Robert Ascroft is a photographer, director, and musician. His debut record, Echo Still Remains, is out now on Hand Drawn Dracula.
Britta Phillips is a musician and actress, and a member of the bands Luna and Dean & Britta; Robert Ascroft is a photographer, director, and musician. Robert’s debut record, Echo Still Remains, is out today on Hand Drawn Dracula, and features contributions from friends like Christopher Owens (Girls), Kid Congo, and Britta herself. So to celebrate the release, the two got on a Zoom call to catch up about it.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Britta Phillips: I’d love to know when this started. It’s been a while.
Robert Ascroft: The project?
Britta: Yeah.
Robert: I think I first approached you in 2020. It was pandemic time. I was kind of locked in the house and said, “Hey, I have this song that I’m working on.” And I already at that point had recorded a couple of other tracks — I had maybe four or five songs — and now I’m sitting on about 45 songs I’ve written, and most of them almost final recorded with a bunch of different people.
Britta: Oh, cool. And of course before that, we’ve known each other for a while now.
Robert: 12 years, or something. So it was weird, of course, for me to approach you, because I’m a photographer. I’m not known as a musician. I think you guys knew that I played music, but it wasn’t a situation where I was going to go in and record a record, and wanted people I knew to come and help fill out the record.
Britta: I mean, I don’t know if it was weird, but I was surprised a little bit. I was curious.
Robert: That original version of the song that we recorded is way slower than this version. It’s pretty psychedelic. It’s very cool. I think when I played you the new version and said, do you want to go in the studio with me and re-record this song, you said, “Oh, it’s a real song now, instead of a vibe.”
Britta: [Laughs.] Yeah. I mean, it was really cool. I could see it in a soundtrack, weaving in and out.
Robert: Yeah, it was very dreamy. I mean, it’s the same lyrics and same chord progression, but there’s no instruments on that that are from the final thing that we did. This is a completely new song.
Britta: Did you write it on piano?
Robert: I wrote it on a piano, yeah. And I’m a terrible piano player, but I’d been messing around with these chords — it was kind of a David Bowie thing, I think it was C major to C minor. I really love that David Bowie always uses, like, one chord, and then augments the chord. He does it very often, particularly around Ziggy Stardust time. So I was just messing with that one day in the studio, and I recorded those chord changes. The way I normally write and work on a song is I just have the chords, and I have lyric sheets that I’m just writing and writing, and then I audition which chords will go with which lyrics that I have. Because sometimes I have lyrics and I’ve done a whole demo and it just doesn’t feel right. But this is one of those ones that I feel like the lyrics came one night. I was just laying in bed and I was typing it to myself in an email.
Britta: Oh, that’s good. They so often they come at night. And unfortunately, I just usually go to sleep. [Laughs.] I don’t want to wake Dean up or whatever. It’s good when he’s out of town, then I’ll write a lot. But that’s great when it all comes at once and you can actually capture it, instead of just thinking you’re going to remember it later.
Robert: Well, my partner Luz will talk to me, and she says things like, “Where did you go?” Because I’ll just go spacing out in my head and thinking about something else. And I loved that line. So in a way, the song maybe could have negative connotations, but I don’t think it does. It’s actually kind of positive. Sort of like trying to draw you back to the one that you love, you know?
Britta: Yeah. And I think the first version — I always think it had a David Lynch vibe.
Robert: Yeah, definitely. The music video that we did has a little bit of [that]. People have said, “Oh, it’s a Lost Highway vibe,” particularly because it’s a highway at night. [Laughs.]
Britta: Yeah. That’s a good thing.
Robert: When we were doing the video, I think I originally I sent you a picture of Janet Leigh in Psycho. She’s got her hand up and she’s thinking. She’s stolen the money.
Britta: Right.
Robert: Whenever I’m writing any song, it usually starts with a seed that’s like, I’m germinating this idea of a story about somebody else, even though it came originally from my own life. So then I was thinking of this character that, you ended up sort of embodying this character for the video.
Britta: Isn’t it funny how — I mean, you’re always starting from your own personal experience, but then because human experience is so universal, you can create [something different].
Robert: It doesn’t have to necessarily be about you. And I think one of the things that I do lyrically is, I always go back and I’m stripping away anything that makes it so specific, so that it does become a little bit more of a universal theme. I remember Iggy Pop one time saying something about “30 words or less” for a song. I love that line.
Britta: That’s easier, too. Or, it’s not really, because you have to edit down to just the right 30 words.
Robert: Yeah. But one of the things that I want to talk about with you is that we took the audio and turned it into this great visual thing, and in some ways, I actually like the song even better now. It was maybe my favorite song on this whole record, but I really love this song because the video is so great and it’s also so simple. I mean, I’ve done these really cinematic, huge, epic shoots for this — I’ve shot a video for almost every song. But we got the car, and you got the cool Girl Scout uniform.
Britta: I got a 1950s Girl Scout dress.
Robert: And Brian Gaw did beautiful hair for you.
Britta: Yeah. And it was pretty short, the shoot.
Robert: Yeah. And the reason why is — this is sort of the way we recorded too — you know the song inside and out, so I’m not trying to get you to remember the song. I make a little video that I have on an iPad that is a karaoke that you could sing along with, and you didn’t even need it. We just ended up taking it away because it was more distracting.
Britta: Yeah, I had to relearn it because it had been a while.
Robert: Well, maybe two and a half years is a long time.
Britta: It’s been a minute. But that was pretty easy to do. Still, I’m so glad you suggested that we do the other me, because I don’t think I knew that was coming.
Robert: I said, “So it’s going to be this Janet Leigh thing, you’re going to be the sort of good girl who’s driving the car.” And then I thought it would be fun if maybe there’s someone just kind ghosting in and out on the other side. But I wasn’t sure what you would be doing.
Britta: Right.
Robert: Again, this video is so great because your performance is everything. Lighting-wise it was pretty simple. It was almost like a still photo shoot. My DP Raoul Germain and I put together the lighting and my son Lucas was there. Then you came in and gave us this completely amazing performance, because I had shot angles of you from behind, from the side. I had all this coverage, as we call it, to make it a more interesting visual thing. And in the end, your performance was so good that I didn’t ever want to cut away from you being the vocalist — it’s literally one take. If you watch it, you do disappear, but I go right back to the same shot.
Britta: I wonder which take that was.
Robert: I don’t really remember. Take one, I’m sure. [Laughs.]
Britta: It was so organic, though, because the bad girl — wild girl, fun girl, whatever.
Robert: The one we want to hang out with.
Britta: Yeah. I just took off my Girl Scout dress and had a slip on and was like, “Does this work?”
Robert: I think originally, you were just going to be in the same outfit, but sort of interacting with it. And obviously I’m doing a split screen, so I said, “When you put your hand up, don’t go too far over to the other side, stay a little tighter than you normally would.”
Britta: Right. But you gave me some prompt. I don’t know if it was “wild,” or…
Robert: Yeah, there’s two things that happened. I said, “OK, let’s do one take of it.” And we played the song too, because I wanted this girl to be interacting with what’s going on sonically. But that also allowed me to shake the car. So I was hiding out of frame, just shaking the front of the car. And every time I shook the car, you started to loosen up and get a little wild. And I thought that that was what gave it, you know—
Britta: Movement.
Robert: It gave you, “Oh, I know that this one’s being very chill and very cool and sort of level headed, and I’m just going to be off the rails on this side.”
Britta: “I’m going to taunt that one.” [Laughs.]
Robert: I wish that we had an audio recording of the actual shoot.
Britta: I’m just maniacally laughing. It’s so funny.
Robert: Yeah, you’re laughing and going crazy.
Britta: That was so fun. Often when you’re doing a music video, lip syncing is the least fun part of it because it does tie you down. But it worked out so perfectly for this because the first me that’s lip syncing looks so uptight.
Robert: You were playing a character then — you’re not even being yourself. So if you’re trying to be Britta Phillips doing one of your songs from your solo record or whatever, it’s completely different than, “I’m an actor playing this good girl character.”
Britta: Yeah. Well, I like playing other people.
Robert: Even as a photographer, oftentimes I talk to people about being in a sort of character. One of my jokes is sometimes an actor will say to me, “Well, you know, I’m not a model.” And I say, “Well, why don’t we act like you’re a model?” [Laughs.]
Britta: [Laughs.] “Oh, yeah, me if I were…”
Robert: So in the original version of this song, you played the bass guitar line. Again, this was pandemic time — you guys live five minutes away from me, so I came by with some microphones and preamps and everything to drop off for you, and just gave you a little bit of a guide track, and then from there I said, “Why don’t you play a bass line, too?” I think that was a really cool bass line that’s in the old version.
Britta: Yeah, the slow version.
Robert: As you know, it took two and a half, three years to make this record. Because of my working schedule and everything else, I was able to finish it during the strike — that’s the reason why the record got done.
Britta: When was that? Was that last year?
Robert: Last year, yeah. And it comes out [February 14].
Britta: That must feel good.
Robert: It does. In some ways, it’s taken so long that it’s just like, “Oh, yeah, and then there’s this.”
Britta: But it’s different when it’s out there. It’s a whole different thing.
Robert: Yeah. Also, I’m coming into making music late in my career — I’ve been 30 years as a photographer and director, and then I’m making my first album — I wanted it to be right, and I want it to be good.
Britta: I made my first solo album in my early 50s.
Robert: I remember you telling me. I think I had a birthday and your record had just come out, and you guys were at a party at my place. We were talking about that, and you said, “You know, I’m 51 and I just came out with my first album.” And I thought, That is so cool. And maybe I used that as a template for myself to say I could do it too.
Britta: It’s hard to make, I think, a first album when when you’re older, because I’m even more of a perfectionist. It was just like, I’ve waited this long. It’s better be…
Robert: Yeah, that’s how I feel.
Britta: Well, [“Where Did You Go”] was fun to make.
Robert: It’s always fun working with you, Britta!
