Hildegard is the collaborative project of Montréal-based artists Ouri and Helena Deland. Their latest record, Jour 1596, is out now on Chivi Chivi.
Hildegard is the collaborative project of Montréal-based artists Ouri and Helena Deland. Their latest record, Jour 1596, was created in the span of 1,596 days, during yearly week-long retreats to rural Québec. Here, the duo discuss two of their shared influences, Duke Ellington and Beverly Glenn-Copeland, who both have tracks on the album dedicated to them. Jour 1596 is out now on Chivi Chivi.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Ouri: We have a common taste for softness. A lot of music that we like in common has this kind of empowered softness, I would say.
Helena Deland: Yeah. When we first went into the studio in 2017, for the first record, we had sent each other playlists to show each other what we had been listening to, and the middle of the Venn diagram was way more aggressive, and either like house music or—
Ouri: Rap.
Helena: Yeah. And — how would you qualify Andy Stott’s sound? Experimental electronic music?
Ouri: Yeah.
Helena: That was our starting point. And I feel like with the second album, what we were digging was way more mellow and soft power vibes.
Ouri: I think we had a lot of difficult life experiences simultaneously, and I think we needed to create a space that felt like this for both of us. It was not a conscious decision, but I think we kept trying to maybe go into different directions musically, and the right feeling was just there, contained in that palette and that emotion.
Helena: Yeah, that comfort and that familiarity is what we would keep coming back to. The tracks that we kept for the album all have that in common, I think. They’re very soothing to us. I think that’s what’s special about them — they’re not trying to do anything. They just happened. And sometimes in ways that were expected to be only a moment of fooling around. Because as Ouri said, I think we needed to cocoon and nurture more than branch out and experiment. But cocooning and nurturing also involves experimentation. It’s cool to be in front of the album today, four years later, and still feel like the songs are mysterious to me. I’m, like, not sure how those happened. [Laughs.]
So it was sort of a conceptual decision to include Duke Ellington, or something that we did for our pleasure, really. The first series of days that we spent in the studio for the second album was March 2020, and I had been very obsessed with the song “Single Petal of a Rose.” We were going through songs we liked with each other to kind of spark something, and Ouri just sampled the two transition chords and made a beat off that. And over that, I played that silly little synth — was it a clarinet sound?
Ouri: Sort of like mellotron flute, or something.
Helena: It came together very quickly and it was really fun. You have silliness spilling out of it, which takes away from the finesse of the Duke Ellington piece. It’s funny because this was a spontaneous, very pleasant moment in the studio, and now we’re looking into rights and… it’s gonna be costly. [Laughs.]
Ouri: [Laughs.]
Helena: A big part of us thinks it’s worth it, but… yeah.
Ouri: I started listening to Duke Ellington when I was studying electronic music at UdeM. I had some jazz harmony classes that were so hard, and I remember listening to his music. There’s a fascination about the sound and the textures and, of course, the harmony, and I feel like my simple brain wants to take some little pieces of that and run with it.
Helena: “Simple brain.” [Laughs.]
Ouri: You know, jazz harmonies are constantly moving, and it’s something I really admire, but I don’t know… I really love conveying a stable feeling in music. So I guess I’m trying to get the more simple pieces of his landscape.
Helena: Yeah, it’s true. I’d always been very intimidated by jazz, and songs like “Single Petal of a Rose” were kind of my way in. Because this one, as you say, is maybe more harmonically simple. So I’m very attached to it, because it kind of trained me to stop being afraid of jazz. Also, when I was listening to this song a lot, it was fun to hear about its story, which is very intriguing and weird. It was on a suite that was pressed once and sent to the Queen of England — he had met the Queen of England and said, “You are so inspiring, music is probably going to emerge from our meeting.” And as the story goes, she answered, “Well, I’ll be listening.” And he sent her a single pressing of that album, that was only repressed after his death, which is so strange to me — the relationship of a Black American to the Queen of England, and wanting to create an exclusive bond.
I feel like the colors that we sampled in the Duke Ellington piece, I hear those a lot in the other songs on the record. And even on our previous album — the semitone chords repeating is so classic in our songs. We love those tonalities and that interval.
Ouri: The tension.
Helena: Yeah.
Ouri: Someone else’s influence would be Beverly Glenn-Copeland.
Helena: I love this story.
Ouri: We were in the studio, and I remember we had a few days of trying to work on things and just moving so slowly. And there was a moment of non-judgement that was quite rare, because I think we started to have some expectations and it was very specific.
Helena: It was a bit scary.
Ouri: Yeah. One of us sat at the piano, one of us sat at the Juno, and we just started improvising and it came out naturally. It was a moment of, “OK, we can make something beautiful and simple,” like “Jour 6” on the first album — it’s kind of a stolen moment. I think the essence of “Beverly” is so free and soft and clearly defined. It was really inspiring to think about this person while we were making it, and remembering their practice and their essence and how they were the first Black student at McGill in music. But the way they talk about that is not like this fighting stance; it’s really soft power.
Helena: This improv moment between us — we’d been trying way too hard, and clearly that was the problem. We were reaching for something we couldn’t see. We were not giving ourselves any time to do anything but try to break out of this stillness that we were in. But we just allowed ourselves a break, and Ouri was recalling a talk that you heard Glenn give at the Red Bull Academy.
Ouri: Yeah, in 2017.
Helena: There’s a YouTube video of this, so Ouri shared it and we watched it on the monitor. We kind of breathed the first sigh of relief that we had had in all those days in the studio, and were just reminded of how simple music can be. It was following that little moment that we sat down at our instruments and made the most repetitive, playful, unbothered thing that we had made in a while. So we’re both really, really grateful for Glenn’s ability to communicate such OK-ness. As you say, there’s no feistiness. It’s very accepting.
Ouri: Accepting and owning the space that is ours at this very moment, and listening to our responsibility and just transmitting something simple.
Helena: And really human. It’s something that’s special about him — he’s very emotionally connected.
Ouri: And the way he talks about your responsibility as a young person in the creative world — it’s really calming. There’s no competition. We just have the responsibility, all of us, to share what we feel in this experience. I remember we were all crying during that talk. [Laughs.] It was just so moving and so simple.
Helena: It talks to the soft being inside of us. I was in the studio with him last week, actually, and it was so singular. His presence, and the quality of his presence — it clears the mind. I was part of a choir singing backing vocals, and his songs… I don’t know if this is the right word, but they contain so much truth and trust and beauty and positivity. Everyone was sobbing, and he was just like, [Helena winks]. So level-headed. It was so special. Very memorable and emotional.
We went through a lot of hardship making this album, just because of how much we wanted to make it. It’s beautiful to be left with the moments where we let go. That’s what is on the record. So it’s important to remember that what matters is getting to a place where you can do that.
