WEBVTT - UMAN 0:00:02.200 --> 0:00:06.880 Ephemeral is a production of iHeart three D audio for 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:09.400 full exposure, listen with that phones. 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.880 One of the amazing things about music is how it 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:41.680 can form connections across language. 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:36.800 Direct to the nice thing with Danielle is we don't 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.760 need to use many words. We understand each other without 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:45.840 speaking very much. We trust each other immediately. 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:46.599 And we can be a lot more direct in our 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:48.400 feedback and saying things to each other. 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.560 The French voices here are those of siblings Danielle and 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:09.160 Dde Jean. Together, Danielle and Dda make up the band Uman. 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.760 Human Human hu Uma umen umah Man Mummen. 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.520 When we talked last year, their nineteen ninety two album 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:22.760 had just been re released by the New York based 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.360 label Freedom to Spend. Wherever he might have heard it 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.880 in the first place, this album left a strong impression 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:31.920 on label founder Matt Worth. 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:38.240 It's an album for imagination, imagination that birds more imagination, 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.640 or that inspires more imagination. I think a lot of 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:45.400 that has to do with the way language is not 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:50.520 only explored across dialects and regions, but also in the 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.600 way that it is then fractalized within the sound itself, 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.480 almost like this alien transmission. It feels like contact with 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.560 another kind of life force. Our reason to reissue this 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:08.400 was because it just felt so hard to place in 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.200 time and therefore a timeless album. 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.239 My interview with Danielle and Dda was conducted with a 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.720 live French English translator. Today we'll have some friends performing 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:24.800 the English translation of their words. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:32.400 When did you start writing producing your own music? 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:35.880 At a very young age, a friend lent me a 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.079 tape recorder. I was fascinated by the stape recorder and 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.519 I started experimenting with speeding up and slowing down. The sound. 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:47.440 Is the one who started playing with different bands, and 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.799 at some point I joined them. We started songwriting, and 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.520 then we started with instrumental music, but it happened progressively. 0:02:57.960 --> 0:02:59.760 Vico pamaldu choregra. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.799 To this album. We were working mostly with choreographers for 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.679 contemporary dance, and we were creating instrumental music with or 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:10.280 without voice. But part of us felt like it was frustrating, 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:12.840 like we had to hold back because the music couldn't 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:15.519 take up all the space of this art form. And 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.040 so finally with this album, we felt like we could 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.760 employ our creativity and do more to give it more 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:21.320 to voice. 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.160 If I understand correctly, before this record, you cut a 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.960 couple of albums recorded in like commercial studios in Paris, 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:34.920 and then I think for this one moved to you 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:36.600 built a home studio, right. 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:43.040 So, yes, we were recording albums of French music or 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.960 pop and some very commercial professional studios. But our feeling 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.840 there was that the sound engineers would oftentimes impose their 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.600 point of view or their mixing, and so even if 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.680 we had less means producing, we had more freedom at 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:56.720 a home studio. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.040 Se at those big studios, and time is money. It's 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.920 very costly and there's a lot of pressure to work faster. 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:09.480 At home. We had all the time that we needed 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:10.000 to record. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.680 Did you go in with with a vision of what 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:21.280 this album should be like? Would be like? See? 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.240 Things happen little by little and it really depends on 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.120 the mood I'm in at that time, so there's never 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.880 an overarching vision. Things happen slowly progressively. 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:31.440 This is. 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:36.760 The swell was at the time. My process was more 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.279 working at night. I would come up with different harmonies 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:41.799 and then in the morning I would propose some different 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.920 ideas to Danielle and she would improvise based on those things. 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:47.280 Then I would do gimmicks with my m one. 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:54.720 And after did kept my melodi and the create a 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:55.800 new melody. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.159 Not always but sometimes. And what was great about it so. 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.080 Based on the long minutes of improv that Danielle would 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.640 come up with, I would sample parts on my keyboard. 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.280 I was keeping a lot of their original melodies, but 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:14.480 I was adding to them or cutting them, and that 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:19.120 was very exciting, like a ping pong match. 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.880 Woven across the album is a single poem, spoken eight 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:39.360 times in eight different languages, French, Hebrew, Dutch, Vietnamese, Portuguese 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:42.920 and English. 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:48.800 It's this force, almost animal warm, like a kiss, fresh, 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:55.200 like the morning June that we call human warm. It's 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.040 not quite sexual, but it's something to do with human 0:05:58.160 --> 0:05:59.000 nature that is so. 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:02.840 Tangible, some opportunity to lay. 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.159 In that time, there were a lot of social liberation movements, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.360 a lot of human warmth, especially in the fall of 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:10.039 the Berlin Wall. 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:11.520 Some of the. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.320 No Man doing New Yorkshires. 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:25.600 The poem Park came at the very end of the 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.719 process of this project, and then it was integrated into 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:30.600 other tracks, but we did it at the end. 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.040 We used people that were around us and people that 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:39.240 we knew we used those opportunities to record their voices. 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:43.920 So one of the first ones was Russia. That's because 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:45.560 we had a cello player that played on some of 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:52.040 our tracks who spoke Russia. At the time, we lived 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.800 in a university town, so we had lots of nationalities 0:06:54.839 --> 0:07:02.120 around us. Popular for us, the voice is truly an instrument. 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.200 We also use phonetic syllables and sounds in the place 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:05.719 of words. 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:13.760 Gembiells just the mom I've loved to play and have 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.640 fun with my voice, not just with singing, but with 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.480 making noises. I like when my voice can be very breathy, 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.520 with lots of air, or sounds that are more jazzy. 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.160 And I've done a lot of world music, so I've 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.480 learned to create sounds that are in my nose or 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:30.840 in my forehead or other parts of my body. 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.560 There is a way in which very lyric forward music 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.040 can be so much direct addressed from the composer, like 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:51.640 a very specific meaning that. 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:52.520 You're supposed to take. 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:56.080 And something that I find so enjoyable about your album 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:58.720 and so like re listenable about your album is that 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:01.520 that's not the case, that it's full of language and 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.800 the human voice, which is one of my favorite sounds 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:08.440 in the world. But it's so much more ethereal and evocative, 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.680 and it feels almost like choral music, like a lot 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:25.080 of voices in concert together. Let's talk about gear for 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:27.720 a second. What kind of Simpson in the in the samplers, 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:29.440 and what kind of gear did you have in your 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:30.560 home studio there. 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.959 In the beginning, we were just experimenting. We had two 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.120 two track recorders, so we were recording one track and 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.520 then singing on the other track, and we were doing 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:43.400 a lot of mixes and experimenting, and I think all 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.920 of that developed our creativity. When the first samplers came out, 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:49.720 we had that preparation. We were ready to start using 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:51.679 them because we had been doing this before. 0:08:56.040 --> 0:09:00.160 JEVI. My first sampler was from Kawai. Then I had 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.640 an EPs from Insnic and that's what I used to 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.079 do the guitar sounds on the keyboard. I had the 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.160 D fifty synthesizer from Roland, the j D nine to 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:13.880 ninety from Roland, the Corg wave station, the COG. We 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:18.960 had a rhythm box from in Sonic too. We had 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.320 a software called Notator. It was the ancestor of Logic, 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.280 and I could create different versions of music modules. We 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.800 also had a digital keyboard, the m K S twenty 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.600 from Roland, which is a really important part of this album. 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.480 Initially I trained as a bassist. I played the bass, 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:40.760 but I don't think there's any real bass on the album. 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:43.760 I think it was all digital essentially. On this album, 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:45.720 I was just playing the synthesizer and the sample. 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.520 Obviously, we played with other musicians as well on this album. 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.640 We had the trumpet, the piano, and the saxophone. 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:06.880 Would play them the theme and then they would either 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.760 improvise or try to play the same theme on their instrument. 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:16.720 We recorded our guest musicians on an eight track, which 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:17.880 allowed us to then mix the. 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:24.360 Mints, and the eight track was synchronized in the Notator software, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.760 so all the synthesizer sounds were recorded digitally, and then 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:29.240 all the other instruments were analog. 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.719 The initial release, you released it in nineteen ninety two, right, 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.240 So what do you remember about releasing it then? Sort 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:42.440 of was what was the reaction? 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:47.000 The album was very well received. We had many articles 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.120 written about it, so we felt very emotional and very proud. 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.199 But this album was still kind of a hybrid and 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.640 an alien people were surprised. I am little destabilized by it. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.400 At the time, it wasn't possible to compare us to anything, 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:11.240 at least in our own environment. 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.440 We couldn't be classified as pop or jazz or anything else. 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.360 A lot of record companies had to turn us down 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.360 because they didn't know how to classify us, and sometimes 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:26.840 they did it regretfully. We could see that they liked 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:28.920 our music, but they didn't know how to sell us. 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.240 When did Matt come at you guys and be like, yo, 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.160 I want to do this record again, you want to 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:41.880 put it back out? 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:44.320 I think it was at the beginning of Lockdown. 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.760 We actually got a message from Matt and didn't answer 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:50.439 for a while because we had other things to do, 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:52.559 but Matt was very persevering. 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.679 Well. What I liked about our conversation was that it 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:00.880 didn't feel like a dialogue between an artist and a 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.960 record company. It felt like a dialogue between two artists, 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:11.040 and that really built our trust in math Is. As 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:13.920 any artist, we start out by being very cautious of 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.240 any commercial offer that comes our way. We've been signed 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:19.920 with Universal before in the past, and that wasn't a 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.560 great experience. We felt like there was always a lot 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.559 of pressure on our heads and we didn't have a 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.679 lot of freedom. But with Matt it felt different. We 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:31.080 felt very comfortable from the start. And something to note 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:33.280 is that we always kept the rights to our album. 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:36.080 We always have this feeling inside of us that maybe 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:37.679 one day we were going to be able to use 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:38.120 them again. 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:43.640 How do you feel about the the re release? I mean, 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:45.680 what sort of attention have you seen? Is it felt 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.360 a lot different than it did nineteen years ago. 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.559 It's a very very different experience, especially because we hadn't 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.200 listened to it in so long, But of course we're 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.720 extremely happy. At the time, it felt like the beginning 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.319 of something, and right now that feels very different. 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.640 Supposed to nineteen years ago. It felt like the beginning 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:15.719 of an adventure and also the beginning of what I 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.000 felt was pure freedom of expression. At the time, I 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.120 started writing children's literature and making a living from that, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.800 and so I didn't feel this pressure to make best 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.120 selling music anymore. The music could be one hundred percent 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.120 my expression, and I felt a lot more free in 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:31.520 doing that. 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:32.480 Well felt that music. 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.079 You know, do you still play music together. 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.120 It's interesting because the re release of this album has 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.439 changed our way of working together. Actually we ex more 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:52.839 so we find ourselves working together like we did in 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.439 the past maybe and you'll see it in our next album. 0:13:55.880 --> 0:14:01.280 There's a feeling in the mood of that time, the book. 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.160 And nowadays we have to work a little differently because 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.640 we've lived far apart and Didier lives in the south 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:11.679 of France and I live in your parents. But we 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:14.199 still work with this back and forth and send each 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.960 other byle Well. 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.560 Dan Didier, thank you so much for taking the time. 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:31.320 This episode of Ephemeralm was written by me Alex Williams, 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.120 produced with Max Williams and Trevor Young, edited by Casey 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:39.120 Pegram and Rima il KLi, translated by and de Valence, 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.120 and performed in English by Lauren Vogelbaum and Noel Brown. 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.120 With special thanks to isis O Reagan, Sammy Jo Concilio, 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:52.240 Danielle and Didejean and Matt Wirth. The re released album 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:58.360 is available in multiple formats on band Camp and I 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:04.640 get our vng dot com. Just search human m Am 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.960 and look for us on social media. We are at 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:13.760 Ephemeral Show. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:18.280 app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.