Kodacrome is a two-man production team disguised as an electronic band. Currently based in Brooklyn, members Elissa LeCoque (vocals/arrangements) and Ryan Casey (synthesizer/production) share a background in visual art, set-building, filmmaking, and screenwriting, all of which has spilled over into the presentation of their original analog synth-based catalog. Over the last decade, Kodacrome has become known for their dark, textured, minimalist production, and layered vocal melodies, as well as their art-department-heavy video content, and small-batch merchandise.
Elissa & Ryan first met in 2009 while touring via their respective solo projects for the Belgian-based label, Marathon of Dope. The pair quickly recognized a kindred spirit of sonic and visual storytelling, and began a cross-country collaboration – swapping files from Elissa’s home base in San Francisco, and Ryan’s Bushwick warehouse studio. By early 2010, Kodacrome was born, kicking things off with a smattering of experimental shows in the US and Europe, and eventually setting up shop seaside in Martha’s Vineyard, where Ryan had been commissioned to build a venue and recording studio.
After 18 months of remote coastal living, Elissa & Ryan released their first studio album, Perla (2012), and returned to their urban roots in Brooklyn. Their second studio release Aftermaths (2014) soon followed, accompanied by several self-directed videos, and features by Indie Shuffle, BBC, CMJ, and Clocktower Radio.
In 2016, after encountering a roadblock on the direction of their third studio album, Kodacrome decided to switch gears and dedicate a year to their visual foundations. What began as a simple music video concept, snowballed into an all-consuming project, consisting of nine sets, electrically-wired lights and motors, and a borderline-obsessive stockpile of dollhouse-sized set pieces. The resulting music video for “Oh, You Two” aesthetically informed the production of their subsequent double LP Think Of The Children (2018), which was released on Brooklyn experimental label, FOIL, and was featured by KCRW, Vice, The Line of Best Fit, and Marvel’s Runaways.
Following Think Of The Children, Kodacrome participated in artist residencies at the Mudhouse in Crete, and the Banff Centre in Canada, where they studied the expressive relationship between orchestral instruments and analog synths, and ultimately arranged and recorded a chamber-based redux album. Their resulting EP Banff Sessions (2020) features original compositions for piano, voice, strings, woodwinds, horn, and hints of ambient analog synthesizer. The experience of recording music “off the grid” with no click track, and making use of human players became an addictive process, which they look forward to implementing in their impending return to synth-forward works.
Glide is thrilled to premiere both Kodacrome’s song and video for “Play Dead,” a dynamic and lush soundscape that contains Explosions in the Sky buildups with shoegaze textures with post-rock nods. Kodacrome are enablers of mood-setting in the most devious ways, with classic creeping piano and enough hush to keep listeners expecting the unexpected.
“Writing “Play Dead” was one of those rare moments where Ryan and I fell into a kind of time warp and arranged the full song in a single sitting – he on a DSI Tempest, and me on piano,” says LeCoque. “We had just been assigned to a beautiful Bosendorfer grand at our Banff Centre residency, and it was as if the mountains and the trees and all of the vibrations of the environment just poured out through it fluidly. Ryan has a really great sense of restraint and dynamics when it comes to his production, so he was innately able to support the piano and let it shine.”
One interesting thing we discovered when we later added synth layers to the song is that they didn’t sit right when we recorded them direct,” adds LeCoque. “After some experimentation, we wound up running them all through a mic’ed amp, to help massage them into the natural resonance of the piano.”
Since the song is thematically about how we warp memories as a coping mechanism, we had a vision of pairing it with a ceramicist manipulating porcelain at the wheel. We wound up spending a day shooting Elaine Tian (Studio Joo), who not only patiently threw a lifetime supply of gorgeous bowls, but also assisted us in composing these stunning textured arrangements of her studio space,” says LeCoque about the video. “We played with slow focus pulls and slides, while gently manipulating the lighting, so as to give a warped sense of time and space, and play into the song’s thematic intention.”
