motel void

MOTEL VOID: You’re from Brooklyn, NY. How would you describe the current music scene there?

People and Clothes: Due to Agoraphobia I rarely leave the house. To this extent my music scene is what I hear from the street, what I’m listening to, and what my friends send me. From my phone I see local musicians I’ve met via social media playing at strange gatherings in basements, coffee shops, on street corners, in small venues. They are capturing a beautiful energy that my situation keeps from me, but I try to bring it out in different ways, in quieter intimacies.

MOTEL VOID: ‘Emma,’ is your very first single, is People and Clothes your first project ever?

People and Clothes: People and Clothes is not the first but everything has been anonymous, and I like to keep it that way. Sometimes I’ll get letters from people on old bandcamps, the communication always skirts around identity. Music kept separate from knowing allows for a certain textural quality since you do not have to listen as if commanded, instead you hear it in one swell.

MOTEL VOID: Could you tell us more about the recording and writing process of your songs?

People and Clothes: Mediation, thinking on things for as long as possible, keeping them in the pit of my stomach and then trying to take the knots and climb the rope. A Shure m58 fed into my laptop captured everything. Hunched over a desk recording layers of vocals.

MOTEL VOID: Your biggest influences right now?

People and Clothes: Cindy, Florist, Cassandra Jenkins, Requisit, Fog Lake, mark william lewis, Naked Flames, Reflection, Nourished by Time, my bed, a single pan for eggs, what I see through my window, the sound of the radiator.

MOTEL VOID: Your plans for the rest of 2023? Any live shows ahead?

People and Clothes: More songs. Perhaps live streaming shows from the room I live in. It comes down to breaking down my fear— do I fear exteriority or do I fear other people or do I fear eyes? Really I am playing to myself.