Das Geschwister-Duo Wasia Project aus England hat am 29. August ihre zweite EP Isotope veröffentlicht. Aber auch schon vorher haben Olivia Hardy und William Gao mit ihrer intellektuellen Popmusik große Wellen geschlagen: Ihre Deutschlandkonzerte in Berlin und Köln wurden in große Hallen verlegt, die internationale Presse schwärmt und seit ihr Durchbruchshit ur so pretty im Finale der zweiten Staffel von Hearstopper zu hören war, in der William Gao mitspielt, sind alle Augen und Ohren auf die beiden gerichtet.

Wir haben Ende Juli mit den beiden per Zoom über Isotope und das Leben im Rampenlicht gesprochen. Wir erfahren, warum Isotope ein Zeichen von künstlerischem Wachstum ist, warum Songs wie Berge sind und was das Machen einer EP so fundamental von einer LP unterscheidet. Wir sprechen darüber, was sie dazu bewegt hat, ihre Musik aus dem elterlichen Wohnzimmer in die Welt zu tragen und warum eher die damit verbundenen Lebensentscheidungen als die Erwartungen der Fans Druck auslösen können. Außerdem erzählen die beiden, warum sie für Isotope einen wichtigen Track am Ende gestrichen haben und dass die Songs nach der Aufnahme erst einmal in den Hintergrund rücken um auf Tour ein Eigenleben zu entwickeln.

Let’s talk about your new EP Isotope. Descriptions of records usually come from an outside perspective. What kind of record is it for you?
William Gao: It’s a record of growth for us  both sonically and in meaning. The songs capture a moment of shared and individual growth. It’s really nice to be able to look back and think that there’s a lot of growth and new experiences and discoveries in this record.
Olivia Hardy: We were just talking about how cinematic some of it feels, and especially the growth from what it was before. We’ve entered a new world of sound, that feels a lot bigger or grander. And it has a lot more movement and motion in the in the music.

Does the growth come from a new vision to sound bigger? Does it also have to do with access to more studio time, more technology etc? I spoke to someone else last week and she said that her new sound also comes from the simple fact that she could afford it.
Olivia Hardy: That’s very true. We have access to more things because it was originally done on GarageBand. But at the same time, we used instruments effectively to make them sound bigger. For example, we recorded a string quartet. Or was it a quintet? It wasn’t that many of them in a room, but the way we arranged it and the way we wanted it to sound was to make it sound like an orchestra and something much more sweeping. So, it was doing things like that, which is a stylistic development as well.

After your first EP you already had a big fan base. A lot of things happened, and you toured a lot and now your second EP is coming out. It must have really changed your everyday life. How do you cope with it?
William Gao: Obviously there’s a lot going on, but actually the main points of the job remain the consistent ones. So we’re writing in the same place we’ve always written. It’s always been a constant coming back and writing. But yeah, it’s been pretty wild. With writing, we choose our own hours, we are completely in control. We have people who help us, but we are in charge. And I think that’s definitely something we’re growing into.
Olivia Hardy: It’s a big thing to learn. Like discipline, I guess. Going on tours and having such an intense amount of stuff very suddenly is overwhelming. But looking back I can see how much it made me realise what I really value. It’s pushing boundaries and pushing me to my boundaries so that I know where they are. I realised that being at home is good for me and how much I value where my home is and how my people are and what I have to do to protect my peace. I’m definitely learning that in the context of touring.

Are you already thinking about touring when you’re writing now? Has that changed?
Olivia Hardy: We’re not really thinking about it at all.
William Gao: Every now and then we’ll have a song where we’re thinking a lot about the live show and touring and stuff like that. But a lot of the time the songs come from a very different avenue of life experience. When you’re on tour you’re seeing things every day, you’re living your life, but it’s very moment to moment and intense in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s easier to come up with ideas and to write when you’re in more tranquil times of the year. You can have a week off and for some reason you write more.

As you said, Isotope will be a new chapter from your previous work. We talked about growth and things you added. Are there things you chose to leave behind?
William Gao: We ditched a song that we always thought would be the centre of the whole EP. Or should I say let go? But it was a really important song to have in the process and we actually turned it into an instrumental. The instrumental that you hear at the end of the EP comes from the back of that song. And I think it has a place somewhere in the future to be shared with the world.
Olivia Hardy: My thing with it was that it felt too similar to things we’d done before. It wasn’t originally written for the EP or for anything that was going to be released, it was just meant to be an amalgamation of a lot of the songs we’d done before. So it didn’t feel like it came from a true place. It sounded nice but it didn’t sound like us in a weird way. Did we ditch anything else? I feel like we did a few others for the EP, but we really wanted the songs to fit together in this sonic landscape and meld together on this particular journey. The track list was thought through.

Yes, they feel very intertwined. How did you go about it? Did you have the whole vision ready and then puzzle them in, or did you just make them fit?
Olivia Hardy: We thought a lot about the order and then intuitively knew things like “This song is a first song. This song is a second song. This song should be at the end. And the idea of a character on this journey of experience was very well thought through. At the end we wanted some kind of hopeful thing because it’s all about growth. The song To Get Better is the last song before the instrumental. It has this feeling of even though I’ve been through all these things that have been hard for me, I still think there’s room for growth.
William Gao: I was interested to extend on that writing wise. It was very representative of the change in our writing. We became more experimental. We weren’t afraid to complicate some songs and some areas, but we weren’t afraid to overcomplicate and simplify chord changes and feel the power and the effect that can have either. It ties in with the growth we’ve gone through as songwriters. We put it all together in a concept piece. It’s just been in every aspect. It’s really fun to play with the idea of a bigger piece, not just an EP or a collection of a few songs, but I think an EP is a really good way to explore a concept. Whereas an album concept is like a whole different kettle of fish that I think we would explore much later when we have more experience under our belt.

An EP is also a whole concept. You have to have a vision for an EP and an album. What makes an album different?
William Gao: I guess it’s just the load, it’s more songs. You have ten songs and for the journey you have to go through more. If you think of it as a collection of mountains, you have to go through more mountains to get to the end of the piece. Whereas on the EP you can have the same beauty of the mountains and you feel the same things when you see them. It’s just a few less mountains.
Olivia Hardy: On an album you want more variety in completely different corners of sonic worlds. What’s exciting about a long body of work is that you can do so many different things with it and it doesn’t necessarily have to be so thought through about a particular concept. That would be my thing, not wanting it to be too similar.

Isotope is your second EP, your fanbase is quite established, but you said you’re still growing as artists. How can we imagine the excitement and pressure?
Olivia Hardy: It’s both. It’s a complete blessing. But we’re young, we haven’t totally turned up yet.
William Gao: We’re very assured in what we want to say and in the songs that leade this universe that we’ve created and continue to create. It makes everything seem a little more grounded. The songs ground us in a really helpful way, especially in the light of a lot of attention. At the heart of it, the music is really grounding.

You’re siblings, you’ve been making music together since you were very young, and it all started to take off when you uploaded your music to Soundcloud. When did you decide to take what you have together out into the world?
Olivia Hardy: We always say it happened naturally, and I think the way we created it at home happened pretty naturally. But there was a point where we really wanted it to happen. We were working on the first EP and we really wanted it to be good. It wasn’t just about sharing with friends. We wanted it to be a record of songs that we wanted to get out there. We wanted it to sound good and we worked really hard on what we wanted to sound like. We were perfectionist about it, and it stepped up. It wasn’t for us or for fun, it was what we really wanted. We wanted to make music that does well and speaks for us.
William Gao: Everything Olivia said is spot on. From my perspective I always had this feeling of really deep excitement, especially when we were creating something in this room, actually the room we are in now, at home. There was always an energy and a feeling that I just love and I think is unique and worth putting a lot of work and energy and my soul into. Once I felt it, it was like a pull and that was the beginning of it for me. It made us work really hard to push. We did our first gig in this pub and we rehearsed it and there was a real excitement around it.
Olivia Hardy: Maybe also pressure. Honestly, looking back, there were some really big life decisions to make. The last couple of years have been completely determined by how important we held wagers and our collaboration. I had the decision about university and my whole future. William too, honestly, with acting as well and so many decisions that are so life changing and life affirming. So there was, I don’t want to say pressure, but there was a real sense of ambition to make it work because there was a lot counting on it.

Is there any pressure on the release itself, or is it gone for you by now?
Olivia Hardy: It’s pretty much gone.
William Gao: I was talking about this with someone on the train yesterday. I literally said that when the project is finished, I’ve washed my hands of it until we play it live. When we bring it back for the live show, you completely relive it. But until then we’re moving on and we’re like, what’s the next step? And for example we’re writing stuff that has nothing to do with the EP or Isotope. I think very detached until we open the curtain on our first show.
Olivia Hardy: It gets more hectic around the release because obviously there’s marketing and videos and all the other worlds of it.
William Gao: I’m really excited about the Isotope tour. You sing a song and you perform a song and it can make you feel different every night. I’m so excited to experience those different feelings in relation to how I felt when we wrote it, how I felt when we recorded it. It takes on a life of its own because the music we’ve created is almost like a third party now. We perform it and we do it justice, but it is its own thing. It has its own wings.

Thank you for the interview

Wasia Project Tour:
18.09.24 Hamburg, Reeperbahn Festival
03.11.24 Berlin, Huxleys
04.11.24 Köln, Stadthalle