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Interview

An Interview with helen island + Great Area

By Gabriella Meshako

Endlessly ethereal. Uniquely metropolitan. Mystically hypnagogic. Few other artists capture soulful intensity in an age of late-stage capitalism like the work of helen island & Great Area. Echoing tales of disillusionment, enchantment, & somber memories, liminal sprawls blur and cascade around their equally hazy tracks.

Paris’s helen island creates dreamily alternative pop music. On his newest LP silence is priceless, stripped down beats, ghostly synths, & shadowy vocals waltz about the intimate bedroom production. With Great aAea’s newest release Good Coding, melancholic detached vocals drape themselves amongst bleepy synths and fuzzy organs. Prior to their double release show at Dokzaal, we invited helen island & great area to share their inspiration, memories, & mantras. 

Most recent non-musical inspirations?

helen island: weed.

Great Area: The song a dream as sweet as this on the new album is a cover of a nestle ad.

How do you interpret beauty in your work?

 

Great Area: if the dopamine flows, its beautiful.

 

helen island: What is beautiful to one person is ugly to another. And vice versa.

What physical spaces are influential to your work and why?

 

helen island: Big cities full of individualities and pollution because it’s where we live.

 

Great Area: The recent video has footage of a visit to Daniel Johnston’s grave in Katy, Texas.

 

 

What digital spaces are influential to your work and why?

helen island: Youtube, Instagram, royalty free loops websites. It’s where I spend the most of my time, where I found a big part of my inspirations.

 

Great Area: I can’t answer that specifically. 
First musical memory?

 

Great Area: idk The Beatles?

 

helen island: “Bring Da Ruckus” song from the Wu Tang.

 

Sounds or textures you have been drawn to recently?

 

Great Area: Violin DNC in the ORG 24 app.


Could you share a work that has shaped your practice?

helen island: Enter the Wu Tang by the Wu Tang Clan

 

Great Area: Theres a cover of Human Cannonball by Butthole Surfers on the last album.

Mantra you live by?

 

helen island: I could say “l’argent c’est rien, le respect c’est tout”, but I’ll say “we have hope because we have love”. 

 

Great Area: I’m not mantra oriented.

 

Catch helen island and Great Area perform live at their double release show on June 21st at Dokzaal.

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