and figure out what fits, what gels and what not.
How long of an actual break do you give yourselves before you start working again?
Brie Deux— I think he was already. It seems like the second we got home, he was already starting.
RW— If I don't pick up everything and just get it all done... I did laundry the same day. I unpacked a lot of the stuff just because if they sit in a case for two days, they're going to sit there for a month. It's not going to happen. When you're on the road too, we're listening to demos and stuff that we've done, so then by the time you get home, you already know things you want to fix or add to those songs, so you're excited to get back to them.
Do you feel when you guys are writing, do you intentionally look for references or ways to put together music or does it just come together? I know some artists also will try to keep themselves away from listening to other music. What's the process like?
RW— I have done that before where I try not to listen to anything just so it's completely coming from, I guess, your head. But at some point, it's coming from somewhere.
BD— Even I noticed a lot of times, Rod will be using a reference that has nothing to do with, not even close to the style of music we're making, but it'll be one tiny little blues line from something. You turn that into a synth line and it completely changes everything. It's not the same thing, but it was inspired from something else, but we turn it into what we're making. So even when you're not listening to things that are similar, I feel like you still take subconsciously from other places.
RW— Yeah. I also found that, weirdly enough, because I think some of these places that we were playing were bigger theaters and it just sounds really cool in there, especially when there's no one in there when you're doing soundcheck. But I found myself playing more guitar than I used to, just because it sounded good in there and coming up with cool ideas. That never really happened before. But there is a lot of reference to anything else. I mean, we go to a lot of museums and it could be just anything, other than music really, could be anything.
I feel like your music is very cinematic. To me, it sounds super cinematic, as well. That's what I hear.
RW— Thank you! I think this next record is going to be even more. There's going to be a lot of strings.
BD— Making movie scores here. I feel like that's really reflective in your music.
If you had to describe your sound, what would you say?
BD— A lot of people ask, "What kind of music are you playing?" If you're at the grocery store and you tell someone you're in a band or whatever and I'm always just like, "Uh, I don't really know. It's hard to explain."
RW— I feel like even with that first record, I think we had in mind the whole thing sort of being black and white and also a little more monotone with everything else, the vocal style or stuff like that. I feel like a lot of the songs were sort of more, I don't want to say downer, but…. It's the only way I can think of it. But I think we were aware that in this record, we wanted to make it as colorful as possible and not have that. I mean, it does have it because it's, I guess, a thing that the band has, which is not a bad thing. I like it a lot. But also I think there's a lot of more melodies and stuff like, having worked with that much in the past. We, I think, want to make it as colorful as possible. How can we put a bunch of different stuff in here that it doesn't feel like a bunch of completely different stuff? Because it's also weird sometimes when you mix some of these genres, house music with guitar music or stuff like that. It could sometimes be a little cheesy, I guess, but I don't know. Some of this stuff sounds really cool. I'm excited.
BD— We're just always figuring ourselves out too. It's the introductory and we're still discovering things, so we're trying a bunch of different things. And then it's the second one we've formed and now we know what we like and who we are.
RW— Also looking back at it, you think it took us a year and a half, two years to make that record. I feel like every time we would go into the studio with Brad [Schultz] in Nashville, we would learn something new and find something new about ourselves as well as a band, and about what we were trying to do.
BD— And going through different parts of our lives. Some of it was recorded before the pandemic and then some of it was recorded during and then later on in it. So it was different stages of where we were too.
RW— We were getting progressively more dancier.
What do you have to say about the term, “New Nostalgia”? It’s been used about your work, but I think nostalgia is different for every person. That term could apply to anyone in a way. We’re all informed by our past. It's just you as an artist and how you interpret music and how as you grow as people and artists, that comes out. How do you relate to it?
RW— I mean, we like nostalgia. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily.
BD— Well, I like it if that's a personalized term, and not pigeonholing, “You guys are very eighties.” That seems to happen a lot. But I think nostalgia's cool because we can interpret our nostalgia differently. We love The Cure and New Order and all of that, but also, we grew up and high school was like MGMT and Daft Punk and stuff like that.
So how has Tampa influenced your music? Honestly, to be honest, I don't know very much about Tampa at all.
BD— I think Tampa gave us the space to be free to make whatever we wanted. We didn't have to be influenced by the music that was being made around us, which was cool. There used to be cool little house raves and stuff, but for what we're doing, I think we kept to ourselves and it just gave us the opportunity to be able to do that.
RW— Yeah, I mean, we haven't played here in a year and a half. I think as soon as we formed the band, growing up and being in a bunch of different bands and we're always touring and stuff. I feel like when we started this, we immediately... I don't think we ever played in Tampa. We went on tour. We went on to New York for two weeks and the band was together for five or six months. It wasn't that long. We basically had the time to put the songs together and then we're like, "All right, let's go play shows." But it was like, "Let's go on tour." And then we just booked a tour and started doing it, but I always like to say that Tampa is a good place to come back to, I guess, after tour because I feel like you leave something behind.
BD— It's a good home base. We can come here and just be in our own little world, which is that's the best part about it, I would say.
In which ways do you feel like you’ll try something different with the next project? And how do you approach building off of the sound that you've created thus far? What's your thesis for going into this next album?
BD— I definitely think the new stuff, based on what we've done so far, is more in the electronic world, more fantastic dancing house style music, but with guitar still, so there's still that element. But I definitely think we're going into a more electronic world.
RW— Agree, yeah. But it could be so many different ways. Yeah, I'm trying to think. But it just comes up or I feel like sometimes changing one thing within that. If we're doing a demo, we'll change the drum sound or whatever, something as simple as that. It's almost just like a completely different thing, which is really cool. So a lot of times, it also doesn't work.
BD— I think that also comes from playing these live shows. We're realizing what we're really enjoying playing. The last three songs of the set, we start really dancing and getting into it and I think that we're like, okay, this is what we're really having fun doing, so let's take that and add it to the next one, do a little more of that.
I feel like these days people want to dance more than ever. For me, it's partly leaving my teenage years or my early twenties when my ego was too big to let me do that — but it's also the post-pandemic energy, going to shows and festivals again. People really seem to want to move together.
RW— We all want to have a good time.
BD— You want to take advantage of that opportunity we're given to get out there. I just want people to pop some Molly and have fun in the crowd.
Check out the video for the new track and our office exclusive look behind-the-scenes of "Bubblegum" below.
Ren G and Chicken will be celebrating the single release in true Club Eat fashion with a FOMO inducing soiree at Mehanata on January 20th.