The New York electronic duo ideasforconversations spent their early days playing shows opening for their friends in emo and screamo bands, hunched over an analog setup somewhat unfamiliar to crowds prone to rock. Two years later, their debut EP No Bad Words is out in the world. It demands an audience from the first note, and they got one. The songs are sticky and club-ready. Mollie and Emerson are fit for the task, too; look at any live recording of them, and you’ll see a duo locked into a mind meld, showing full control over their tools. We recently caught up with them over Zoom, and though Emerson and Mollie called from an NYC apartment and a London pub, respectively, they remained in sync. Read the interview and listen to their new EP below.

How are you guys? 

Emerson: I just got off work. Cooking all day. What about you, Mollie?

 

Mollie: I feel like the last few days have been kind of tumultuous. I got held up in border jail for like six hours because I didn't have the stupid British visa. Then I had to wait for the French police to bring me back into France. And they were just taking their sweet time. So I was having a tough day. But I made it to London and I'm gonna make it back to New York. 

Emerson: At least now you're in the pub.

You gotta go to the pub after a long day in jail. What have you been up to? 

Emerson: Mollie DJ’d a show that Clavicular was at. 

Mollie: Yeah, the welcome.jpeg fashion event. Emerson didn't wanna go. He wanted to hang out with his girlfriend. So I DJ’d with our friend Reno and we played a lot of our new EP. Which was fun, I guess. Someone has to do it. Clavicular, in some way, knows about ideasforconversations.

You guys are pretty close with a lot of up-and-coming emo acts. How did you guys end up in that scene? 

Mollie: They are my friends I was close with before Emerson and I were a band. We just wanted to play gigs with our friends, and they'd put us on bills to close their shows and stuff, which was definitely strange, but lovely in so many ways. It’s nice to feel like an outlier in this case, maybe not in others, but in this one it felt swell. It’s only recently that we've started to play gigs with our contemporaries, people who make music that sounds like ours does. I feel less novel. It's like a different kind of community. 

Emerson: We’re meeting people through some random booker that we've never met. They’re putting us on a bill with people that we're gonna sound right with. It’s a weird thing where the first, I don't know, 15, 20 shows we played, you couldn't compare us to anything that was on the bill. So it felt like no matter what we do, it's fine. ‘Cause it's not gonna be like, this is better or worse than that last screamo band. But now, I’m like, oh shit, a lot of people in this audience have a reference for how it's supposed to sound, and how it's to be performed. Especially with the music being out. 

Mollie: The emo kids weren't leaning over the rail and trying to take a gander at our setup. It’s good to have that fallback, though. If the twee-poppers stop rocking with us, we can always make music with our friends. 

Do people try to touch your equipment? 

Emerson: Yes, for sure. I mean, not while we're playing, but before and after a hundred percent. They come up and try to mess with it. I get asking. Why would I not want to talk about it? Mollie's referencing this rave we played—this outdoor rave on this abandoned lot in Williamsburg that's right next to where an old oil rig used to be. So anyone could pull up. We were transitioning between a DJ set and us, and we were trying to frantically plug all our shit in and set up. And there were three dudes being like, “Keep the vibes going! What are you guys trying to do? Like, do you need help?” Just let me figure it out. 

Mollie: Emerson was a little spiteful and was saying, “Just press play. Blow this guy’s socks off.” He thought we were faking it, too. By the end of the gig, he was like our biggest fan.

You use analog synths, correct? 

Emerson: Mainly. We use some digital. The sampler we use is a 404 also which isn’t analog but [uses] samples we made using an analog synth that we can’t bring there. There’s drums we made on a drum machine. It’s not as harsh as like, we don’t fuck with digital. We never use MIDI. I think it's cool to creatively limit yourself, but it's also with what we’re doing we don’t need that right now. We're just making whatever, and it's just very based in analog. Everything starts there and then ends there when it's performed. There's definitely a mix. Mollie's using OPZ which is a Teenage Engineering product that's a sampler, beatbox thing.

Mollie: I wish I had a Beatbox.

The drink or the instrument? 

Mollie: It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Two things can be true at once. 

Emerson: They don’t have those in London.

It’s an American delicacy. 

Emerson: It’s actually a Shark Tank invention. 

Mollie: Do you have any Shark Tank ideas?

Not at the moment. How about you? 

Mollie: Cigarettes that make you have to pee less. 

Emerson: As a kid, I wanted to make a box that you could put an item in, and a digital [one] would show up on your computer. But someone got to it first.

What’s your experience making analog electronic music in a DAW-centered world? 

Emerson: Bands we love like Tal Castle or Cicada are using tracks, and every time I watch them I’m like, that looks so nice. It just sounds perfect. I do get a little bit of jealousy. It would be sweet to not have to carry all this junk. On the inverse of that, there’s so much analog electronic stuff happening in New York, it’s just not a ton of dance. There are a lot of modular shows. So I don’t think we’re super unique or anything, but a lot of people in the scene we’ve fallen into are not doing that. 

Mollie: I was at the Bassvictim show, and I was watching her have to carry such a crazy stage presence. So it feels lovely to me that I will never have to worry about being that hot, and I can just hide behind my instruments. I won't have to worry about how to move my body, because I have like, knobs to turn and shit, right?

Can you speak to the importance of dancing? 

Mollie: It’s really important to dance when you feel like you have to. You’ll be feeling weird at a club or something and feel like you have to dance, which is when maybe when you shouldn’t. It’s important to dance when you feel like it is a bodily response, as involuntary as a sneeze. That’s when it is good and it makes me feel like I am a part of something that is bigger than me that’s communal and important. I think that moment in dance or in a good conversation when I feel the opposite of alienated and seen is what I live for. 

Emerson: It’s like a guided breath exercise with everyone in the room but way more fun. I really like dancing.

How do you split duties during live performances? 

Mollie: A lot of the instruments that we are familiar with in our independent practice are those that we take control of, but then when we’re unable to do that, we'll have the other person jump in and take over that instrument. It happens in the moment while we're creating everything, because we create everything to perform and not to record it, generally speaking. The unnatural part comes in when we have to record it and we can really zoom in. It’s like written word versus spoken word. You can edit your written word a bunch, whereas your spoken word … I'm saying this right now, and I can't really redact it. 

Emerson: We both really love when we do something new in the song. For a really long time, it was sort of like our little secret, because none of the music was out. We could make the song longer, or add another thing, or keep playing them if people were liking it. And we still can, but now it's not a secret anymore.

How did the project Ideas for Branching in United States come about? 

Emerson: Evan from Branching Out DM'd us and all of Holidays [in United States] and was like, “Let's put out a split.” And we were all like, “yeah.” 

Mollie: Shooting that album cover was so funny. We couldn't get everybody into the same room, so it's a drawing that Emerson did over a Zoom call screenshot. I'm working a courier gig; Emerson, Sarah, and Evan are smoking pot in their room. And Aiden's on a line cooking. I don't know. 

Emerson: The hardest I've ever laughed was trying to get everyone in that Zoom. Someone would drop out, and then Mollie’s blurred eye would show up. Just to get one screenshot.

What is some analog-synth music that inspires you, new or old? 

Emerson: I-F is huge for me, “Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass.” That song blew my mind the first time I heard it. I love Lali Puna. She's really a genius, and probably has the coolest analog synth music ever. DJ Omega is a huge one for me. Drums and synths. He's a genius. Miami bass. Detroit bass. The most perfect drums. Absolutely beautiful. 

Mollie: I'm really into George Pringle right now.

Emerson: We might have to bleep that one. We might have to gatekeep that one. 

Mollie: Why? She’s so good. 

Emerson: She’s amazing. Don’t bleep it. We also really fuck with Tal Castle as a contemporary influence. 

Mollie: And Cicada. I was talking to this English kid the other day about them, and he kept calling them “za-ka-da.”

Electronic duos are very hot right now. Do you guys have any theories as to why? 

Mollie: I think about bands that we would play with early in the emo scene. And at the end of that car ride, you want to choke one of those eight people for sure. Just logistically, I feel like it makes sense. 

Emerson: Logistically, for sure. You can practice in your room and you can meet up as much as you need to. 

Mollie: I love being in a duo because I feel like it's easy to feel heard. When I'm in a room full of people trying to express my opinion and I don't feel heard, I just want to be quiet and run away. And I can't run out of Emerson's room because he’ll just knock on the bathroom door and say, “why are you being weird?” And I'd be like, OK, let's talk about it.

Any favorite duos? 

Emerson: Park Avenue Music is huge for us, one of the first things Mollie ever showed me. Obviously Figurine and MGMT rock. 

Mollie: Headache, Dallas Cowboys, and Japanther.

What kind of music did you make before meeting? 

Emerson: My parents do make shadow puppets and long format projection/puppetry performances. They asked me to make a couple songs for them when I was 13 and I got really into making and learning after that. I made a lot of sample-y ambient breakcore stuff all throughout college, and then got really into making dancey 80 BPM stuff in the last 3 years. 

Mollie: I played piano and violin when I was little. My mom bought me my first synth when I was turning 17, which I would take onto instagram live a little too frequently. Other stuff that can be found on my Soundcloud.

You worked at a sandwich store together. What kind of sandwich is your music? 

Emerson: Something with not a lot going on, but leaves you just satisfied enough. Like a nice ham, soft bread, crunchy lettuce. Mustard, too. 

Mollie: White bread, salami, pickle, cheddar, lettuce, ample mayo, light mustard, shower time.

Your name came from a NotesApp note entitled “ideas for conversations.” What were some of those ideas? 

Mollie: I’m not telling.

Emerson: Should I tell? 

Mollie: No.