[Interview + Premiere] A/C Repair School – Órfãs
* Pour lire la version française de cette entrevue cliquez ICI!
Every Grimalkin releases resonates with great attention in the ears of MEFD members and when we have the opportunity to share the fantastic work of the collective with you, we don’t miss it. We’re therefore ecstatic to premiere the very first album of A/C Repair School, a duo formed by Rafael de Toledo Pedroso (deus1, DJ Pai Ausente, heche, Pedroso & Pedrosa, summer 2015) and Carolina Simionato (soft verges). At the crosslines of electronic, punk and folk and permanently displaying a dreamy aspect that makes it so unique, their music acts as a real remedy for the ills of life. Órfãs will enchant you with its beauty, its tenderness, but also its intensity. Learn more about the wonderful duo in this interview we did with Carolina and Rafael. Enjoy the read!
To buy the album, it’s HERE!
You’re releasing Órfãs today on Grimalkin Records, your first album has A/C Repair School. I was wondering if it was your first collaboration and how did you start working together?
Carolina: Yes, it was our first collaboration. I met Rafael through a friend in common, who listened to the first few songs I self-released on Bandcamp in June 2019 and put together a little group of people who might want to make some music together. As a group we didn’t manage to finish anything, but Rafael and I got to talking and to making music together, thankfully.
Rafael: Yeah! Órfãs was our first contact musically! As soon as I heard soft verges (Carol’s solo project) I was excited to work with her.
Your songs carry a strong emotional charge and are delivered with a lot of tenderness and fragility. Your art seems to be a very powerful outlet, I wondered what made you approach the theme of abandonment on your album and what was your state of mind when composing these songs?
R: Abandonment only became a conscious theme after we were able to step back and distance ourselves from the album a bit – by then it became very clear how those tracks connected to each other, it also became clear that we were able to capture a very beautiful and melancholic moment. Carol is able to answer this one way better than me as she wrote all the lyrics on the album – I always get very emotional when listening to it, as it is relatable in so many different ways and every time I listen the lyrics seem to relate to different kinds of abandonment.
C: I don’t think we really knew it was about abandonment from the start. I know I didn’t. But looking back, it’s easier to connect the dots. I think Rafa and I have had a lot of experiences around this theme, which is also maybe (or probably) why we could sense what the other one was expressing. I often felt abandoned and rejected as a child, even though I wasn’t aware of it. I lived with my parents on a settlement from MST (a landless workers movement), and one could feel we were very much rejected, through how people treated us everywhere, even my teachers or the other kids, how the media portrayed us, how violently the police confronted us. But I was also seen as a weird kid, so that didn’t help — I was often alone even on the settlement. My parents weren’t really emotionally stable nor were they able to deal with a lot of things, which just made matters much worse.
Now it’s easy to see how that leads a kid to feeling alone and rejected and abandoned by the world. On the other hand, I loved reading and music so much, and I had a couple of adults around me who believed in me and instilled in me a sensibility that I treasure. My parents also did their best in many aspects, empathy towards others being one of them, even if there were a lot of pieces missing, and even if that empathy was often not directed at me. By the time I met Rafael, I was dealing with all of these issues through psychoanalysis, so it was all coming to the surface. And as a Latin-American woman living in Germany, there was even more rejection and abandonment to be felt. I was also dealing not only with unrequited love, which I still feel, but also dealing with it in a very sad manner, probably through those layers of decades of feeling rejected and abandoned. I really didn’t get it at the time, but in this album I’m always singing about all of these things together and how they constitute me. I think it’s mostly about love, but in a very roundabout manner… very much melancholy and about not being loved. It’s truly a pleasure to be able to understand that now and to still feel it all, but in a much lighter manner. But that moment in my life was, I think, very much the perfect storm to create Órfãs.
Being thousands of kilometers away from each other, Carol in Hamburg and Rafa in Paraná, how did the distance influence your creative process and what did you learn from that experience?
C: It’s hard to tell if our music would be possible had we been able to make it physically together, but the distance definitely shaped how I approached it. First of all, I don’t think I would’ve been able to sing so honestly had someone else been there in the room with me. I usually sang freely for many minutes and sent it to Rafael for him to do what he wanted with it. It was a process of letting go of even thought and just going with the flow of free association, and a lot of things came out that I had not planned at all. I think I didn’t plan most of it, except for a few lines in cachorro (we stone). So in a way it was very freeing and it allowed me to be vulnerable in a moment of my life where I think I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable with other eyes and ears and brains right there in the room with me.
R: I agree with Carol – I would have not been able to produce so freely, to really experiment with a few textures and rhythms I wanted with another person in the room – maybe after a while but as Órfãs was our first contact musically, to have that freedom it was great. I remember being scared if Carol was going to enjoy the first instrumental I did or not, not only she liked but turned out shaping a good portion of Órfãs.
Your music is a highly melancholic and noisy kind of dream punk which I find amazing. What were your influences (musical or not) to be able to create such an original and touching result?
C: That’s something Rafael can definitely answer better than I ever could. I was just very amazed by his instrumentals and mixing and felt the vocals and instrumentals really fit together. But we had talked about our common influences, so maybe that was part of it? I remember when we were just getting to know each other, we had an important talk about how much Velvet Underground meant for each of us, for instance. Maybe we also talked about Sonic Youth? Rafa, what do you think?
R: Yeah, for sure, I remember some long conversations about Velvet Underground and that definitely always influences me musically. I didn’t go into the production of Órfãs with any influence in mind, most of it was born in improv and I wanted to achieve a punk-ish atmosphere using only an old keyboard and a monotron, it had to sound raw but still maintain its beauty.
Rafa, you are also part of Pedroso & Pedrosa alongside Pedro Pedrosa and you produce different styles of music under many monikers (heche, deus1, DJ Pai Ausente, Summer 2015). Carol, you are creating haunting and beautiful soundscapes under the name soft verges. What can we expect from both of you in 2021?
C: First of all, thank you so much! Haunting and beautiful is what they aim to be. I am in the process of figuring out how I work best and experimenting with a lot of sounds that interest me. I am working on new tracks that go in a somewhat-different direction I’m actually quite pleased with. I don’t know where it all leads or what I’ll do with it once I feel these tracks are done, but it’s been a cool ride.
R: More music! I have some releases ready for 2021 and I am also producing some new material. I don’t really know what to make of this year yet but I am trying to maintain the same level of production as last year, hopefully.
Thanks for your time!