An Updated Interview with SWANAZ, August 2026
How do you feel your sound, ways of working, mindset, etc. has changed since we talked last July? What new ways of working/outlooks/inspirations have you gained that influence your music?
Honestly, day by day, I don’t think I’ve changed all that dramatically. But looking back, I can definitely see that something shifted. Around July 2025, I was slowly chipping away at a project that eventually came out that December, I’m Making This Album I Love You 536,256,000. In a lot of ways, that record felt like a return to music for me. I had been spending more time focusing on other parts of life, but eventually I found myself naturally building things again, little recordings, ideas, fragments that slowly started becoming something bigger. During that time, I really fell in love with collage-like acoustic guitar improvisation and what I think of as “earth sounds.” Just sounds that feel lived in, things that already exist around us and carry their own atmosphere. That was a direction I hadn’t really explored before, and it changed the way I listened to everything. Through and through, though, people are still my biggest inspiration. I don’t think I ever fully know who I am, and maybe I don’t really need to. I make things because I feel like making them. If someone connects with it, that’s beautiful. If they don’t, that’s okay too. I think I’ve become more comfortable with letting the work exist without needing to explain every piece of myself through it.
Tell me about your most recent albums!!! What was the creative process behind them? What significance do they hold to you? Anything specific you wish to highlight about them?
Totally. Since the last time we talked, I’ve put out three albums, one last December and two this past August. I’m Making This Album I Love You 536,256,000 was recorded between July and November. A lot of that album came from entering a relationship with my current partner. There was something about that time, you know, that sense of being vulnerable with someone, allowing myself to feel close to another person that really made the recording process feel much more grounded and intimate. That record is really special to me because of that. I recorded so much material during those months that some of it, alongside newer recordings, eventually became Pour Toi/Home Recordings, which came out this past August. I don’t think I ever truly understood the idea of having a muse until recently. I always thought that was something people just said. But I think I understand it now. Both of those albums are probably the closest I’ve come to making something that feels like a direct thank you to someone who has quietly changed the way I see and create.
Speaking of those albums, you’ve released a ton of music recently!! What inspired you to make and release so much? Were both made at the same time or were they broken up from one another? How did you decide what went on each album?
Originally, the two albums were actually supposed to be one. It took me a while to convince myself to separate them, but eventually I realized they were asking to be different things. The intentions behind them were different. The sounds were different. They felt like two separate beings, and trying to force them into one body didn’t feel right. Most of We Were Too Young To Be Nostalgic was recorded during the early part of this year. I had gotten my hands on a tape recorder, and whenever I had the chance, I would record little songs or moments and just keep going until I filled up both sides of the tape. There was something really freeing about working that way letting the limitations of the tape become part of the process. I put those recordings aside for a while, and coincidentally, that’s around the time I went back to some older IMTAILY material. I started re-recording certain tracks, writing new things, and eventually that became Pour Toi/Home Recordings. So they were made separately, even if their timelines overlap a little. And I really do think they sound best as two different worlds. Both albums are thank yous to people in my life. We Were Too Young To Be Nostalgic was meant to be a kind of time capsule, a small preservation of who I was and what life felt like during that period. Pour Toi, on the other hand, is much more directly an expression of appreciation for the muse I’ve found in my life and in music. She’s wonderful. Recording has always been a slow thing for me. Soft, intimate, and usually happening somewhere between living and remembering.
You mentioned a lot of your music draws from found audio—what is your process in finding/selecting samples? How are these pieces then transformed into full songs?
Audio is such a huge and varied spectrum. There’s so much sound already existing in the world, just waiting to be noticed. A lot of that fascination really started when I got into cassette tapes. I fell in love with the way they sound, the texture, the imperfections, the way a recording can suddenly feel like it belongs to another time. Recording onto tape was also just easy and immediate for me. It added another layer to everything and gave the songs something to stand on, something to grow around. A lot of the process also comes from collaboration. Some friends of mine from Barley Still 1999 have an incredible ear for audio texturing. They’re really good at finding and manipulating sounds almost like puzzle pieces, figuring out where something strange or unexpected can fit. They’re very creative people, and working with them has definitely influenced how I hear things. Voicemails became another thing I was really drawn to.
For We Were Too Young To Be Nostalgic, I reached out to people and simply asked them to leave me a tale or a story whatever they wanted to say. I got some really beautiful voicemails back, and some of them eventually found their way onto the album. For me, it’s rarely about forcing a sound into a song. It’s more about listening long enough to figure out where it wants to go. Eventually things start finding each other naturally and hopefully, by the end of it there’s something that feels whole.
You made a short film! What was that like? What drew you to make it?
I did, yeah. The Quiet Hour is a short film I wrote, directed, and edited myself to promote We Were Too Young To Be Nostalgic. A big inspiration for it was fellow artist David Robert Pollock and his mini-series, The David Robert Pollock Show. It was honestly one of the most creatively committed things I had ever seen. I remember watching it and feeling like someone had put a battery in my back. It made me want to make something without overthinking whether I was “ready” to make it. I wrote the script in about two days, and filming happened over the course of three days. It was a very rushed shoot, mostly because the ambition hit me only about a week before the record came out. Suddenly, I had this whole idea in my head and very little time to make it happen. My house definitely suffered a little in the process. I kind of turned it upside down. But I’m really happy with what came out of it. Making the short made me realize that filmmaking is something I genuinely love, and it’s become a new passion of mine. I definitely want to continue exploring it. I like the idea of music expanding beyond sound forming into images, stories, spaces, or moments that people can step into.
What does the future hold/what are you working towards right now?
I’m trying not to look too far ahead.
I think whenever I start thinking too much about where everything is supposed to go, I lose touch with why I started making things in the first place. I don’t really want to turn creativity into a destination I’m constantly trying to reach. Right now I just want to keep following whatever feels honest and exciting. I’m always working on something even when I don’t fully realize it yet. It might be a recording, a collection of sounds, a guitar idea, a sentence written down somewhere that eventually becomes something bigger. I like not always knowing what I’m making while I’m making it. I want to keep experimenting and giving myself permission to change without feeling like I have to stay in one place creatively. More than anything I hope the future gives me more room to make things, collaborate with people, and keep finding new ways of hearing the world around me. I don’t really know exactly what’s next, and I think that’s part of what keeps it interesting. For now, I’m just doing what I’ve always done; Creating. And hopefully the next time we have one of these conversations, I’ll have something new to tell the public.
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