Rodrigo y Gabriela – Gabriela Quintero

“I felt this really compelling amount of nostalgia and I was kind of living in the past, so I thought that maybe songwriting was a way to capture that and a way to protect it, because I felt like it was slipping away — just… childhood," says Bedouine's Azniv Korkejian, talking about the inspiration for her beautiful new album, Neon Summer Skin. "I felt really sad about it and I started to write with that in mind and it was kind of more than anything kind of therapeutic for me, I understood that I needed to address it because I understood that it was all consuming.”It was such a pleasure to finally get to do this interview with Azniv. We’ve been friends for years, but there was still so much I didn’t know about her earlier life and her creative journey. In episode 145, we delve into that evolutionary stuff: singing along with Mariah Carey’s Music Box as a kid, falling in love with artists like The Strokes and Norah Jones as she got a bit older, working in sound editing for film and TV after college, and eventually starting to perform her own music a little more than a decade ago. And we also talk about the making of Neon Summer Skin and how it helped her process some of the bittersweet nostalgia she was feeling about childhood and the safety of family. Bedouine has a North American tour starting in mid-October. Get tickets here.