Enjoying ‘WET TENNIS’ with Sofi Tukker [Interview] – Dancing Astronaut

“White tennis clothes is required always.”

At most nation golf equipment, the tennis courtroom costume code is more likely to embrace some variation of the above. Within the official press shot for “Authentic Sin,” not a sew of white is to be discovered on Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, clad in orange, purple, pink, and purple ombré athletic put on. As with all elements of Sofi Tukker, the aesthetic alternative is not any oversight; it’s intentional.

“We’re constructing WET TENNIS round this idea of flipping tennis on its head and turning it from one thing that’s of a really unique, nation club-like vibe into one thing tremendous shiny and colourful. Often, you aren’t even allowed on the tennis courtroom should you’re sporting colourful garments,” Sophie Hawley-Weld advised Dancing Astronaut on a Zoom name taken from a pal’s home in California.

The “sports activities essence” of their forthcoming sophomore LP, introduced on February 4, pervades every thing from their outfits in promotional imagery surrounding WET TENNIS to the mission’s title, to the manufacturing of its supporting tour. And it’s no surprise why—in some ways, tennis mimics Hawley-Weld and Halpern’s each day artistic interaction as Sofi Tukker.

“We’re hitting concepts forwards and backwards all day for each tune we write, besides we’re not enjoying towards one another; we rally,” Halpern mentioned.

They’re a doubles workforce that’s taken the dance scene by storm lately, racking up gold and platinum information in each continent aside from Antarctica, a whole bunch of livestream appearances, and, notably, a Grammy nomination for his or her debut album, Treehouse (2018). To run so rampantly round digital circles is an train of its personal, however Hawley-Weld and Halpern have an athleticism about them—each actually and figuratively—and that’s part of WET TENNIS‘ idea, too.

“We didn’t need it to simply be about tennis as a result of that’s solely part of it, we each come from athletic backgrounds. I used to be a school basketball participant, Sophie was an incredible soccer participant, and now she performs a variety of tennis,” Halpern mentioned. His mother can be a skillful tennis participant, as is the artistic director with whom Sofi Tukker labored to convey WET TENNIS to life.

At an earlier level in WET TENNIS‘ growth, the workforce sat listening to the cluster of cuts that Hawley-Weld and Halpern wished to incorporate on the LP. An errant dialog about sports activities led them to the serendipitous realization that all of them shared a background in tennis. Pair that with their informal overuse of “moist”—”we began utilizing that adjective a bunch,” Hawley-Weld mentioned. “Like, ‘that’s so moist,’” Halpern chimed in.—and so they’d have the album’s identify.

“We had been like, ‘woah, moist tennis,’ after which we had been like, moist simply feels a little bit too surface-level. It doesn’t encapsulate the depth of a variety of the music,” Hawley-Weld added.

They “cherished the athletic, thrilling, playful aspect of it,” Halpern defined, however in addition they wished to “say one thing intentional to the world,” one thing that might match the deliberate nature of the music.

They’d preserve WET TENNIS, however would make it an acronym: “When Everybody Tries to Evolve, Nothing Destructive Is Protected.”

To know the acronym’s significance is to know that WET TENNIS is one thing of a constructive catchall. It’s about “ahead motion, optimism and constructive progress, irrespective of the problem.” It’s additionally a “life-style” that claims, “every thing’s higher when moist,” attests Hawley-Weld. “Wetness is pleasure,” she says. “It’s the pussy, and there’s a lot energy within the pussy, it’s enthusiasm and pleasure—it’s type of a euphemism for that. However it’s additionally sweat and motion and circulation and mom nature. And it’s horny, you already know? We don’t need simply any tennis, we would like it to be moist.”

Although the identify “WET TENNIS” got here out of what Hawley-Weld calls a “foolish temper,” there’s nothing frivolous about its ethos. The truth is, the sanguine, whimsical character of the album’s title takes on a better that means when Sofi Tukker share that they made the entire album throughout the pandemic:

Amid the unprecedented scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, many creatives translated emotions of uncertainty, disappointment, and aimlessness to tune. Sofi Tukker had been amongst them. From their residence in Florida, they wrote some “tremendous downer” tracks, at the least 10 of which didn’t make the album. Hawley-Weld calls the productions that didn’t make the WET TENNIS lower “superb,” and contentedly says that, finally, they’ll “come out in their very own type, after they’re prepared.” The selection to shelve them stemmed from Sofi Tukker’s need to craft an LP that maintained a consciousness of the local weather wherein it was written, however was nonetheless uplifting.

“As soon as we bought to deciding what songs had been going to be on the album, we had been like, ‘what do we actually need to put out into the world proper now?’ And we determined that we actually wished to place one thing out that felt prefer it was acknowledging that it [the pandemic] was a tough time, however we wished it to sound actually shiny and optimistic and hopeful, as a result of we at all times have a alternative to take a look at issues which might be destructive and determine to be taught one thing from them and determine to maintain that shiny and optimistic spirit,” Hawley-Weld defined. “We narrowed down the music that we determined to placed on the album to songs that basically made us really feel that approach. And there are undoubtedly some songs the place you possibly can really feel and listen to that we had been going by it.”

WET TENNIS‘ tracklist has but to be introduced, however has been organized such {that a} tune that’s extra introspective or doleful is adopted by one which’s “extra of a spirit carry,” Hawley-Weld mentioned. Sofi Tukker’s consideration to the lyrical focus and tonality of WET TENNIS‘ inclusions serves to maintain the album from leaning too consecutively in a single path, and by doing so, emulates the fluctuating nature of feelings felt throughout the pandemic’s evolution.

Though COVID-19-related circumstances brought on WET TENNIS to take “for much longer” than both Hawley-Weld or Halpern anticipated, a lot of its intentional character is owed to the pandemic. When Sofi Tukker had been fashioning their debut album, Treehouse, the LP’s manufacturing and monitor choice was catered to the stay present. The making of Treehouse orbited across the query, what feels actually good to do in a stay present?, say Sofi Tukker. As such, a number of the songs on Treehouse are extra of a “screamy, shouty” model that might be misplaced on WET TENNIS. In fact, the distinction between the time that Treehouse was being made and the time that WET TENNIS was being made couldn’t be sharper. In the course of the former, Sofi Tukker had been “performing nearly on daily basis whereas making it.” Evidently, this wasn’t the case throughout the latter interval.

Within the absence of in-person music programming, they turned to livestreams and element orientation, drilling down into elements of WET TENNIS that they in any other case wouldn’t have. “We had a variety of time to consider precisely what we need to say and the way we need to current it that we wouldn’t have had if the world hadn’t stopped. We wouldn’t have been so intentional as a result of we simply wouldn’t have had the time to essentially go in on each little element, like the garments we’re sporting within the shoots,” Halpern mentioned. He doesn’t really feel that such a world-building occurs often in dance music, and that’s not solely gas for his or her joint pleasure concerning the WET TENNIS mission, but in addition what makes it so particular.

This inflow of time afforded Sofi Tukker the bizarre potential to get granular with nearly every thing WET TENNIS. There’s an extended checklist of examples to drag from, however the one which’s essentially the most synchronous with who Sofi Tukker are is the tennis-fied emblem that they designed. That includes two intersecting tennis rackets, one emblazoned with an “S” and one with an “F,” the emblem sits on the middle of Halpern’s green-strung racket, suspended atop the phrases WET TENNIS.

Hawley-Weld and Halpern have at all times likened Sofi Tukker to a Venn diagram, in line with Halpern. Within the emblem, the 2 interlocking tennis rackets overlap by design to resemble a Venn diagram.

“We’ve at all times mentioned Sofi Tukker is such a Venn diagram as a result of there’s me and there’s Sophie, and we’re so completely different; we’ve so many various pursuits. And that sliver the place we overlap is the place Sofi Tukker lives,” Halpern mentioned. “We’ve at all times wished to include that right into a emblem or one thing artwork[-related] to signify what Sofi Tukker is, and it was so thrilling to have the ability to use tennis rackets to indicate that.”

This precision may even be obvious in different elements of WET TENNIS. “We had been so explicit and took our time and made positive the execution was proper with the imaginative and prescient,” Halpern attested, noting that this will probably be particularly obvious within the merchandise and tour manufacturing to come back.

They’re nonetheless defining the small print of their supporting tour, the information of which was introduced in tandem with “Authentic Sin,” WET TENNIS‘ lead single and music video. The initiative will first take them by a slew of North American cities, resembling Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Toronto, Portland, and Berkeley, with Australian cities incomes visits in late July. A full checklist of tour stops and tickets to the WET TENNIS tour, that are presently obtainable for buy, will be discovered on Sofi Tukker’s website.

Notably, the WET TENNIS tour will probably be a sequence of stay reveals fairly than DJ units. Per Hawley-Weld, they’ll be “creating an entire world” and, sure, there will probably be a tennis courtroom on stage. It’s going to be a distinct kind of present, they are saying, nevertheless it’ll “nonetheless be a Sofi Tukker present.” As such, it ought to come as no shock that they’re contemplating inviting somebody up on stage at every present to be spanked with a tennis racket by both Hawley-Weld or Halpern—attendee’s alternative. The thought was proposed by one among Sofi Tukker’s “freak fam” throughout a livestream that happened on February 10, simply earlier than Sofi Tukker related with Dancing Astronaut for this WET TENNIS interview. Perhaps it’ll occur, possibly it gained’t; both approach, it’s an concept that earns amusing from each Hawley-Weld and Halpern.

Within the months main as much as WET TENNIS‘ April 29 launch, Sofi Tukker will bathe streamers in pre-album singles, in addition to different LP-related information. Between further WET TENNIS tracklistings, remixes of mentioned tracklistings, music movies, and different bulletins, there’s one thing popping out “nearly each week” till they begin touring. It’s price noting that WET TENNIS will play host to a few of what Halpern feels to be their “greatest singles.” And, in fact, there are additionally some collaborations to come back.

“One of many issues that has at all times been necessary to us is that our collaborations are world, and that undoubtedly stays true for this album,” Hawley-Weld mentioned.

At this level within the rollout, Hawley-Weld and Halpern should stay tight-lipped about the remainder of WET TENNIS‘ particulars, however assuredly, the interim between now and the LP’s late-April arrival through Extremely/Sony Music will probably be, effectively, moist.

Featured picture: Elizabeth Miranda

Tags: interview, Authentic Sin, sofi tukker, treehouse, WET TENNIS

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