Listen to an Exclusive Mix From Dream Koala

Whether he’s laying subtle falsetto ethereality on tracks like "Odyssey" or stringing together hazy meditative toned cuts, 19 year old Parisian producer and recording artist Dream Koala is quite the enigma. Adamant to escape the confines of categorization, his current releases steer the outliers of chillwave and ambient electronica toward experimental hip hop and underlines of guitar instrumentation. We caught up with Dream Koala and he sent us a mix in return.

Noisey: Hey Dream, how’ve you been?

Dream Koala: I’m good, I’m good.Things are cool, I was just watching a Boiler Room set from some LA guys and Nicolas Jaar.

Cool, so what part of the world are you in right now?

I’m in Berlin right now, I’ve lived in Berlin for like five months. It’s a cool city, there are cool vibes here. It’s cheaper and people are really cool. It’s a real cultural city. There are a lot of vegan shops and vegan restaurants and they’re way cheaper than Paris and London I guess. Everything is so expensive in London anyways.

Yeah tell me about it. You were in LA recently, right? Was it your first time there?

Yeah it was. It was crazy, I love it. I mean it’s winter for them and they’re like in shorts and you can go out in tees and there are palm trees everywhere. It’s a great city.

Cool. For those that don’t know your first band was called I The Omniscient, what was that like?

Oh you found that out, haha! It was actually with some friends. The singer was a really old friend from since I was 11 or 12 years old. We started the band and then after we met some other guys on the internet… I forget how we met them. But we met some other guys, like a drummer and a guitarist and a bassist who were looking for a singer and a guitarist so we made a group. We recorded one EP which is online and we played some shows in Paris. Then I started Dream Koala, and some of the band members moved from Paris and others started to work, go to university… so you know we ended the band.

So you’ve been making music for about 5/6 years now. How would you describe what your sound has evolved into?

It’s really changed, and it keeps changing every time. So, I’d say that I actually don’t know how my music will sound in ten years and I think it’s pretty exciting. This is what I like, I don’t wanna keep doing the same thing again and again. I’d say it keeps evolving and this is why I don’t want to stick to one genre or for people to call me just a wave or a group or [part of] a kinda scene. I know I could never stick to one scene or genre.

But would you say that right now you’re comfortable with the label of electronic or chillwave?

Yeah, I mean actually I don’t really like really serious names or serious genres. So I’d say that electronic music is kind of, yeah, it says what it is.

It’s a genre that’s open enough.

Yeah, if people call me a genre which is only like, I don’t post-blah-blah-blah, I don’t know it just sounds so focused on one thing and I just don’t want to stick to one sound. Anyway people will always find a way or name to call it, you can’t help it.

Yeah, you can’t really escape it. Your music video for "Odyssey" was impressive, would you say you’re as visually inspired as you are musically?

Yeah, I mean it helps when you have some visuals in your head, it really helps on the narrative side of the construction of one track. When you visualize something, it’s easier. You have more ideas about what you want to make, how you want the track to finish, how you want it to build up. What elements you want to put inside of it and yes actually when the guys started working on the music video, I actually already had a lot of ideas in my head. Concepts and ideas and some screenshots of other artists, just to tell them which direction I wanted the music video to be. I like to work like this, it was really cool.

So you’ve just finished a remix of Banks song…

I don’t know when it’s going to drop but yeah, it’s done. (It's out now and you can listen to it here!)

How did that connection happen? What can we expect that to sound like?

I don’t know how this happened. I’m a really huge fan of Banks, so I keep posting on my Facebook some music videos or music by her, just saying “hey, this is cool check her out if you don’t know her” and then Gregoire, I think he received some mail from Banks’ manager and he asked if I had a remix for her and I said okay let’s do it. It sounds really different from what I’ve done, it’s really different. I’m pretty excited to release it.

So what kinds of things did you put together for us for this mix?

I just finished it actually, I’m going to send it over. I’ve put some ahhh, I don’t know how to call it. It’s really grimey. There’s techno, there’s some weird futuristic robot sounds and the intro is actually like a pokeball sound.

Haha!

So yeah that’s it, you’ve got to listen to it.

Awesome, thanks Dream Koala!