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By: Daniela Patrizi
The famous duo Arms and Sleepers have just released their new and long awaited records that is full of songscapes with glorious intricate melodies and upbeat rhythms. Swim Team is an interesting album (read the review here) and we decided to interview the band to better understand what’s behind this record but also to get to know even better our beloved duo.
Answers by Mirza Ramic of Arms and Sleepers.
(((O))): Hi Mirza, many thanks for taking time out to speak with us. How are you?
Mirza: Thanks for doing the interview! I am doing well, thanks – a bit tired from all the traveling but that’s what coffee is for.
(((O))): I know you are touring in Europe. Where are you at the moment?
Mirza: Right at this moment I’m on a plane to Bucharest, Romania – so somewhere in the clouds above Germany or Austria.
(((O))): Firstly, congratulations on Swim Team because your album is really amazing. How did the writing and ideas for the record come about?
Mirza: Thanks for your kind words about our new album. Writing music is still a bit of a mysterious process to us – we don’t fully understand it ourselves. We tend to sit down and work on music when we feel inspired to do so, but often what we come up with is not good enough for us. So the process tends to be long and frustrating, utterly self-critical and tiring. The moment when a good idea comes to life is always unexpected, and always presents itself after a lengthy dance with failure. I would say that failure is for us the fundamental catalyst of good ideas that eventually lead to the creation of an album.
(((O))): How do you describe your music style and how you think it differs from other bands’ sound?
Mirza: Describing music is quite difficult and something that we really dislike. I am aware of how others describe our style (trip hop, electronic, chillwave, ambient, etc.) and that definitely influences me in how I then refer to our music when someone asks me. But in a different world where we think less about music styles, I would just urge the listener to listen and not worry about categorizing what s/he hears.
My relationship with the music I co-create with Max Lewis (the other half of Arms and Sleepers) is inevitably very different than someone who just listens to the final product. Style is simply not something we think about at all when composing music, so it would be quite dishonest for me to try and do it here.
(((O))): Fair enough 🙂 Your sound has been evolving during the last years and Swim Team, in particular, is the most different album that takes distances from your warm and sometimes melancholic sound. How would you describe it as a record?
Mirza: I would describe Swim Team as a carefully crafted record that is a direct expression of who Max and I are as people at the moment. We continue to evolve personally and many things have changed in our lives since we first started making music as Arms and Sleepers. So naturally what we do musically is constantly changing as well.
(((O))): How long did it take to you to write it and what was the theme, sound or image you wanted to convey?
Mirza: Swim Team took about 1.5 years to complete, though it would have taken much less time if we weren’t busy with school and other things going on in our personal lives. There was nothing super deliberate that we were trying to convey, I think this period in our lives just happened to be full of reflecting on the past and thinking about the future which subsequently resulted in a somewhat nostalgic but also hopeful record.
(((O))): Do you have a favorite song from Swim Team and if so which one and why?
Mirza: For me personally, it is the title track. It is a song that was written last minute and a song that came from a very unexpected, but exciting, place. It still sounds very refreshing to me, and as a piece of work that was put together during writer’s block, it feels very special.
(((O))): What are some of your musical influences? And, in general, what most influences your creative process?
Mirza: Our musical influences are all over the place – from hip-hop to jazz to classical to R&B, etc., etc. A couple of artists that greatly influenced us while growing up were Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, Deftones, Beck, Air, Phil Collins, Chopin, Satie, and some others. Since then, artists such as Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Do Make Say Think, Ennio Morricone, Max Richter, Caribou, Anita Baker, Atmosphere, Sage Francis, Why?, and countless others have impacted us greatly as musicians. But more than music, I think everyday life things influence our creative process the most – the people we meet, the places we visit, the random memories that pop into our heads.
(((O))): I saw you playing live twice, at Dunk!!festival and last April in Zurich. Being a duo I imagine that it’s hard to reproduce and play every single part live on stage. What kind of equipment do you use?
Mirza: These days it’s actually just me performing live, so of course I am very limited in terms of what I can do on stage. But I try to do as much as possible, and I am always thinking about how to do more things live. At the moment I use two midi controllers (Arturia Minilab + M-Audio Oxygen), Animoog app on my iPhone and iPad, Reason and Logic on my MacBook Air, Kaoss Pad KP3+ and Kaoss Pad mini, Boss Delay pedal, and a Yamaha mixer.
(((O))): Do you think that online presence is important for fans to discover you and critics to find your music to write about? What‘s your opinion about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free?
Mirza: I think an online presence is important for every business, organization, artist, etc. – it’s a great way to share what you do with people that would otherwise probably not be able to reach you. A great example of this might be a place like Tehran, Iran – there have been a lot of people that have contacted us from there and told us about how they frequently listen to our music, but that our records are not available anywhere in Iran. So without an online presence, those individuals would simply not be able to listen to our music. That being said, I think it’s easy to get lost in the online world – a balance is key. So going on tour and making an effort to meet individuals and organizers that care about your music is equally as important. In terms of online music sharing, this is of course a complex subject. I think in the long run, what online music sharing does is devalue music to the point where we expect it to be free without understanding what kind of human effort and resources go into creating music. While bigger artists can afford this trend (because they’ll always get large amounts of people to attend their live shows, etc.), smaller artists will continue to really take a financial hit. This in turn will mean that a decision to create music will increasingly be based on one’s financial reality, which is terrible news for diversity, creativity, and freedom in music.
(((O))): When writing new music, what’s the process? Is there one of you who brings the music to the table?
Mirza: The writing process really varies. Sometimes a song will start with a beat, and at other times with a synth or a piano line. It also depends on the type of music we’re working on – mellower, modern-classical material tends to be written when we are together, while the more electronic/beat-heavy material tends to start individually and then we bring it together. As of late, Max will work on a beat and a simple vocal sample cut, and I will add layers of synths, melodies, and restructure the song.
(((O))): Can you tell us something about the hiatus you took in 2012? I confess that I feared you weren’t coming back.
Mirza: Both Max and I were starting graduate school and we thought that we needed to move on in our lives with a fresh start. It was a difficult decision but one that made most sense for us at the time. After a few months, however, we realized that Arms and Sleepers and music in general are a big part of our lives and of who we are, so we decided to come back and continue going with this project.
(((O))): Any bands you both are listening to at the moment which people should be checking out?
Mirza: Stephen Steinbrink.
(((O))): If you could go back in time…what gigs would you have liked to have been at?
Mirza: Portishead’s performance at Roseland Ballroom in NYC in 1997.
(((O))): And finally…do you have a message for our readers?
Mirza: Thanks for reading this interview and listening to our music!
