An Interview with Imitation
- BuzzSlayers
- 12 hours ago
- 6 min read
A new release from Imitation is a gorgeous piece of music in the form of a vast end thriving electronic and ethereal, dream and glitch approach that takes elements of cinematic backbone and amazing synthesizers and keys, along with samples of vocals, to bring together such extraordinary moods and create thick atmospheres that invite you along for the ride.
"All Shards" is indeed inviting. And take a bit of a musical journey into these wonderfully textured layers of soundscape, and as the song unfolds, you find yourself drifting off with it and sort of going through memories of your own.
The samples and synth pads are very deep. There's a lot of distance that is created in a lot of wetness that the mix puts through, so that you feel that you are embedded with the song shortly after it begins.
It's quite a beautiful sensation, and the sounds are totally bright and beautiful, so it creates something that feels graceful and almost elegant in a sense. The sounds begin to sort of swirl around you and swallow you up, but in a good way.
It is very easy to get engulfed by a track like this one because there is a lot of attention paid to how the song will build and what sort of sounds will be incorporated as it plays through.
There are strings that hold steady, giving it that cinematic and robust sort of feel, slow-burning into the midst of the song and pulling you into the atmosphere pretty early on.
You can also hear some of those vocals drenched in reverb effect, way in the background, fading in and out, and to me, this was a beautiful effect.
The further along the song goes, the closer the vocals get. Before you know it, they are right up front, and they are gorgeous with a beautiful cultural flair along with this sort of huge intensity that hits.
As this is happening, towards the middle of the track, you start getting new keys and synthesizers that come into play and start building a different aesthetic.
I love the effect that the keys have during the section because it starts pushing the electronic sensation a little bit more.
Until now, we have more of an atmospheric and cinematic, string and pad-based track built with lyrics that are coming through both in the background and now up front. But now that these new keys are there, the electronic side starts building.
The keys start becoming a little bit more rambunctious, and I like this too. The energy starts rising a bit, and all of a sudden, beats come into play. Now the percussion is sort of pushing the song along, and it's got a classic, almost breakbeat style to it, beckoning the glitch aspect a little bit more as well.
The textural tones of the vocals and that synthesizer really mesh together incredibly. There's something special about how those two sounds feel when they're going at the same time.
The beat really does help take you away, and the entire song is an absolute escape.
This track pulls you away from wherever you are and whatever you're doing and puts you in a completely different world for a small chunk of time, which to me is a gift in music.
Now, this is actually a sort of EP. The reason I say that is because the single comes with an intro that's only about a minute long, but really helps bring some of the intensity into the track at the very beginning. This one-minute build-up really gives you a little bit of a glimpse of what's to come by bringing in some of that spacious underbelly right from the start.
This helps you get engulfed by everything before the actual track even begins.
On Spotify, this flows right into the radio edit of "All Shards", which is also amazing; however, listening to the full version, which is the third track in line, is the best way to go.
The full version has more going on. It's over a minute longer and really just lets you soak everything up.
This is a track to listen to with headphones on, so you could take in all these layers and textures that are going on throughout the song and really get wrapped up in everything.
It just feels great to do it this way.
Now, as you listen to this track, be sure and read our interview with the project below because we ended up asking some questions surrounding the release, vocals, mix, influences, and more.
This is a great way to take in this track and learn a lot more about where it came from.
So, take a deep dive into this one and remember where you heard it first.
Buzz Slayers: Hey and, thanks for taking some time with us! Let's talk a bit about the "All Shards"! This track was tripped out, vast, and cinematic with brilliant production! Where did this song come from?
Bulcsu: I was fiddling with some vocal samples for another track when it hit me. I had listened to these recordings about a hundred times by then, but it was as if I’d never heard them before. I found some elemental and hymnic beauty in them that completely took me over. It was a mixture of sadness, yet also of hopeful patience, grace and vulnerability. I immediately dropped everything else I was working on and tried to create a musical background that could accompany this voice. It became the hardest track I’ve ever worked on. I tried to build a kind of barricade and bonfire from music – a place where these voices could rest and be sheltered.
Buzz Slayers: I am hearing some great styles here! Can you give us some of your biggest musical influences?
There are artists who influenced us the deepest but in a subtle and not obvious way in what we do, and there are more direct similarities we have with other musicians, somethimes with much lighter inspirational connection, and we are trying to answer with the first category, because it seems more interesting
These are the artists who left the deepest mark on our expression in the last few years:
Actress, Koreless, Autechre, Michelle Gurevich, Tim Hecker, The Knife, Floating Points, Brad Mehldau, SOPHIE, Mark Guiliana, Madeleine Peyroux, Arca, Sibylle Baier, Mount Eerie, Bo Burnham, Tricky, Burial, David Lang, James Blake, Bill Wurtz, Esbjörn Svennson, Fiona Apple
Buzz Slayers: How did this all start for you as a band?
At the time, Zsanett was mostly singing jazz, but she always wanted to express herself through more genre-fluid, experimental and art-electronic styles and tones as well. In the beginning she worked with many great musicians and producers, but there was always a need to compromise her vision – to smooth out the edges. So I started making some reference tracks to help her find the tone I imagined she envisioned. That became our first song: Bright As Fear.
Since then, we’ve allowed ourselves total freedom to experiment with styles, tones, and emotions – with no compromise in our vision or raw expression. Some of our listeners say that’s what makes us most compelling to them: every song is different, yet together they somehow form a coherent Imitation story.
Buzz Slayers: Do you find it hard to write songs like this?
Bulcsu: This one was hard for me. We’ve worked with complex sound structures and elaborate sound design fabrics before, but the most challenging part was to preserve the clarity and the elusive, personal tone of the singing throughout this long arc of shifting soundscapes.Zsanett: Since all vocals are fully improvised in our new series of songs, it gives me the biggest freedom in expressing myself. So for me it’s really easy to create music these days.
Buzz Slayers: Do you play live shows at all?
We used to play more live shows before - but always preferred quality over quantity.We cut it back about 2 years ago.Our last album’s premiere was not a concert but a listening event, because we wanted to share our experiences and back stories about working on this special project with Kazuhiro Takeuchi.
Sometimes collective listening and conversations can give more to the audience than reproducing the same songs live.Also the music we are creating nowadays (beginning with Time Rhymes), and especially this year’s improvisative glitchtronica series is more focused on capturing special fragile moments e.g. in form of vocal fragments, and that is not something a concert version can give you back properly.Of course we also have a concert program we play sometimes when we are invited to give a live show but we don’t pursue these gigs nowadays. We only had one tour in Germany and one public concert in Hungary this year.
Instead of live events we are planning to work on more visual and total art collaborations in the future. (A new music video is coming out soon.)
Buzz Slayers: Who is in your headphones right now?
Jenny Hval – Iris Silver Mist
Ralph Heidel – anyways.onto better things
Lazarus (OST) – Kamasi Washington, Floating Points, Bonobo
Tim Hecker – Shards
Actress – Tranzkript 1
Koki Nakano – Ululō
Nicholas Payton – notes from the zen gangster
Nonkeen – All good?
Brad Mehldau – Ride Into The Sun
Garbage – Let All We Imagine Be The Light
Buzz Slayers: What kind of advice would you have for other bands getting their music out there?
The system is rigged against you. So you are free. Express yourself with no compromise.
Buzz Slayers: What can you say people might expect from this song?
An art-electro hymn, and a subtle optimist vibe, which is totally out of caracter for us.
Best,Zsanett & Bulcsu