There was a friend of ours who was an opera singer who was also singing at it, and she called me up upset because she didn’t feel like she fit in the soul genre. I called Bender up – there was this collective called the Soul Collective – and I was playing solo as a part of this showcase. I went home and wrote my interpretation of that melody. And then I was walking home and got a call from my sister saying she had given birth – there was just this release from an intense sort of time, I guess. I remembered it from doing ballet when I was really little it’s a familiar melody. In the studio of this singing teacher’s place, she had the opera that is the flower duet – the Lakmé Flower Duet – and I just saw the word ‘malika’ and I was just trying to make small talk: “you know malika is the sanskrit for jasmine and jasmine is my favorite flower.” She said, “yeah, this is an opera piece,” and she sang it to me. My sister was about to give birth, and I went along to my friend’s singing lesson because he just wanted moral support. For me, spring isn’t a date it’s when I smell jasmine, and “Malika” is sanskrit for jasmine. I came back to Melbourne and it was spring. NAI: It’s pretty crazy, because that was like the first song that we really…I almost feel like “Malika” was the real, original growth of the band, because it was a song that I wrote after coming back from two months in the desert and it was really intense I was houseless. Can you tell me a little bit about how that track came together, and the subtle opera influence in the background? JAMIE: “Malika” is a clearcut standout on the EP. It’s something that translates to somebody as an instrumentalist trying to find that balance – that push and pull – the right amount of tension versus the right amount of sedation. I like juxtaposition that you can be breathy and smooth but abrasive, as well. And language…a lot of my friends are from everywhere – like Columbia and Iraq, Somalia and Cuba. That was my training, just from growing up listening to a wide range of different music. My aunt was studying classic Indian dance for twenty years, so from a young age being exposed to a lot a different music styles but having soul as a staple, I feel like I was never trained formally. That’s where I get my pipes from, but also brought flamenco and music from Mali. I was raised on soul, traditionally – just from growing up around the house, that was the soundtrack to my childhood.
NAI: My mom was a contemporary choreographer, and I grew up with five siblings and we all sang together and stuff. JAMIE: Nai Palm – what kind of musical background do you have? What I’m trying to ask is…where did you get that beautifully unique voice of yours? But for us, we’re still thinking of an EP as like half an hour. JAMIE: But that’s just the norm now, I guess. Albums back in the day were like 70 minutes long and now albums are like 40 minutes. PERRIN: Four songs for us – especially with the amount of music we all make individually – you may as well tack some extra things on there.
We wanted it to be a cohesive piece from start-to-finish, like a whole sonic journey. These are the songs we’re gonna record, but as a result of that process, the interlude idea came about and we extended upon that.
Holistically, there’s four feature songs, so that’s what makes it an EP. With Donuts by J Dilla, some songs are only a minute long – it’s the idea of a song. The idea was to have it as a cohesive piece, but there’s interludes more from like the tip of a hip-hop mixtape sort of vibe. NAI PALM: There’s four actual full-length songs. PAUL BENDER: Because that’s what we thought we were going to make, when we started making it. “We wanted it to be a cohesive piece from start-to-finish, like a whole sonic journey.”
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