Enfnts Terribles

We’re often very inspired by your music. What inspires you when it comes to songwriting?

It really has to do with being centered in my body, being able to feel and empathize and trying to become even more sensitive than I already am. That’s what really inspires me. I also receive a lot of information from processes, like chemical processes or explosive elements. I really look to the material world for notes when I’m songwriting.

Your music can be divided into two different sonic worlds; you have a very angelic and soft world and also a more distorted one. Why did you want to include both on CLEARING instead of focussing on just one?

I love holding multiple worlds at once. In order to create a new world, it takes a multitude of materials to materialize it. For me, it’s like a game that I play with myself where I come up with textures that usually don’t go together and try to combine them to create something new. I’m always looking into the future of what’s possible to create the next world.

Creating CLEARING was a long process. How did your vision of your work evolve once it came out after having it for yourself for such a long time?

It was incredibly intense. For a long time, it was my secret recharge zone, so it was a place I’d go inside myself, rest, and sort of expand by trying things that were new to me. There’s an element that was really challenging, just opening it up and putting it out. I do think something happened when it was released, which made it fully change forms. Even when I was listening for it or listening to it when it was accessible online, it sounded completely different to me.

I always felt that I was writing it from a future version of myself. It did involve quite a bit of time travel; where a lot of the lyrics when I wrote them, I didn’t know how they would hold over time. The album came out on 11.11.22, and just everything had changed. Obviously, there was a lot of loss in my life at that time. My longtime partner, girlfriend, and collaborator, SOPHIE, had changed forms. She and I wrote a lot of the album together. A.G. Cook also wrote the album alongside us. It was just a completely new world that I had entered, and it almost felt like the album was scaffolding for me. That sort of carried me through that time.

Volcanos are linked to fire, while the artwork sees you drowning in water. Tell us more about the image that became the artwork.

Within the album, you see an experience of multiple states of beings. For me, it started in a fireplace. You can call it magma, full flames, this feeling of chaotic, total destruction, complete loss, deep devastation, and moving from that place into ashes where you feel like everything has disintegrated and you’re almost nothing—just that time of waiting and hoping that something will change. Something I’ve learned in the process of making the album is that inside ashes, there are seeds. This was a profound realization for me at the time because you don’t realize it, but when you’re in a field of nothing, around you, there’s this new potential for growth.

I experienced that in the making of this record, where everything felt extremely fertile. Moving into the next cycle, which is more of a water train of nourishment, receiving care, and that care leads to sprouts, a feeling that something can grow. That was also really generative for me because I felt like I was sitting in total darkness for such a long time. It was so hopeful for me to experience that. In getting to create the album cover, I was coming from a place of care, recovery, and regrowth. When I thought about how that would look like, it wasn’t about returning to the place of total loss. It was about opening up to what is next. That’s the space between ether and water. Making the image with Michael Bailey-Gates was an unbelievable honor. They’re one of the closest people in my life, and they immediately understood me. Together, we made an environment that I feel reflects the album.

For many people, the darkness is a scary place because it’s often associated with loneliness. Would you say that you see the light in the darkness?

I thrive in total darkness. If I have a really hard day, I will try to find a room and turn off the lights, put on a blindfold, and sit in darkness literally. I find it helpful. My background includes losing my vision, and when I didn’t have eyesight, I was in darkness all the time. It was a very nourishing place for me, but initially terrifying because there’s an emphasis on sight that is so intensive and strong in this world, which I don’t feel attached to right now, but I love being in total darkness.

You often isolate yourself in darkness but now perform on stage in front of many people. Does touring feel overwhelming to you since you’re literally in the spotlight?

I wonder. I never really think about it. I guess I’m someone who loves live work because there’s this kinetic element where you don’t know what’s going to happen. I experienced total transformations in shows, where I felt different after witnessing a performance. There’s this potential for something really powerful to happen. I think about it almost like a container, where I have these different elements where you have the chance that these elements together will explode in tears. I wind up crying a lot during performances, and things just come through, so it’s really meaningful to me that I get to perform this work. It is so incredible to be with other people in this generous environment where we’re all sensitive together. We feel each other and feel connected.

Your debut album is out, and you’re touring with this body of work. What can we expect next from you?

There’s another album, and it’s all preparation for that now. There’s a lot of secret stuff that will leak out, but I’m really excited about that.

Hyd was captured by Robin Schraepen before their show in Brussels at Botanique and interviewed by Maxim Meyer-Horn in Berlin.