Chandeen’s ‘Mercury Retrograde’: The Celestial Dreamscape
I was on Instagram, I know that much – doing the infinite scroll. I was already following singer, songwriter, guitarist and performer Holly Henderson who is somewhat more local to me, when she offered a suggestion to her followers:
‘Please check out the new @chandeenmusic album, Mercury Retrograde, out now on all platforms and CD/Vinyl. I had the pleasure of co-writing And performing on 2 songs on the album, ‘I Don’t Care If I’m Wasted’ and ‘Light’. The album has already been featured on @billboard and I hope it continues to be heard, I can only describe it as ‘Utopian Pop’ and can’t imagine anything better to listen to while shutting out the bad in the world right now. These people are as talented as they are lovely. Check it out!’ – Holly Henderson (March 16th 2020)
So, I did. Without listening to any of the songs first, I bought Chandeen’s new CD on faith, especially because I didn’t know who Chandeen even were. Pandemic or no – ‘Mercury Retrograde’ would become the soundtrack to my 2020. I listened to the CD at work, in my car, at home, late at night, early in the morning, I watched the music videos – I absorbed every note of this record and without a doubt what you’re about to read concerns my favourite album of 2020, by some distance.
Julia Beyer and Harald Löwy. Image Credit: Julia Beyer
It occurred to me after some time that despite listening to their music, I still had no idea who Chandeen were, which is highly unusual for me. Chandeen (pronounced ‘shan’-‘deen’) were formed by German musicians Harald Löwy and Oliver Henkel in 1990. And though the latter departed the band in the mid-90’s, Löwy has remained a constant figure in Chandeen’s history. With different band members and vocalists over the past thirty years, Julia Beyer has been a part of Chandeen since 2008. Harald formed his own record label in 2001 called Kalinkaland, which would release their albums ‘Echoes’, ‘Teenage Poetry’, ‘Blood-Red Skies’, ‘Forever And Ever’ and ‘Winter Reverbs’. There would be a five-year gap between Winter Reverbs and the release of Mercury Retrograde.
Now, I invite you to assemble your preferred listening apparatus, and join me in The Celestial Dreamscape. You never know, your feet might even leave the ground…
The album begins with a strumming electric guitar in your left ear that’s joined by another in your right, in the distance is a keyboard, the sound of an organ. The introduction feels too quiet though, but as your hand reaches for the volume control, another guitar runs up a scale and drums kick in, bringing the volume up a notch to where the mind feels it should be. Guitars and drums are by Chandeen collaborator Florian Walther, while Harald Löwy handles all the keyboard and bass side of things. The pair wrote this instrumental together, the only song without vocals on the album. The soaring saxophone part is by Joseph Geyer – I couldn’t think of a better way for Mercury Retrograde to begin.
A combination of picked electric guitar and strummed acoustic guitar serves as the introduction for ‘Vanish’. Instruments are shared in the same way as Summer’s Fling, but without saxophone this time. Julia Beyer makes her first appearance with lead and backing vocals, she also pens all the lyrics she sings on the album. The harmonies are perfectly layered in and Julia’s delivery has this dream-like quality which is assisted by reverb that carries the notes on into the ether. The melancholia is set with the tone of the lyrics, finishing with ‘Waiting by her doorstep with a flower, you just want to make her cry, when she closed her eyes forever, finally you found some peace…’ Harald’s whistling in this track breaks my heart - what a beautiful and fragile melody, perfectly delivered with soft keyboards beneath it that slows to a stop as the track concludes.
An indispensable part of the Mercury Retrograde experience comes in the form of the music videos the band put together for the album. Vanish was the first of these, released in December 2019. The imagery in this video is also reflected in the artwork for the album. Directed by Julia Beyer, I urge you to tumble down the rabbit hole of Beyer’s instagram account. Her photography is equally as dazzling, and these music films only get better.
The first collaboration on this album outside of the Chandeen circle comes from Holly Henderson in ‘I Don’t Care If I’m Wasted’, of which her vocals and lyrics on this track are some of my favourite on Mercury Retrograde. ‘I can breathe, oh my, and I can see all my dreams in front, it’s like a breeze, I lifted my soul from the Earth, I looked above at all the people, all the people – I want to share my thoughts with them…’ I hang onto every word, every word of this lyric. The excellent arrangement by Harald and Florian brilliantly serves the words as drums are intermittent, knowing when the time is right to give the lyric the space it needs. The most assertive instrument aside from the drums is Florian Walther’s bass playing, play loud on a good stereo and you’ll see what I mean. I’m breathtakingly overwhelmed every time I listen to this song.
In times where songs are unceremoniously chucked into and shuffled in a playlist, it’s often forgotten that the artist has been through the gruelling process of carefully selecting the tracklist for their album, paying attention to how one song follows another. In this case, ‘Let There Be Fire’ serves as the come down to I Don’t Care If I’m Wasted.
Beginning with piano, keyboards and programming from Harald Löwy, saxophone quickly follows from Joseph Geyer and drums from Florian Walther. You could be forgiven for thinking this might be the second instrumental of Mercury Retrograde for a moment, but the minute-long introduction is vital to establishing the mood for the album’s next collaboration.
KITTY is the alias used for the French songwriter and producer who put out her own album in 2020 entitled ‘The Dark Age’. One of the incredible things about Mercury Retrograde is how it pulls together multiple collaborators with the band, and yet it all sounds like it comes from the same space. Let There Be Fire echoes the freedom felt in the previous track with lines like ‘Forget everything and run, let yourself be free,’ and ‘I’m on the run and I’m not afraid, I feel no shame.’ One of the wonderful things about KITTY’s vocal delivery is how some lines impart softness and in a snap can soar as they do when voicing the title of the piece. There is some lovely acoustic guitar playing from Florian on this track, stark and bare, creating the space and feeling of watching the universe turn at night-time.
‘All Ghosts’ begins with the voice of Julia Beyer. The lyrics are sparse, and so is the music in a way. Beyer’s words have a noticeably more downbeat feel than their collaborator’s lyrics, such as; ‘I have been hiding in the dark that you left for me, and now I’m flying as the ghost you don’t want to see, I don’t believe in the world that you see.’ Florian extends into a guitar solo, the tone of the instrument perfectly formed for this track. You wouldn’t believe how important it is to get something like that right, stale guitar tone could make or break a track such as this. Löwy’s instrumental textures are stripped away and All Ghosts finishes with Florian’s steady beat as Harald accompanies on piano.
The video for All Ghosts was directed by Beyer and Löwy, with assistant director Jens Kuhn and features a group of women in a tent-like structure. My first thought was that they were all circus performers, but the scene is ambiguous. It’s possible the characters are All Ghosts, and in the credits are labelled as ‘Mercury Ghost Girls’, listing just the performers’ first names - Anna, Marlene, Jule, Hermine, Antonia, Anna.
‘Ocean Mind’ is a broader collaboration with Harald writing the music, KITTY penning the lyrics, and the mysterious Odile performing the vocals. Twinkling can be heard behind Harald’s keyboard textures as Odile’s full-bodied voice carries the song with KITTY’s expansive lyrics; ‘Hey let’s go to the other side, the evening sky shines so bright, it will lead us home.’ The sounds Löwy uses include orchestral elements, but for these verses the focus is on piano, which isn’t simply piano. It has a more muted tone, like a cross between an upright piano and the electric piano sounds of the 1970’s.
I feel my heart leaving my chest as Odile’s voice lifts up with the line; ‘In between these shades of cool, I’ve lost and found, I’m tearing it down and kicking off my shoes. Come and dream with me, we will renegade, me and my reckless heart, together.’ The late addition of Florian Walther’s guitar and drum performances aid and create this never-ending visual landscape that is so perfectly realised in the music video for this piece.
Released in February 2020 and directed again by Julia Beyer and Harald Löwy, this one actually features Odile as the focus of this music video. Visually, the film for Ocean Mind features all the elements I love about the Mercury Retrograde experience. The colour and light twisting and turning away in fantastical notions, the slow-motion shots present in all the Mercury Retrograde videos, and being able to connect with the performer’s voice heard in the music. Easily another stand-out musical and visual piece from this record.
KITTY maintains her involvement for ‘You’re In A Trance’, this time singing the lyrics she writes for the piece. The introduction is a beautiful cross between Harald’s atmospheric synthesizer sounds and gentle guitar strumming from Florian Walther. KITTY’s opening lines perfectly set the tone for You’re In A Trance; ‘Hey I know who you’re searching for, I think I have the perfect soul. Take my hand, let’s escape this world, I’ll be your celestial girl.’ One of the slowest songs on Mercury Retrograde, Walther’s drumming is as fitting as ever, with his heavily reverberating guitar work cascading down a waterfall into a slowly circulating whirlpool of Löwy’s keyboard playing. The most conventional part of the song is towards the end when most of the other sounds roll off, leaving just acoustic guitar and KITTY’s voice for one more round of the chorus.
Also released in February was for the film for You’re In A Trance, stated simply as having been filmed in Wales and edited by Jens Kuhn and Harald Löwy. Featuring galactic juxtapositions in both kaleidoscopic imagery of KITTY in studio shots and tumbling Welsh countryside, You’re In A Trance ties as being one of my favourite film presentations from this album. The use of lighting in the studio counterpart to the location shots is dazzling in its quality and of course KITTY’s performance is essential to its success. The acoustic conclusion to this track bursts across the sky in a blaze of light across Welsh coastline as KITTY walks the beach in slow motion, the perfect ending to this visual spectacle.
KITTY concludes her collaboration on Mercury Retrograde with the spoken word passage in “’Cause It’s Slow”. Featuring a musical backbone created with Joseph Geyer’s saxophone, rhythm section by Harald Löwy and later guitar work from Florian Walther, this feel echoes the mood set in Let There Be Fire. The spoken word passage voiced by KITTY is written by Jennifer Pague, vocalist and songwriter of L.A. based band Vita And The Woolf.
Like the rest of the album, this would also make an interesting visual companion as demonstrated in the opening lines; ‘The truth is she won it, we’re lying here just to watch it be free. Fly us as comets, showing off our eyes to the galaxy. We harvest the daylight, just to make space flight, and maybe, maybe we can go and see the queen.’ Interestingly the passage includes the phrase ‘summer’s fling’, the name of the album’s opening song. Perhaps there is more of a conceptual thread between these songs than is first present on the surface. In an album that is the manifestation of dream-like conditions, ‘Cause It’s Slow contains Mercury Retrograde’s most poetic and captivating words. “Call my name, all day…all day, I’m breathing. Just ‘cause it’s slow, just ‘cause it’s slow…’
‘Wild At Heart’ comes back to the core band with Julia Beyer writing and performing her vocal parts. Most of the instrumentation is by Harald Löwy with saxophone by Joseph Geyer and guitar feedback from Florian Walther. Across Mercury Retrograde, I love the additional production choices from Harald in the programmed sounds that defy explanation, like birds tweeting, most prominently featured in this track. My favourite lines from Wild At Heart come towards the end of the song; ‘In the night, we’re dancing into nowhere, I turn to you as the headlights are approaching us. In the sound, in the dark, we are bound, wild at heart…’ As the guitar feedback echoes die out like some tumultuous creature fading away into oblivion…
…the final piece of Mercury Retrograde, ‘Light’, begins. With mechanical clicking and whirring comes drums from Florian Walther and a programmed keyboard part from Harald. Holly Henderson is back writing the lyrics and performing the vocals on Light, leading the charge in this finale piece designed to leave an imprint long after the amps have cooled and the reverb has exhaled it’s last note. In more spinetingling vocal moments, Holly’s delivery of this line is what grips me the most; ‘Can you feel the warmth? There’s a heat from above. I’ll find it, I’ll catch it. It’ll be mine, it’s just a matter of time!’ The words overlap in delay like schools of fish in open water, forming, loosening up and re-forming like a singular mass with one brain reacting to the musical soundscape around it. Joseph Geyer puts in his best performance yet on saxophone, and there’s even acoustic guitar from Gabriel Löwy.
Though the music video for Light doesn’t feature Holly Henderson, it does feature more mysterious characters billed as the ‘Mercury Space Girls’ - Anna, Marlene, Jule, Hermine, Antonia, Anna, perhaps the very same women who appear in the film for All Ghosts. Directed by Julia and Harald, Light continues to explore the expansive imagery seen in You’re In A Trance in vast open skies above land devoid of light pollution. Similar to the film for Vanish, Light also features flashback elements in vintage film which show more optimistic moments, particularly in the mood of the on-screen characters.
Finally, as Geyer’s saxophone solo brings Light to a resounding finish, there is more yet in what feels like a bonus track, but is in fact a final verse quite unlike the rest of Light with Harald’s piano and Henderson’s voice the only thing breathing through the silence of the din. ‘I felt myself singing along to a love song in my head, I heard my lips move and my body quiet, a new connection is keeping me going. I sigh, you heard…’
Das Ende.
Read on for our detailed Q&A with Chandeen and the collaborators on Mercury Retrograde. Harald Löwy tells us his favourite track and the meaning of the album title. We talk to Julia Beyer behind the visual elements of the record including the cover-art and gruelling shooting schedule of the music videos. Florian Walther tells us about the equipment he used in the recording process and Holly Henderson and KITTY talk to us about the inspiration behind their lyrics. All this and more below!
Chandeen - ‘Mercury Retrograde’. Art design by Michael Schwalm, Photo by Julia Beyer.
1. Your latest album 'Mercury Retrograde' is my favourite from 2020, where did the title come from?
Harald Löwy: Thanks for having us in your favorite list, Teri. The title is just a wordplay, Julia is very interested in astrology and I am fascinated of everything within and outside our solar system. Mercury Retrograde is a word for both: astrology and astronomy. We thought it fits perfectly, also because of the spacy sound of the album.
2. All the songs on this album slot together really well! What was the writing process like for this record? Did you set out with a theme in mind?
Harald: It was one of my main goals to get that flow on the album. I think the theme is the harmonised whole sound. The writing process is quite different. There is not that one single moment where I write songs. It's a big part of my life and I can write in almost every situation. Of course, when it's time for an album we also had a lot of studio sessions, mostly with Florian, I came with some ideas and we developed the whole structure and arrangement of every idea to a song.
3. This record features collaborations with outside vocalists in Holly Henderson, KITTY and Odile as well as Jennifer Pague. When did you decide to bring in other collaborators and how did you choose these artists to work with?
Harald: I am always open to work with different artists to get another view, to see things from a new perspective. It's a big challenge and so great to work with people like Odile, she was 15 or 16 during the sessions and her view and artist influence is so refreshing and enriching. It motivates me to have such great artists around me. Also with Kitty and Holly, such fantastic talents. For me it gave my music and the album a real unique and colourful vibe.
4. Holly and Kitty - how did you become a part of the Mercury Retrograde project?
Holly Henderson: Harald found me via my site, I’ve been writing/arranging freelance online for a couple of years now, so I think he heard my music, dropped me a message and we got on great. We have similar musical sensibilities.
KITTY: Harry contacted me to work on this project, initially for one or two songs - I remember he told me about the album project and how there would be multiple artists working on different songs and it all sounded incredible and I was so excited to be a part of it. We worked remotely over the internet (before you had to, haha!) and I remember he sent me different instrumentals and I picked two that really resonated with me. Later he told me about Odile's song, 'Ocean Mind' and finally 'Cause It's Slow'.
5. Florian, most of the instruments are shared between yourself and Harald, how did you decide who played what on each track?
Florian Walther: Basically, it just happens on the way. It usually works that way that Harald comes up with a rough song idea and presents it to me with a certain sound in mind and certain parts already on it, mostly played with piano and synths. Then we try to figure out what parts would sound great on guitar and just experiment with it. Sometimes he already has guitar parts on there that sound great, so we leave them. Sometimes it's just some piano chords and I feel inspired to play a certain part. It's usually Harald who initiates a song, and I'm the one trying to bring other elements to it in a complementary way. Same thing with the drums. Harald usually starts the writing process with programmed drums, and as the songs evolve some just feel right being played more organic, like a drummer would play it.
Harald: Florian is a great drummer, it's always fantastic when he replaces the programmed drums with his organic drum play.
6. Florian and Harald, what was the gear you used to play on this album?
Harald: I use a lot vintage gear, specially at the mixing process and the production, different preamps and comps, or f.e. a Copperphone to double vocals.
Florian: My main electric guitars are a Fender Telecaster from 1978 and a Heritage H137 Les Paul Type Guitar from the 90's. I have several real vintage tube amps that I love, but on our recordings I used a Kemper Profiler Digital Amp. For the way we write and record it's crucial that I can dial in a sound in seconds to catch that moment of inspiration, and to be honest, there's virtually no difference in the sound quality. It would just take much longer if I took my vintage equipment and fooled around with it for hours to get it to sound like that. The acoustic guitars I used the most are a Furch OM Model, mostly for the more delicate or finger picked parts and a Lag Jumbo model, that happens to sound really great on strummed rhythm parts. The drums varied from time to time. I have an old Ludwig Kit from the 70's, that we used on some recordings, but for the same reasons that I mentioned before, we extensively used a tiny Roland E-drum kit with different sample-libraries, that gave us immediate great sounds, but with the feel of a real drummer. I used to spend thousands of hours and dollars to get certain sonic results in top notch studios. In some cases that's a very desirable part of the recording process, in our case we wanted to quickly catch an emotion before it's gone. It's 2020! Why not use the tools that are available to everyone to make some great music?
7. Holly, were you given the finished instrumentals to put your lyrics to, or was it more of a collaborative process?
Holly: One of the things I love about how they work, there was enough to work with to get a great feeling for where the track was headed, but I think they were also waiting to have the vocals/melodies etc down so they could build onto the track afterwards. It’s a nice, authentic way of working, more interesting and layered than just giving a singer a backing track, I think it’s where a lot of the mystery and ethereal nature of their music comes from.
8. KITTY, did you meet Chandeen at all to record your parts, or was it all done in your own studio space?
KITTY: No, everything was done remotely, in my little room at university haha - although I would really love to meet and work with Harry and Florian in person!
9. Holly, were your parts recorded in your home studio?
Holly: Yes!
10. Julia, you wrote and performed the vocal parts for 'Vanish', 'All Ghosts' and 'Wild At Heart'. Would you take us through the inspiration behind each lyric?
Julia Beyer: Most of the time my lyrics come from deep within my subconscious and it happens very often that I only recognize the inspirations behind it after I hear the finished song. I think that's a pretty magical process as it sometimes even helps me to understand some phases I went through or times in my life better. It sometimes feels as if my subconscious is writing letters to me through my lyrics. And it even happens that I write lyrics that I still haven't figured out myself, this is especially the case with "All Ghosts". I wanted to create an eerie, dark and desperate atmosphere with these lyrics which fit well to the overall mood of the instrumental. But I think the lyrics haven't fully revealed themselves to me yet.
"Wild At Heart" is very loosely inspired by the movie of the same title by David Lynch but somehow personal. It's one of the very few love songs I've written over the years. It's about going through thick and thin, going crazy together.
"Vanish" though is a totally different thing, even different to all other lyrics I've written so far as it's about a very specific topic. I read about the misogynistic Incel scene sometime last year and was shocked that something like this even exists. I think it's very scary and sad at the same time. So the lyrics try to depict a fictional scenery based on this phenomenon that has the most unfortunate ending but matches with many of the fantasies occurring in the Incel scene. I also tried to incorporate the subject of Gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse I went through myself one time and for me, is thematically quite near to the initial idea of the song.
11. Harald, the whistled melody on 'Vanish' is beautifully melancholic, was that melody always going to be whistled or was that decided later into the process?
Harald: It was just a spontaneous whistle melody during the recording session. I wanted to do it as simple and human as possible, no overworked melody. Like someone who walks around, whistling to that song.
12. Holly, what inspired the lyric on 'I Don't Care If I'm Wasted?'
Holly: They really wanted to get across that feeling of hope and possibility in that track, so, actually just inspired by the music and it’s constantly, slowly elevating nature, I wanted to write around the idea of almost delusional happiness. That sort of, otherworldly hopefulness, when you’re listening to music that makes you feel so good you almost transcend, ‘I don’t care if I’m wasted’ or what this feeling is, I just want to feel it forever.
13. And what inspired your contribution to 'Light'?
Holly: We worked together so well on 'I Don't Care If I'm Wasted’, we’re both quite idealistic and try to think big when coming up with ideas, so a chance to work on another anthem track seemed like a no-brainer.
14. The extra verse at the end of 'Light' sounds almost like a bonus track, was that always intended to be there or did it come much later?
Holly: They were very open to ideas, I felt comfortable giving a little more melodically/vocally, and giving some choice and fat to trim. I remember writing a little extra on this one, and at the time, the track wasn’t so fully formed, so it’s less that it was a later addition, it was one of those happy accidents, where we were both throwing ideas at the wall and something unexpected stuck.
15. KITTY, you wrote lyrics for three tracks on Mercury Retrograde; 'Let There Be Fire', 'Ocean Mind' and 'You're In A Trance', would you take us through your writing process for those?
KITTY: The writing process is my favourite way of writing music (receiving the instrumentals first) and I was given a lot of creative freedom which was amazing! I really love to be sent instrumental tracks and being able to feel my way through them. I guess that way they kind of write themselves, as it feels like I'm interacting with emotions and stories that are already there present in the music. 'Let There Be Fire' was the first track I began writing on. The first thing that came to me was the melody line for the chorus when I sing "Let There Be Fire" and that's when I got the idea of writing that song from the perspective of a wildfire.
Next was 'You're in a Trance' - Harry had told me that initially he was planning on singing it himself but he tried a Lana Del Rey acapella sample against it which sounded amazing and it reminded him of my voice. Like with 'Let There Be Fire' the first thing that really stuck and stood out was definitely the lyrics and top-line for the chorus. I was really inspired by the idea of lucid dreaming and over-idealising someone. I've just been going through our old messages actually and I told Harry this when I first started writing it properly: "they feel that they are being idealised into something they are not and they want their lover to always be in this state of mind, in a perpetual lucid dream of them".
The process for Ocean Mind was and will always be such a precious and treasured experience for me. It was really special to be able to write this song for Odile, she really reminded me of myself. She had already recorded a demo and I tried to keep as much of the emotions and feelings from that as possible. Some of the lyrics and a lot of the top-line is taken from that first demo so of course I cannot take all of the credit for that song! There was definitely a lot of back and forth between me and Harry for that it and I remember there being a lot of magical moments, particularly when he stripped back the instrumental to just the piano. I was very inspired by her story and I'm so proud to have played even a small part in her first journey as a recording artist.
16. What was it like when you heard Odile's performance on 'Ocean Mind' for the first time?
KITTY: I was so so proud to be honest. I was so happy that the lyrics resonated with her, I felt like she was born to sing that track, it could only be sung by her and no one else but her. I know that it was emotional for her to hear my demo initially but I promise it was more emotional for me to finally hear her sing it!!
17. Your delivery in 'Cause It's Slow' is perfect, did it take long to record the monologue for that?
KITTY: Thank you! I really love spoken word passages and tend to include little snippets of that in my own solo work - so if I remember correctly it was a fairly quick process I believe?
18. Julia, I love the cover-art for this record, where did that idea come from?
Julia: I'm very happy you like it! When we were shooting the music videos for the album, I used the sparse idle time in between takes to shoot some Polaroids - a huge passion of mine. When we were looking through all the Polaroid shots, we decided to use this scene from the music video for "Vanish" because it has some sort of glamorous atmosphere that paired well with the album title. Also we loved the idea of having the same scene on the back of the album, but empty - without the actress - as a counterpart.
19. A number of videos were made for this album, but which was your favourite to make and why?
Julia: This is impossible to answer as I enjoyed filming all of these equally! The circumstances for some were more exhausting than for others (e.g. filming "All Ghosts" in a circus tent with temperatures of nearly 40 degrees Celsius), but overall I am in love with all of the videos. All the girls we worked with were so amazing, I still get goosebumps when I look at some of the scenes. But you have to know that we filmed all four videos within four days - actually I think we were totally out of our minds to plan with such a crazy schedule. So the different video shoots pretty much all blur together in my memory and for me it was just one wild ride.
20. KITTY, 'You're In A Trance' makes for such a dreamy experience in the video, what was it like to shoot that one?
KITTY: I was in Wales during the summer that I shot the video. Harry gave me a rough storyline and plenty of ideas and I tried to make it happen to the best of my abilities!! My mum and brother also helped me out for a lot of the shots so it was definitely a family effort too. Some of it was filmed in the Marteg Valley, which is only a couple of minutes from my grandmother's house and we also drove to the beach in Borth to shoot some of the other scenes.
21. Harald, every song on this album is wonderful, but do you have a favourite? If so which one and why?
Harald: It's like asking a parent with three children: who is your favorite child... However, it seems it is my first recorded album which I still like after finishing the production. :)
But if you wanna hear a song: I love Cause it's slow, because it has that interstellar vibe with the fantastic lyrics of Jen.
22. Holly and KITTY - would your contributions to Mercury Retrograde be likely to make it into your own performing repertoire?
Holly: I would love to do an arrangement of I Don't Care If I'm Wasted, always been interested in how it would sound with an acoustic and myself and another vocalist weaving some harmonies throughout.
KITTY: I would really love to perform these songs and it would be an amazing experience to be able to have a live set surrounded by all the artists on this project. I really hope that it's something that could happen in the future!
I'd like to add that working with Chandeen really taught me a lot. Harry's guidance, suggestions and the way we bounced ideas off of each other was a strong force that shaped the way the songs turned out for sure. His music really spoke to me and really it felt like I was interpreting what was already there. Like I said, there were a lot of magical moments when writing with them despite everything being done remotely but there was definitely a strong musical connection there. I loved every moment and I am so proud of the album as a whole and being able to have been a part of it!
23. Finally, if time and money were no option, what would be the ultimate way you'd choose to present this album live?
Harald: A spacerock ambient trip, (re)verby and very very very epic with a lot visuals and lights. I always have this atmosphere in my mind when I listen to the songs. We will try to do it in 2021, doing a live film or something.
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To purchase a copy of Chandeen’s ‘Mercury Retrograde’ on CD, vinyl and digital, visit their Bandcamp page here.
Follow Chandeen across social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @chandeenmusic.
Find Holly Henderson on Instagram at @hollyhendersonofficial, Facebook @hollyhendersonmusic and Twitter @hollywoowooo.
KITTY is on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @urbabykitty.
Follow the adventures of Jennifer Pague on Instagram @jenniferpaguesounds.
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