Hiele & Sevdaliza: An Alumni Conversation

Hiele, from Antwerp, and Sevdaliza, from Rotterdam via Tehran, met as participants at the 2016 Red Bull Music Academy in Paris, and though they share a language they transmit their musical messages in distinct and unmistakeably personal ways. Sevdaliza showcases the emotional possibilities of the human voice within various beat structures while Hiele embraces rhythmic confusion alongside memorable melodies, but their productions highlight a dual sense of irregular momentum and tranquility. Both are willing psychoanalysts when it comes to discussing their creative motivations and working methods, and they caught up over Skype for this Alumni Conversation in advance of their appearances on the RBMA Sonardôme stage at the 2016 Sonár festival, just after Sevdaliza returned to Europe following a stint in the studio in Los Angeles.

Sevdaliza

Here in Holland, we work more in blocks. We start a session and we end a session. In LA it was, “You can go on as long as you want.” I started to experiment with different styles of making, questioning the process and changing that. For instance, instead of writing I started freestyling, and then layering those freestyled vocal tracks to see what kind of progression and harmonies would naturally pop up. We also did some tracks where we started out with a vocal idea and then produced under it, instead of the opposite way. It was super interesting.

Hiele

Do you think that that was triggered just by the city, or the fact that you were in another place and that could have happened anywhere that you would have been?

Sevdaliza

I think it was triggered by the amount of time. Suddenly you don’t have to have a finished thing within a session, so it’s just like, “I’m going to sleep a few hours and then continue working on it.” I took the time. Sometimes I would sit behind the computer for three days recording, recording, recording until I comped the right format.

Hiele

Locking yourself down is not a luxury you have when you don’t take the time for it. I also wonder if the music that comes out of that is necessarily better? Or, not better, but is it a direction that you could also somehow get when you don’t have this? The things you come up with, obviously, are going to be different because you have the time to use.

Sevdaliza

Well, I have no fucking clue if it’s better or not. But it’s an insight into personal growth in the process of making music. I think when you do something creative, you start to see and use patterns that work for you. Not in what you make – not the choice – but how you make the choice. That’s also a pattern. You start to do things repetitively. I think every person that makes something that is trying to become more efficient is also building a pattern, a way of work. Your template in Ableton, the sounds you use.

I think the time that you take to question that process, question the way that you come to the product, can resolve into very interesting compositions, completely different things that you never thought that you would be able to do. Which is good for your growth, for your confidence, but also for the way you think. I can be very, like, “This is it.” But then when you realize it’s not it, it’s very interesting for yourself. I don’t know how you feel about that. Do you recognize those patterns?

Hiele

Definitely, and I also get annoyed by them very easily. It stresses me out that whenever I start a project, I still do it like I used to do it two, three years ago. It’s important that you’re aware of that. Because when you’re studying music – in my case, when I was studying at the conservatory – you’re busy with it everyday, you have your teacher that’s putting you on to new content and new ways of thinking. The moment that stops, when you start to make music for yourself, you tend to go into these patterns that are not only Ableton templates, but also ways of approaching making music. It’s the moment you have to realize that you still have to educate yourself constantly, feed yourself, not just by listening to other music, but also analyzing it to shift those patterns and to get into new patterns that you’ll get annoyed with later on.

Sevdaliza

True. It’s a game with yourself.

Hiele

There’s this expectation that you have with finishing a project or a direction you want to aim for. A certain pattern could also block that. Although it’s very comfortable to start in it and to progress from there, somehow it’s good to throw something overboard that you would normally do in that pattern, and that can lead to something new. For me, I really try to be aware of it, but if I would be too aware of it, I would really work against myself. So you don’t want to work too much against yourself or you don’t finish anything, you know?

Sevdaliza

It’s true. You have to find a middle ground. I don’t have the same musical background as you, but I think I go through a lot of similar experiences. For instance, someone once said to me, “You know, it’s finished when you think it’s finished.” That was kind of mindblowing for me. That was the moment I realized, “Oh, yeah, you’re right!” I always was so sure of my opinion, that my opinion was the truth, until someone said that to me and I was like, “Hmmm.” In life, I don’t believe in an actual truth. I believe in something that works for me. But in my music, for a period of time in development, I had an actual truth. “This is it, and that’s the truth.” Now I’m in a phase where I realize, no, it’s the same, like everything in my life it’s an opinion. It’s the truth that I want, and that can be anything.

Hiele

You’re really like a magician in that way. You just make up the future because of that. It’s crazy that you’re doing something that nobody hears at that moment, then you work maybe one year on one song, and it’s been through all these different flows and directions, nobody knows about it, and in the end you almost lie to people, in the sense that the first energy you put into it was something totally different. But nobody would have ever known, because they hear the finished product.

Sevdaliza

Do you know musicians or artists that are able to capture that raw energy because they are so comfortable with their work, or they don’t care, or maybe that’s the approach that they chose, that they leave the raw energy in? The most recent example for me would be Kanye. I don’t know how long they worked on it, but The Life of Pablo is not finished – you can definitely, technically hear that it’s not finished. But he chooses to leave it that way. Would you like to grow to be able to do that?

Hiele

That’s really something I’m jealous of, but I think that’s also your age or where you are with your music. This is really something I’m thinking about lots. It’s not necessarily becoming faster, but just going from track to track to track to track and making more but still getting the right stuff out of it that you can be happy with in the end.

Sevdaliza

I think it has to do with your learning process as well. Do you think you will learn so much that at some point you will be comfortable, because you know what you need to know – you just don’t need to use all of it? Is that something that you think could be able to help with this? Do you want to be more efficient, or do you want to be more happy with your first choices?

Hiele

That’s the thing. Sometimes you work two months on a track, and then in the end you just go back to your first choice. Have that confidence of knowing that that first choice is, most of the time, the best way to go.

We can all do it with our computers, and just sit down on the bus or in a coffee bar or in a park, in all these different environments where you would work on your laptop. Like, “I’m going to do the mix now,” or “I’m going to add these synthesizers to it.” Somehow that’s really good, but it’s also not really good. Because you just keep on spitting it out.

Sevdaliza

In my music, it has to be almost to the point that it’s so engineered. The funny thing is that no one can do that for me except me. I will sit on my vocal for days, and comp every fucking little “s” and thing. In my most recent trips I actually freestyled some of my songs and kept the first takes. To other people they probably won’t even hear the difference, but for me that was a first step of accomplishment. Vanity is fine, but at some point I want to grow, and be able to go with my first pick, and just leave it like that: Whatever is in there is in there. I think that has to do with skill. If you suck then your first choice is going to be shit.

Hiele

Exactly, and it’s this confidence that you need. As a musician I think you are humble, and somehow the humbleness makes you survive as a musician. But on top of this humbleness, there has to be confidence. A humble musician can be confident, but maybe in some people’s ears it’s arrogant, almost bragging about themselves.

For me, I’m very aware of that when I work with other people. Belgians are very aware of the fact that we get perceived maybe in a wrong way, so we’ve ended up with saying “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Sevdaliza

Do you think you will ever be as satisfied with collaborative projects as with your own projects?

Hiele

Definitely. But I think with electronic music it’s hard, because it’s almost too many machines that you already have to control. Of course, you can also just make electronic music with one synthesizer or whatever audio processing you’re doing. But it’s definitely harder when you’re two producers together. To put that together is almost harder than a group where somebody plays the keys and also plays drums, but has the first role of providing the keys, then later on would do some bongo parts.

Sevdaliza

I make all the music with one person, which is Reynard, my producer. Over the years we’ve really learned how to collaborate. It was very difficult in the beginning, because I had no idea what actual collaboration and creativity means.

For about two years it was extremely stressful. It was not a pleasant experience collaborating, for both of us. He had to grow as the producer and as the person, and I had to grow as the producer and the person. Maybe nine months ago it finally clicked after about two years of sitting in the studio together four, five days a week. Now it’s such a harmonious experience. We respect each other, we are able to understand what we need. For instance, we work in the same room but separately. I co-produce now as well, and that’s a different level – I start to hear more and more in the mix. It’s very fluid. In the beginning, I did not respect his ideas and he did not respect my ideas.

Hiele

Is that a thing of ego? Ego sounds really negative, but somehow we all deal with it, especially when you make music, that you have an idea and that’s your idea.

Sevdaliza

I think that what you say is true, but I think it’s good to learn that your ego is a choice. And that the choice can also be the other person’s choice.

Hiele

Exactly. This is the thing of collaborating, and that’s amazing when it works.

Sevdaliza

You understand that the harmony is sometimes more important than your choice, and that harmony eventually makes the music better than your choice.

Hiele

It’s about pushing aside your “darlings.” Not killing them, but pushing them aside.

Sevdaliza

Trusting each other, as well, because at first I was always like, “My choice is the best choice.” Now I have a whole different perspective. It doesn’t matter what choice. As long as we are both grounded and in full attention in this project, it will be beautiful, whoever’s choice it is. It sounds weird, but that’s the trust you build when you collaborate with someone for a long period of time. It’s brilliant.

What’s your songwriting process?

Hiele

Good question. What is yours, actually? How do you start? You already said you had some moments where you started off freestyle.

Sevdaliza

Yeah. I think it changes. When I have a pattern that works I switch it. I feel stupid when I work in patterns for too long because I think, “Yeah, okay. Of course you can do that trick. We know that now. What can you do next?”

I always challenge myself to learn. It’s really strange because after all this music that I’m making I still never feel confident, like, “Oh, I made all of this?” I don’t even realize that I made it. It’s like a brain maze.

Hiele

You know what’s funny? Miles Davis claimed that he never listened back to any of the recordings he made. That’s quite something. You just move on. It’s almost impossible when you produce yourself.

Sevdaliza

Yeah, to not listen back.

Hiele

With Miles, he’d be playing trumpet and he’d know what he has to play. He puts his total energy in it. It’s there. No need to look back at it. That’s quite amazing to get there.

Sevdaliza

Exactly. To get there. I think we can both get there, but I think it takes time. It takes growth. It takes personal depth, investment, whatever.

Hiele

I see myself also just re-listening to my music to analyze what I did, to know what I don’t want to do anymore. Do you have the same?

Sevdaliza

Do you always listen back and you’re not satisfied anymore?

Hiele

Yeah. I definitely have that. It’s details about the mix, especially, maybe not necessarily musically.

Sevdaliza

Not harmonically, but just technically.

Hiele

Exactly. Musically, I made my point. That’s what it is. It’s not that I’m fully happy with it, but I’m definitely more satisfied with the music than the way it sounds, maybe. You know what I mean?

Sevdaliza

Yeah. I sit next to every mix for hours and hours, so I know how mixing goes. Do you think it also has to do with mixing that your brain somehow can really not see the whole when you’re in it too long? When you mix it’s like you’re hearing it, you hear low, you hear high, and then you hear gaps, and blah, blah, blah, and it’s sometimes muddy or whatever. If you’re on it too long, you get zoomed in to a certain detail and you overlook the whole. Is that maybe what happens?

Hiele

Definitely, yeah. Also, listening to that detail on a certain type of headphones. Then, hearing that same detail out of monitors you’d be like, “no” or “yes.” Whatever works.

For me, one of the best references is my MacBook speakers. There's also this Logitech soundsystem that really sounds shit on your music. It saturates so much in the low-end and then there’s almost no high-end. Still, you want to make it sound good on that.

Sevdaliza

It’s really something I have to credit Reynard for, because he’s a beast at mixing. But I have a very detailed ear, so I will guide him. He knows what he does, but with us it’s different because there are four ears in the room. Whenever he oversees a detail, I will be there and be like, “Oh, maybe...” and then suddenly he zooms out again because someone tells him, “Maybe you’re too zoomed in on the detail.” Sometimes when I start to comp vocals I get the same thing. I get too focused on a certain detail and then I zoom out and I’ll be like, “Oh, fuck. This sounds shit together.”

In the process of making music he will tell me, “Yeah, that frequency of that bass is not going to come out of the iPhone speakers.” I’m like, “Really? Okay.” He’s very technical, which I’ve learned a lot from, because you start to listen and think. For instance, he knows exactly what kind of height of the bass works in clubs. He says, “That note, you’re going to feel it here.” I never went to school so I didn’t learn those things.

Hiele

It’s also by doing it. Hearing your music in the club and in the club it sounds shit.

Sevdaliza

Your music sounds crazy, what I’ve heard.

Hiele

I hope so, because I never really had the chance to test it out. In the future I want to live in the jungle and I want to have a space that has the same width of a club, where you have some Funktion-One installed so you could test out your music in a club environment. Next to that you have this totally different studio where you could really zoom into the smallest details possible. That would be perfect situation, but that’s of course not the case.

Sevdaliza

Why not?

Hiele

Because I live in London in a room and I don’t even have monitors.

Sevdaliza

Coming back to what you just said earlier about not being happy with looking back, listening to your own music and not being satisfied. I’m in the room with someone else, so there’s more opportunity to step back and look and listen, because you’re two people working in the same room. I feel critical in the process itself, which results in that I’ve never listened back to something that I released and was like, “Oh. No, I think we have to do that better.” Maybe taste changes, like, “Oh, I would not put reverb on it like that anymore.”

Or, I would not EQ like that anymore. At that point, it was always the definite choice. I never ever put something out that was not finished in my head. Maybe that changes because now there’s not the same time that I used to have to pinpoint every little detail, but it’s also interesting because that makes you grow. You have to grow. You have to be on point in that first take and you don’t have 100 takes. You don’t even want to spend 100 takes, in a vocal but also in the mix. You start to learn.

I honestly don’t have that, that I listen back and I’m not satisfied. I do think, “Okay, I’ve grown now vocally or choice-wise or taste.” I honestly listened back to all the music and I was like, “Okay. Yeah. We worked really, really hard on it.”

Hiele

If you look back at where you started off, what was your thing that pushed you into doing what you’re doing now? Was it music, or how did you pick it up? Did you suddenly have the urge to do it, and then out of that this is what you’re doing now?

Sevdaliza

I think mainly channeling that urge. That urge was always there, but it’s really strange. I always say this, and it’s true: I knew I was a musician, a singer and artist before I was it.

Hiele

Because you played basketball before, right?

Sevdaliza

Yes. I did. And I studied. I just knew it, always.

Hiele

And then that one moment, you just totally went for it, and now you’re here.

Sevdaliza

Yeah. I sucked for years.

Hiele

Everybody sucks for years. You still suck, in a way.

Sevdaliza

I sucked in the public eye, because I started to put out music really early.

Hiele

I knew I sucked. I didn’t want to put out my music. I somehow did, through YouTube videos under my pseudonym of “fuckingharpsichord.” From the age of 14 or 15, I started to put the most random synthesizer shit on YouTube.

Sevdaliza

So you’ve been making music for that long?

Hiele

Realizing I can make my own music, that only came when I was 13.

Sevdaliza

That’s really, really young.

Hiele

I’m very happy that came super early. Maybe that’s not so early – realizing that I could make my own music somehow came super late. In the way we get educated in music and the way we listen to music, young kids don’t really realize that they can make their own world with music. It comes only later. Maybe I was young being 13 and realizing that.

Sevdaliza

You think you were not young? Did you know I was 24?

Hiele

Really? That’s still young.

Sevdaliza

And 13 is not?

Hiele

No, in the sense that some people maybe only realize when they’re 50. Still, age doesn’t matter, because somebody who is 50 years old picking up a cello is going to sound amazing because everybody’s got some journey and their own story to tell.

Sevdaliza

It’s your life and your experience that comes through the instrument or whatever that is, I agree. I think it’s very interesting you say that 13 is old, but why do you think that? You want to be the best?

Hiele

No, no, no, I don’t have that. I’m absolutely not competitive when it comes down to music.

Sevdaliza

Not towards another, but towards yourself.

Hiele

Oh yeah, I’m very hard on myself.

Sevdaliza

That’s what I mean. I’m never competitive to anyone else. I don’t think you are either, but towards yourself: “I wish I knew it when I was ten. By now I would be three years better.” Or something like that.

Hiele

Exactly, but I was feeling like that when I was 16. “Fuck, I should have started when I was nine.” It’s absurd what I’m saying now.

Coming back to those YouTube videos, it’s really shit and it’s still out there. It’s really good because it’s a video diary of a couple of years of faking a synthesizer and doing crazy stuff. Eventually, that grows out to actually song making.

Sevdaliza

Do people know that’s you?

Hiele

I think so, but who’s interested in that? It’s out there. As long as it’s there, I’m going to keep it there. It’s just for myself. It’s really a moment that went along with being in high school, and then evolving and looking back to your evolution. It’s very nice to look at. I’m a bit jealous that I’m not actively evolving as how I did from that very early age to my first records.

Sevdaliza

You feel the growth process has slowed down a little bit?

Hiele

Yeah. I have to be openminded and go into a new direction. I’m trying to do that more and more. At the end of the month, I’m playing music from Ornette Coleman with four amazing Belgian musicians that are a totally different age than me. But I’m so blessed that I can play with them, and especially that I can play jazz music with them and improvise.

In electronic music you give room for improvisation, but in the end, that gets recorded. That’s how it is. You sit on an idea that came out of improvisation, and you add ideas out of an improvisatory approach to music. But you lock it down to a final production. In a live environment, when you’re on the stage making music with musicians... that’s something I really have the urge to experience again.

I want to get closer to that, but I’m so perfectionistic about my own music, that I really want to be sure how it’s going to come out. That kind of blocks this improvisational mind.

Sevdaliza

It blocks until you’re able to have that confidence and know that you are so fucking good that every improvisation that you do is on a high level that you are able to live with.

Hiele

Not necessarily that you think you’re good, but just that you know the language.

Sevdaliza

It’s not about good, it’s about knowing the skill and being able to channel that each moment instead of one magic take out of hundreds.

I think when you give it time and you learn you will be able to channel it in every moment. For instance, I will compare it to something in my own voice. Now I’m on a level where people will ask me for a TV or a radio thing. They will be like, “We’re going to sing now.” I’m totally fine with it now. I used to be very aware of the fact that, “Oh no, I have to warm up my voice.” Now it’s like, “Open your mouth, here we go.”

It taught me. I’m also extremely perfectionist, but performing live taught me to embrace the raw emotion instead of the perfectionist. That’s kind of more improvising.

Hiele

That’s very well said. That’s also why it’s very important to perform. It’s all about performing because you get exposed directly to the people listening to your music at that moment that you don’t want to necessarily please them, but you want to be sure that what you did was a statement that you wanted to bring over in your language.

What I experience is that the best moments when I’m making music is not staring at a screen, because although your eyes are open and you’re playing a keyboard, you see this abstract thing of what your music is that you can’t explain in words. Eespecially when you’re doing something right in the moment, or when you’re singing, maybe, you see this blur of rightness in images or feelings that all come together. It’s there. That’s a thing I have when I’m not looking at a computer screen. In the future I really want to start to use tape again, not for the fact that tape “sounds better,” but just so that I don’t have to be locked to the computer screen. Do you feel like you’re aware of that? That you’re totally creatively different when you’re looking at a screen than when you’re standing there in a room doing it?

Sevdaliza

Definitely. I learned this year that I’m way better at improvising than pre-writing. I didn’t know that. I learned a type of process and I was doing that process. Whenever that process didn’t work, I got frustrated and I tried to become better at the process. I never actually thought about changing the process until I started playing with a live band. In the rehearsals, I would do crazy shit with my voice and come up with these crazy melodies.

Everyone was kind of surprised. Where did that come from? We started to incorporate that into the live performance, and now we have a whole section in the live performance where I just freestyle. It’s always different. I just look at my key player and we do something. Sometimes it’s incredible. Sometimes it’s shit. It’s very vulnerable. I want to show that, because the channels of pure emotion always works. People see that it’s freestyle and they’re kind of doubting, “Is it freestyle? Is it not freestyle?” It works.

That made me realize that, for instance, like what you say about looking at the screen, when I programmed drums, or when Reynard programs drums, I suddenly feel imprisoned. “Fuck, I have to write the melody within this drum?” Then it was like, ”Fuck, I’m trapped by this chord progression. I have to write this melody on this chord progression. What if I don’t want to do it?”

Then: “You know what? What if I just open my mouth and I record whatever comes out, and then work it?” It’s a total different thing.

Hiele

Do you think that’s the new way you always want to go at it?

Sevdaliza

No, it’s just an experiment. I like to experiment. I don’t necessarily think the music is better like that. It’s just an interesting way of making it. Do you think the music that you make off the screen is better?

Hiele

Definitely not. I want to get to this point that the music will be better, much better, than the music I make when I look at the screen. Some audio processing, you cannot do not looking at the screen, because the equipment is too expensive to have for something that is free within the box. You have to just deal with both worlds and accept that both worlds have to interlock.

Sevdaliza

Do you think being aware of the possibility also sometimes makes you frustrated? I don’t know the possibilities, so I’m very easily satisfied with what I have now. Do you miss that?

Hiele

I don’t miss it, because you work with your limitations and you get to your ideas. I’m also a musician – I’m not just a technician. I know how to get somewhere because I can sing it. When I can sing something, I know I can make it.

Sevdaliza

Do you sing it in your head?

Hiele

Or out loud. I really use singing as a tool. I’m not a good keyboard player, but the moment I sit down and I sing the melody and I play the melody while I’m singing, stuff comes out that otherwise I would not be able to make when I’m just playing keys and listening to what I’m doing there. I need both.

Sevdaliza

And you’re kind of being your own instrumentalist, your own technician.

Hiele

You’re using yourself as a tool. When you do it yourself and you have all these different functions, you’re a mixer and a producer, but you’re also a musician. The fourth one, which you always forget, is you’re also a listener. Stepping out of your project, listening to it – that’s the hardest thing.

Sevdaliza

It’s impossible. You’re never objective. Even if you’re being critical you’re still not objective.

Hiele

How do you do that? Do you ask an old friend of yours or do you ask a total stranger? Do you ask your grandma or somebody in your life to listen to your music, to have the confidence coming out of that, or do you not need that?

Sevdaliza

I don’t need it. I like when I play something and someone is like, “Wow.” If I think it’s really done and someone says it’s missing something, I really can’t get into that opinion. The opposite, also. If I know that it’s not done and someone says, “This is great,” I’m like “Mmm-hmm.” You have the same, right?

Hiele

I totally have same, and it’s sometimes hard to deal with these opinions. In the end you do what you think you should do best, but it will slow down the process because you did that.

Sevdaliza

“I have to be a human being. I have to take this, maybe something’s in it.” You go back. You listen to it ten times like, “Nah.”

Hiele

It’s also building on your intuitivity. That is an amazing process that has nothing to do with music, in a way. That has to do with where you live, what street you’re walking to, all these small details of talking to that person, doing these things where it’s like your body is leading you to somewhere in the future and you don’t know what it’s going to be. Maybe it’s going to be super-negative even, you know?

Are you peaceful viewing yourself as a creative person?

Sevdaliza

More and more and more and more.

Hiele

That’s really healthy.

Sevdaliza

It’s also rare, I think. Are you restless?

Hiele

Not in the fact that I can’t sleep, but in the fact that there’s always stuff bugging you, your mind, what you’re busy with, what you are making.

Sevdaliza

As long as I’m growing as a person and as a creative I’m not that restless. I have restless periods when I feel I’m not growing enough, when I’m like what you said about that slowing down of your process. Because I only make music for a few years, my process is immense. Every week I discover something new in my voice, in my work. I’m like, “Oh, okay. I have vibrato. Wow, I can lengthen my notes for 30 seconds. What the fuck is this?”

That gives you so much childish joy, almost. You’re becoming what you have in your mind. The restlessness is only when I listen to someone else or listen to my not-intuitive choices. Then I become restless. Therefore I don’t really do that because you know what? If I, for the public, fail in a choice that I made in full confidence and intuition, I can be totally happy with it. It’s really true.

Hiele

That’s really good that you say that. I have the same approach. It doesn’t matter. Somehow you want that one person to enjoy what you did more than the thousand people who hated it. It’s really about bringing over your language.

Sevdaliza

Why are you restless, then?

Hiele

I’m not restless all the time. It was more a question if you also have to deal with it. For me, restlessness comes also from the fact that you want to do so much in so little time and you have all these ideas. That makes me restless, because I don’t find the moments to put it all down.

Sevdaliza

You have to create that moment, because it gives you sanity and gives you clearance in your mind. It gives you rest. You’ll be able to sit back and be like, “Okay, you know what? I took the time.” I don’t know how to say this, but I don’t really have fears, because I gave everything up for what I’m doing. My only fear is realizing when I’m old that I completely did the wrong thing.

Hiele

I don’t think you’re going to have that.

Sevdaliza

I don’t think so, either, but that’s what comes in on the down parts. I don’t know if you have this, but I have a lot of swings emotionally, very extreme.

Hiele

I think that’s part of the creative process, everything we’re saying now. I think lots of people go through it but don’t talk about it, because you are also a bit defensive or hostile in talking about it to people that maybe deal with it just like you do, but you don’t know, so you don’t really talk about it because you don’t want to look so vulnerable.

Sevdaliza

It also sometimes feels like stuck-upness, like, “Oh, get over yourself.”

Hiele

You know what helps me? Humor in general is so important. You have to love yourself, in a way. You have to respect yourself, but you also have to get yourself out of this serious attitude sometimes. The only way to do that is humor. Humor in music is very important. It’s not like, “Oh, a funny sound.” It’s more like an approach. It is maybe even a sound that you put somewhere that brings the context, gives it more light feeling suddenly.

Sevdaliza

I think my work is very serious and dramatic, but the humor doesn’t kick in in the work itself. It kicks in in the process. Me and my producer talk about this a lot, because you wouldn’t believe the way that we make this painful, emotional music.

It’s so fucking dumb, making jokes the whole time that are silly and we listen to stupid shit. We talk smack. Then suddenly you start to record and it’s super painful and intense.

Hiele

When I saw you on the boat in Paris, I was really like, “Whoa,” because I suddenly heard all your music in after each other, and it really fit very well with how I got to know you.

After a couple of days of getting to know you and spending days together, I heard you performing and it all made sense, because this emotion that is in your music is not a forced-upon emotion. That’s so great that it’s in your music, your storytelling. The drama of it – it’s maybe even the wrong word, drama, because music that is your story sounds dramatic in a way – I saw that when I heard you playing. You have a language in there and that’s really great. You have your own language.

Sevdaliza

Not to say anything back just because you said something, but I was really, really impressed by you, not just as a person but as a musician.

I’m not impressed easily, but I’m impressed when someone has their own language. I’m not impressed by technical skill. I’m thinking that’s really nice and interesting and I have respect for that, but I’m interested in... I remember your live performance very vividly, because it was so loud that I couldn’t listen with open ears. I just remember realizing, “This guy is a true fucking artist.” I really, really heard that and I really saw that. I think the only way to survive in your own joy is to be able to channel that language that you have inside of you.

Illustrations by Alex Solman