Wonderful party last night! Jolanda and Karen's Q&A Part One today - musical background and philosophy
Hi friends - hope all good :)
Huge thanks for coming to the party last night! As always we had an awesome crowd of regulars and great to see some new faces too :)
Getting everyone together really does make each release extra-special - being able to hang-out and listen as one big community really is a privilege, very grateful to all of you!
Amazing to see all the love for Jolanda and Karen’s album - ethereal, magical, enchanting, hypnotic - just some of the words we saw repeatedly - agree with them all!
Thanks for all the support too - digital remains half-price and CDs with the unique mixed long-form edition still available.
Now for Part One of our Q&A - big thanks to Jolanda and Karen!
Please tell us a bit about your background and history in music?
Jolanda:
My journey in music has always been deeply personal and intuitive. I started with the piano as a child, drawn to it not just as an instrument, but as a living presence, something that held silence and sound together in a sacred balance. Over time, my relationship with music expanded to include voice, percussion, electronics, field recordings, and visual arts like collage, photography, and video. I’ve never seen a strict boundary between sound and image. Everything I create starts from an intuition, often tied to the unseen, the ancestral, or the symbolic.
A big part of my musical life has been shaped by my band She Owl, which I co-founded in San Francisco, California. In She Owl, I’m the lead vocalist, pianist, and producer. We’ve toured extensively across Europe and the US for more than ten years. Touring taught me how to build intimate sonic worlds in very different contexts and environments. It also taught me how to stay connected to emotion and presence, no matter where I was.
Living a nomadic life between Italy, California, Berlin, Paris, and beyond, I’ve gathered stories, textures, and people that all somehow find their way into my work. During the 2020 lockdown, this process turned inward with my piano project, Sound of Spells. I recorded the album Birdscapes using just an old upright piano and a single microphone, integrating birdsong recordings sent by friends from around the world. It was a way of staying connected, spiritually and sonically, at a time of isolation. That project reminded me that simplicity, honesty, and shared listening can be incredibly powerful.
In 2022, I released my first multimedia solo work, Nine Spells, a vocal and visual ritual inspired by old family photographs and the stories of my female ancestors. Each track was paired with a collage and a video, released in sync with the moon's phases. Performing this work live at Le Guess Who? festival marked a turning point for me. It was the moment I fully embraced performance as ritual - something that blends the personal and the collective, the spiritual and the artistic.
Karen:
I’m an Australian-born artist and have been based in Paris, France, for the past 15+ years. I’m a vocalist and a very intuitive musician when it comes to how I record, mix, and produce my music. I first considered making music when I was 19, after inheriting my brother’s guitar following his passing. Grief led me to learn how to play, as a way to feel connected to my brother and just process my feelings. Every time I played, it felt like I was crawling through a secret portal and accessing a very direct energy that was beyond words or rationality. I’m a self-taught artist, and I learn best by experiencing, fumbling through it, and allowing myself to get completely lost in the moment.
In 1999, I co-founded Heligoland, and since 2007, we've worked closely with producer Robin Guthrie (of Cocteau Twins) as he’s been involved in all our releases since then. I’ve been making music for 25 years now, and it’s been a strong passion, but never a full-time occupation. But in 2018, I really began to stretch my legs as a solo artist, creating experimental, improvised, atmospheric music and letting myself explore and do things differently. I also love collaborating and have worked with quite a few people over the past few years through doing guest vocals or collaborations, often circling back to those I want to keep working with. It’s a bit overwhelming when I look at all the music I made and was involved with over the past 5 + years, but I also love the growth I’ve experienced and the different directions it has taken me without being tied to one label. I love being free to make the music I want to make and carve out my own path.
Please can you describe a bit about your general philosophy and process as an artist?
Jolanda: At the heart of my work is the belief that music is a form of spell-casting, an act of transformation that can open a dialogue with the unseen. I think of my performances as rituals, sacred spaces where people can reconnect with intuition, memory, and emotion. I’m not interested in perfection or performance in a traditional sense. What moves me is the rawness, the truth of a voice trembling or a piano note decaying into silence. That’s where the sacred lives.
I work a lot with symbolism. I often use the lunar cycle, archetypes, ancestral memory, and elements from the natural world as frameworks. These become vessels to carry deeper messages. I’m especially interested in the invisible threads that bind us across time and space, and how sound can help us trace them. My goal is to create immersive, multimedia experiences that allow the listener to feel part of something timeless and sacred. Whether it’s a whispering voice looped into a choir, or a visual spell made of torn photographs and ancient symbols, I want people to feel seen, remembered, and stirred. For me, the most radical act of art today is not to entertain but to reawaken our senses, our intuition, and our sense of wonder.
Ultimately, I see music not as an end, but as a path. A path back to ourselves, to each other, and to something beyond the visible. And I feel honored every time someone chooses to walk a part of that path with me.
Karen: Something I think about often is how each of us is so unique in our voice, our approach, and the way we express ourselves. I’ve always had this drive to see how far I could go in expressing myself, not necessarily to reach my “potential,” but more to explore what’s possible. I’m drawn to anything that takes me deeper into the flow of creative energy and allows me to trust whatever music, vocals, or ideas come through. A big part of my philosophy is to give myself the freedom and space to let the shyest, deepest, moodiest, and most natural-feeling parts of me rise to the surface.
Improvisation has played a huge role in my life over the past few years. It’s been incredibly nourishing and creatively fulfilling. It keeps me present and reminds me how much I still have to explore, and how much is yet to come into being. I use improvisation whenever I create music and often begin with no expectations of myself or of what the outcome will be.
Even when I collaborate with others, I approach it with the same openness. I want to see how I respond - whether it’s to the person, their music, or the material they bring. It’s always about connection, curiosity, and following the moment. I‘m interested in being as human as I can possibly be.
What does quiet details mean to you and how did you use that to approach this album?
Jolanda and Karen: We interpreted quiet details as paying attention to what was not obvious. The blink and you’ll miss it moments. So we were noticing each breath, microphone bump, softer melody, pedal switch, pause, and other interesting detours. This was about going deeper into those sounds and not following the obvious choices or louder ideas. A less is more approach, but also an exercise in paying attention.
Now some shout-outs:
qd35 Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt
Big thanks to
for including the release in this week’s First Floor.Much respect to Shawn, as well as covering some of the best new music around, he’s a very important journalist voice, fearlessly reporting on vital issues of our time.
Highly recommend subscribing and supporting however you can.
qd19 Loula Yorke and qd29 ASC
Thanks to the always-supportive No Place Like Drone crew for including tracks on their 100th mix! Big congrats to them, fantastic series - check it out!
Much love and have a great weekend!
Alex
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