Enfnts Terribles

Where are you at the moment? 

I’m in Brooklyn, New York. 

Ooh, I have to admit I’m a little bit jealous of that. 

(laughs) I love it here. I’m moving here very soon, in about two weeks or three weeks. Like literally two days after I turn 18. 

That sounds super exciting! So let’s dive into your music. I was going through your Spotify profile, and there isn’t a lot of information in your bio except for one sentence. It describes you as a complextro artist. I was so intrigued with that word. What do you mean by that? 

(laughs) Thank you so much. So … (laughs) when I first started making music, when I was about nine, I made this genre music called complextro music. It’s quite dated to like 2013-2012 and is like very complex electronic music. And so, me and my manager were together one day— we were just talking about all the old, shitty EDM we used to listen to—and I wanted to update my bio. So I was just like, “Put ‘17 complextro god’” or whatever I said, and that’s that. 

It’s a great bio. Now you’re still quite young; you recently turned eighteen. Are you happy to be a teenager during these times? 

No, I hate being a teenager right now. I wish I was a teenager five years ago, maybe? I really hate what social media has done to my generation and done to myself in regard to like instant gratification. I’m just worried about all the repercussions of social media because I spend so much time on my cell phone. It makes me nervous. So no, I wish I was a teenager like five or ten years ago. 

Well, I’m looking forward to that! Talking about Artpop, what’s your favorite track on the album, and why is it such a groundbreaking album for you? My favorite track on Artpop is “Scheiße”. 

That’s from Born This Way! That’s from Born This Way. 

Omg, I meant “Aura”!

Yeah, that song is crazy. My favorite song is the song right after that: “Venus”. I think it’s just one of the best-written songs ever. All the vocal harmonies and the production is incredible. I think the reason why it’s such a groundbreaking album for me is because of the theatrical approach to music. How unhinged it is but at the same time so put together and collected. I think it’s just Gaga’s strongest body of work. 

During the cycle of that album, she lived, slept, and breathed art. Like she was the embodiment of art. She used her body for art. Her emotions like … it’s something I’ll always look up to. I’ll never forget how I felt when Artpop was released and all the press she did and the concerts and how all her live shows looked. Oh my gosh, when I was like ten years old, discovering that I like shit my pants! I’ll never forget it.

Now you released an EP in February called evil twin, which represents your duality as an artist. You’re dealing with that line between your fascination for pop music and experimental music. Why are you so torn between these genres? 

A lot of it has to do with my ego getting in the way of things and how people view me, honestly, and credibility as an artist. Not wanting to just be a pop-music generator—constantly making circus-level, down-the-middle pop music—and me being somewhat pushed to do that to a certain extent. And me just not wanting to do that all the time but also loving pop music. 

During the process of making evil twin, I didn’t listen to any pop music at all. I listened to things like Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, and Aphex twin— just weird techno music. I was just so inspired by them. My sense of reality is always changing; what I view as cool and what I sort of hyper-fixate on. (laughs) It happens to me often. I felt as though this experimental music was the coolest thing in the world. I hated pop music, but then I recognized pop music is cool, and I like the experimental music, so I put them both into one. 

I loved the artwork of the EP! Does it have a special meaning because we see you four times? Why did you decide to put four different Isaacs on the artwork? 

Well, thank you. The reason why I did that is because the first single is the “love, or the lack thereof” and there were two of me. The second single was “intimate moments”, which is three of me. And then I decided for the grand reveal of the EP—for the art—I would have four. There’s no real symbolic meaning. I just love the composition. I told the people I was working with “I want four of me, so it fills up the entire square”, and I’m obsessed. I’m so glad you love it too!

I have a feeling you are an artist that puts a lot of effort into his visuals. Do you like to compliment the story of the music video with the meaning of the song, or do you try to get two different perspectives? 

Oh, that’s a great question. Visuals have always been intuitive for me. For example, when I write a song, I see something visual at the same time. I’m sort of cultivating two buildings: making the song also happen with this visual escape. So really, I based the visuals off of whatever I feel from a song, even if it’s not about the meaning of the lyrics. Sometimes I just see colors that remind me of different synths from songs that I made. It’s always different. Always different.

For your song “pink party” you used a fisheye camera. Is there a special meaning behind the choices you made there? 

Honestly, as I said, it’s all so intuitive; I just do it randomly. I remember I made the “pink party” deck—that’s where I put all the different scenes and what I want in each shot—and so I just thought fisheyes. It gave me the feeling of the intro of the song because it felt very curious sounding. The synths just spoke to me in like a curiosity-killed-the-cat kind of way that reminded me of a fisheye for whatever reason. It’s a very strange process I have. (laughs)