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Music

How To Dress Well bonus Q&A

How To Dress Well’s Tom Krell had a lot more to say than we could fit into this feature on him, so here’s the extended version of the email Q&A.

There seems to be more give and take these days between R&B, hip hop, and (for lack of a better word) indie rock. Do you find yourself part of a larger movement, or do you approach the genre conventions in a way that differs from other artists?

No one worried about whether Medulla was part of a crossover scene. I do think that because of 1) the i’net, 2) the fact that we live more and more in cities (more than 50% of the world lives in metropoles now, and that’s steadily growing), 3) the fact that hip-hop and R&B has now booted rock n’ roll off the throne and is THE american music (not to mention the most listened to music world-wide), and 4) all three of these things are inextricably entangled, the kinds of music people are making is changing.

Do you approach those genre conventions in a detached way, or are you engaging with them?

I definitely don’t approach my music with any detached attitude at all. Ever. I feel like because I’m forced to approach so much of the rest of my life in a strategic way, music is like the one avenue where I just get to do me without qualification. With music, I’m not worried about my career profile. Not worried about my credit score. Not worried about my purchasing power. not worried about my reputation. JUST DOING ME.

On record, How To Dress Well is very quiet and intimate. Is that hard to recreate in a live environment?

There’s definitely a difference between How To Dress Well on record and live. For me, the record is very quiet and intimate. I listen to it on headphones. I listen to it when I’m lonely or when public space leaves me wounded or wanting. I make music from this position too, so, live, LOUD, it’s very different. I think a lot of people find it challenging to have a public experience of my music because it is so intimate for them. I would encourage people to let themselves respond to the music live just how they do on record – really listen and really feel. i am always so honored by people who are into my songs, because if you get it that means you’ve really listened and really let your heart open up. It’s so humbling and dope.

We could definitely use more non-religious occasions for public experiences of sadness, of mourning. Playing live, I’ll often just start singing about something. Like on Suicide Dream 2, which is a song about my family, I will often improvise and discover myself really working through some hard, traumatic shit. It is really exhausting for me but really special. In this respect it’s similar to the record, but it is very different for me, psychically, to let myself mourn in my room alone facing a laptop than it is to mourn with so many loving supporters (or haters) on a stage.

Do you do anything in particular to foster that kind of mood?

I use fog and projections and so on because i want to create a certain affective ambience, one which accomodates my music in a live space. When I make my music, I let myself feel very murky and foggy and often find my mind flooded with abstract emotions and images. This is what I try to create live. I try to create the live space so as to accommodate the fragility of the voice and of the songs I make.

For me, the live sound is all about the voice. I’ve worked to re-mixing the backing tracks in unique ways to create room in the sonic space of the song for the live vocal line and for spontaneous singing. My favorite thing about playing live is spontaneously adding new lines to songs, improvising, etc. So while someone might think of having backing tracks as not conducive to improvisation, for me its actually what I need to improvise in meaningful ways.

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