Nico Fox, the sole member of the experimental music project known as Real Clothes, released their first folktronica album, Modulation, onto Spotify earlier this week. The album combines modern electronic beats and audio modifications with traditional, almost spiritual sounding folk melodies.
Nico Fox, the sole member of the experimental music project known as Real Clothes, released their first folktronica album, Modulation, onto Spotify earlier this week. The album combines modern electronic beats and audio modifications with traditional, almost spiritual sounding folk melodies.
Fox’s ethereal vocalizations soar above a rising tide of pulsating rhythms or echoes alone and unaided as if into a suddenly empty room. It’s music for soul-searching, perfect for lying face up on the ground and letting the world fall away.
“I grew up listening to multiple styles of music in multiple languages and I think that makes my music a lot more complex and if anything more accessible to larger groups of people,” Fox said.
Fox is a first generation Haitian immigrant who has been performing under the name Real Clothes since 2012. Before that, she was involved in a few minor musical projects with her friends in Richmond, where she attended college and lived for four years. Today, Fox lives in Washington DC and splits her performances between the nation’s capital and Virginia’s.
“DC does have a pretty good music scene but it’s not the way it is in Richmond,” said Fox. “Richmond is definitely much larger and I was more influenced by the music I heard down there because I definitely found personally that I hear a little bit more experimentation with different styles when I’m in Richmond.”
In the past, Real Clothes has typically produced conventional folk albums backed by a live band, like her first original EP, Lost Socks in the Spring of 2013. She also produced an experimental electronic album called Object-Oriented (Night) in 2014, which she calls the “spiritual successor” to the nine-track albumModulation.
“Since I used to do folk music and a capella and I used to play apparitions I wanted to incorporate that too and I feel that both folk music and electronic music don’t really tend to overlap so I kind of wanted to try something by blending the two styles that I’ve done over the years,” Fox said.
Fox produced Modulation entirely on her own with only a laptop, drum machine, and guitar. Using a combination of the audio editing software FL Studio and Ableton, Fox explored the possibilities that contemporary electronic media offers to accompany and even shape her voice in this album.
“I kind of want to explore the electronic realm because I think there’s a lot that isn’t really tapped into because technology’s still evolving,” said Fox. “I actually ended up learning a lot about the electronic music making process, you can actually hear that as the album goes through that I’m getting better.”
Indeed, the sophistication of the digital manipulations to Real Clothes’s songs in this album increases while at the same time, the prevalence of Fox’s voice dwindles and becomes adornment to the beat, rather than the other way around.
The changeable nature of music and the human voice in particular that is evidenced on this album inspired Fox to title her work Modulation, which means to regulate or adjust, and in relation to music refers to a change in stress, pitch, loudness or tone of voice.
“It made me think of how things change and again the album changes and evolves as it goes through from the first track to the last they don’t sound the same but it does flow from the beginning to the end of the album,” Fox said.
In the spirit of the album’s title, and because as a kid she frequently preferred earlier versions of popular songs to what was played on the radio, Fox released “Modulation: In Progress”, a demo version of her final album, on SoundCloud about two months ago.
“I just think that there should be multiple versions of the album because albums evolve and change. I want people to have the choice and I want to reflect that.”
To listen to both the demo and final versions of Modulation for free, check her Soundcloud page here.
