Xanthí: Emotive Ideas of Sound
Military velvet jacket and fringe skirt by Elizabeth Emmanuel, tights by Wolford
“My mother used to play the accordion and my father has been playing the guitar the past decade, so beautifully. He has a magical voice.”
“In a half-asleep state I am in touch with a playful subconscious that honours colour, but music is enough as it is. It’s more connected to powerful urges and memories rather than abstractions.”
“I want to make music without trying too hard, so my process is very drawn to imperfection.”
“I had just bought a guitar for my birthday and had written a song using three chords, without knowing how to play. She brought over hers. We recorded it with two guitars, in my living room and we both sang it.”
“I’ll take life as it comes, not constantly seeking, but experiencing to the fullest.”
Xanthí
Emotive Ideas of Sound
INTERVIEW BY DAEN PALMA HUSE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAM SHERGILL
STYLED BY SETA NILAND
MAKE UP BY JONAS OLIVER
HAIR BY ISSEY HYDE
NAILS BY JULIA BABBAGE
Songrwriter and singer Xanthí has released her latest album: Problems. Describing her music as dark, confessional, and impulsive she has us hooked with her sensuous style and embracing a sensible play with imperfections. Asked about her genre, she replies “I’d say dark pop with a downtempo twist at times. There are random trip-hop elements and lighter pop melodies in there. To me, it’s not one genre. It’s expressions of me. I’m not pulling a Walt Whitman on you, though.” The new album feels like a nuanced sound exploration of the past, present, and future. Xanthi explores a personal journey, which the listener can follow through all of the album’s thirteen songs. We spoke to her about some of her inspirations, memories, languages and sound when writing, performing, recording and producing.
What is your earliest memory of music?
I think it would be my father playing on the guitar a Greek folkish kid’s song that mimics farm animal sounds. My grandmother also sang English kid’s songs to us. I don’t know if it counts, but I had excellent high notes, as most five-year-olds do, and I remember pretending to sing opera at the staircase of our flat just to enjoy the reverb.
What came first for you, writing music or performing music? Tell us more about your journey. You once said that you are a music writer first and foremost that also performs her music, is that still true?
I wrote my first songs with a friend when we were seven years old. We would write the lyrics, come up with a melody and then perform them a capella. We were horrific and the name “Tiger Girls” didn’t make us any better. But we were kids! Once I started writing my own music on the piano, as a teenager, it was incredibly fulfilling. Singing comes secondary, because I wouldn’t be a singer for other songwriters. My need is to create something so I can express myself, through melodies, lyrics and creative ideas. Even when I sing covers, I “reshape” the music, it becomes my own creative process.
Jacket by A Cold Wall
Have you always written in English? Have you ever faced any difficulties working in a language that isn’t your mother tongue? If so, how have you overcome these? What possibilities have you seen working in English that you didn’t see working in another language, Greek for instance?
Both my BA and MA were in English, but even before that, English came most naturally to me. In Greece everyone grew up watching American/British films and listening to anglophone albums, so I was writing poetry and lyrics in English since I was thirteen. I love how liberating the syntax and grammar are – but it’s more than that. The most complex theories and philosophical concepts I learned at university were in English. So, my horizons opened, and my thinking evolved within an English mental landscape. Language isn’t independent of your way of interpreting the world. Inevitably, as I also write for a living, this had a huge effect on me.
Describe your heritage to us. You were born and raised in Greece but spent time in the UK also. How do different cultures impact on your cultural artistry?
I can’t really describe my heritage. It’s like trying to share inside jokes from Greek TV sitcoms with a British boyfriend. It won’t work. And it’s unnecessary. We all have so much in common due to globalisation anyway, so I cannot but adore the British. You can’t really think poorly of a country who gave us the Beatles, the Clash, PJ Harvey and Scout Niblett. Who gave us Black Adder, Black Books and all the royal drama. I do realise this is an apolitical view, but I inhabit pop culture and there’s a rather comforting illusion of safety in it. I would love to move to London again, but Brexit makes it hard. So now I also inhabit the fantasy of my return.
What impact have your parents had on your musical education and formation? Feel free to speak about (other) close personal connections that impacted on this.
Both my parents duet all the time a capella, on road trips, in the kitchen, at little taverns with friends. My mother used to play the accordion and my father has been playing the guitar the past decade, so beautifully. He has a magical voice. They were the ones to suggest piano of course, though they couldn’t foresee that I’m the kind of person who can’t study what’s supposed to be fun. I did it for a few years and then stopped, until I felt it was my own choice to return to it and write emo pop ballads. Sounds like revenge, and maybe it was!
Visually, what styles are you inspired by the most?
If we are talking about fashion, I’m inspired by sexier, darker styles like 1990s Dolce & Gabbana. Or more androgynous with a looser fit like Diane Keaton’s style throughout the years and The Row (the Olsens’ brand). Depends on the day and the mood.
Frock coat by Elizabeth Emmanuel, body chain by Vicki Sarge, tights by Wolford, boots by Serio Rossi
Military velvet jacket and fringe skirt by Elizabeth Emmanuel, tights by Wolford, shoes by Gina
Do you connect colours to sound?
It’s not something that I feel I’ve spent time thinking about. I usually connect colours to people. I envision auras in my head sometimes. In a half-asleep state I am in touch with a playful subconscious that honours colour, but music is enough as it is. It’s more connected to powerful urges and memories rather than abstractions.
What is your favourite everyday sound?
The laughs of my colleagues when we crack a joke. Not as romantic, but that’s the one!
We are now very used to listening to music in stereo rendition. There have been so many experimental ways of recording and producing “stereo” effects in music over the years, including the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and rudimentary early ways of recording voice and instrumental separately and then playing voice to one speaker, the instrumental to another. Are there any of these techniques that you know or that you keep in mind when producing music?
Not really, I prefer stereo music, despite having enjoyed recordings using those techniques you refer to. I take stereo for granted, I’m not super experimental when it comes to that, I just love playing around with panning automations and taking advantage of the space in the recordings. I always start mixing at home by myself before I go to the studio for the final mixing and mastering. But I find it super interesting how recording works in classical music and the realistic mirroring of the sound, or how I am still surprised when listening to songs from the 1960s & 70s and I still catch myself isolating the sound to one ear indulging in a childlike curiosity that these old-school panning techniques invoke.
You describe your music as “imperfect” – can you tell us more about this?
I want to make music without trying too hard, so my process is very drawn to imperfection. And imperfection is born out of the circumstances and the real soundscape surrounding us. I have kept first-time recordings in the album and “mistakes” just to be true to the moment and its own noises. So sometimes in my songs you might catch a sound of a car passing by the balcony and it’s got nothing to do with what Miles Davis and Easy Mo Bee did in Doo-Bop [laughs]. It’s just an accident! The only time I’ve done this on purpose and tried to create a soundscape with movement using sounds from clicking my nails on my teeth, my breath and body was for a choreography at Onassis Stegi in Athens. It was a performance by Iro Vassalou and I created the soundtrack and sound design. I had to make something knowing how the dancer would move. I followed a visual progression and helped it evolve. What I’d actually love to do is make music for a horror film. It would be the very peak of creativity for me!
Tell us about your new album: how does it differ from your previous albums?
My first album was actually 10 years ago, and it was produced by King Elephant. In between I had some singles released and an EP, all self-produced. Problems is more minimalist in production and lyrics and it’s actually a mosaic of songs written between 2014 to today. I am someone who tends to be nostalgic, so gathering all these pieces that coin an evolved version of me, helped me see myself as I am now without having to renounce the past. Because that’s what I do. I store everything and cherish it forever. This album is produced mainly by myself, many are a collaboration with Thanasimos and three of them with Rami Winston. It’s my most personal work so far. It’s all me, it’s my own ideas, my own imperfections, my own inconsistencies. I took my own sweet time just to be able to pick moments from this past decade to look back to and feel good about them, including situations that may have inspired me but were tough. Some songs are role-playing, but that too expresses a need of mine. The roles we choose show exactly who we are – and that’s not the roles.
Tell us more about some of your favourite songs from the new album and tell us what you felt when you wrote these. Which was the most exciting to produce?
My favourite song is “Nobody Remembers Anything”. It’s my most personal song ever, a confession about the dark moments I’ve experienced when dealing with loss, unrelated to death. You love people, but then everyone seems to move on without looking back. Everyone seems to forget. If you are highly sensitive, the realisation and acceptance that most people do not relate as deeply can be a very difficult process. And it doesn’t have to be your own experience. Sometimes looking around can take a toll on you. That’s why most cynics, in reality are, romantics. This song was my last effort to cling to the ideal that feelings last, a failed rite of passage into cynicism.
Another song is Reality/Destiny, which was written way back in 2015, where I was striving to feel wanted by someone who pursued me but once he had me his intentions did not translate into actions. I felt it was a "me" thing and "us" not being as compatible. I had called a friend singer/guitarist, Nina, to chill at home. I had just bought a guitar for my birthday and had written a song using three chords, without knowing how to play. She brought over hers. We recorded it with two guitars, in my living room and we both sang it. When Rami Winston heard it in 2022, he took those voices from 2015 and some of the guitars and gave that song new life. I am so glad I have this memory in the album. Our voices sound so good together and the timing inconsistencies when it comes to the double tracking part suit the “incompatibility” concept of the song.
The most exciting to produce was Mother Und Father which opens the album, because I worked a lot on it, kept adding tracks and automations for months. It was the most fun I’ve had recording something. I also like that song for the random inspiration to use the German “and”, “und”, that escalates into switching “mother” and “father” in “Mutter” & “Vater”. There was absolutely no reason for it.
Are there any patterns as to when song ideas come to you? Is there a particular mind frame you find yourself in often when you write?
Usually when I make music, I’m either infatuated or melancholic. But I go through periods of time with no urge to go into the studio. I don’t want to ever pressure creativity into existence. I must have something to say to make music, because most of the time my tracks come with lyrics. I rarely separate those two, except for when I am asked to for someone else’s project.
As a songwriter, how do you write? Pen and paper? Your mobile phone notes? … or perhaps voice notes?
When it comes to lyrics, and not music, I usually create a base on Logic, and when there’s a draft beat, some synth bass maybe and a melody, I start improvising on the mic while recording. If something comes out of it, I’ll write it in a notebook or the phone and I’ll usually go from there. Sometimes I’ve kept grammatically incorrect phrases just because they felt right. You can’t limit a stream of consciousness. At least I don’t want to.
What impact has the pandemic had on your creative work? Were there any radical changes before the release of the album that were affected by more recent events?
During the most difficult periods of the pandemic, I had surrendered to the terrifying grip of the moment and there’s limited space for inspiration when I can’t rely on the comfort of what I know. And that present was as blurry as the future. Still, I did make music. Two of the songs written during the pandemic were released as singles. Some others I’ve kept in my “drawer” and I’m sure I’ll get back to them soon. I always need my songs to mature within me before I decide to release them. So, it was early 2022 when I chose to finalise edits and productions of songs that I had loved for a long time instead and never had the courage to let the world hear.
Have you come out wiser “the other end”?
I have. I look inside a lot. I do the work. I’ve been going to therapy for years. I have felt “wise” for a while now, but it’s different to know and realise some things and to act according to that knowledge. The difference is now I am more eager to take life as it comes, while understanding my worth. It’s very liberating when you gradually learn to love yourself while accepting the insecurities that make you human as well as the chaos that can change everything in a second.
Blue sports dress by Red Valentino, gold metal bra by Natasha Zinko, boots by Matic Veler
When listening to your songs, what would you like the listener to keep in mind? Putting something creative out into the world is like a gift to the world. Once given, people can listen and make up their own mind, you have no control anymore. Does that excite you because of the possibilities this creates? Or does it also sometimes scare you because of being misunderstood? How important are these aspects to your work?
People will always feel what they want to feel, what they are ready to feel. They’ll react a certain way to something independent of what that is, because they will experience it through them. Sure, it might affect me if they misunderstand me, but people make assumptions for everything without knowing everything or everyone. It’s ok, that’s life. My music is me and I’m not going to shy away from the world just because not everyone will see me for who I am. Those who will see me, I will see them too and that’s what matters. Nothing is real enough if not shared.
What’s next?
Maybe a live performance, maybe an album with Greek covers only, maybe more singles! Definitely more collaborations with different producers. Now that I put my own songs out, I am ready to work with other artists. It was something I needed to do and now I want to do more. But mainly, I’ll take life as it comes, not constantly seeking, but experiencing to the fullest.