An Interview with Oracle Sisters
Words by Sarah Morrison
Parisian trio Oracle Sisters recently returned with their newest single ‘Asc. Scorpio’ off of their upcoming debut EP ‘Paris I’. I can’t remember exactly how I came across the tune but I knew within the first ten seconds that it was something special. Their approach to a dream-pop movement lucid dream, infusing true life events through a free flowing, melodic track.
The group have been chipping away at a handful of new releases and within a short period of time, were picked up by NME and included in their list ‘Essential New Artists of 2019.’
We spoke to Lewis, Julia, and Chris, to get a better understanding of their origins, their life in Paris, Vincent Livelli, Politics, and much more.
At what age did you all start playing an instrument/looking to get creative with music?
Lewis: At five years old I started playing piano and then at seven switched to guitar. I wrote my first song when I was ten, prompted by my guitar teacher at the time.
Julia: I picked up my mother’s dusty Landola guitar when I was nine years old and started picking and singing little made-up melodies.
I showed a strong fascination with the instrument so my mother signed me for auditions to a musical conservatory and I started a five-year schooling in classical guitar.
Chris: I had my first guitar lessons on a four string guitar when I was six. I wasn’t a very good student though. I was impatient and preferred running around outside. I found my way back to the guitar around thirteen when I started writing songs and singing. That led me straight to my drummer friend’s garage where we’d blissfully experiment and fumble out all sorts of jams.
What was the first sort of elements were you fascinated with?
Lewis: I think, growing up with my mother playing classical music on the piano every day or practicing opera singing, I had that around, so an ear for composition and music, and then for me... I loved the poetic figures in music and the rebels of course, who changed the culture and turned it on its head. So for elements, it would be tone, texture, and meaning. I tended to like the dirtier more rock and roll sounds when I was younger and later, a love of poetry.
Julia: Growing up my father was listening to jazz at home and he was always drumming jazzy rhythms with his hands on the dinner table and the car steering wheel. So I really grew fond of rhythm from an early age and the syncopation of jazz music. I continued with guitar and got my first electric guitar at age 15 and joined a heavy metal band in secondary school, and listened to mostly metal and punk for the next few years (thank’s to my sister’s influence).
So biggest fascinations were melody, rhythm and the raw craziness in metal that brought a relief in the freezing darkness of Finnish winters.
Chris: My first fascination with music has to be its power to have a physical impact on me. The rhythm, groove and thunderous vocals I found on my dad’s old blues records stirred something crazy up inside me. And then the melodies and vocal harmonies which I found listening to Elton John, Queen and my youthful guilty pleasures - The Eagles and The Doobie Brothers. They conjured a feeling in the belly which was completely intriguing and addictive. Like falling in love before you even know what love is.
When did you both [Chris and Lewis] officially meet? What drew the two of you together?
Lewis: We were in the same school from the age of 5 and always were crossing each other's paths or had friends in common as we were one grade apart, but didn't really meet until we were fifteen or sixteen. I remember seeing Chris play with his band 'Billy Nomates' at the school 'Battle of the Bands'. We both had our bands enlisted, neither of us won. So that's where we met.
Chris: we got to know each other properly when Lewis asked me out of the blue if I fancied joining his new band. They needed a drummer and my dad had just bought a kit he never played. I knew a beat or two so I put myself forward and that was the start of a very rewarding musical relationship.
When were you introduced to Julia? What about her artistic abilities made her the best choice as a drummer?
Lewis: We met Julia at the end of 2017 after we'd been writing together for a year and living in Paris getting to know the city and the people there. We were looking for a drummer and tried her out. We chose her for her instant ability to harmonize with our voices and her delicate touch and a good sense of timing on the drums which suited the songs we had been working on. She also had her ear for music and had been writing songs herself which was cool too.
How did you end up in Paris together at the same time?
Lewis: With Chris, we had decided to move at the same time. I was doing an artist residency in Italy the summer before moving. I got Chris a job in the kitchen as an apprentice cook. We hung out there and worked out some songs, I was living in New York and him in Edinburgh... we realized we were both on the verge of leaving where we had been living before... and wanted to try our hand at writing together. A man named Lionel who runs clubs in Paris and happened to be there in Italy offered us a job in his Cabaret if we were to come, so that sort of encouraged the move. Julia happened to have arrived not long before us.
‘The Queen of the Elves’ is a nickname you've given Julia. What does the title represent?
Lewis: Queen of the Elves, is a story we came up with through Armand from Papooz while shooting the 'Always' video in Finland. We had received our first budget from our publisher to make a video so we made the most of it and worked with our friends Armand and Victoria who directed, staying by a lake taking Saunas (thank you Alikari family!!) and traveling through the country making up a plot as we went along. Anyways! Julia became the Queen of the Elves as we noticed her elusive and mysterious presence in Finland (the country she is from as well) we surmised that she must be part of the long line of the Scandinavian Elvish Mafia that is known to live in the forest with trolls, and that, in fact, she was a spy in the human realm making the best of both worlds. The plot thickened when we learned that she had a special relationship with dolphins and a pact with the Mexican cartel. The story continues... and one day we might publish a novel on the subject.
I read that Chris, you work as a mathematician, and Lewis, you are a painter. Are their traits from either job that play a factor when you write music?
Lewis: I write music best when I don't have to think too much about it and I'm in a certain mood. So my ideal day is sitting down outside and listening to music, working with colors, letting the words and sounds blend in my mind and then getting in touch with the mood of the colors and shapes in front of me, until I distract myself and pick up my guitar and in that same atmosphere that I'm swimming in comes out with something. One leads to the other naturally and I use them both to fool each other in to not overthinking the work. Then there is the refinement process where I take out a chisel and hammer for several months...
Chris: I studied mathematics which has a lot to do with patterns and shapes and creating some kind of order and framework out of an infinite realm of possibilities. Catching ideas, melodies, and images and turning them into songs can resemble that in many ways. Saying that there is a whole other side to songwriting which I love and has no use for the mathematical side of my brain.
Lewis, I'm very curious to know who Vincent Livelli is; did you publish a book together?
Lewis: Vincent was my best friend for the last two years I lived in New York. I met him when I was twenty-three and he was ninety-three... I overheard him in a cafe talking about dancing in Cuba in the '40s, meeting the queen of Afghanistan and being in the studio with Orson Welles when he recorded War of the Worlds... Charlie Parker was a friend of his etc... at the time I was interested in interviewing older people with incredible life stories. My girlfriend introduced us and we became quick friends sharing the same birthday, a day apart, and seventy years. I discovered he had a fantastical and unbelievable varied life story to share and he had been writing his anecdotes for over twenty years into short vignettes. So I helped edit them down and put them in chronological order, including an interview, and linked him up with a small publisher out of Pennsylvania to make it available as well as the Greenwich Village Historical Society who recorded his stories. We're still good friends.
You've stated that you've used Paris as a fresh canvas/start when it came to the arts. Did you scrap material that you had written before now, start new, or in what terms do you refer to Paris as a fresh place artistically?
Lewis: I definitely put behind what I had been working on, I had just finished a solo album for a Japanese label and had been working on my own writing for some years. I wanted to collaborate and write with Chris again, it's very rare you find someone you can properly write with who has the same intention and is on the same wavelength artistically. So we both started fresh I think.
Chris: I’ve always loved throwing ideas at Lewis and seeing what he comes back with. I had a couple of ideas floating around that I was keen to see which way we could stretch together. Otherwise, it’s been a completely fresh start.
Are there other forms of media you’ve tried to incorporate or experiment with while living in Paris?
Lewis: I've started to develop from doing my artwork as a painter doing watercolors and oils to doing the collage covers for our releases… collaborating with filmmakers in Paris taught me the ropes and now I've taken an interest in directing our videos and have been director and co-director of 'Asc. Scorpio' and the 'Most of All' videos (out April 22nd!) and hopefully more in the future.
What is Paris like? What are things you've noticed or indulged in? What sort of community have you melded into?
Lewis: I would say Paris is like an egg that keeps cracking, the never-ending egg. At first, there was a wealth of people around working hard as artists and supporting each other as friends, collaborating. We fell into a good group of people, we wrote together, played concerts together and traveled and more... now we're all in quarantine.
Chris: Paris is definitely a city of two halves. One of elegance, refinement, beauty and history and the other a wild animal pulling at the shackles and striving to move forwards. It’s a gift to be able to float between these two worlds, to take inspiration from the variety of characters who are the living breathing heart of the city and then to be able to drift into your own thoughts and dreams with Paris’ deep poeticism as the backdrop.
Julia: When I moved to Paris I felt like anything and everything can happen here. It’s an artistic cocoon where for me the speed of life doesn’t overwhelm you like in NY or London. There’s a sense of freedom in expressing one’s highs and lows while feeling inspired about the smallest details on an evening walk. On the other hand, it’s easy to get lost in the romanticism of the city so building routines has helped me keep in track.
Paris has a very powerful community that stands up for beliefs and the rights of others when it comes to politics. Does this place any sort of pressure on the arts community or the way you write lyrically?
Lewis: Paradoxically, as oppose to its political and social history, I think in a lot of modern music, even out of Paris, there's an escapist tendency that can be like drugs... for a moment it might be fun to escape reality but then you do reality a disservice by not paying attention to its myriad details, to the interconnectedness of life and its events whether political, social, economical or natural and biological. It’s like that ancient Chinese saying ‘when a butterfly bats its wings, on the other side of the world: a hurricane’ or something like that... You turn your back on the fullness of life. It may be cliché but I miss realism in art, whether its realism with a poetic license or stylized realism. I think there can be more of it. So it’s not a pressure, I welcome it. It just can’t be slogan driven.
Julia: There’s a Franco-Chilean female rapper called Ana-Tijoux who writes confrontational political opinions while always standing for native and women’s rights. Both of her parents were tortured and imprisoned during the Pinochet dictatorship.
She’s got a lot to say and I think she’s a bad-ass competitor to the male dominant hip-hop scene.
Like any painter would do except it doesn't glorify, it shows the lines and cracks in the makeup of it all' is a way you've described the lyrical flow of ‘From Kay's to the Cloisters.’ Is that an idea you put into effect when writing all your songs?
Chris: Lyrically, certain songs have their feet firmly placed on the ground. They are songs which have taken a strong look at something. Ideally whoever is listening can relate to the images and ideas or be transported by the narrative. To be reminded of their own existence.
Other songs are more in the air, more psychedelic perhaps, they serve to lift the listener high above the earth. You want to be able to roll those songs around and look at them from lots of different angles. To hopefully feel an extra space open up in your chest. To forget one’s existence.
What can you tell me about the bootleg ‘Eat the Document’ by D.A Pennebaker and Godard? How does it influence the lucid travelogue you were looking to achieve for your music video ‘Asc. Scorpio?’
Lewis: Pennebaker was a hero for me growing up. I loved 'Don't look back' and 'Eat the Document', they were my visual bibles and where I got a sense of some broader horizons in life but also a cinematic style and aesthetic I liked. He pioneered that style of film making and even designed the first camera to record sound and visuals at the same time.
Godard has a juxtaposed, editing style that forces you to find creative solutions in your mind to the seemingly unrelated imagery. Just like dreams at first, appear nonsensical… when you start to look at them, you find the random imagery, jumping from one place to another is part and parcel of an overarching story that has meaning. Often, I like songs or films to be like this: waking dreams.
You are fairly definitive on not compromising your aesthetic when it comes to artwork or videos. What are things you look to in moments of finding that imagery that suits the creative direction you're aiming for? What could be said about your current music videos in relation to your music?
Lewis: Over time, I've learned it's worth it not to compromise on your technique or approach to your work. If you compromise you end up regretting it, even if other people like it. You have to stick to the techniques you love, the brushes or material you love, the quality or grain that you love and the stories that you love. It's the only thing that makes your work worth it, even if no else notices it immediately. For me, this is the case with film: 35mm, 8mm, 16mm or tape... the same goes for recording on to tape. I have always preferred the quality and grain of it and haven't found a satisfactory digital alternative that can bleed colors as well or paint a picture as well.
For finding imagery, it has been a question of staying curious, not being afraid to steal from the people and artists who inspire you and finding your own rules as to what you like and your style. For example, I have never liked a busy frame... I like there to be a central subject and then the surrounding objects, colors, lighting within the frame to be composed or justified, everything in the frame being able to contribute to the story of the picture if possible. This is my feeling for now but it could change.
Our current music videos serve as a visual translation from our heads... it's what we imagine the cinematic feeling of the song to be, which we then translate into a story that seems exciting to us... at least an exciting and fun enough project to use a good amount of energy on.
In a time of such uncertainty, what could be said for the future? How are you using this downtime? Will you reflect on your current work or keep moving forward? Have releases been delayed or still on schedule?
Lewis: We are all in quarantine now. I hope we all come out of it with a lot of songs and a renewed sense discipline...it's definitely not a time to be lazy artistically.
We had a lot of work finished and scheduled to come out with before the current crisis...I think it will roll out more or less as planned and on time. It will be a double EP entitled Paris I & Paris II, our 'Tale of Two Cities,' two alternate visions of Paris and it's future. We're sort of focusing on writing songs for an album after at the moment, but the two EPs coming out over the next weeks and months will already be two sides of the same coin. The next song is out on April 22nd entitled 'Most of All.'
Julia: Time in quarantine can be very productive for any artist who has access to his tools and instruments. I’ve been practicing on the electric drums at home which I kind of abandoned as I started going to a studio to play. Going to the studio might not be an option for a month or two so I think you’ve got to use what you’ve got at hand, whether it’s pen and paper or a guitar, and be grateful for everything one can learn.