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Photo by Lisa Nguyen

Interviews while driving always feel a bit precarious, balancing parts of the brain dedicated to accelerating in motion, while recalling emotions & influences as they speed from memory to words. While conducting an interview with the duo of Zimmer90 as they sped home from the studio, we learned many things – including that their ability to multitask is very strong. Aside from their driving, it's evidenced all over their immersive music, especially on their latest album, Interior, a speed run of tempo-driven electro-pop that stalled us in our tracks when we first got a listen. We wanted to know so much more, and here are the safe-arrived results:

OnesToWatch: My first question always is, why are you guys artists?

Zimmer90: Why are we artists? Because we love art. We love every form of art. We're interested in every form of art. Finn studied architecture, Josch’s from a family of painters and artists, so it's just really close to us. And music is just one part of it. 

I was going to ask about your aesthetics and why they seem so cohesive and deliberate, but now I think that question sort of answers itself. My next question would then be, if all your creative talent was taken from you, what else could you do? Is there another alternative life you could lead? 

Finn: I think I would become a teacher. 

Josch: I would work as a doctor because before we started this music thing, I was thinking about studying medicine.

Finn: I could also see myself working as a housekeeper that has a simple life.

I love this. Maybe you could be a housekeeper to a good doctor. 


Josch: Yeah, you could be my housekeeper. 

Keep the duo alive, you know? I wanted to dig into the reason I initially reached out, which is your amazing album. I know we're a little late to it in terms of an interview. But give me the context for Interior. Do these songs represent a time and place? Or are they pulled from different times and pieced together to fit a theme? 

Josch: We wrote the songs over a year, but we had a significant time where we spent three weeks in the French countryside in a very tiny, small village. I think there were only about 20 people living there. The whole time we were there, we only saw two other people. We spent our days just making music, putting our phones away, and walking through nature. And I think that was the place which inspired us the most to get all those songs together for Interior. 


Beautiful. How many songs didn't make the record? 
Do you write very intentionally where what you’ve written will get released, or is it more of a paring down process? 

Josch: I would say we wrote unintentionally. At the time we had about 80 songs lying around, but those 10 songs fit nicely together. We also wanted to have one sound, but not like a concept album which feels like one big song. The album also feels pretty single-y.
So I think one could listen to every song as a standalone –

Finn: Yes, but it was a cool idea for us to do it like this. 

Well, it seemed to have worked and it's beautiful, and you're right, there's a lot of standalone songs there. Where did the title come from? 

Josch: I think we just love beautiful rooms. Usually, we write at places that are not professional recording studios, but are more places that inspire us. We found the name pretty interesting because we love interior design but also interior meaning the lyrics and themes from the songs describing our inner feelings. 

Beautiful. Who has the worst ideas between you two? 

Josch: Worst? That’s a hard question. 

Finn: I don't know if there's such a thing as a bad idea. We stopped judging ideas and have committed to trying everything. It’ll become clear through the process if we should follow an idea or not. A bad idea can result in a good thing. But we both have crazy ideas sometimes. 

Definitely. Who would you say is the more consistent composer or a songwriter?

Finn: Why are you asking us hard questions? 


Well, I love the dynamics of a duo. So I know that how you guys work together is probably pretty interesting. I'm trying to figure that out. 

Finn: We both love creating and as Josch said, we do it every day on our own or together. And so we're both really consistent, but we have different fields where we specify it. 


Josch: Finn is really good at getting a song together and doing instrumental stuff and drums. I like to go into the chaotic and emotional side of things, while Finn likes the structured stuff. 

Awesome. I'm going to pivot to some more fun questions.
If you guys want to celebrate – and you should after this amazing record – where do you go? Where do you go to have a celebration or enjoy yourselves? 

Josch: I think we would go to a cozy bar in our hometown in the Black Forest, and keep it really chill with some friends, drink a beer, a German Pilsner. 


I might have to join you. That sounds amazing. 


Josch: You're welcome. 

If you guys are hungry in the studio, can either one of you cook? And if you do, what's the meal?
What's your comfort food while you're recording? 

Finn: We are not cooking a lot, because we don't have so much time, but we have this really cool thing called Mensa in Germany and it's a food hall for students where you can get really nice food, very cheap. They cook the whole day. We love to go there because we can just go and pay like $3 for a full meal. 

That does not sound like America. Do you guys have a dream place or venue that you close your eyes and imagine performing at? 

Josch: Yeah, Red Rocks. 

That's a good one. I think you guys would be amazing there. If you could go back or forward in time, would you, and where would you go? 

Josch; I think I would like to go forward because when I have to go back, it would be strange that I know everything, and I think life would be really boring if I already knew what will happen in the next 20 years. I would go back to a time where we had no internet and no phones and where it was just living life and getting to know people without being online and on the phone all the time. 


Finn: I think there's a funny, sweet spot between 2002 and 2011 – a lot of fun stuff happened there. Not that many wars going on like today. Lots of fun music. So it's kind of weird because maybe it's more interesting to go way back, but I think it's also fun. 

Absolutely. Last couple of questions, I would love a recommendation from both of you that's not music. So it can be an activity, something to read, something to eat, a place to visit, anything, but just not music.

Josch:
I have a book and it's called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. 

Finn: I would recommend trying this matcha ice cream that we had in LA a few weeks ago. I don’t like matcha at all but this one I liked and I think about it quite often. 

Josch: We had it at a ramen place. 

Good rec. For my final question, I would love a music recommendation from both of you. 

Josch: I would say Men I Trust.

Finn: I second that. 

Thank you guys so much for your time! 

Zimmer90: Thank you.