You’d be surprised at how many huge songs have been inspired by the simplest events. Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ originated from frontman David Lee Roth just watching the news, while Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ came after Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna spraypainted the phrase “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on a wall in reference to the deodorant used by his girlfriend at the time. Every now and then a select few are able to craft entire worlds within music from what initially appear to be rather insignificant occurrences; much like French artists Eliade Krön and ODA Louise who, on one fateful walk through Hampstead Heath, saw a dog choosing to ignore its owner. For them, it not only signified the beginning of their latest EP, but the beginning of a journey of prodigious growth.
“We took this walk in a park in Hampstead Heath and we ran into this crazy little dog that was just completely disobeying his owner,” Eliade recalls
ODA: “He was all alone by himself near the lake, just sitting there enjoying the view and the owner kept screaming and yelling at him like, “Apo! Apo! Come back! Come back please, now!” And the dog was like “no, I don’t care.”
Eliade: “That lasted for like 10 minutes and then I swear to God somebody else came and was like “Apo!” and the dog went straight to the other guy and the owner became so frustrated. He was like, “This dog, he doesn’t listen to nobody” and the other guy was like “I think he just doesn’t listen to you.”
ODA: “We found it was a great symbol of liberty and one having their own mind, and we thought it [‘Apo’] was a great title for a song.”
While the intensity of ODA’s interpretation of something as basic as a dog disobeying its owner may seem crazy at first, it’s also an example of the pair’s innate ability to take real-world situations and channel them into their music. This is a skill that is drawn upon habitually in their latest release Nowhere Left, where the pair translate the trials and tribulations of a monstrous three years into a compact 15-minute EP. ‘Genuine’, the last of four videos accompanying the EP’s tracks, is released this week and streaming below.
As soon as you press play, Nowhere Left begins to showcase a rather delicate and intimate insight into the turbulent world that the two have endured together. Despite its vulnerability, though, what makes this piece so intriguing is that although it took so long to perfect, “roughly 80 per cent of the recording was done in one session,” Krön explains. “It’s in the same vein as Friday’s At E’s as it’s very free flowing. It’s ‘just get out what you have there in the moment.”
It’s understandable that this “pressure makes diamonds” philosophy would draw comparisons to Friday’s At E’s – Eliade’s online series where he leads a group of artists through the task of making an entire song in just one day, with only one word of inspiration to use as a base to build from. Yet that still leaves us wondering as to why it took three whole years to make the other 20 per cent?
Says ODA: “I was in the middle of a very toxic relationship. I was almost quitting music because of this guy I was with. He was very jealous and so I felt that I couldn’t make it in Paris because it was always like he was looking at what I was doing. When I left Paris for a few days to go to see Eliade, it was really like a bubble; like a safe space, truly, because I was away from it all and with him. He’s really someone who can listen to people around him and so it was like I was giving myself to the song but also to him in that moment.”
And while putting your own thoughts and experiences into song can be incredibly therapeutic, it’s not always the easiest thing to do. Nevertheless, ODA explains, sometimes it’s exactly what the doctor ordered. “The first song [‘Apo’], when we did it, we were in quite a dark place. It was really like, okay, we’re both going through this kind of depression, or complicated relationship, lack of self-trust and all that jazz, and this was a moment that was outside of it all. Like an island outside of this, a timeless capsule.”
The idea of a timeless capsule in which one can remove themselves from the real world as they draw closer to the music sounds as thrilling as it does unsettling. It’s something only proven further when the pair tell me about the ethereal atmosphere that was present when they recorded their track ‘Sunny Night’.
“It was really a strange moment for us,” says ODA. “We were so deeply within our own minds, the two of us in the studio, that it became so intense. We made the instrumental for it and after that, we played it back for hours, like a complete night. We took a quick nap but after that we still spent maybe half of the night listening to it like a cycle. It was really a kind of strange meditation. We were like in another state of being.”
Eliade: “It’s true, in the beginning we were just like ‘this loop is so satisfying’. It wasn’t like we decided ‘oh, let’s just simmer in that loop for a while’, it was just nice to play so we just kept it playing while we did our own thing. We talked, we took a nap and then at one point we were eventually like ‘maybe we should write something?’”
ODA: “I’ve never made a song like ‘Sunny Night’ before. It was really a moment on its own. We were completely fucked up after it, but we had to arrive to that state to be able to write what we did.”
It’s that very process of surrendering themselves to the music that enabled Eliade and ODA to reflect deeper within and uncover their true selves; ones that they may not have deemed to be possible in retrospect.
ODA: “We did the last song [‘Genunie’] in Paris just after I dumped the guy I was seeing, and I was like, ‘the circle is finally completing’. At the time I had just gone to the police.”
Eliade: “That’s true, and you were hesitating on going.”
ODA: “Yeah, but it helped me decide to go to see the police because the lyrics were about that too.”
Translated from French to English, she sings: “I know you’re chasing me but I’m not broken / My energy is heavy, and the storm flashes, but I can fly.”
Despite ODA’s ability to clearly write herself into her own songs, it’s not the only way that the two are striving for more; Eliade’s drive to perfect his craft not only as a producer but as a vocalist and songwriter can also be heard in full force. Doing so wasn’t easy, however. “At some point I started to understand through feedback of other people that production wise, I’m good but when it comes to singing and songwriting I have lacks and when I let that sink in, I was just a bit discouraged,” he says. “There are definitely other things that contribute to it but I had a real dip of self-confidence and it’s been around a year and a half that I’ve had to work on taking care of myself, focusing on meditation, faith and working toward getting that self-love back and it definitely paid off.”
And while rediscovering that faith in yourself is vital, it’s also an arduous process. Trying to accomplish all that while also writing, recording and producing an EP? Well, that’s just nigh on impossible all by yourself; another major element of Eliade’s journey was gaining the confidence to let go and reach out to others for the occasional helping hand.
“We owe a lot of this project thanks to the collaborators on it, there’s only two songs that we made, just the two of us: ‘Sunny Night’ and ‘Apo’. But then for ‘It Heals It Hurts’, we had the help of Tr33 for the production, who also comes to sing on it. He’s the only featured artist. Only for like 10 seconds as well but it adds a flair that we very much needed for the song. For ‘Genuine’, we have Mika Baru, who is the instrumentalist and producer. We were able to visit his beautiful studio in Paris; he had so many instruments and options that it felt so seamless to work with him. Then when I was in Iceland finishing up everything, I had the help of Michael Már Trampe for some drums. Usually I master everything myself, but this time we were like, ‘No, no, no. We need a proper mastering engineer’. Not that I’m not one, but it’s good to have a different set of ears on it. I think it shines a lot more because of that.”
Beyond the music itself, keen-eyed viewers might also notice that the collection of videos for Nowhere Left tells a story of its own which, when paired with the context of the EP’s origin story, makes its meaning abundantly clear.
“We wanted to keep integrating our lives into the project,” says ODA. “For example, Eliade was far away in Iceland when we started to mix the first single so we thought ‘you’re far away? okay, let’s do a far away music video, a FaceTime music video’. And after that we had an event in Paris so Eliade came over and we were like ‘Okay, let’s do a music video where the two characters had just met and they’re going somewhere on a train’, and the final one is the two people finally achieving going somewhere together and it’s a symbol of what we had just lived through for this EP and in our friendship. We were going through a journey together and at the end we arrived and somewhere really dreamy where we can be ourselves in our own timeless capture.”
Eliade: “And it’s in Hampstead Heath where it all started. It’s a special place, particularly for this EP, but for us it will forever be a special place just as it is.”
The new video for ‘Genuine’, the last of four from Eliade and ODA Louise’s new EP Nowhere Left, is out now
