Exclusive Interview with COLORSWAP

COLORSWAP is made of the two Torres brothers, indie electronic drifters from Marseille, France. Releasing: “The Wreck: Memories” from the Original Game Soundtrack.

A story about sisterhood, motherhood, grief, and survival is told in the video game The Wreck. You get to watch unsuccessful screenwriter Junon struggle to get through the most important day of her life. You explore significant memories while reliving the past to COLORSWAP’s music. Here is an assortment of these fragmented, dream-like moments. Through these fragmented, dream-like moments, “Memories” takes the listener on an uneasy journey. You will encounter a variety of musical styles, including downtempo, ambient, and electronica, as well as constant changes in your emotions and intensity. The EP’s climactic track, “Memories,” however, features an explosive fusion of orchestral and aerial synthwave. Following that, you’ll be immersed in soothing ambient music as you journey into Junon’s mind. Check out the exclusive interview below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how it all got started?

COLORSWAP: We’re two brothers, based in Marseille, France. As kids and youngsters, we used to play rather separately. Each one had his own bands. We’ve played in lots of electronic formations, but also rock and rap. We haven’t really been seriously working together before entering the soundtrack industry. In 2014, we met Edouard Philippe, future creative director on the game called Stay Safe (#RaceDieRun), and also on Family Bash, a niece piece of punk game hitting mobile phones pretty soon! He was just starting a company, developping his first game, and proposed us to handle the audio part! At last, that was the occasion for us, brothers to start working together in music.

2. Do you think is it important for fans of your music to understand the real story and message driving each of your songs, or do you think everyone should be free to interpret your songs in their own personal way?

COLORSWAP: We play instrumental music, mainly. We dream of people creating their own deep universe by listening to the tracks. One can dream! On the other hand, we believe a large part of our audience streams our music after having played the games we composed for. For these latter persons, it seems clear that our music should strongly echo with the games sequences and the emotions they carry.

3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘COLORSWAP’?

COLORSWAP: We do love Ry X, Weval, French 79, Rival Consoles, and a lot of other artists from electronic, french touch music, rap. We study a lot of contemporary pianists work, as it’s a central instrument in our music production process. We’re thinking a lot of Hania Rani, Nils Frahm, Niklas Paschburg, Chilly Gonzales, Koki Nakano. But what we dig the most, is how insanely great artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers, are able to create deep, lively universes, in permanent mutation as you listen to their tracks. Everything can happen every second in their songs. They seem to embrace a frenetic sense of creative freedom that mesmerize us. As for our name, COLORSWAP, you got to go back to the early 90’s. By then all arcade co-operative games let duos of players control an identical character each. In order to tell who was controlling who, developpers used a cheap tool: the only difference between the two characters generally was that they were all color swapped: hair, clothes, so on. We do feel a bit like two adventurer brothers, facing this industry, co-op style. Colorswapped style ;)

4. For most artists, originality is first preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and music maker, and the transition towards your own style, which is known as ELECTRONIC?

COLORSWAP: At COLORSWAP, we can’t say we’re in an never-ending idyllic total passion of each other music!! It’s not that simple obviously. Each of us, Oni and Stereoto, brings on the table patterns, harmonics, instruments he like, and the other either discards it (pretty forwardly, it’s a nice result of being bros), or embrace it. In that case, one is pretty often going to push the other. More and more, until we nailed a new sound that satisfies us both! Oni is mainly specialized in sequenced synths, samplers, drums. Stereoto is more about elaborated two hands played keys and synths with rich harmonics. Finally, we share each week with each other the fresh music we dug recently on streaming, and we never stop studying the masters! With tons of releases each week, incredible music production tools getting more and more available, those are fascinating times for musicians, in our opinion.

5. Did you have any formal training or are you self taught?

COLORSWAP:

Initially, we had both, actually. But with the years, we grew more and more self-taught in the industry, trying to turn more and more versatile.

6. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?

COLORSWAP:

Deeply synth-based. We love synths. Lots of keys also, piano and electric pianos especially. Lots of our tracks are rather Ambient, but we do write a nice bunch of more danceable music. We’ve released a Synthwave record in 2018, and are about to release House and Trap singles! They’re from the soundtrack of Family Bash. For our live sets, we’re looking more and more into samba rythms as they bring a real nice and smooth danceable mood to our piano and synths based tracks. But we like to mix those with more edgy and fresh drums sounds.

7. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative, and entertainment?

COLORSWAP:

Definitely the first one! I mean, political, cultural, spiritual and social vehicles: you named them all. That’s why we’re so found of huge artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Radiohead, The Chemical Brothers, and late Mac Miller. Still, our music is mainly instrumental. So we primarly find our way into politic and social fights by contributing to collective works such as The Wreck from The Pixel Hunt, and Family Bash by Atomic Raccoon. Those games have a lot to say. They manage to bring poetry, yet fat punches, at once.

8. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?

COLORSWAP:

First thing would be having been working a lot in remote mode in our first years. Stereoto was in Nice, Oni in Marseille. It was a mess. Things got *so* much easier when Stereoto finally landed in Marseille! The other thing: ramping-up in sound design and development, entering the video game industry. This was harsh. Lots of developpers we’ve worked with were truely benevolent in accompanying us in this. Nevertheless, we had some rough times!

9. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?

COLORSWAP: The Wreck is the more significant game we’ve been writing a soundtrack for. Along side co-writing its soundtrack, we’ve been deeply involved in its production, as audio leads, sound designers, also. Critical reception has been great so far, people playing the games seem deeply moved, on a regular basis. This is a tremendous achievement for us, having been a part of this much sincere and powerful work (well, we hope it is).