1 week ago
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Shaped more by the internet than any one city, samxemma’s Sam Cooper and Emma Kirsch describe their sound as distinctly online. “We don’t sound like we’re from Manchester,” Cooper admits. “All the music I find is online.” Yet their meeting was offline; at university. “Freshers week at Spoons,” Kirsch recalls – she is originally from San Diego, with Cooper from Northampton.
At the time they first met, they were both already making music but in separate bands. Cooper describes his as “The 1975-esque”, while Kirsch's was “post-punk nonsense, wall of sound,” though she “wanted to do autotune pop” at the time instead. She discovered Cooper was a producer and from that moment, they “never stopped.”
“SEE SEE WHERE WE GO” is a Charli xcx how i'm feeling now adjacent listen, fuelled by restless electronic production and club-warped pop instincts. Kirsch's unfiltered lyricism collides with Cooper's high-impact, genre-fluid production, circling the familiar “let’s see where this goes” mindset while confronting the pull of toxic attachment.
“Our two biggest inspirations are Porter Robinson and Charli xcx,” Kirsch says, pointing to the emotional maximalism and left-field pop sensibility that combine to inform the track. Cooper introduced her to Robinson’s music a while back; in return she introduced him to Yung Lean and Drain Gang. “We have an entire Drain Gang-esque EP that will probably sit on our Soundcloud for a while,” she admits.
The track’s instrumental was created on a train journey before Cooper shared the almost complete version with Kirsch. “I changed my mind with what the lyrics mean recently, because I only just realised what it meant myself,” she says. “I realised it was about relationships, staying in a toxic cycle but clinging onto the good things and the bare minimum they give you. So, that’s the real meaning.”
samxemma's new single will feature on the band’s upcoming EP Us Forever, a title inspired by a comment on Kirsch's Instagram. “The last EP [HOT PEOPLE MAKE HOT MUSIC] was quite dancey and this one goes more into the EDM, hyperpop side, but there’s also an acoustic song that goes to the other side,” Cooper explains. Instead of curating songs from a single period, they selected tracks spanning different times, mirrored in the release’s imagery.
Within the context of the EP, “SEE SEE WHERE WE GO” forms part of a “culmination of feeling like you’re not going anywhere,” Kirsch explains. “Still having that hope and that drive. It feels hopeful, that’s the word for it.” Cooper adds, “But if you look a bit deeper, there’s a bit of darkness to it.” Kirsch agrees: “It’s so full of doubt but so full of hope. Those two things, fighting constantly.”
English (US) · 