Far Above The Aether with GALÁN / VOGT
2022, and so the pandemic rolls on. This period of history has seen a multitude of musical collaborations that may not have happened had the time not been afforded to artists when they least expected it.
At the end of last year, artists Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt released their debut album together, a wash of colour and sound in a vinyl length collection they’ve called ‘The Sweet Wait’. Here, we’ll review the full album including a premiere of their latest video release for ‘Nothing Is Under Control’. Plus, we have a Q&A with both Pepo and Karen as well as further behind-the-scenes insight from their collaborators.
Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt.
Multi-instrumentalist Pepo Galán is prolific in his work, releasing solo EPs and albums going back to at least 2015. Not only has Galán collaborated with Karen Vogt, but over the years has also put out records with Gärtner, Carlos Suero, David Cordero and with Lee Yi as Dear Sailor, amongst others. Most recently, Pepo released a record with Sita Ostheimer called ‘Contact’ and an experimental album with Shinji Wakasa entitled ‘Between The Leaves’. Pepo Galán rounded out 2021 with a solo album called ‘Tomorrow The Sun Will Rise’, also featuring Yi, Ostheimer and Karen Vogt.
Songwriter and vocalist Karen Vogt is best known for her work with Australian band Heligoland. Since the late 1990’s, Heligoland have released several albums and EPs, including their 2021 full-length ‘This Quiet Fire’. The band’s touring schedule permanently brought them to Paris, France where they have resided since 2007. Heligoland finished 2021 with two firsts in one single – both a collaboration and a cover in John Martyn’s ‘Please Fall In Love With Me’. The credit is shared between Italian duo She Owl and Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, who has worked on much of Heligoland’s musical output.
‘The Sweet Wait’ album artwork. Image Credits: Aurélie Scouarnec.
Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt began releasing their music under the name GALÁN / VOGT in July 2021 with the music video for ‘The Dark Opens The Way’. They’ve continued to steadily release music videos for all of the songs on the record, up to and beyond the full release of ‘The Sweet Wait’ in November.
The tone is set on The Sweet Wait from the beginning by ‘The Dark Opens The Way’. Faint reversed sounds breathe underneath Karen Vogt’s voice, doubled and soon layered with a harmony. Much of the lyrics on The Sweet Wait are sparse, reading like single verses of poetry, each meticulously sounded out by Vogt, like these opening lines: ‘Been counting hours, I think I’m on to something. No, I’m not afraid of missing out on anything.’
The music builds with what sounds like guitar cycling underneath Karen’s vocal. The most percussive element here comes from the sustained piano notes, most discernible in the song’s first half. In a lyrical break, a deeper drone is introduced, bringing a more sinister edge to this song, exemplified by the song’s closing lines: ‘I’m playing with it at the end of a line, dark opens the way. The dark opens the way, don’t be afraid, open the way.’
The hypnotising video above was shot by Vogt and shows how the absence of scale can alter your perception, the finer details making these scenes look bigger than they truly are. It’s interesting too considering the title of this track and its lyrical content, that light would be a key element of this song’s visual presentation.
Fading in with instrumentation more rhythmic in nature, ‘Starseed’ begins with this startling revelation from Karen Vogt: ‘I don’t live in this world, and I can’t escape myself.’ Vogt’s delivery is more urgent than the album’s opener, with these lyrics less ambiguous too. Most aurally pleasing is the soulful edge Vogt puts on the end of these early phrases, later, another voice appears to support Karen’s in Jolanda Moletta of the aforementioned She Owl.
Whispers surround the lead vocals, with backing vocal and harmony parts giving the listener much to digest as electronic percussion clatters ominously in the wide stereo frame. Once the vocals cease, Starseed descends in a long fade-out, which gives you a brief chance to hear Pepo Galán’s multi-drone layering, with the more musical, but muted piano chords.
The song’s music video, released in October, was too created by Jolanda Moletta. The double-exposure effect contrasts wooded scenery with silhouetted figures twisting and turning against darker tones. The change of background to a detailed night sky pays close attention to the lyric: ‘Don’t put the stars out, let them shine in the sky.’
‘The birds mirror her voice and flow with the delicate timbres while the shadow appears as an ornamental figure to help guide us through transitory times; emphasizing the grace and welcoming contemplation. It could, perhaps, be perceived as a ghost or figure from both the past and the future; arriving during the moments where we seem to have lost control. It was a gusty day and I think the natural movement and the moments of stillness in nature also helped to accentuate the overall ambience of the music.’ - Elska
Next we have the privilege to premiere the new music video for ‘Nothing Is Under Control’, filmed and edited by Elska. These sweeping panoramic shots also include additional footage from Aaron Osborne, with the opening and closing field recordings made by musician and sound designer Patricia Wolf.
‘When Karen posted about making a video for her upcoming release, I responded and stated that I'd love to try and make one for her. She sent me the track and I immediately and completely fell in love. I was moved by the vulnerability in Karen's voice, the delicate timbres of Pepo's arrangements and the overall elegance, sweetness and fragility of the track. I wanted to compliment the beautiful emotion I heard with a vast and open landscape that would display a visual space for reflection. In November 2021, I was invited to accompany a friend on a daytrip to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife refuge in Missouri, USA. I researched the scene and learned about the nature and history of the migratory birds that the landscape attracted. I knew instantly that this was where I would capture the footage I needed for this song.’ – Elska
Pepo Galán.
Pepo Galán divides his sonic space between intermittent piano and electric guitar phrases. There’s the faint crunch of guitar distortion, while the piano hits the page like raindrops. The pauses in the music are utilised by Karen Vogt in her lyricism which lasts just five lines, the first three of which are: ‘We’re rushing for no reason at all, I never said my way was better than yours, but you’re barely able to hold it all together.’
‘About the field recording, I recorded it on Sauvie Island near Portland, Oregon in 2020. There’s a wildlife area on the island that has great habitat for birds and frogs. I recorded these sounds by a pond there in the summertime at dusk. I recorded it with no purpose in mind at the time. I just wanted to capture the soundscape at that location. Karen reached out to me to see if I had a field recording of a similar location to the one in her video. I looked through my archives and found the one she ended up using.’ – Patricia Wolf
The vocal production particularly in Nothing Is Under Control glides through the air effortlessly. This is most evident in Vogt’s line of: ‘Even though it seems like everything is under control.’ The last word arrives during one of Galán’s breaks, the delay sounding and wrapping the song spherically. All of this is underpinned with the kind of field recording that could be natural rain or the digital hiss of white noise.
‘To me it feels like someone has found a special place and is just watching, observing and thinking. My interpretation is that the sky is like the canvas of the mind and the flock of birds is like the thoughts gathering in the mind. Sometimes working together in the most beautiful, quick and instinctive ways and then other times just being all over the place. But I hope everyone will have their own interpretation.’ – Karen Vogt
One of the few songs on The Sweet Wait to not yet receive a music video release is ‘Opa’. The composition of this piece is as if Galán and Vogt’s contributions are one immeasurable soundscape, like some unknown shapeless supernatural entity tumbling and shifting in the air. The music is a myriad of keyboards and drones, an effect achieved with great layering, yet Pepo Galán has fused this together seamlessly, and not a crack shines through its structure.
Inseparable too are Karen Vogt’s voice and words, elusive in the track until almost two full minutes in. ‘Is it all in me? Is this all that I could be? I wanna find out. Will it keep me warm?’ The ambiguity of the lyric only makes Opa the more intriguing. Karen layers her voice in the song’s outro, gliding around in the duo’s mix before it’s overtaken by static. How would this be represented in a music video? I’m excited to find out.
Contrary to the approach taken in Opa, ‘Panacea’ begins almost immediately with vocals, while Galán plays more distinctly in strumming lone electric guitar chords. The first half reads like a more conventional song, even the lyric is warming in the comfort it relates. ‘And if you’re aching all the time, I know, you’re warm and tender. We won’t let them win…’ With the lyric finishing almost halfway, Pepo Galán ceases his guitar playing shortly after, with Karen’s words echoing in the distance. This coda to Panacea is created by American composer Akira Rabelais, whose other credits include working with Bjӧrk and Harold Budd.
Created by Drea Louise, the video for Panacea is enchanting in its colour and shot layering. Sometimes visible are certain scenes, the glimpse of a hand, a face turning to the camera. But despite the scarcity of discernible moments, Louise’s video truly captures the essence of this song and aligns itself with the album as a whole.
‘When the fear that makes the body tighten finally subsides, hold it delicately and stay between the lines. Soon you will feel the weight is lifted from your mind, every star that I see burns deep into my eyes, all these memories will be the way we survive.’
The other video not yet released for The Sweet Wait is ‘Between The Tides’. Far away, guitar is perpetuated by delay and reverb, while closer to home are the warm glow of piano chords. Karen’s voice is more distinct, mixed more upfront by the duo as if to emphasise the importance of these words versus some of the more ambient pieces on The Sweet Wait.
Between The Tides also features session musician Achim Färber in a drum performance that begins in the song’s second half. The rhythmic accompaniment is a palate cleanser for the album’s flipside, bringing the listener out of the trance set by the ambient pieces that came before it. Färber’s part is slow and steady, his bass drum especially full of depth - a real compliment to this piece.
Pepo Galán creates such a mood in ‘Hynagogia’. Some of his instrumentation defies identification, which makes The Sweet Wait so unique. The cavernous reverb is almost an instrument in itself more than a tool. Vogt lays down backing vocal parts to compliment her lead, reading like two minds thinking the same thing in different ways:
‘(Another time). In the deep dark of the night, when I feel the most alive (laying awake), for a little while I am in between two lives. (On the other side. But maybe I’m not in between).’
A quick Google search into the title of this piece reveals that: ‘Hypnagogia is the transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep.’ Armed with that knowledge, the music and lyrical structure becomes more apparent. As well as the music the duo created in this piece, they also recruited Mark Beazley to lay down bass:
“After listening through the song quite a few times, I didn't want to 'ground it' in any way with a bass part. I created blurs and played it in a way that made it sound like it was coming from outside, or underwater. To me, this approach felt like it would work best in this particular track.” – Mark Beazley
Perhaps it’s ash, or snow, or sediment circling in a body of water, but it’s the video directed by Jeff Dungfelder for Hypnagogia that centres on the album’s artwork. French photographer Aurélie Scouarnec contributed two pieces that became the cover for The Sweet Wait. With the front cover visible earlier on in the video, it’s the back cover that drifts away in the song’s conclusion.
‘There are no set rules for writing songs, but sometimes it’s better to record music that is minimal, simple and direct. The first guitars have a thick, firm tone that are reminiscent of a ship's horn. The sea is a theme that often appears in my work, probably because I come from a family of fishermen and have spent most of my life close to the beach. The sea is connected to some of my best memories. I did not know that Jolanda would be filming on the beach until I saw the finished video. It was a very beautiful surprise and it made sense.’ - Pepo Galán
‘Nacre’ is driven by the delayed guitar chords of Pepo Galán, creating a more direct composition than some of the more ambient work featured on The Sweet Wait. The lyrical theme to Nacre is open to interpretation, as with most of the words on this album, but this piece does feel like one side of a conversation: ‘You may stumble as you get far away from... We know what they’re like. Oh baby. Move away. Cos it’s not your style.’ There is also an additional voice present in Nacre – this is the second vocal contribution of Jolanda Moletta.
‘Karen’s voice is so beautiful and rich, so I wanted to enhance her voice and create a dynamic range. I sang only where I felt that something was missing. I wanted to give the feeling of the waves rising up until they break on the shore. I whispered and spoke in my native Italian language and gave a poetic translation of some of the lyrics. Both the song and the video have a mysterious, unspoken mood and I hope people feel this when they watch the video and listen to the song.’ – Jolanda Moletta
Jolanda Moletta.
Moletta directed the music video for Nacre, who also features as the main character. With footage shot by Paolo Besse’ as well as Jolanda, what intrigues me about this video is the absence of vastness. Despite filming in a spot that could convey the magnitude of the location, Moletta instead keeps the piece intimate. The viewer doesn’t see how far that body of water stretches, and is given no knowledge of the area surrounding them. The focus remains on Moletta’s character and the seashell.
‘The video for Nacre was filmed by the sea in Liguria, Italy. I used to spend the summer there with my grandparents and many beautiful memories lingering on the beach's pebbled shores. Karen gave me some themes of the song and described some images that she had imagined. I then added my ideas and began to create a story. I approach my creative work (music, artwork and videos) as a storyteller. The seashell I used in the video belonged to my grandmother.’ – Jolanda Moletta
‘How long will they stay among us? There is hope inside, we will be high above the aether and there, we’ll wait.’
Concluding the album is the comforting melody of ‘Above The Aether’. Beginning with a field recording and piano from Pepo Galán, Karen’s voice soon follows. As the track reaches its climax, Vogt adds a vocal harmony that lifts this song to the next level.
One of the most beautiful parts of Above The Aether is Simon McCorry’s cello contribution, sitting comfortably sonically amongst Vogt’s vocal and the field recording. As with the end of Side A, Akira Rabelais returns to craft a coda for these closing moments of the album, reversing parts of the track heard in the song’s first half.
The video for Above The Aether, directed by James Eakins, is unique in this collection as it’s a vertical presentation, more suitable to a handheld device. Parts are similar to the video for Panacea in Eakins’ exploration with colour, but the panelled approach is individual, as is Karen Vogt’s performance here.
‘I made a vertical video for a few reasons. We are all so used to selfies, live streams, and reels nowadays. All of my most recent video work has been vertical. For me, it’s exciting to experiment with this layout in a different ratio. Also, I got tired of asking people to turn their phones on their side.’ – James Eakins
Karen Vogt.
If you were to purchase The Sweet Wait on Pepo and Karen’s Bandcamp page then you’ll receive a special bonus track not available elsewhere entitled ‘Engrama’. This piece opens with tinkling percussion and a deep rumbling drone in the distance. It also features sample contributions from James S. Taylor and concludes with a percussion loop out of character with the preceding four minutes. Of all the released tracks from Galán and Vogt, Engrama has a purity to it unlike the rest and is well worth seeking out.
Even with their own musical careers carved out well, GALÁN / VOGT is a collaboration that has the potential to go beyond this single album. They’ve created a rounded collection of songs that at no point sound clunky or unnatural, but often like they were simply meant to be. The Sweet Wait is immersive, thought-provoking and expansive. Let’s hope there is more to come.
Continue reading for our Q&A with Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt. We ask them how they co-wrote their parts for The Sweet Wait and the involvement of their collaborators. We also dive into the album’s visual content, the possibility of live performance and future GALÁN / VOGT material.
Pepo Galán and Karen Vogt.
1. Your album 'The Sweet Wait' came out back in November, how did the collaboration between you both start? Had you ever met before?
Karen Vogt: We met through the Thesis Recurring project that is curated by artist Gregory Euclide. I had contributed a work to that project. Pepo heard it and felt inspired to reach out to me. He was reworking a song by the composer Benoît Pioulard, and invited me to try something for it. The vocals I recorded for it went on to become the track “Try To Be (More) Realistic”. After that we just kept working on things. Pepo would send me music and I found it very easy to come up with vocals for them, and it just grew from there. So although we have never actually met in real life, working in this way of exchanging files seems to work well for us at the moment.
2. How did the collaboration work in terms of the writing? Did you write separately and then present ideas to each other for further development?
Pepo Galán: Karen and I had previously worked together on a reworking of Benoit Pioulard. After getting some good results with that track and connecting so well with each other, we decided to keep working. So I sent her more material and we worked on it together until we had much more than an album’s worth. The way we generally worked is that I sent Karen some ideas and she developed vocals for them and then between the two of us we worked as a team until we were happy with the sound.
3. Karen, these lyrics read like poetry. Are they written in accordance with the music, or do you find yourself penning words without music too?
Karen: I love that moment when I hear a piece of music for the first time and instantly feel the melody and the words swelling up inside. If I can be still enough to hear it (and have the microphone beside me) then I can capture it. This is how I wrote most of the vocals for our album. I need to respond directly to that piece of music. The words always come after. Although, I do tend to journal throughout periods of my life and I think that helps because it keeps all the thoughts and emotions moving. It also trains you to just allow each thought to move quickly until you find something that you want to go deeper into.
4. Akira Rabelais contributed two pieces of music to 'The Sweet Wait', how did he become involved in the record?
Karen: Akira was the first person that Pepo and I asked to be involved in this record. I wanted to have him involved in some way to bring something special to this record. I have known Akira since mid 2000 and he has a very beautiful way of processing sounds and using his computer as an instrument.
5. Did Akira have the complete pieces from you before composing his parts?
Karen: While we were still working on the album tracks we sent him about 4 or 5 of the songs we had mostly finished. We gave him the individual stems to play with. The entire second half of the track Panacea is Akira doing just that. It made for a perfect way to end the side A of the vinyl record. We also did the same for side B so it would be a coda to each song that finished each side of the vinyl. The coda he did for side B and the song “Above The Aether” was a little bit different. He sent us some different pieces that were about a minute each and we then stitched them together over the top of some of the cello sounds from Simon McCorry to create the coda for that song.
6. Was there more music that Akira composed for this project that went unused? Did he try different parts before settling on the final version?
Karen: Not for Panacea, but there was more material for Above the Aether. But Akira was happy to let us choose what to use for this as we were stitching his parts together. We had decided early on to have vinyl as our physical format. If there was more space on the vinyl we would have happily included more of his work on it. But you have to work within the limitations and look at the work as a whole. Ideally, we’d love to release some of these extra pieces in the future. But there is a remix album coming and Akira will be on that also.
7. Jolanda Moletta features on 'Starseed' and 'Nacre', as well as creating some of the visual pieces for the record. How did she become involved in the making of 'The Sweet Wait'?
Karen: Pepo and I had discussed having some guests on there to play on certain tracks and also for vocals. Jolanda is a very dear friend of mine and when Pepo and I were discussing other vocalists to include her name came up. We have worked together before on a few other projects. Jolanda did the artwork for an experimental release of mine and also played piano on a track by my band Heligoland. So this was a great opportunity to now include her beautiful vocals on the album. She also graciously offered to make videos for the two songs that she appeared on (Starseed and Nacre). Her video for Nacre is one that I especially love and it was wonderful to have her involved in this way for the album.
8. This record also features additional musicians in Simon McCorry, Mark Beazley and Achim Färber. Were their parts recorded with either of you? Or was everyone recording completely remotely?
Pepo: These artists all did their recordings remotely. They made completely new recordings specifically for each song that they contributed to. We deliberately chose these artists for each song that they appeared on because we were looking for something in particular. We wanted them to add their own sounds following a general guideline that we gave them. They all did a great job and for all three of them we took their first takes.
Karen: I asked my friend in the UK Mark Beazley to play bass on the track Hypnagogia. I am a fan of his band Rothko and we’ve known each other for a long time now. I always wanted to ask him to be involved in some kind of musical project, and this felt like the perfect opportunity. I generally like people to add what they feel like adding, instead of writing parts for them or giving them instructions that are too specific.
9. The video for 'The Dark Opens The Way' is entrancing, where was that shot?
Karen: I shot the video during one of the lockdowns here in Paris. I live on the outer edges of Paris, France and I would go for long walks to clear my head and get some exercise. Soon I started to take lots of photos and videos of all the things I found to be visually appealing. I would pass by some bridges and I noticed that the river reeds near them were exposed when the river was low in the Summer. You could see the reeds moving with the flow of the river and they seemed so expressive the more you looked at them. The footage I used here was my favourite with the light coming through the trees and shining on the water’s surface.
10. The artwork for this record perfectly matches the music, were these photographs commissioned for this project or were these pre-existing pieces by Aurélie Scouarnec?
Pepo: These photographs already existed and were part of Aurélie’s collection. Karen was interested in having some of Aurélie’s photographs for the album and she showed me Aurélie’s website. We both felt that her images perfectly encapsulated our sound and what the album was about. We asked Aurelie for permission to use the photographs for the front and back cover of the album, and she graciously agreed.
11. Aurélie's artwork is also the focal point in the video for 'Hypnagogia', is that the song that connects most with the album art?
Pepo: The artwork connects with each song and not just the song Hypnagogia. The video artist simply included the photographs in the video for Hypnagogia, and I think it works well for that track. But the photographs represent all songs equally. There is nothing connecting it to this track especially, except for the video.
12. Tell me more about the video for 'Panacea', who decided to make it so colourful?
Karen: We asked video artist Drea Louise to make the video for this song. Drea’s videos are usually very colourful and so I kind of knew that if she did it in her style, it would probably end up this way too. I love how it is not only very colourful, but also very bright and saturated. I think it’s one of those videos that makes the song feel even more intense when you watch it.
13. 'Above The Aether' is one of the most interesting vertical music videos I've ever seen. What made you choose this format just for this song?
Karen: This was the decision of the filmmaker James Eakins. When James asked me if I was okay for the video to be vertical, I had to think for a moment. It seemed odd at first, but then it made sense because we are watching most things on our phones these days. I was really happy to have something different. Also, with all of the people doing videos for the album I wanted them to just do their own thing. I asked them all to do videos specifically because I like what they do.
14. The bonus track 'Engrama' includes a field recording of a storm. Pepo, what's the most extraordinary field recording you've ever made?
Pepo: Actually, this field recording was made by Karen. Sometimes I will do field recordings when I travel with my family. Most of the time I leave the recorder fixed in an interesting spot while I go to sleep. The result is always a surprise recording, especially because it’s done at night time. But we did not include any of my field recordings on this album. However, I did use some dirt filters I designed so that the song has a more deteriorated appearance.
Karen: That field recording I added to that song is not a storm. It’s actually the sound of the rain as I sought out shelter underneath a railway bridge on a walk one day. The rumbling sound is the trains going over the bridge, but I guess it gives the overall effect of a storm.
15. There's also a rhythmic loop at the end of 'Engrama', what items were used to make that?
Karen: This rhythmic loop was made by Pepo using some drum samples that James S. Taylor had given us for the album. Pepo took the drums and had a play around with them. If you listen closely you can hear them slowly building up towards the end of the song too.
16. Is this the sort of work that could be performed live on occasion? Is that something you'd be open to doing?
Pepo: Playing our music live is something that I would love to do in the future. Despite the distance, I hope someone has the budget and the interest to bring Karen and me together on stage.
17. 'The Sweet Wait' is your first album together, was there more music created in this time? Could there be a second record?
Pepo: At the time when we were writing this album there was much more music created. But at one point we had to stop and decide on which tracks we would use for this album. We will start working again on a second album very soon. There is also a remix album for The Sweet Wait that will be coming out this year and we are very excited about this.
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Download and stream ‘The Sweet Wait’ by GALÁN / VOGT on their Bandcamp page, including the option to purchase a copy on vinyl.
For more information about Pepo Galán, visit his official website.
Follow Pepo Galán on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @pepogalan.
For more information about Karen Vogt and Heligoland, visit her official website here.
Follow Karen Vogt on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @karenvogtmusic.
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