Three Music Thingz with Midheaven
My my my, it's another rendition of Three Music Thingz, the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making.
Today we have Midheaven! Midheaven is a Los Angeles-based duo comprised of Andy DeLuca and Sarah Eiseman, whose Instagram bio—"dreampop girlfriend + shoegaze boyfriend"—sums up the tenor of their band perfectly, given they are romantic as well as musical partners. Not only do they make and produce music together, their respective backgrounds in visual arts allow them to make their own single artwork, direct their own music videos, and even take their own press photos.
They put out a single called "M.H.D." last month that is a deeply refreshing blast of alt-rock, invigorating in its instrumentation even with the heavy subject matter at hand (the title acronym "M.H.D" stands for "mental health decline".) DeLuca and Eiseman have cited influences like My Bloody Valentine and Depeche Mode in the past, but "M.H.D." occupies a more mid-to-late '90s moment—with its filtered breakbeats, glowering guitar, strobing synths and icy vocals, it reminds me a lot of Garbage or Republica, to which I say hell yes, more please. I'm excited to see what else Midheaven has in store!
The band sent over three thingz that you simply must read...go on then...
- Creating As A Couple
It’s not lost on us how blessed we are to be making art with our significant other and to be able to do so with great flow and communication. Our relationship comes first and foremost. How we nurture our bond lends to the type of art we make and how we make it. Working together has become as natural as an intimate language between us. When we met, we were both working as visual artists but longed to be making music as well. Andy is an innate musician, the way he
creates and produces sounds and plays instruments, evokes fantasies in my mind, almost as if he’s scoring our life, and I’m just putting the words to it. The flow always switches, so sometimes I’ll start by writing a poem, and he’ll put music to it, and sometimes we’ll start by playing together, but most often I’ll hear music drifting through corridors of our home and get lost in a daze of how that makes me feel. From there, we’ll world-build together visually and spark more things from that space, like children at play.
Our natural chemistry and desires set us on a path as creative soul mates where we push one another and work together to make our dreams a reality. That only continues to grow just as we do. Making art together is how we process the world around us. Our relationship comes first for us, and everything else flows from that place of love for one another. — Sarah - Our Life As A Cinematic Work of Art
Since we are both visual artists, how we look at our lives and craft our world together is like a movie. We reminisce continually about the things that shaped us as children, the films, the culture, the smells, the sounds, all of it blends in our minds like a never-ending movie. When we create, it’s never based on sound alone but rather on our feelings, memories, and desires and our shared need to translate those feelings fully. To us, that world is multidimensional and encompasses all the elements and all the senses. We use a lot of sensory depictions in our dialogues when crafting our work together which in turn, feels like we are scoring music to our life past, present, and future. Seeing our creations fully in this way and witnessing how they take shape, is exhilarating and of utmost importance to us. — Sarah - Voice Memos
As cliche as it may seem, having an accessible device that can record ideas the very moment they’re transmitted to you is a blessing. One of the most frustrating feelings is thinking "This idea in my head is SO good that I’ll definitely remember it—there is no way I can forget something like this"—and then 20 minutes later, it’s completely gone. The best concepts usually come when it’s inconvenient to you—when you wake up randomly at 3 am and don’t want to get out of bed, or you’re in the shower and can’t get to an instrument. So by having the ability to pull your phone out and jot down some notes, it makes it easier to translate once you get to an actual instrument. It’s proven most helpful when collaborating together because we’re not always in the same room to bounce ideas off one another. So, every now and then, one of us will go, “OH, I had an idea for this," and open up the memo from earlier. We both have hundreds (if not thousands) of voice memos in our phones that hopefully we will one day bring into their fullest form. —Andy
Thanks Midheaven! Listen to "M.H.D.", check out Midheaven's link aggregation, and follow them on IG. Thanks for reading I Enjoy Music. If you like the blog, tell a friend.
