Faux Real. Expect The Unexpected From Siblings Virgile and Elliott Arndt

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Faux RealMusic duo

Los Angeles, USA. March 17th, 2021

Interviewed by Alexei Key

Photo by Maxime Imbert


 

Faux Real is more than music. It is an all-encompassing approach to life and art. It is closer to a godless cult, an agnostic agglomeration, radiating radical revelry in the midst of failing systems and falling structures. It is the idea that everything we know can be subverted and all meaning can be reversed, twisted and transformed to suit purposes of propaganda and proselytism. Therefore, it is best to always look on the Faux side of life and take it with a pinch of Real Salt™, since we are nothing but grains of sand on the infinite beaches of creation.

Music is our only means of communication, as we don’t possess a lingua franca. Our parents thought it would be an interesting sociological experiment to bring us up speaking different languages. In fact, this interview was transposed directly from sheet music into English, so we could both participate.

We are inspired by each other. We are mirror images of each other, opposite in every way, but also eerily similar. This means that when we express ourselves, we express each other, and vice versa. We are in a closed-circuit reality, in which the Faux self is expressed through the Real self. Outside circumstances only dictate the premises but never the outcome of what we create. By sticking strictly to certain codes, to a cult of personality for instance, when creating, one paradoxically liberates oneself from the shackles of making ‘real’ art and becomes free.

Our process is Faux Real’s best-kept secret, and we will never divulge the recipe. We are the Willy Wonkas of wonky bops. All we can say is that we usually start in one place and end up somewhere wildly different. We take ourselves for a ride, every time, and try to have the most fun possible.

We feel most creative when mixing media and disciplines; when the visual and architectural landscapes merge with conceptual archetypes, when clothing and choreography swing into one seamless motion, when music is only the time-bound expression of a deeper feeling, one that isn’t going to ever fully be expressed but that will instill its particular flavor into our lives for a given moment in time.

The pandemic has changed us in some ways, mostly in our choice of footwear. Gone are the days of insignificant slippers and insipid sneakers. When one doesn’t have many opportunities to do so, it is essential to hover in high heels, boast offbeat boots, to fasten one’s moccasins, chauffeur around in loafers, jump into pumps. It has also dissolved many misconceptions we had about time—which, when you’re making music, is often the frame you use to create inside of, the red line you have to follow. Unless it’s not a line.

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Photo by Agathe Rousselle.

The fame and fortune are the best part of what we do, easily. We also like creating things that people cherish and hold dear to their hearts. We are Method Musicians™, so the research is almost as important as the output, in our eyes. We have taken to heart to make Faux Real as much an outwards process as an inwards one. It is a constant meditation on family, brotherhood, humor, weather patterns, shapes, and colors.

Lately our inspirations include breathing very deeply, platform shoes, Vivaldi, Madonna, old vocal memos and hastily scribbled notes, our own record spinning on repeat as we try to decipher its various meanings, and the uprising of people against their oppressors in not-so-distant corners of the world.

We love the fact that the tools and teachings of music are no longer confined to hallowed halls of learning. The power has shifted from a select few people holding the keys to an army of unhinged carpenters making their own doors, for better or worse. What a time to be making “music.”

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Photo by Sarah Pardini.

 

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A post shared by Faux Real (@isthisfauxreal)


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