The Aprons… Israeli no need for a bad pun in this caption

Interview: The Aprons

Published on February 25th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

Tel Aviv duo Talia Peri and Hava Cohen captured Rocksucker’s imagination with the “animated live action” video for their magical single “SoundStain”, so we checked out the album on their Bandcamp page and resolved to find out more. Here, then, is our interview with The Aprons, starting with the video that took one year and forty different animators to make, and which attracted ten thousand views in its first week on YouTube…

Is there an active music scene in Tel Aviv?

Hava: There is, and it’s evolving all the time.

How long has the album been out for over there?

Talia: It’s been out for one year but it’s been ready for three.

So are you now embarking on a promotional push for the rest of the world?

Hava: We’re trying! We decided to use the video clip as a promotional tool for the album. We’ve been waiting for it for a long time because it took more than a year to complete.

Have you been getting a lot of response to it?

Hava: Yeah, from all over.

Talia: It was kind of a viral hit in the beginning – it had ten thousand views on YouTube in the first four days. Then it slowed down a bit, so we’re hoping it will pick up again sometime.

How long has The Aprons existed for? When did you get together, and how did you meet?

Hava: We’ve known each other for ten years but we only started playing together around five years ago.

Talia: I never remember when it truly started but it was a four or five years ago. We’ve been friends forever before that. In the beginning our friendship had nothing to do with music, but then we started having mutual acquaintances who were involved in music and we started developing our own music skills.

Are you classically trained?

Hava: Talia is classically trained on the piano. I learned to play the piano for a few years but I can’t say I’m classically trained! I took drum lessons for a couple of years too, but I wouldn’t call myself a proper, educated musician.

Talia: We fooled everyone!

What kinds of bands or styles of music are you into?

Hava: We like Blonde Redhead, Nine Inch Nails , Sonic Youth…

Talia: …Radiohead…

I hear a bit of Mogwai in there.

Talia: I love Mogwai.

Also a bit of Mew.

Talia: I’ve heard about them but I don’t know them.

Hava: Also Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes.

Have you played in the UK yet?

Talia: Not yet but we’d love to.

Hava: We get it all the time, people asking us why don’t we go to the UK…

You should tell them to come to Tel Aviv.

Hava: They say that to us in Tel Aviv, so they’re already there!

Talia: It seems like our music sounds kind of European to people, so we get asked a lot why don’t we go to Europe to try our luck. We’re not doing it currently, unless we get invited!

How much of the instrumentation on the recordings do you handle yourselves? Who’s playing what?

Hava: I play the drums, Talia plays the bass, and we both play the piano and do the vocals. That’s about it, I think.

Talia: There are no guitars on the album, only bass, drums and piano. One song has violins, which wasn’t us playing, but that’s it. It was a concept not to use a guitar.

Do you know yet if you’re playing any festivals this summer?

Hava: In Israel?

Anywhere, really.

Hava: In Israel it’s not festival season until around September, which is the holiday season – we’re waiting to see what will happen with that. It’s probably way too late to try for festivals in Europe.

Have you started recording your next album yet?

Hava: We’ve got a load of material for the next album, and we’ve already set up where to record it and with whom. We think it’s going to be in the next couple of months. It’s ready to be recorded.

Talia: We are amusing ourselves with the thought of recording it in my kitchen, but we might not take that chance. We’ll see!

What would you say have been the highlights so far of being in The Aprons?

Talia: I think this video clip is the highlight because it’s our biggest exposure. We’ve never had that many people see and listen to our stuff. People from all over the world watched it – we can see in YouTube statistics who saw us, so it’s really exciting to know that somebody in Brazil or somebody in China watched our video. Other than that, we’ve played at relatively big festivals in Israel, but they’re not that big relative to festivals that you’d think about!

The Aprons, thank you.

The Aprons - Sound Stains

The Aprons’ debut album Sound Stains is out now and available at theaprons.bandcamp.com – click here to visit The Aprons on Facebook

Artists: rocksucker, the aprons

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.