“It was like leaving each other little messages”: Iceboy Violet in conversation with Nueen
The You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through The Fire collaborators catch up to discuss creating a cathartic project, ambient music as an attitude, and why there’s never been a more exciting time in rap than now.
In the music video for Closer, a collaborative song from producer Nueen and rapper Iceboy Violet, shots flick between people asleep clutching mobile phones or at computer desks, while their mouths animate Iceboy’s mumbled vocals. It’s a hazy, beatless track so low-slung that it’s borderline claustrophobic, and the video, produced using AI by director Mau Morgó, creates a combined watching and listening experience that’s skin-crawlingly disquieting.
“Obviously, releasing anything that has anything to do with AI can be quite controversial,” Iceboy says. “It’s interesting, because the relationship that I’m talking about on the album was heavily mediated by phone screens. We used to fall asleep on the phone together, and wake up halfway through, so technology was a really big part of that, and I think AI was a perfect thematic tool for these ideas of artificial closeness and digital distance.”
It was made in the months after Iceboy Violet had broken up with their ex-partner, when in perfect timing they had been gifted “a pile” of beats and ambient productions by Nueen. It gave them a canvas to channel their emotions, and the result is their joint album You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through The Fire, released in June via Hyperdub. With deep, after-dark productions underscoring Iceboy’s apocalyptic vocals, it’s a cathartic breakup album built for 4am night bus rides.
To hear how they did it, we brought the pair together – over a video call, of course – to chat about producing a long-distance album, long-distance relationships, ambient and hip hop as attitudes, and bringing their music to live settings.
When did you first meet and how did you come to collaborate on music?
Nueen: We met each other on the Internet. I listened to Iceboy’s Drown to Float record a few years ago and they listened to a record I released called Link on 3XL. So we started chatting on SoundCloud and then thought it would be nice to try and make some music together.
Iceboy Violet: Yeah, with the Link EP there were all these hip hop samples on it, and I was really into that with Drown to Float – it seemed like a similar kind of relationship to hip hop there, and particularly the emotional weight of it and trying to recontextualise that. We did that, messaged, and then I got broken up with shortly after and there was this stack of beats from Nueen waiting there for me. Then I just started writing, SM_FID was one of the first ones. It was perfect timing really, I needed something to focus on to make the ending of that relationship not push me completely over the edge.
It was very reflective. When it became clear that it was going to become a full project, there was a sense of [trying] to be aware of that. It’s one thing to write loads of songs about being heartbroken, and it’s another to be like “this is an album” and it needs narrative and structure. I think what was really helpful, both for me [and my breakup] and the album was that I realised that it would be really negative if it was just me being angry and upset for 13 tracks – it helped me celebrate the relationship as well and have a much healthier exchange with the pain.
Can you talk about the process of bringing all those ideas together? Both lyrically and sonically?
N: When I make music, I try not to overthink my process. I was listening to a lot of dub techno, and hip hop and trap, but I didn’t know what we wanted to do before we did the whole thing – it developed naturally. But one thing I did know was that I had wanted to make music with a vocalist for a long time. Before I sampled vocals from the internet, or YouTube, but I wanted to go deeper on a project. I was in a good mood at the time, very optimistic, so I felt like I really needed it. Another interesting thing, I was dating at the time and then when we finished the record, we broke up. So Iceboy was going through their breakup and had started feeling better, and then I was going into that headspace.
IV: Yeah, it started and ended with a breakup. But we never talked about the direction, in terms of what I wanted instrumentally. I’m always excited by abstract stuff, so there wasn’t really any direction beyond being like: “I like this beat,” or “I’m not going to use this one.”
N: We only spoke about the direction of the album when the record was finished. It wasn’t premeditated and was very organic. I was sending all these bits to Iceboy, but we have a lot of musical empathy [for each other], so if they approved something it was cool – the whole thing was easy. We made it in three months, so it was fast, but easy at the same time.
Making the album in different cities, were there parallels with the long distance relationship?
IV: It’s a very natural way of being for me. My last three serious relationships have been long distance. It’s horrible, I don’t know why I keep doing it to myself. But musically, just like a long distance relationship, there’s a lot of independence built into it. It was like leaving each other little messages – it’s very cliché, but it was like we were communicating through the music. We would check in with each other and be like: “How are you doing?” But with the real detail in the music, we wouldn’t talk, it would just be there in the recordings I sent back. It really works for me as a style of working, because I feel a lot of pressure when I’m around people and I have to perform in a three-hour studio session.
N: Me too. I feel the same. I’ve tried a lot of times to make music with friends or other people in the studio. It’s too much pressure. We didn’t make any phone calls, or have any physical interactions, but just [spoke] on the internet – it’s perfect for me. But the way we both make music isn’t conventional – we over-process a lot of instruments and sounds, and it’s pretty hard to replicate that live in the studio.
The music is very reminiscent of nighttime, and personally particularly of urban scenes and cityscapes – what do those late-night hours mean to you?
N: It wasn’t premeditated for me. I do like to make dark music, and it’s a vibe that I wanted to replicate. I’m actually not a nocturnal guy. I used to be, but now I just want to wake up early, do some sport and be healthy. I used to make a lot of music at night and would make it until I fell asleep.
IV: I think that’s what interested me in Nueen’s music – that feeling. It’s the kind of music I listen to and make myself. My favourite situation to listen to music is on headphones, at night, walking. I used to work in bars and there would be a lot of missing the last bus and walking home all night listening to music. In that situation you want something very specific and very introspective – music can feel very distant and cold in those situations, and you can feel alone, but it’s also kind of warming.
"The [album]'s title was one of the most romantic things that has ever been said to me"
Can you talk about some of your influences on the album and in general? And where do you both crossover?
N: Our influences are pretty similar, I would say. But I’d been listening to a lot of UK sounds and nu ambient – things from 3XL, Motion Ward and Huerco S – for a lot of years, mixed with music I’ve been listening to all my life, like trap and hip-hop. This record is basically made of samples that are pretty simple, just three or four layers at most. I had the idea to make a record mixing my vision of ambient – in my opinion, ambient is not a genre, it’s a way of doing things. I could listen to a techno track and say that it’s ambient.
IV: Yeah, it’s interesting, I was talking the other day about that same kind of thing with hip-hop – it feels more like an attitude and a way of making music than anything else now. The Sugarhill Gang and Future are both technically hip-hop artists, but are so different. We share a lot of influences though in ambient and hip-hop, and I’m also really into simple music that’s executed well. When I first started making music, all my tracks had two channels and I was like: “How can I pull everything out of just one midi track? How do I get the most out of the least?”
I was listening to a lot of singer-songwriter music [when recording the album], like one person with a guitar kind of stuff – like Adrianne Lenker and Florist were particularly inspiring. That was really good for me, because I think I pulled that kind of attitude into my own songwriting – being less concerned with ideas of legibility and putting faith in an audience to be able to find their own meaning in it. Then I’m always listening to more introspective hip hop stuff, so AKAI SOLO, Earl Sweatshirt and Armand Hammer. That sort of stuff can often be complicated, but there’s also a notion of having short songs – being lyrically dense but delivered in a way that’s never overbearing. So there’s a lot of deliberately short songs [on the album], because I didn’t ever want to get to the point where I was forcing things to get another verse.
It’s interesting you bring up Armand Hammer, I feel like there’s a real movement of artists blending ambient, rap and weirder areas of club music.
IV: The interesting thing about hip-hop is that there are so many rappers in the world that you have to do something very different for anyone to take notice. But yeah, particularly at the moment there’s a really refined mix of club music and ambient, with rapping. You have people rapping over tracks that don’t have drums, or are essentially weird noise experiments – it’s an exciting time.
Can you talk about the process of bringing the music to a live setting, what’s that been like?
N: It’s pretty similar to the record, but I would say it’s pretty difficult to translate my creative process in the studio to a live performance. I work with a lot of over-processed samples, so sometimes it’s hard to translate, but with Iceboy we just do our thing. It’s also way better to share it with someone, I love doing it with them, they have a real presence and they give the show a real performativity. For our first, we didn’t do any rehearsals – the sound check was the first time we played together. But it was good, and a friend of mine works on the lighting design for the show, which is really cool.
IV: It’s a lot more polished than my solo set, which has a lot more jumping about and is more confrontational. But it’s a challenge that I’m really interested in, working out how to perform it on stage. I’ve never not been in control of the music, so giving away control helps me create these spontaneous moments, which I like.
What does You Said You’d Hold My Hand Through The Fire mean to you personally?
IV: Well, the title was one of the most romantic things that has ever been said to me. But the album is odd – it’s weird to write a breakup album and have to talk about it and deal with it afterwards. I’m really proud of it though, it represents a huge step forward for me lyrically and artistically, and I feel quite compassionate towards it as a project and gave me more compassion for the relationship – it changed my life in lots of little ways.
N: In my side, it’s one of the most exciting projects that I’ve ever done. I usually do things very impulsively and then move onto the next thing, but on this we put a lot of effort and energy into building something with a strong narrative and story.
Iceboy Violet and Nueen play at Semibreve Festival, which takes place in Braga between 24-27 October.
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