Anadol & Marie Klock “Like a ray of sunshine”

Marie (le) & Gözen (Photo: Eda Arda)

Gözen, Marie, first: congratulations to this beautiful collaborative album.
I am curious how the idea for the collaboration grow in you and how the artistic process felt?

Gözen: I heard Marie barking for her song “Pipo le iench” on stage. It is a great song, and I thought I need this thing. I need her! Or somebody just like her. Then after some while we talked about it. The artistic process felt good – like a ray of sunshine.

Marie: As I didn’t get the chance to hear Gözen’s music live because she DOES NOT PLAY LIVE, I discovered her albums on Bandcamp when I got back from this festival where we met – and I genuinely freaked out, which I told her. From that point on she manipulated me into becoming her thing. She was very good to me during the whole artistic process. I was fed daily and allowed to shower twice a week.

Can you personally hear in the final six songs of the album who of you brought in which elements or is it more like in the end it all becomes one magic blury tapestry of sound?

Gözen: I had some sketches on my computer, Marie picked the ones she can connect with and we started immediately to record. On the first day, I had no idea, on the second day she came up with the lyrics for “LGA” – and she did record them in two takes. I was like, “this woman has problems.”

Marie: There is no magic, just hard work. I remember every single note I played and if Gözen tries to steal some % of my rights I will sue her because I know many lawyers. By the way: I do not have problems, this is a lie.

The story goes like this: you two met on a festival in England in 2022 that was “crowded with violent seagulls and outsider musicians”. I am of course curious to hear more about this setting and what it meant for your first encounter?

Gözen: Well, it is not a romantic relationship, so it was a normal encounter of two artists nodding at a table: “Hi, I am Marie”, “hi, I am Gozen”. In these settings I tend to be shy and not very talkative. I want to go home all the time. Second, I saw her eating chips. Third, I was hearing her in the backstage. Fourth, in the evening, there was a drum and bass party, I left.

Marie: Meeting in England meant that I had been absorbing a lot of oily food before I met Gözen for the first time. Probably the reason why our first encounter went so smooth. I liked this woman – she was not making any effort to socialize. Very sympathetic to me.

Gözen (le) & Marie (Photo: Eda Arda)

The Prince Island of Büyükada, where the the album was recorded by you two, is a very special place (I stayed there for a few days in August) – do you feel it had an impact on the songs of the album?

Gözen: For me, places do not have much impact on what I do on my computer. Outdoors, it was calm and beautiful; lots of funny animals, at home and on the street. Home cooked meals and constant joking.

Marie: For me yes, it had an impact as it was my first time in Turkey. Landing on this little island to stay for two weeks with a person I barely knew except for a few Emails and two Skype calls was quite a big thing. We are lucky, it turned out good, because if she had killed me, she would have had no difficulty hiding my body there in some pile of garbage. Maybe this fear infuses in some of the lyrics. In any case, all the things randomly piled here and there on the island – resulting from construction work or carelessness – inspired me. Also there was a very specific villa, being emptied, the statues torn down – this inspired me. A book also inspired me  -“Boussole” by Mathias Enard – I had brought it with me from France and really hated it, except for half a page about the ghoul. I never finished that book and threw it away on Büyükada, maybe it is still there.

And Istanbul in general? In my review of the album I reflected especially about the permanent state of being on the road (or let´s better say sea as one uses so many ferries in Istanbul). The everyday life is in that sense a steady process of departures and arrivals. And even if you retreat to one of the Princes’ Islands for a while, Istanbul always shimmers magically before your eyes in the mist, so close at hand. So: what does this mean for you?

Gözen: Departures and arrivals are a steady part of our modern life. Istanbul does not mean so much to me. It is a mega city, dirty, horrible, tense and also if you are lucky you got to see the bosphorous and such, you can enjoy some views. I am not really a city person, so even if I want to, I can not say many nice things about where I or people live. I never lived in a place that I really liked. Never chose it.

Marie: I barely went to the city of Istanbul because we spent most of the time on the island, which I liked a lot. I already live in a very agitated city, so I was not craving too much for this kind of stress. I liked taking the ferry, it is so terribly slow that it forced me to adapt my rhythm, which is usually way too fast.

Marie, maybe you can give us some inside views how you write your beguilingly fabulous-abysmal lyrics?

Marie: Oh god.

As you are also a writer I wonder how the text production with and without music feels different in the process to you?

Marie: It’s a very good question and I have to think a lot to answer it.

I don’t really know. I think the main difference is between what I write to communicate things/informations/ideas to people, like the kind of writing I do for the newspaper, and what I write freely, for fun or other non-lucrative purposes. In the past, I have been writing songs that meant to communicate things, that expressed some feelings that I found very important to be communicated to people, I wanted people to know that I was very sad or very angry, or I had a funny idea or thought: “this will make them laugh”.
For this album I could not have cared less about people or meaning. Very little brain activity was involved. Except maybe for “Sirop amer” which is the most song-like piece; I was searching for the fitting rhymes and I wanted to tell this little story… But the other ones were just written very automatically, along the music that was slowly taking shape. The music just mechanically evoked in me many pictures and atmospheres and fragments of words that were floating around by themselves and I just catched them. Very easy.

Man, I think I did not answer the question.

Marie (le) & Gözen (Photo: Eda Arda)

No worries, you did. Okay, let’s talk semantics: “La grande accumulation” – what is it that is being accumulated?

Marie: Garbage, brain garbage, all kinds of garbage, I love garbage, garbage is life.

The cover image shows you congratulating each other for the finished mission of this album in a funny staged set-up in the midst of urban island waste.
Which leads me to the question: how important is humor for you two in the arts?

Gözen: Ok, we are clowns, you got me.

Marie: I have big difficulty with people who take themselves seriously. In any field of life, but especially when they are artists. I guess it sells better when you talk about your art like it’s something very important? Please stop talking. Please.

And in life in general?

Gözen: I enjoy every second of my life and I have no respect for it.

Marie: Gözen brought some fake moustaches to Paris to cheer me up, this is the kind of life I appreciate.

Gözen, we first met at Meakusma festival in 2022 and even back then the talk of you not playing live was already omnipresent (as my friend Jan Lankisch tried to convince you to play at his Week-End Festival last minute).
Shortly before the album release you posted once again: “I don´t play live!” – and I asked under the post if you play unlive, kind of as a joke but then again not really as there are other possibilities to bring music on a stage.
So: Are there plans for a live staging of “La grande accumulation”? Maybe a puppet theater? Or a film screening?

Gözen: I wish, the puppet theater is a very good idea by the way. No movies though, I would like a stage, that I can be on on a stair with no shoes on, doing my moves.

You released both as solo artists before on the Hamburg based Pingipung records imprint. How important is the label for you as artists in your personal set up? I know, the question may sound a bit weird, what I am specifically interested in is your artistic working model. Like can you fully live from the music? Or do you have side jobs?

Gözen: I am poor, but I like my label. I am way too angry to deal with music industry and professional mailing.

Marie: I am very happy to work with Pingipung, it’s like a nice and warm little cabin in the woods, there’s always someone there, you feel taken care of. My artistic model is to have a job that allows me to make the art I want to make. Never in my life have I thought for one second that I could live from that kind of music, and I still don’t expect people to buy it, I find it very strange when it happens as I myself do not buy music. I make a little money doing live shows, this I like: I come, I play, I leave with money in my pocket. Very simple. I like it simple.

There are a lot of talks these days about the state of the music industry (with streaming being the dominant way people “consume” music; alternatives like Bandcamp pretty soon become the playground of investors; and funding is in most countries not really existing in those like Germany with a good set-up so far terribly under pressure by right-conservatives), I wonder how you feel about the state of the arts in 2024?

Gözen: I don’t know a good model, everybody was happy when streaming came out, now they are like “No, we hate this, buy vinyls”. Before that everybody was “vinyl is DEAD”, I don’t get it. If someone wants to listen to music, they can, and that is the state of the arts. But you can not regulate a system based on profit. Sorry, I am waiting for the big AI moment for the new hit of Michael Jackson. I will put it on repeat.

Marie: I don’t think I have any interesting thoughts about this topic.

Gözen (le) & Marie (Photo: Eda Arda)

Let´s change to nicer topics. I am curious to learn which records of other artists you two liked so far in 2024?

Gözen: I listened to lots of metal again, and Gnod, Sleaford Mods, Marc Almond Mylene Farmer I guess.

Marie: Albums I listened to the most in the last months: “La vie rapide” by Rowjay, “E-trap” by TH, “Hyperdrama” by Justice, “NoLand” by Reymour.

Gözen, do you have any local Istanbul artists you wanna point out to the kaput readers and me?

Gözen: I will name Koray Kantarcoglu. If you look at my records, you will see that I thank him on every album. He is a great musician and digger. Gokalp Kanatsiz is my favorite composer of electronic music right now, very talented. And Bunu Sen Istedin is my favorite stage act – the funniest lyrics.

Oh, I got one more question for you Gözen: Your artist name refers to a car that is in Turkey as popular as let´s say the Fiat 500 in Italy or the Volkswagen Käfer in Germany – what´s the story behind this?

Gözen: I found this name actually for a friend of mine, then he said, “no, my artist name is ok, I don´t need one.” Then one day I made these analog recordings from mini synths and I thougt I use the name for myself, for this project. And here we are.

To not leave you out of this, Marie: what is your favorite car?

Marie: Fiat Multipla. Beautiful design.

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