Kelly Moran is a composer and producer based in Brooklyn. Her latest record, Don’t Trust Mirrors, is out now on Warp Records.
Kelly Moran is a composer and producer based in Brooklyn; Bibio is Stephen Wilkinson, a musician and producer based in the UK. Kelly’s new record, Don’t Trust Mirrors, came out last month on Warp Records, so to celebrate, she and Stephen caught up about it (and much more) over email. Don’t Trust Mirrors will be out on CD and vinyl January 30.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Kelly Moran: Hey Stephen! Greetings from Greece where I’ve started my mini-EU tour! 🙂
Stephen Wilkinson: Excellent. Have you been to Greece before? I’ve not been to mainland Greece, only Crete a couple of times.
Kelly: This was my first time — I had a brief layover in Athens and spent four days in Crete. It was absolutely magnificent, I really want to go back and explore the southern parts of the island. I had assumed all the buildings would be white, but I learned there’s a lot of Italian and Turkish influence in the architecture, so it was more colorful than I expected! Which part of Crete were you in?
Stephen: It was over 20 years ago now… I think it was near Gournes Gouvon, it was a super cheap holiday as we were students at the time. Some years later we went to Sisi. I love the Mediterranean, but the landscape can be a bit dry and crispy for my tastes — if I want a holiday in a warmer country I prefer the softer greener landscapes of Tuscany and around places like Lake Garda. Italy is wonderful, I could happily keep going back to Italy. Didn’t you tell me you have some Italian heritage?
Kelly: I do have Italian heritage — my mom’s side of the family is from Naples and Bari. I agree with you, I could happily keep going back to Italy and never get tired of it. They have the perfect lifestyle. I played a show in Milan earlier this year and got the opportunity to visit Lake Como with a friend who has a family house there. It was this magnificent compound that has been in her family for centuries. The walls were decorated with oil paintings of her great-great-great grandparents, it felt so special being there. As an American I love going anywhere that you can feel the weight of history because we don’t have that here. I brought my friend Irena and it was her first time in Italy, and she was amazed by how relaxed the lifestyle was there. We’re so conditioned as neurotic New Yorkers to always be working and “earn” our relaxation, so it was pretty mind-blowing for her to see how much of the Italian lifestyle revolves around making time to enjoy the simple things in life — playing bocce ball with your friends, sitting outside for a coffee, savoring a long meal with your friends, etc. Eating on the go is just not a thing there, these experiences are meant to be savored. It makes me cringe when I think about how many meals I’ve eaten in transit in NYC because I was rushing somewhere.
Stephen: We could do with adopting some of that in Britain too. We also have an eating-on-the-go problem as we don’t have the food culture of Italy or France, and it’s also one of the reasons we have a litter problem, something that really winds me up and gets me down sometimes. It’s much cleaner where I am in Wales, but you still see it, and it blows my mind how people can throw a plastic bottle out of a car when looking at such beautiful scenery. Next to nothing is done to change this though, it’s a mentality problem and it won’t change without ongoing intervention.
Kelly: Totally — it’s a mentality problem.
Anyway, thanks so much for taking the time to have this conversation with me. First of all, thank you so much for contributing to my record. I hope we can make more music together someday.
Stephen: Absolutely.
Kelly: How are you these days, and how is your new home in Wales? It’s been a minute since we properly caught up and I’d love to know how your life has changed since I last visited you. What’s been the biggest shift or adjustment for you?
Stephen: The home in Wales is great. Life is more peaceful here, I find myself feeling less stressed, more patient. I guess the biggest change so far is the peace and quiet and the darkness, but also the massive upgrade in terms of scenery, so all positives. I live in Eryri National Park (Snowdonia), and it’s a magical fairytale landscape. The village we previously lived in outside of Wolverhampton for nearly 11 years was good preparation for moving to the countryside proper, it didn’t have any shops and I couldn’t drive (I’m learning now) and so I got used to not having those kinds of conveniences within walking distance. So although it’s much more remote here, it doesn’t feel too cut off, partly because I didn’t feel the shock of moving from the city to the countryside — there was a bit of a transition period from living in a village. I can cycle to town in 12 minutes here, or I can cycle deep into a forest and admire waterfalls and ancient mossy stone bridges, or walk to a lake, or up to a summit and see mountains for miles. The beach is also not far too. It’s kind of funny living in a place that’s a tourist destination, that’s a new feeling for me, but I like that aspect of it, it makes me feel more fortunate to live here. Wales is an absolute gem.
Kelly: That sounds absolutely heavenly, and it makes sense that the transition to Wales wouldn’t be so much of a shock since you were microdosing remoteness in Wolverhampton. The scenery around your old cottage was absolutely incredible. I remember being in such awe when we went on that long walk across all the fields and hiking trails near the canal. The recent videos you sent me of your surroundings in Wales are astoundingly beautiful, it must be so inspiring being there.
Stephen: There are some nice spots around South Staffordshire, and there are no canals like that here, but the scenery here is a massive massive upgrade 🙂
Kelly: I can relate to living in a tourist destination — what kinds of tourists do you meet in Wales? One of my favorite things to do is give tourists directions in NYC. I love feeling helpful and giving people a good impression of my city.
Stephen: Haha yeah, NYC gets its fair share of tourists. I’ve only been to NYC for one day, to meet Jason Reitman before I did the original soundtrack to his film Men, Women and Children. In fact, that’s the only time I’ve been to America! I met up with a guy who used to work at Warp NYC and we spent part of a Sunday walking the High Line, which is a unique park. Most of the tourists in Wales are actually from England, usually from the cities. I see quite a lot of Dutch and German car number plates here too, usually camper vans/caravans. I’ve heard a few American accents too. The landscape here is certainly very different to The Netherlands and northern Germany — lots of twisty narrow roads, miles and miles of dry stone walls everywhere covered in moss, rugged hills and mountains covered in heather, lots of trees… and sheep. The autumn colors now in Eryri (Snowdonia) are amazing. It’s also a mast year, which is a year when there’s an unusually high amount of seeds like acorns and beech nuts. There are billions of acorns everywhere, it’s amazing. I hear them falling on the roof of our barn like wooden raindrops. I also heard that trees may communicate with each other via fungal mycelium networks to put out extra seeds, which is mind boggling.
Kelly: I can’t believe you’ve only been to NYC for one day! If you ever come back I’ll be your tourist guide. I love the High Line too, but my favorite park is Prospect Park because it’s so big that you can get lost in it and forget you’re in the city.
Stephen: I do like city parks, especially in autumn, they have their own vibe, and one that has inspired me over the years. In fact I’d say Fi is partly suburbs/city parks in essence. It’s essential to have green spaces in cities, but isn’t the hum of the city a constant reminder of where you are? Quiet and dark night skies are the missing ingredients in the city. I think I’m more sensitive to this than some, I find the constant sound of traffic oppressive. Some people find silence oppressive. I must admit, when I first stayed at this house on my own, it was a bit creepy going outside at night and not being able to see anything. Sometimes I’d see a bunch of glowing eyes looking at me in the distance, reflecting the light from my phone or head torch, it turns out we have deer visiting us nightly. I’m definitely getting more used to that now, winter will be the test as it will be really dark for long periods. It is special seeing the Milky Way above your house though 🙂
Kelly: You’re so lucky you have deer visiting you in Wales! One thing I really miss about living in Long Island is encountering deer and other animals in the nature preserves. One of the most memorable animal encounters I’ve ever had was when I was hiking near my mom’s house and came face to face with a huge buck. It felt like a mystical encounter, he was so elegant and majestic.
Stephen: What’s it been like touring at this time of year? Going from Greece to Newcastle in a short space of time must be like fast forwarding through the seasons.
Kelly: It’s pretty wild. Right now as I write this to you, I’m in the UK. It was still summer in Greece while I was there — I was going to the beach and swimming in the Gulf of Chania on my days off! And then I flew to Warsaw where it was super cold and rainy, so that was a big shock for my body. All my dates in the UK have been similarly wet and dreary — which was entirely expected — but still a rough transition for me. I have a really bad cold right now. I could never live in the UK, I have a fragile constitution and sensitive system, so I do not do well coping with so much rain.
Stephen: I just Googled Gulf of Chania — oof, that looks divine. That water looks a bit more inviting than the Irish Sea in October. Although we have lovely sandy beaches and dunes here!
Sometimes the rain can be annoying, it can change your plans, it can prevent you from doing certain things. But I also love it. I have a distinct memory from when I was a teenager, it was raining heavily and I put on my German army parka and grabbed my walkman and went for a walk in the rain listening to tapes (probably Iron Maiden). Apart from the cars, I felt like I had the streets to myself and there was something really peaceful about it, I loved the fact there was hardly anyone around — I think that day shaped me. I love the sound of rain and the smells, but it fucking sucks when you’ve got to walk or cycle to school, college or work in it and you spend the rest of the day in wet clothes and shoes, summer rain is also way nicer than winter rain. I’d definitely miss rain though if I spent a long period in a dry country. I love having the bedroom window open at night and hearing the stream down in the valley. During the summer we had multiple heat waves and the stream dried up, it was reassuring and comforting when the sound of running water came back after rain… although it was literally two weeks of pretty much non-stop rain.
Kelly: You had an amazing studio at your cottage in Wolverhampton. Do you have a studio at your new place, and how has your practice of making music changed since you moved?
Stephen: I’m currently having a studio built, but I have a minimal temporary set up in the house — essentials like guitar amps, microphones, preamps, compressors and EQs, computer, Nagra reel-to-reel, MPC… I’ve only got a tiny space to record in at the moment as most of my gear is boxed up taking up most of the room, so it’s a bit like going back in time — I wrote and recorded most of Ambivalence Avenue in a small spare bedroom. It’s all good though, I’m not complaining, and after a fairly hectic couple of years I’m happy to take it easy for a bit. I know I can make music with less, and really do think that creativity is pushed when you have limitations, it sounds like a cliché but I think it’s true. So I’ve been playing guitar more, writing stuff, some recording too. I’ve definitely got to hand all I need to make music, but I’m looking forward to more space and getting my drums and synths out. I also want to buy a Welsh harp, that’ll be something new to look forward to when the studio is built.
Kelly: I resonate with that a lot — it can be a really great creative reset to strip down your gear to the bare essentials. I remember having that urge when I started writing Moves in the Field — after working with synths and extended piano techniques for so long, it felt oddly freeing to limit myself to working with the sound of the acoustic piano and nothing else. When you have no sonic limitations, it can almost be too overwhelming.
Stephen: I think that translates to other features in life. It reminds me of people like Einstein, who apparently wore the same thing every day so he didn’t have to use up his brain power on deciding what to wear. I think David Lynch also said something similar about ordering the same food in a cafe. I could definitely learn from this, I think I’m getting better with it though. I used to take four different cameras and multiple lenses with me when I went on holiday, but I’m stripping that down to one or two now. Sometimes if you go out with just one camera and one fixed focal length lens, it forces you to look out for things that you can capture with that lens, and anything that requires a different lens — well, you have to let it go, it’s good to practice not being precious. I know some photographers who go out with one camera and one lens and stick to that format, I really admire that. One thing I like about film cameras is that you can’t look at the photo you’ve just taken (it’s called chimping), I’m not against that, but there’s something magical about taking a photo and not seeing it until you’ve developed the film, which could be in weeks or months away from when you took it.
Do you ever go out just to take photos? NYC is a dream location for it really, constantly changing with millions of chance encounters happening all the time.
Kelly: I don’t! I would love to get a real camera someday and learn more about photography, though. I think you need to come back so we can roam around the city and take photos, I would love to see the kinds of shots you’d take in NYC! For my album campaign I worked with this amazing photographer Brian Karlsson who is a genius at street photography and capturing interesting moments in NYC. I think you would love his work — I’ll send it to you.
Stephen: I’m too much of a chicken to do proper street photography, I’d hate any kind of confrontation if someone was pissed off I took a photo of them, but to be honest I’m more interested in places than people when it comes to photography. I met NYC based street photographer Daniel Arnold when I was in Japan in 2017. He was invited by the promoter Laura Brown, and she asked him to do the photography for her vegan shoe brand, in fact I was a model for some shots and even ended up in Vogue, who’da thought? https://www.vogue.com/article/sydney-brown-vegan-shoe-designer-taico-club
Daniel told me about a time he was arrested and jailed for street photography, but was falsely accused of taking a particular photograph, fortunately the film in his (confiscated) camera was evidence he was innocent. That story kind of put me off wanting to photograph people. I admire what he does though, and he’s very good at it.
Kelly: That’s such a great photo of you and Holly in Vogue! I’m also too much of a chicken to do proper street photography, I could never deal with confrontation if someone caught me!! Was Daniel in Japan when he got arrested? I know that there are different social norms there about photography, and iPhones sold in Japan have an un-mutable camera shutter sound to protect peoples’ privacy. Street photography is so commonplace here in America that it almost feels that stepping out in public is giving your consent to being filmed.
By the way, what’s a Welsh Harp like? I can imagine that instrument would be a lethal musical weapon in your hands!
Stephen: There are different types, I’m looking to get a 34-string lever harp. A concert harp has pedals to change the pitch of the strings, but they’re big and complex and very expensive. The lever harp also allows you to change pitch, but it’s done by hand with a lever at the top of each string. I’ve seen people play quite complex pieces, changing the levers on the fly to access other notes, as it’s tuned diatonically. I’ve never played a harp, and although I might have some dextrous advantage with my right hand as I pluck guitar strings with that hand, my left hand is used to doing the fretting, and my left hand technique on piano isn’t great. But I’ll definitely get something out of it, I’m dying to try it through my loop/delay pedals.
Kelly: That’s so neat, I can’t wait to hear what you do with it. It seems like having dexterity on the guitar would definitely translate to the harp.
Have you been making anything besides music lately? What’s your visual art practice like right now?
Stephen: Fairly wholesome stuff — riding my bike in the forest, going for walks and enjoying the epic scenery. Chainsawing, chopping and stacking logs, I even bought a scythe — it’s great for annihilating nettles. I always wanted an apple tree so I could buy an apple press, and we have two apple trees here, so I’ve been making gallons of juice with it. I think I’ll try making cider next year. I’ve been taking photos of course, and shooting bits of video too, which is mostly for a collaboration project that’s coming in 2025/2026. Now that I’m away from noise pollution I feel like I can get back into location recording again. I recorded an epic thunderstorm in the valley recently, the thunder echoes off the mountains and it sounds really vast.
Kelly: I’m absurdly jealous that you can make your own apple juice at home. This whole convo is making me reconsider living in NYC, which has been pretty punishing as of late! I think I need a vacation to Wales.
Stephen: Where did you record your new album? (Which is amazing by the way, I listened on headphones in the dark and it was otherworldly!)
Kelly: Thank you!! I recorded most of my new album at my mom’s house in Long Island on my trusty prepared piano. Half of it was made in 2019-2020, and then I revisited the project after I finished Moves in the Field. I had intended for this music to be the followup for Ultraviolet, but when the pandemic hit and I was stuck at home, all the sounds I was working with felt too familiar to me, so I decided to change course and focus solely on writing for the disklavier. Like I mentioned earlier, having the restriction of only working with acoustic piano was extremely invigorating after years of working with extended piano techniques and synth textures.
Stephen: When I listened to it for the first time, I felt like there was this deep intimacy to it, like it was the result of shutting yourself away and getting lost in your own world for considerable time. Was it like that at all? Or do you find it easy to go in and out of that world and fit the creativity around everyday life?
Kelly: It definitely was a result of that. I decided to move in with my mom in late 2019 because my piano lives at her house and it made sense for me to stay there in between my tours so I could work on my record. Otherwise, I would have been hemorrhaging money paying for an empty NYC apartment! During that time, my parents got a divorce and it became really intense living with my mom through this period of family upheaval. I was spiraling, my mom was spiraling, and working on this record was the only thing that felt remotely grounding for me. I put all my emotions into this music since it was created during a time where I was feeling so deeply conflicted — I had been getting amazing career opportunities and my life as a performing artist was taking off, but my family was falling apart. When your home life isn’t stable, nothing in your life feels stable. Working on this music was one of the only things that kept me going and kept me feeling motivated — at the time I had a team at Warp who really believed in me and was pushing for me to release more music ASAP, and that support network was absolutely crucial for getting me through this. Unfortunately, all those people left the label during the pandemic, but I am very grateful to them for encouraging my creativity during some of the darkest times in my life.
I find it kind of difficult to fit in the creativity around everyday life — especially because I find myself doing so much “admin work” for my career on a daily basis since I don’t have a manager. Nowadays, I feel I have to really compartmentalize — I can’t answer emails about work in between making music. I have to either shut my brain off and be an email warrior, or hole up at my studio and focus on nothing but music. Now that I’m living back in NYC again, I use the Yamaha studios to compose and practice. In Long Island at my mom’s house, my grand piano is in my bedroom, so I can literally roll out of bed and start practicing. But I’ve never lived in a NYC apartment big enough to fit a piano, so now I use the Yamaha studios in midtown Manhattan to record and practice. It’s about a half hour commute from my apartment. It’s a lot different from working at home for me, especially because it’s a more formal space that I have to book in advance. But it forces me to really lock in and focus — there’s no distractions there, and for now I appreciate that I have a dedicated space for that.
Stephen: Sorry to hear that you’ve gone through that, I can also relate as my parents divorced in the early ‘90s when I was still a kid, my dad then moved to Germany. He still visited, but it’s not the same as having someone around every day. I didn’t really understand how all of that affected me at the time, but it probably made the escapism of music more alluring, music was the color in my life. Thing is, looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing, it made me who I am and I’m proud of what I’ve gone on to do, I’m not sure how things would have unfolded otherwise.
Kelly: I’m sorry to hear this about your family too — divorce is so hard to endure at any age. It is always disruptive and traumatic. Even though my parents only divorced fairly recently, I never saw my parents have a healthy relationship and that dynamic was really present growing up. I definitely think that the tension in my house made me gravitate towards the escapism that music provided me. It made me who I am too, as difficult as it was. At least we were able to cope with our circumstances in productive ways.
Stephen: [Your album] is very visual too, when I was listening to it I was imagining floating in some dark space surrounded by glowing organic shapes, kind of like those intricate bioluminescent deep sea creatures and jellies that have flickering iridescent rainbow cilia. The way you play piano on this album feels more inspired by the organic, it feels structured but it’s less metric and more like natural movement, like breathing.
Kelly: I am always seeing colors and visuals in my mind’s eye when I am writing music, which is a huge part of why I like to have visual projections accompanying me when I perform. It’s funny you think this album feels less metric, I started off with the intention of making it very loop-based and rhythmic. Ultraviolet was such a free-flowing and improvisatory record that I felt compelled to make my next album feel more propulsive and metric. But even though that was the starting point, I of course deviated from it and made a few unmetered tracks on the record, like “Cathedral” and “Reappearing.”
Stephen: Yes, it’s a mixture of both really. I think sometimes people summarize an album after initial impressions and it’s not really fair or accurate, like some people think of Ribbons as being folky (and understandably so) but it has tracks like “Before” and “Old Graffiti” on it, and some people think of A Mineral Love as more disco/funk, when it has tracks like “Wren Tails” on it. I think some of the less metric tracks on Don’t Trust Mirrors made an impression on first listen, so it left me thinking of it as a less metric album. But on subsequent listens that’s not really true.
Kelly: I find your music to be incredibly visual as well. After spending time with you at your home, it made so much sense to me how both your music and visuals feel so inspired by the beautiful surroundings you live in. You do such a brilliant job of capturing the purity of nature and distilling it into your work. Now, this is sort of a silly question, but have you ever found any inspiration from a sprawling metropolis or big city?
Stephen: Thank you. Considering that I was born and bred in a sprawling conurbation (although I wouldn’t describe it as a metropolis) — the West Midlands — then I must have been inspired by urbanity. I also lived in north London for four years, and the West Midlands is the largest conurbation in the UK outside of London, but I’ve never felt like a city person. I think the way the urban landscape has influenced me is somewhat of a mystery, something I don’t fully understand myself. I spent the first 20 years of my life in the sprawling residential areas between towns and cities in all directions. I always found it a dull place, downright depressing in places, but this is the environment where I developed my sense of aesthetics, my wonder of the world, my taste for creativity — I think it’s maybe a good place to dream or to find creative forms of escapism. There are some features where the inspiration is more obvious to me, such as the overgrown derelict factories along the canal between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, but I think the industrial and residential sprawl of the West Midlands was like fertile soil for my imagination and my desire to be creative. My introduction to the Welsh countryside as a small child made me aware of another world, and it ignited something deep within me, it felt colourful and magical in a way that urbanity wasn’t, I fell in love with it and spent a lot of my life longing for it, I spent many hours fishing with my dad and my brother, hypnotised by flowing water over stones. When I was 18 I visited a place in southern Eryri called Cwm Einion (also known as Artists’ Valley in English). This is a magical fairytale place, it’s also a rare temperate rainforest (also known as a Celtic rainforest). This first trip to Cwm Einion had a profound impact on me and I think it really set my heart on one day moving to Wales. I feel like the closest I’ve ever got to translating a landscape into music is with my track “Ffwrnais,” from the album Hand Cranked. Ffrwnais (Furnace in English), is a small village near Cwm Einion and I recorded that track after camping there in the mid 2000s.
Kelly: That is so beautifully said, Stephen. I relate to this a lot. I grew up in the suburbs outside of NYC, and the town I lived in was pretty boring as far as creative stimulation goes. I was always taking the train to NYC and dreaming of a more exciting life as an artist in the city where everything was happening! This escapism definitely fueled my creativity growing up because you know there’s another world out there that could fuel you beyond what you’re used to.
As an aside — when I first heard Hand Cranked in college, it was such a monumental record for me. I know the word “organic” is used to describe music a lot and, but that album truly sounds so organic to me. I feel like if you were to sonify the sounds of plants growing, it would sound like that record. In the summer after I graduated, when I was still living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I took acid and ended up listening to the song “Quantock” on repeat. I remember sitting in my room watching the sunset and just silently crying out of appreciation for how beautiful and deep the track was. It hit me so hard, and to this day it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. That song is like the aural embodiment of a flower blooming in slow motion to me. Can you tell me anything about what it was like writing that song, or what the inspiration was like for it? I would love to know any lore about it because it’s such a special and sentimental track for me.
Stephen: I recorded that 20+ years ago, so the memories are a bit distant now, and I don’t think the process of writing and recording it was much different to everything else I was doing. The title is named after the Quantock Hills in Somerset, southwest England. I have a friend who lives there. I met him at uni in 1999 and he was the first friend I ever had who was from the countryside, I would visit him from London (and later Wolverhampton) and we’d hang out most of the time in a shed down a lane surrounded by hills and fields. It was another world for me, it was particularly special when I’d go there from London, I’d get a coach from Victoria Station to Somerset and half of the journey was getting out of London, then hitting the dark country roads was like a sigh of relief. I always felt inspired going to Somerset and have some amazing memories from there, sometimes staying in his friend’s parents’ 350 year old cottage next door. We used to sometimes have parties down the lane with bonfires, sometimes in the rain and snow, sheltering under a big barn. If there’s one record that reminds me of the journey from London to Somerset, it’s Fixed::Context by Labradford. Memories just seem to stick to some albums.
What about you? Are you aware of where inspiration comes from? Do you feel more inspired in certain places?
Kelly: I’m a proponent of the mindset “wherever you go, there you are” — a location change will only yield a temporary shift for me mentally. Tour has only affirmed that my mental baggage follows me no matter where I go, so whenever I feel tempted to run off somewhere remote and write music, I have to remind myself that it’s not going to have a lasting change for me mentally or creatively. That has to come from within.
Stephen: Yeah I get this. I suppose this is why an occasional change of scenery is good. I remember feeling incredibly inspired on the flight coming home from Tokyo in 2019, my head was buzzing with creative ideas. I don’t know why, I think it was just being somewhere very different for a while, out of my comfort zone, the cobwebs had been temporarily blown away.
Kelly: No, you’re totally right — being somewhere different can help shift things temporarily and help clear out the cobwebs! Especially if it’s somewhere unfamiliar that forces you to rewire your habits or thoughts. I think I’m just very cautious of relying on that as a way to generate creativity or as a long term solution, but it’s good for a short term revival.
Stephen: I agree, you can’t rely on it. I think a lot of people over the years have assumed my music has been inspired by being in the countryside, but if anything I’ve probably been more inspired by wishing I was in the countryside. Dreaming is powerful, basing music on memories of places is powerful. We can’t grasp dreams or memories, and that makes them alluring because they’re intangible. I was fascinated by mirrors and reflections when I was a little kid, sometimes I’d walk around the house holding a mirror under my chin looking down into it imagining I was walking on the ceiling, it was like a portal to an impossible world that I couldn’t enter, there was almost a frustration to that, but also something inspiring. I think longing for the things or places we can’t have or visit can be converted into something positive through music/art, and I suppose that’s why nostalgia is such a powerful thing to play with ‚ it’s a bit like the world inside a mirror — it’s inaccessible and it can only exist as a fantasy.
Kelly: A lot of my past music was composed and recorded at my mom’s house in Long Island, and that place can be very inspiring because it’s right next to a nature preserve and the beach. It was so nice to work on music and then take a break to go for a walk in the woods and sit by the water. But I moved back to NYC after COVID and have sadly never been able to live in an apartment that’s big enough to accommodate a grand piano, so my piano still lives at my mom’s house. Now, instead of going all the way to Long Island to play piano, I go to the Yamaha Artist Services Piano Salon in NYC. It’s a beautiful space in midtown Manhattan, and it’s quite a change to go from making music in my bedroom to commuting to the city to be in a studio. At first I was worried that a more formal, sterile environment would be a difficult place to be creative in, but it’s actually been really great for my productivity and focus because there are so few distractions.
Stephen: The Yamaha studio sounds like a great thing to have, separate from home, there is something appealing about that, feeling excited to go to a place where you can just be creative without distractions, even the walk there would be part of it. I suppose the closest I can relate to that is when I was a student, especially during the years when I didn’t have a computer at home, so I relied on walking to uni to use the iMacs there and do things I couldn’t otherwise do, I’d often stay late until they were locking up so I could carry on experimenting, I’d listen to my experiments on MiniDisc on the walk to and from uni. It was always on my mind, but the process of what I did at uni was often separate to what I did at home, and that was quite exciting at the time. It was at home where I started making Fi, and bits of what I was doing at uni would gradually filter into it over the years, and vice versa. I don’t think I’d want to be a student again now, but there’s something about it I miss. I don’t miss the essays etc. that feels too much like admin. I hate admin.
Kelly: Sometimes I really miss the structure of being in school and the resources that a university can provide. I was actually thinking of applying to PhD programs for composition but I’ve been hesitant since I’ve been out of academia for so long and don’t know if I will find it as inspiring and motivating as I did 15 years ago.
One of my most productive writing sessions came right after I had a really bad breakup. I thought, I can either sit on my couch and eat ice cream and cry, or I can go to the Yamaha studios and try to excavate these feelings and turn them into something productive. And that’s exactly what I did — it’s how I wrote the music for my EP, Vesela! I was surprised that I was still able to tap into these feelings in an environment that was so formal, and that’s really what drives so much creativity for me. I’m an extremely sensitive person and I find that I make my best work when I’m deeply in touch with my emotions, even when they are turbulent or unpleasant. For Vesela, I remember feeling so heartbroken and depressed that I was desperate for comfort — and the only way I could achieve that comfort was to create music that felt comforting for me to play. I suppose it’s a method of self-soothing — it made me realize that the piano is a vessel for me to channel all my emotions through in order to achieve some kind of catharsis.
Stephen: That’s amazing. Music, and more specifically making music, is medicine. It reminds me of stories like Elisabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins who spoke of having all these negative oppressive thoughts in her head that would be drowned out when she was singing. She’s possibly my favorite singer, her melodies feel like they’re beyond the imagination. Great beauty can come out of dark times, and it seems like a certain amount of that is necessary to access the depths of emotion, like the way manure contributes to the perfume of the rose (to plagiarize Alan Watts).
