Fama

We are both from Germany, Anna from a small south German village and Fama from Berlin. We got to know each other in Dresden, where we both studied and made a lot of music in Annas rehearsal space. Only when Fama moved back to Berlin and Anna eventually started studying in Copenhagen, we started working online as well, sending drafts and ideas and soundfiles back and forth.

Anna

Of course, in the beginning we started out as young hobby musicians playing the recorder, the clarinet and the piano, not knowing where this whole journey would take us one day. Now we are educated and qualified musicians and we create experimental sounds that we couldn’t have even imagined when we were little. The piano and even the recorder are still part of our music – but of course in a whole other way than back in the days…

Fama

I am inspired by interesting voices like Laura Mvula, Jim Morrison, Jordan Rakei, Betty Carter and by an organic earthiness. I like when I can dance to music. In life, I enjoy encounters with people, they give me a lot of material to think about, it keeps me reflecting. What I like about working with Anna is, that our approach towards songwriting is pretty different, but the exchange makes us learn all the time.

Anna

I listened to a lot of pop music, such as Radiohead, Little Dragon or Jono McCleery. I think my fascination for synthetic sounds derived from that. At the same time I was surrounded by classical music that I’ve been playing on the piano and of course there has always been a huge fascination for jazz musicians like Stan Getz, João Gilberto and Chet Baker. It gave me peace and direction throughout my chaotic and busy everyday life. But in the end the greatest inspirations are the people and the musicians that surround us and that we live and play with.

Fama

We call our style electronic handmade loop jazz and it is very vocal based. Our music is flowy, earthy, organic and sometimes rhythmically unsquared…

Anna

It is a mixture of organic and synthetic sounds. We play around with a lot of instruments – sometimes they’re electronic, sometimes acoustic and we love to combine those sounds in our music. The voice though is always the core for our sound and it reflects the stories we tell through words and vocal expression.

How has your sound evolved so far?
Fama

We recorded our first EP in Anna’s little band room pretty much by ourselves. Our sound evolved in quality but also in the things we imagine when writing a song. We understand the potential way better and are able to follow what the song needs.

Anna

Our songs talk about deeper subjects I think. We’ve grown and lived through difficult phases in our lives and I think it shows in our music. Technically speaking there’s always new gear that we add to our musical spaceship so our sound gets wilder and wilder with every instrument we take on. Our sound has definitely become more electronic and more experimental with time.

What can you tell us about your last job? What inspired you? What do you want to convey?
Fama

We are about to release our debut album “Liquid Lines” on Ocotber 1st. It’s going to be a double version album – so 10 original songs in two different versions, two different energies and moods. We were thinking about how music is received these days and thought: we have to make people buy records again. So you will get 10 songs online but the 20 only on vinyl and CD.

Anna

We want people to actively listen to music again. In times where ephemeral encounters with music happen through listening to playlists on streaming platforms, it is more important than ever for us to sit down and really experience what an album and a big arch is all about. It’s a little bit like at live concerts. People come to our shows to listen to a whole arch of music and to see us perform live and in the moment. We brought that feeling onto the record. We stood in front of the microphones in the studio and just started to perform and improvise with the existing material. That’s how most of the second versions came about: Through being in the moment and listening to one another.

Fama

Blue Hour talks about the energy of beginnings or breaks. The moment when you know: something will happen… I am who I am in this moment, and I’ll see what I’ll become.

It is like a blue curtain that lifts and makes space for everything to come. It’s an open hand, an open mind and an open door to another world.

Outer Space kicks you out into space, it has a sensual energy to it that bursts into flames.

All the senses melt into one another and everything starts spinning, the weightlessness makes you feel like everything is possible!

Préférences/Preferences is about different types of people: the ones that are always up for party, adventure and social encounters and the ones that want to rest, be alone and enjoy the calm of a cosy evening.

It speaks about different energies and different personalities and how every single one of those preferences can and should be accepted, tolerated and appreciated.

Texture of words is a beautiful song Anna wrote about how sometimes the things you didn’t say become bigger and bigger and become dense, like a texture you can touch.

It’s an honest way of saying: It hurts! I am hurting! The things you don’t say – I feel them anyway. Not through words but through a sensation on my skin, through bitterness in the air and through gestures, looks and spinning thoughts.

Water takes you into a lake full of funny sounds, air bubbles and lets you out into the sunshine again, giving you a totally different perspective on the world.

Everything appears clearer and much easier when your body floats under water. The feeling of heavy weight dropping from your shoulders makes you want to dive again and again.

Pulse is a snapshot of the feeling you have, when everything around you seems to be too fast. When everything shakes and you try not to collabs under the pressure that it brings to manage life sometimes.

During a pandemic it sometimes feels like you affect other people around you with every step you take. Every person becomes this fragile glass statue that breaks as soon as you touch them, every breath seems to be dangerous to others and you feel imprisoned in your inability to move, even though everything around happens in enormous speed.

Lullabies is a song for my grandmother and other people I have lost. The innocence and horror that one feels when having to say goodbye to a loved one and the certainty of the situation.

It’s a beautiful song that expresses the pain of letting go.

Bleu is a spontaneous one. A friend of mine wrote the lyrics years ago and Anna one evening said: Let’s put it on the album – you’ll play the guitar. And after a nervous cigarette and another glass of wine, we did that and I’m super glad that Anna pushed me!

For me this song is exactly what has been missing on our album. A simple and beautiful song with guitar and voice in the one version and with fluffy voice loops in the other. It’s that one song that is simple and very special at the same time – the one song that makes you stop and listen, you smile and then you walk on.

Go Go Go is our dream come true collaborating with Laura Perrudin, a French harp player. For the orange version, I wrote the lyrics and for the violet one Anna did. We are worshipping precious women in our lives and most of them are in the music video we shot in summer.

It’s about empowerment, female strength and colorful expression. We want women to listen to this song and feel empowered to be, to do and to feel whatever they want, without hesitation, without doubt or fear.

A huge part of our work in general is improvisation. Both being educated as jazz vocalists, we come back to this tool a lot to freshen our minds and play around. Give Me What I Asked Ror and Gently In My Mind are both improvisations, that were composed in the moment.
The last few concerts we experimented with lyrics in our improvisations. It is so interesting how it enlightens and deepens our musical expression as soon as there are words underneath our music. It sometimes happens that our musical decisions take whole other turns as soon as the lyrical approach does and that is always a surprise and an honest way of saying “I am listening!”

Fama

We hope that we can continue playing concerts. This summer almost felt normal to us but we still feel the insecurities and anxiety around the subject. Ticket sells are still down and this is of course bad in our situation. We were really concentrated finishing this album and now we want to bring the music to the people in concerts. Let’s stay responsible but optimistic!
On the other hand it made it possible for us to record, produce and plan the release of our album and really take the time to step back, look at it from another angle, plan things differently and have the time to rethink things. Also it made it possible for us to produce the music videos for the album and to found our own label o-cetera.

Fama

Anna and I are both touring with Sophie Hunger at the moment and promoting our album. Next up will be side projects of both of ours and of course the next dream for Olicía….
We are for example currently working with an electronic sound artist and we create music for a silent movie. Also we will collaborate with a dancer and choreographer for a project that involves musical improvisation, dance and visuals. But more on that very soon…