Artist Feature — Roscoe's Blog

The immersive feeling that mood and ambient soundtracks have is certainly an art to be mastered, and emerging musician Leif Kurt is well on his way.

Today, I am eager to kick off our Artist Feature articles with my good friend Leif here. I am hoping that this first feature and interview can get you excited for the projects to come!

In our upcoming animations, Leif and I plan to explore narratives through mood building and abstract visual storytelling. After the debut of my thesis Dreamweavers, we have been working on laying down the path for our future collaborations- it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun too. There's something about working on projects like this with someone I'm so close with- it feels like Leif is able to understand the direction I'm going in with my work, and the music he comes up with compliments the narratives that are already there while creating a whole new narrative of their own.

I feel comfortable saying that we just "click", and our creative vision seems to align very well. Our collaborations are born from the experiences we've had together, whether it be midnight talks on the porch, fun errands around Bern, walks to small villages in the scorching Italian sun, and even the difficult moments when I was coping with my newfound disability and needed a friend to talk to. Finding someone that just "gets" me feels particularly important to me because while most of my collaborations with other artists have been a great deal of fun, collaborating with someone who knows me so well feels like we are both on the same page, with the same vision, always.

I feel like I can tell Leif a crazy, abstract mess of an idea and somehow he can see where I am going with the idea before it's even a full storyboard.

This brings me to our current projects- Leif and I are currently developing an experimental narrative piece as practice for both of us. The concept is as follows- I send him a short prompt, a one-sentence story. From that prompt, he composes a piece based on the mood he interpreted from the sentence, and then he hands over whatever he has composed for me to animate. It is an interesting narrative experiment because so far the song he sent me for the first sentence I wrote was everything I imagined and more when thinking of that scene and mood... perhaps, I should consider the fact that my friend could be a mind reader.

We'll find out in the following interview!

Leif Kurt and myself the day we released Dreamweavers to the public

Tell us a bit about yourself, Leif!

Leif: Hi, I'm Leif Kurt. I'm a musician based in Bern, Switzerland. It's a lovely city, with a lot of inspiration for artists and musicians alike with its bustling creative scene. It's great.
Me: Shoutout to Bern, everybody loves Bern.

We resumed the interview shortly after, as we got carried away talking about the beautiful city and I was laughing a little too hard. Back to Leif.

Leif: I am working on learning new instruments, currently polishing up my Saxophone skills, and eventually I hope to play the clarinet as well. I have a lot of respect for multi instrumentalist musicians, and I hope that through enough dedication and practice I can also master a few instruments as well.

That sounds absolutely fantastic! What inspired you to start making music?

I've always had a knack for music, and have been playing instruments since the age of 7.
During the pandemic, I decided to take the chance to dive in and try to follow my passion- might as well, right? I have found out a lot in this time- the things I like, the things I don't like, and the things I want to do and will continue working towards.
I'm learning a lot, and I'm focusing a lot on my growth as a musician. I'm even applying to a pre-college program, as I believe that having a more structured approach could also help me learn a lot more and advance this passion further.

That sounds wonderful- As an artist, I find that while learning and growing I started getting into a rhythm, and really learning how my own creative process worked. Being a musician, What is your favourite part about the creative process?

The point where it clicks, and the ideas all flow together. Usually, I get into a mindset where I'm wondering "oh no, what have I done? Am I making this for me?" And I sometimes don't know how to advance some projects further. Some take off, and some stagnate and fizzle out.

Yeah, it must be similar to how I have hundreds of unfinished sketches for compositions that just didn't really speak to me- it's OK to let some ideas go and focus on what clicks!

What was it like to work on an animation like Dreamweavers? What did you learn from that experience?

It was daunting at first, the time when i started work on this animation I had only been composing my own tracks for half a year, and felt like there was still so much to learn but it was an interesting experience.
Actually, the original track I had composed for Dreamweavers definitely didn't "click" for me- it was a bloated, overworked piece that just didn't go anywhere. Perhaps I was q bit stressed out, knowing this project was your thesis and I hadn't ever composed for an animation before. I felt like I let it get out of control and didn't even know which direction it was going I the first place. After putting our heads together and modifying a track I had composed for fun, I found that I was on a roll. Suddenly, it all clicked, and we made it work perfectly with qll the visuals and ideas we both had. I feel like we took an unconventional route to get to the end destination, but we got there.

Yeah, we did! And Dreamweavers got a lot of positive attention- I am so thankful that our first collaboration went so well. Aside from the work we've planned for ourselves, What kind of animated projects would you like to work on?

Personally, as a big anime nerd, I have to say "composing for an Anime, of course".
I'm very familiar with it, and the way music in the scenes is used to create mood and aid the narrative. Animations with a good soundtrack stay with you, and a lot of animated films have had that effect on people because of their soundtrack too.

I agree! I think back to the Animations I love and grew up with and to this day I still listen to some soundtracks from movies I couldn't get enough of. Which game and movie soundtracks do you feel stand out to you?

The one that stuck with me the longest would be the soundtrack for an older game called Rise of Nations. That soundtrack always stuck with me, and I too listen to a lot of game and movie tracks. They've got a way of just pulling you in, and the immersive feeling of these games is in the music, for me.
Now, as for other media- man in the high castle, Psychopass, Ghost in the Shell, Game of Thrones, Witcher 3.
These soundtracks are iconic, and for good reason. They've definitely stood out to me, and they're all very different styles from each other. Much like that iconic Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, I feel like the Game Of Thrones soundtrack is just as recognisable, if not more. But it's not just about being recognisable but also how well they deliver the feeling and tone of the narrative.

Hypothetically, You can collaborate with any musician- who would it be and why?

It's hard to narrow it down to one, I thought about this question for a long time.
The person I'd choose would be Yugo Kanno, an animation composer who's known for his work in Jojo's Bizzare Adventures.

If you could be mentored by any musician, who would it be?

Very, very difficult question....there's certainly many. But, my final answer would have to be City Girl. After all, she's the reason I explored making music digitally in the first place. Her video where she samples her cat made me realise that I had everything available to me to start composing, and so I did.

Thank you for your time, Leif. I'm really glad we got this chance to talk about your music more, and I'm eager to share previews of our upcoming projects as things progress.

For now, you can check out the animation we did for my Bachelor's thesis, Dreamweavers.

Thank you for reading, and see you next week for a new blog post.