Q&A: Blurring the Boundaries Between Visual and Audio, Pearly Drops’ Latest Album ‘A Little Disaster’ Enriches Every Sense
CONSTRUCTING BOTH THE VISUAL AND SONIC DIMENSIONS OF THEIR MUSIC — Pearly Drops’ Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin are artists in every sense of the word. Drawing from a myriad of inspirations, their latest album, A Little Disaster, interweaves art house and the avant-garde with digital culture and horror films.
For Tervonen and Malin, creating the tracks for the album in their studio provided a much-needed reprieve from the unease of a global pandemic, so it’s unsurprising that A Little Disaster envelopes a gentle tenderness within an eerie sense of anxiety. Fluent in the communication between soundscapes and their visual representations, the Helsinki-based duo perfectly capture the atmosphere their tracks create within their self-made cover arts, drawing on associations between colors and feelings.
Alongside the release of their sophomore album, Pearly Drops is unveiling a visualiser for the album’s fifth track, “Take Me Down.” Directed by Gabriel Boicel, the music video translates the song’s fluid spirit into the visual, infusing a strange futurism into a nostalgic base.
Read below to explore deeper into Pearly Drops’ latest album, A Little Disaster, and the creative process behind both its tracks and cover art.
LUNA: Congrats on A Little Disaster! What would you say are the main themes running through the core of the album?
PEARLY DROPS: Thank you! Well, our first album was clearly quite isolation-themed, while this sequel might banally but somewhat beautifully deal with death and loss.
LUNA: Is there a process behind the ordering of the songs on the album, or is it more random?
PEARLY DROPS: Yes, the album has an order where the songs develop and connect together on their way towards the climax. We were working on multiple songs all at once, so they also naturally bleed into each other.
LUNA: How would you compare the feel and sound of the songs on A Little Disaster to your previous music?
PEARLY DROPS: It might be a tiny bit more organic this time around. Maybe the feel is also a bit more psychedelic? We might’ve learned some new tricks.
LUNA: You paint your own album and single covers, which is super interesting! Can you talk a bit about the creative process behind that?
PEARLY DROPS: We both create the visual materials, but Sandra is in charge of hand-painting the album covers. When working on a song, we usually start to associate a certain color palette with it. So you could say the visual side of things goes hand in hand with the sonic.
The cover arts are basically the portraits of the songs. Creating cover art for a single release is much easier because then you only have to depict that one song — whereas an album cover is like a portrait of many characters and feelings at the same time.
LUNA: How did you develop the cover for A Little Disaster?
TERVONEN: First off, we have to come up with the right kind of color palette. There’s usually some ideas already, but the best way to go about this is actually just to listen to the album while mixing the oil colors. I had a reference photo for the composition, but for me I just have to let the strokes go where they want to go and be in this really meditative state — which is quite hard for a perfectionist to do. And then it’s just a matter of trial and error to come up with something that just feels right.
LUNA: Which song(s) on the album do you feel you have the closest connection with, and why?
TERVONEN: It’s really hard to pick, but I think, especially, “Heath” is a really personal one for me. It’s the kind of song that was waiting to happen for me. Meaning, as if I always had it in a safe somewhere, even before I started making music.
MALIN: I love them all equally, but probably for me it would be “Take Me Down” and “Forest Scene,” which are counterparts and also mostly part of the same story about the passing of my mother and how lost I was back then.
LUNA: How do you get into the “zone” to start creating — audio or visuals?
PEARLY DROPS: Well, sometimes you just wake up super inspired and everything creative feels effortless. We try to work on those days especially. But otherwise we feel like movies are something we draw a lot of inspiration from. Also just leaving the house and going on a walk in a nearby forest might do the trick.
LUNA: Your music creates an entirely unique atmosphere — how would you describe it yourself?
PEARLY DROPS: We don’t really know how to describe it because it’s something that comes really naturally. We guess it has to do with the dreamier pop side of us, to really put emphasis on the sonic textures and spatial feeling.
LUNA: What inspires this soundscape?
PEARLY DROPS: At least lately we’ve been attempting to create something warm and modern with the instruments from the ’60s and the ’80s. We've probably listened to The Electric Light Orchestra, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Fleetwood Mac, and Kate Bush so much during the years that they’ve psychosomatically inspired and influenced the outcome. Juuso has also been listening to rap music since the ’90s, so its influence on production will always be included.
LUNA: Do you feel like the physical space you inhabit informs your music?
PEARLY DROPS: Yes. We like our studio to feel like a cocoon; a cozy hide-out. We’re both introverts so only in this setting can we truly feel like ourselves.
LUNA: How did the idea of you creating music together come about?
PEARLY DROPS: We first met quite randomly in 2013 and quickly realized that we shared a similar taste and ideas for music. We started working together on a few different productions and we also did quite a lot of touring as part of different groups. Around 2019 we started to feel the need for a completely new project, in which we’d take full control of every possible aspect. It also felt like a test to see if in modern times it'd still be possible to start again from almost nothing without a backing from a large support group.
LUNA: Where did the name “Pearly Drops” come from?
PEARLY DROPS: Naming a project is difficult because you have to live with that name for the rest of your life. It’s already been a while since we settled on this name, but we quite possibly tried to sum up in words what a string of pearls, tears, or morning dew on grass would look like combined.
LUNA: What are you looking forward to achieving this year — personally or creatively?
PEARLY DROPS: We’re looking forward to releasing our new album on April 14. We’re also happy that there will finally be some new live shows around it, and we’re already working on new music!
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