{"id":45846,"date":"2015-02-26T14:09:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T13:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/?p=45846"},"modified":"2016-09-22T14:35:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T14:35:42","slug":"playlist-syvlan-esso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/2015\/02\/26\/playlist-syvlan-esso\/","title":{"rendered":"Playlist: Sylvan Esso"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Criss-crossed harmonies, colour drenched electronica and weighty drum beats. Wonderland<\/em> talks to\u00a0Sylvan Esso \u2013 aka Megafaun\u2019s Nick Sanborn and Mountain Man\u2019s Amelia Meath.<\/p>\n

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A fortuitous happenstance \u2013 a chance meeting that brings about something beautiful \u2013 exactly the kind of moment that spawned Sylvan Esso which brings together Megafaun\u2019s Nick Sanborn and Mountain Man\u2019s Amelia Meath. Characterised by criss-crossed harmonies, colour drenched electronica and weighty drum beats, the duo\u2019s productions perfectly capture the grey-space that exists between genres.<\/p>\n

Ahead of their Scala gig we sat down with Nick to talk about their cadre of seminarian groupies, the challenges they face trying to stay creative and their burning desire to score a videogame (round of Portal anyone?).<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve just started your European tour, do you have a favourite city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Copenhagen is a great city, it\u2019s such a beautiful place! Not every European tour gets routed through there so we probably only get to see it one out of every four times we\u2019re on the road. All the cities we\u2019ve been lucky enough to visit have a completely unique energy to them. I love Utrecht in Holland. Lisbon took me totally by surprise too, I\u2019m normally a woodsy camping kind of guy but it was an amazing place. Outside of Europe Amelia is a huge fan of Iceland too. Once you\u2019ve been touring for a while it starts to become much more people based. You start to look forward to places like Paris and Berlin knowing who you\u2019re going to be able to meet with whilst you\u2019re there. Like most things in life it centres around the people and the food.<\/p>\n

Have you ever thought about moving country?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure. I used to think I would make an excellent expat but the older I get I start to realise just how American I am. Not necessarily in a weird or a bad way, but being in the states, if you\u2019re here for long enough all these things get brought up which you\u2019re told are \u201cAmercian\u201d. You end up thinking that\u2019s not me, I\u2019m much more worldly than that, I don\u2019t wave flags or tote guns, but then you go to Europe and you\u2019re confronted with so many experiences which are nothing like the culture you grew up with. It makes you recognise, this isn\u2019t my place, I\u2019m still an American. I might not be one of the ones you see on TV but it\u2019s still inherently a part of who I am. I\u2019m not sure at this point in my life I could fully adopt life a new country.<\/p>\n

Do you like being on the road?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to write whilst we\u2019re on tour. Every time some person says \u201cwe wrote our second record on the road\u201d I always think how the fuck did you manage that? When did you find time to be creative? Then again I\u2019m just not one of those people that has songs constantly pouring out of them like some kind of eternal flame or a wellspring of ideas. I have to sit down and work to get stuff out. I can\u2019t immediately get myself into a creative space. One of the reasons I think Amelia and I work so well in a band together is that we constantly inspire one another. If one of us has a tiny idea the other can build on it and help shape it into something more concrete. It\u2019s a much quicker way of making music than some of the other bands I\u2019ve been in. Whilst we\u2019re performing all we can think about is how to finesse the next performance to make it even better than the last one.<\/p>\n