#001
Are Friends Electric: A Conversation with Vindit and bizley
entry 001: Vindit and bizley discuss their new collaborative EP Driver’s Seat, and reflect on online friendships and love/hate relationships with social media
words by Christian Kim
Vindit and bizley are two artists separated by over 8000 km of distance. For both, the year’s pandemic inadvertently rekindled a drive to focus on producing music and meeting new, likeminded people online. Vindit, located in Brazil, connected with my fellow ceremony admin Nathan Blair around the time of VOL. 2, and we later invited him to play our standalone livestream event LA FORME. bizley, located in the UK and completely new to producing music, would meet Vindit just a few months later. What started with an impulsive tweet would turn into a new friendship and a collaborative EP commemorating the fruits of their online activity and remote connection. We invited Vindit and bizley to play at our “ceremony, VOL. 3” livestream where I heard tracks from Driver’s Seat for the first time.
Driver’s Seat is a 7 track EP that races from start to finish emanating joy and celebration. Like a 150cc dash on Rainbow Road, the tracks speed through different sounds with unpredictable twists and turns radiating charm and youthful abandon. A nighttime drive and the new car smell set to bubbly synths and club kicks. Vindit and bizley’s interpretation of traditional pop songwriting tropes lend to their catchy hooks and upbeat rhythms. Precise polish, while not completely lacking, is often sidelined in favor of a more conversational and impulsive tone. Don’t call it a victory lap though; both Vindit and bizley expressed that they’re just getting started.
The entire project is a product of fortuitous digital encounters that in hindsight read as surreally serendipitous. Driver’s Seat directly references the context of its creation as a vital component: two artists in different continents connected by social media working in tandem over a shared love of pop music. However, both Vindit and bizley know that the online sphere is also plagued with exhaustion, hostility, and misrepresentation. Parasocial interactions are abound, raising questions if friendships mediated online can ever exist beyond the algorithmic sublime. Reconciling that online platforms are simultaneously connective and destructive means experiencing a feedback loop of excitement and fatigue. It’s hardly a new rumination on social media but one that permeates our daily interactions and creation processes on and off screen.
Two months after “ceremony, VOL. 3” and two weeks after the release of Driver’s Seat, ceremony sat down with Vindit and bizley to discuss the creation of the EP, facilitating meaningful online connections, and the nuanced love/hate relationship between art and social media. Online interactions move uncompromisingly fast; this conversation sets out to slow down the pace.
[This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity]
Ceremony: First things first, before we go in depth into Driver’s Seat, I wanted to talk about both of your paths to making music and how that eventually intersected into the creation of this EP.
Bizley: So, I don’t really have a musical background. I’ve always wanted to make music but my defeatist attitude would make me think, “I’m going to suck, it’s not worth it.” I’ve been in this cycle since I was a child, but when lockdown first hit and it was literally just me and my room, every day I said, “If I’m not doing it now, I’m never going to do it.” And it just so happened that because of COVID I moved out of student accommodation and was refunded a term of rent money. I instantly thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to invest that money and get a nice new laptop.” Since then it’s been a really crazy year and some more of sad, lonely YouTube tutorials in my room. But meeting people online has been amazing and a really rewarding, fulfilling experience. And I’m still learning every day, thanks to their help and guidance from this wonderful little niche, Twitter community that I have landed myself in.
Vindit: I’ve been doing music by myself since 2017. I think around that time I became sort of disinterested in my college courses. I started to mess around with music more and saw that it was a better opportunity to express myself. I made and released music by myself to no audience really. And with the pandemic, I started being a bit more open-minded about collaboration and started to ask people off SoundCloud if they wanted to collaborate or do a remix. That’s how I met Nathan when Charli XCX released the stems for how i’m feeling now. We both did “forever” remixes and he commented on mine, I commented on his, and then we linked up over that. And afterwards, I felt this joy with collaborating with other people that never went away.
C: I actually learned about you first through Nathan because he remixed one of your songs, I forget which one I think it was…
V: He did two, he did “Young Brazilian” and “Worms” a year ago.
B: Both incredible songs! The original and the remix.
V: I met bizley online after Janghoon’s Reset Zoom event that Astra King and Kogarashi played. bizley joined the ceremony Discord server after and we talked about our favorite performers and sets from that event.
B: I first heard your music because Nathan put your “One Shot” performance video on his story and I immediately thought, “Holy shit this is so good!” and I followed you on everything.
V: And then we first started talking, and after I tweeted “anyone want to form an intercontinental band” or something and I actually had you in mind. So when you responded that was amazing.
C: Let’s get into Driver’ Seat now. In your own words, how would you describe the EP genre-wise or feelings-wise or however else you’d like to describe it?
B: It’s quite tough to pin down because we went into it wanting to make pure, traditional pop. I think we achieved that with some of the songs, or it definitely led to “This World” and “One More Go.” But then halfway through the EP, I downloaded the Sy & Unknown sample pack and suddenly started making everything into hardcore. That’s how “Na Ponta da Língua” was born and it kind of went off the rails.
V: That’s where the “only hyperpop moment on the EP” line came from in “Super Real,” cause we decided to take a traditional pop direction for the rest of it. Though honestly I’m not sure I even know what traditional pop is.
C: So it sounds like the process was partly improvisational?
B: Yeah totally. It’d often go something like, “Here’s a demo I made, do you think it has potential?” “Yes and no” and a lot of back and forth.
V: It was a lot of, “yes this is amazing, yes this is amazing.”
B: Yeah there wasn’t much saying “no” to be honest. Out of all the hundreds of ideas that made it on the EP maybe like 3 were rejected.
C: That’s interesting because I was wondering how much of the EP was composed entirely from scratch or how much was presented as demos first and then stretched out?
V: I think almost all of it was written originally for the EP. I had an early demo for “One More Go” that I sent to bizley. That was the first one.
B: “One More Go” was the only one that existed as a demo before, but apart from the melodies we completely changed it on the production end.
V: That was a really special moment for me, because it was the first time that someone took my song and produced it in a different way with their twist on it.
C: The variety of sounds on this project makes sense to me knowing that now. Obviously it’s rooted in “electronic” but you have both very dance-oriented songs like “Na Ponta da Língua” which contains almost breakbeat-esque segments, and also more ballad-y type songs like “This World.” Can you recall the influences you pulled from and what was going through your heads when you crafted each song?
B: With “Na Ponta da Língua,” at that point we had completed the whole EP except that song. When we were trying to sort the tracklist, we decided that “One More Go” and “Super Real” should be next to each other in front of the tracklist. But then I thought, “Oh, there’s not gonna be a huge banger towards the end of the tracklist. Ok, I’ll have to make another huge banger now.” My only goal with that song was “huge banger” hahaha. And like I said I downloaded the hardcore sample pack and went to work.
V: It’s hard to think of influences. Early on, we made a collaborative playlist on Spotify of our favorite pop songs. There was one song that bizley showed me by Kirin J. Callinan.
B: “Big Enough!”
V: Yes! And that one really influenced “Super Real” with the shouting of the cities and such.
C: In a field where remote collaboration to produce new songs or remixes is normal, Driver’s Seat stands out to me because this was a project that was produced top to bottom as a celebration of online collectivity. You’ve got these self-referential lyrics like, “You can be in London. I can be in Brazil, we can break down all the borders.” The very conscious idea that the internet can forge new, meaningful bonds rather than solely a tool for remote or professional work. I’m curious with the different time zones you’re both located in and different DAWs or programs: what were the ups and downs of the process?
V: The obvious challenge was not being able to meet in person. The whole project is about being in different continents but it was definitely weird not being able to meet after working so hard on a song together. We mainly collaborated over Discord chat, so at first it was a bit of a challenge to be very descriptive and minutious over your intentions for a song over text. Hmm, now that I think about it, it probably helped to write down your intentions and not speak it out. Maybe that helped us double down on exactly what we wanted to achieve and not wander around stuff. Would’ve loved to have a beer with him after doing amazing work though.
B: I completely agree and on the music creation side of it, I was actually quite shocked at how easy it was collaborating and working with stems. The worst part about it was waiting for the stems to export and upload onto Google Drive. I also had to learn all these things for the first time; I’ve never had to send stems to anyone for anything before. I didn’t know how to organize any of that, and Vin never complained but it was a hot mess.
V: Oh it was totally cool. The one song that we messed around with the most was “One More Go” because it was the first one and we had 50/50 production on it. We passed it back and forth so much I don’t even know how many times.
B: And recently someone asked for the stems to do a remix! They were scattered all across our drives.
V: But yeah, it wasn’t that challenging. It was all fun. I do feel sorry for bizley for him being 4 hours ahead and I’d stay up very late. We’d be working together and it’d be 4 AM for him while it’s midnight for me.
B: I liked that actually. I would often wake up to a new bounce from Vin and immediately download and put my headphones on to listen, before getting out of bed.
C: You two work together pretty efficiently from the looks of it. When we called you up for “ceremony, VOL. 3” for the beginning of May it sounded like you already had a lot of the songs ready from the EP.
B: We had it all written up by the end of April. A lot of the production was unfinished, but the only song that was unwritten by the end of April was the intro. We had an old intro that we played at ceremony that I decided was really bad and so we scrapped it.
V: Aw I liked it. I liked everything hahaha.
B: I loved that set. I’m so proud of it, and Vin’s visuals were incredible.
C: The intro was the last song completed for the project then?
V: Yeah literally at the end. And the title is something my cat typed on the keyboard.
B: I’ve never said that title out loud. We sampled that cat too.
V: In the intro when it says “hear the engine purr” it’s the cat purring.
C: I wanted to also ask about the meaning of Driver’s Seat. Beyond the cars and drivers imagery, I’m also sensing this theme of connection. Forging new bonds like in “Super Real” or longing for connection like in “One More Go” and “This World”. Why the central premises of the driver and the passenger? Why’d you settle on the title of Driver’s Seat in relation to the project?
B: I’d love to talk about this. We’ve had the idea of the internet as like a fantasy road that connects you straight to people who would otherwise be inaccessible to you. I just finished watching a show called Revolutionary Girl Utena and there’s car imagery all over the series and the film. And so I had cars and this road idea in my head for so long.
V: We initially wanted to figure out a band name before starting out the music which is funny because we ended up not having one. I think we had around 10 different names all related to cars and driving. The idea of crossing the Atlantic, intercontinental roads, trains and cars, vehicles, and roads. I remember having Kraftwerk’s Autobahn album cover in my mind a lot.
B: The name Driver’s Seat came from a conversation I was having with Peytie about their time in music school. They said something like, “I hate it because someone was always trying to take the driver’s seat” and I was like, “Fuck! [inaudible noises] That’s it!” By this point Vin and I had been working on this quite a bit, and I never felt like either of us were trying to take the driver’s seat. That’s also why we both have steering wheels on the car on the front cover of the EP. In this car, every seat is the driver’s seat.
C: Speaking about the cover, all the artworks relating to Driver’s Seat was done by one artist right?
B: Yes, it was all done by Kester Benton, my childhood friend. I’ve known him since I was eleven. I love his art and it seemed like a no-brainer. Earlier this year I released a really bad cover of “Komm, Süsser Tod” from Evangelion and he did a really sick and wild and bizarre cover for it. We wanted to bring a weird, wacky energy to this album cover. And we all talked about how it’s like the opposite of what many hyperpop artists are going for these days. There’s no clean lines or metallic images; it feels very human and handmade in a way that reflects the sorta rough nature of the EP which was never trying to be super clean from the start.
C: Got any favorite songs or moments during writing and recording?
B: Waking up to the first full instrumental for “This World” was definitely the most mind blowing thing. The previous version had only Vin on a piano, but by the time I woke up he had this full, crazy instrumental with FKA Twigs “Cellophane”-like hi-hats and I remember thinking, “Holy shit I can actually sing on this instrumental it’s amazing. I shouldn’t even be allowed to go near this.”
V: “Na Ponta da Língua.” Writing in Portuguese was a bit weird for me but I think it was very necessary.
B: I’m super glad we had a bilingual moment on the EP. I like the decentralization of music because of the Internet. The whole EP has shades of that.
V: This idea of collaborating with people internationally is so exciting. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I’m an International Relations major and it informed my worldview a bit. I see that music, especially pop music, is very centralized in the US and Europe. But it’s weird because I sing in English, so I sometimes feel like I contribute to that cycle of centralization. With this world of pop music being inaccessible to other countries, that’s kind of why I felt it was an important moment for me to write and sing in Portuguese. Writing in English definitely makes it easier to collaborate with international pals but it’s nice to think about how to circumvent that and twist it.
C: This is a good segue into the more general things I’d love to talk about. At ceremony, one of our goals is to examine the online worlds in place and how they affect and shape both creation and consumption. One particular point of interest to me is how social media encourages a very frequent presence and regular output in order to be favored by algorithms or at the very least get noticed by others. Have either of you in the recent past needed to take extended breaks form online interactions for whatever reasons?
V: It’s really hard because if you don’t have an online presence or a frequent social media presence, it’s almost like you don’t really exist as an artist. You miss out on having a community, which is the most important thing for me right now. I do need breaks frequently. Do I need to take more breaks? Mmm, probably yeah.
B: I actually deactivated recently but not for as long as I was planning to do so. I suddenly got this really unhealthy relationship with Twitter, and I go through phases of self-hatred where I think everything I’m making is terrible because I keep comparing it to all my peers online. Being on Twitter constantly was exacerbating that really badly and I had to get off. But then “Super Real” came out and my Twitter was offline and I couldn’t promote it at all. And I felt really bad so I ended up going back on. I’m doing a bit better now, but yeah social media is so evil. It’s so beautiful. But it’s so evil simultaneously. I think we need some radical new solutions because Twitter is increasingly becoming reserved as a space for advertisers. They’re harvesting your data to sell you stuff. And then in-between that you get to interact with your friends and meet people. It’s garbage and all social media is the same. I like Discord though. I think it’s good, but it’s a shame that Nitro is so expensive.
C: Given the central premise of Driver’s Seat as a project produced entirely through friendship formed online, how do you navigate this fine line between feeling over-consumption fatigue and finding community? You don’t have to pretend that you’re perfect at it or it’s easy.
B: Real cop-out answer, but exercising self love at every opportunity. If you’re not doing the latter, you’re going to go down these spirals. You have to be realistic with your expectations of yourself. Analyze your behavior and such. I haven’t figured out yet.
V: That’s not a cop-out answer. That’s a really good answer. Honestly I have a really hard time. That’s like the golden question of our age. In terms of practical things I do the screen time block thing on my phone helps me personally. An hour of Twitter on my phone, an hour or forty-five minutes of Instagram. Tik-Tok lately has been consuming my time, which is awful. Hmm, what else? Muting people, definitely.
C: I’ve definitely started muting people more too. On that topic, the intense thing about the online sphere in general is the sheer plurality of conversation that takes place in any given screen grab. Especially a place like Twitter where it’s all short bursts of different conversations and interactions. Speaking personally I often feel exhausted or unfulfilled. Do Driver’s Seat and other interactions in retrospect ultimately make it all worth it to stay online for you?
V: For now I’m saying yes, I think so. I couldn’t have survived the pandemic without these connections. But the fatigue is a real threat to general health.
B: There’s a lot of stuff that could be really beautiful or even more beautiful than it is if it didn’t exist under late capitalism. Everything that we hate about social media is made worse by the fact that the people in charge are trying to turn a profit. They want to make it as addictive as possible. They want to make it as much of a consumer activity as a social activity. I feel like yes, it was worth it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for radical new alternatives to what we’ve got.
C: I notice that in this loosely-defined music scene, a lot of artists seem to pride themselves on being very joyfully transparent and interactive online. Talking about their songs well before release or expressing excitement that they’re working on something and how they’re feeling about it. How would you describe your online presence in relation to your creative processes?
V: It’s very random for me. Sometimes I get really excited and then I’ll tweet about it. Like this morning, I was tweeting about Driver’s Seat with bizley and then we had a public conversation. But lately I’ve been secretive, well not very secretive, more like self-conscious about it. I have these periods. It goes up and down. I don’t know if the addictive nature of it makes it that way. Maybe.
B: I’m really bad at being secretive. I always thought if I was a musician, I’d love to be one of those artists that doesn’t do interviews like Death Grips. You can only find a few paragraphs online of anything they’d ever said. But now that I’m in this position where I’m making then releasing music, I’m thinking, “Wow, keeping secrets is an insane effort.” Maybe not for Death Grips; maybe it comes naturally to them. But to limit your interactions with the internet that much, maybe it comes with maturity, maybe it comes with having more faith in your own music. It’s also kinda fun to be transparent and have the freedom to choose how much I share. When I first started making stuff that sounded like music, I kept putting really unfinished bits on my Instagram story. And I kept regretting it because I’d think, “This will be so much better in two weeks.” So I’ve gotten a lot better at not putting out demo material for the public.
C: To coincide with the release of Driver’s Seat you two also hosted the Driver’s Fest release party on Zoom with so many different artists who could all probably also credit online interactions as significant factors in their creative lives. I wanted to ask about the path to Driver’s Fest. What was the motivation behind hosting this launch party online?
B: It was a no brainer, to be honest. As soon as we decided we were going to do an EP, we knew we had to do a Zoom event.
V: And to tie it back to the Janghoon event where we met.
B: If you listened to Vindit’s set, he says at the beginning, “This is my set for the Zoom release party” because at the time we made it we didn’t even have a title for the event or anything.
V: I made it around a month ahead, and I had all the songs I wanted to play almost three months before.
B: The event was insane.
V: And bizley carried it so well. Such a good MC.
B: We had all these problems with soundcheck. And then so many of the artists popped up to troubleshoot with us because they’ve done Zoom events in the past like by Landee, Astra, and JK. Without them we’d probably would’ve had to cancel it. There was so much stuff about secret Zoom settings you can’t access on the app where you have to go on the website.
V: I had no idea and I thought I had it figured out, but nope.
C: COVID is certainly not over in a global context but shows are slowly back in some parts. How do you see online events shaping music or continuing if at all?
V: I’m really scared of losing them, but I don’t think that they’re going to go away that soon. Like bizley said, people really like and learned how to work these livestreams on these platforms. And I don’t think that all that work and energy that people put into it are going away that soon.
B: And if you think about how many people there are who aren’t in touring cities that’s big. I think the feeling of being at an intimate Zoom live show completely matches the feeling of being in an intimate actual show, like the interactions you have with other people in chat and stuff. Obviously the physicality of live shows is very important, but it’s like an equal and opposite thing. In the case of me and Vindit, we are still going to make music together. We are still going to want to celebrate the releases of music together, which we cannot do physically. So there’s absolutely no alternative; the online shows will go on and long may they last I say. I love live shows. We need both in equal amounts. I would be heartbroken if livestream shows stopped stopped happening for sure.
C: I think the online space for music is a relatively new concept that we haven’t completely figured out. Tons of questions still surround the future of live-streamed shows or online concerts in general. And it’s interesting how Twitter seems like the home base for a lot of artists, but it can get uncomfortable balancing our use of the platform and all that it’s providing with knowing about the problems of big data. Scenes and communities become split on it all the time. What are your thoughts? What would you like to see happen?
B: I’m not naturally a pessimistic person. I’m an optimist like 90% of the time. But I’m pretty terrified about the future of social media and the future being set, because I have a gut feeling that it has to get really bad before it can get good. I don’t know bad in what way but that there needs to be a trigger that forces a reconsideration of the way we use social media. It’s not gonna happen overnight. The big data consumer side of social media is only getting worse. You can remember how many sponsored ads you saw on Instagram three years ago compared to now. I have absolutely no solutions, but I also have great faith in people to find them.
V: Yeah, I have faith in people too. I’m not much of a pessimist on it. I’m kind of excited just because I’ve been having these great collaborative experiences lately. Maybe it’s selfish of me to think of that only on my terms. But it has been good for me. Well, I don’t know.
B: Absolutely. There’s sides to both. And there’s so much conflict talking about it. We’re all the age where we saw the birth of social media. We’ve seen pretty much its journey from fairly innocent, mmm, I’d like to think a fairly innocent creation compared to what it’s become today. Like you say, I’ve also had incredible experiences afforded to me because of social media, especially in the past year or so. It’s a lot of conflict between good and bad.
C: On a more intimate level, perhaps you may feel you’re not the perfect person to answer this but what advice would you give for healthy online interactions for artistry? What would you like to see more of on the person-to-person level?
B: Be bad at stuff. Be bad at it and do it anyway. That’s what I’ve been doing.
V: I’d like to see more collaborating. People being even more open to collaborating with each other and being nice to each other about it. Offering up help to each other and so on.
B: I call it “our Twitter community” even it’s actually quite wide with subcategories, but people are so helpful in this scene for no reason other than just to be helpful cause they want to. I had a two hour call with Space Candy the other day and they got nothing out of that. They helped me with my vocal chain and drums and alike. And obviously Vin has helped me with everything regarding music. It’s all for the joy of helping people. It’s beautiful.
C: Winding up with my questions. This one’s simple: so what’s next? You said you have remixes coming out?
B: Yes! We are working hard pulling together an EP called Passenger’s Seat which is going to have remixes, covers, and alternative versions of songs from Driver’s Seat. And this is an open call to artists who want stems or want to cover a song or want to feature on a song: get in touch. We’re here. We’re open. Yes. We’d love to work with you. It’s Passenger’s Seat because we will not be the drivers for most of it. We will be taking a back seat here as other friends jump in and join the Driver’s Seat world. I’m very excited about it.
V: Before this call, I was mixing a “Na Ponta da Língua” remix because bizley just sent it. It’s insane, it’s crazy, it’s really good. I’m so excited. As soon as we hop off this call I’m going to bounce the mix.
C: Are a lot of the artists from Driver’s Fest gonna be involved in that?
B: Yes! Some stuff might not pan out so I don’t want to reveal everything and put false hope but the answer is yes. 1una has a remix. We sent Astra King stems and she made an incredibly sick remix for “This World.” I interacted with her a bit before, but not at a level where I could invite her to play. That was because of ceremony and VOL. 3 for sure. So thanks for that!
C: My final question: got any shoutouts or anybody you want to recognize right now?
B: Kester Benton for working so hard on the artwork for the whole thing. Everyone who played Driver’s Fest, I’m actually going to pull up the document and name everyone. Shoutout JK, Y2KALEB, by Landee, Elesbinho, Lonely Cloud, wesout, Nathan Blair, Janghoon, Kogarashi, 1una, Vindit, Astra King.
V: I think he got everyone.
B: And shoutout Tracey Brakes for providing hi-hats! I have good hi-hats now.
V: I think there’s a Jackson snare on “Super Real.”
B: Yes, shouts out to all of them.
Driver’s Seat by Vindit and bizley is available to stream/purchase now on Bandcamp
“Are Friends Electric” is a new subseries by ceremony exploring varying perspectives on the volatile relationship between art and the Internet ecosystem.
