Idyll twice is a duo based in Paris, navigating between post-rock reminiscences and lo-fi collages. Actually, they combine genres in such a fluent way, it’s quite impossible to describe their style with a single word. Their first album, Lost and Found, will be released on Brussels-based label Sal de Fête on November 4th, 2025. On this occasion, we are publishing an interview conducted by artist and writer Peter Brazil.
Peter: Bonjour! So let’s get to the start of the idyll twice. How was the project born?
Ryo: We have known each other for a long time since we grew up in the same city. We even learnt classical guitar in the same music school, but we weren’t really close at that time. We met each other again a few years later during a friend’s film shooting (Koban Louzoù by Brieuc Schieb). We actually had a conversation there about our mutual desire to make live music again.
Dorian: Yes. Making music was something we just stopped doing during our studies. I mean, for me, in art school, it was complicated to just find a way to compose music. And so when we both graduated, it’s funny because we just came back to what we used to do in our teenage years.
Peter: And was it more: “let’s jam”? and, “let’s just play together and see if something comes”? Or was it more like, “let’s try to go for something bigger”?
Ryo: On the first evening, when we tried to make some music, we decided that we had to make a demo from start to finish in one session.
Dorian: That could be two, three, or four hours, and around midnight, we had to finish something. For me, it was super stressful because we didn’t know each other so well. I was thinking like “I’m gonna do something and it’s gonna be just shit”. But it’s crazy ‘cause we started and it pretty much instantly worked.
Peter: So I would like to bring up the constant duality in your music, and on this album. You both often sing alone, two visions opposing and meeting in the middle, like two solos duetting. One of you might speak in an obscure, distorted manner during an ambient moment, while another sings high and clear over drum and bass. Do you both recognize this duality in your music?
Ryo: Something like a pattern emerged after a few sessions. Dorian was singing with an almost spoken-word and whispering type of singing, and me, more melodic and higher-pitched way. I think we were trying to differentiate our identities by highlighting the way each of us was singing.
Dorian: Yes, and then we tried to figure out how both our entities could coexist within a song. And it was also important for us not to think only about one song, but to think about the scale of the album and how we could use our voices to create a dialogue.
Peter: So, since the gorgeous release in September, ‘Let the words do the talking’, with its lightness and wonder, comes the second single, a sort of dark prayer or hymn with ‘Candlelights’, that rises and falls in rhythm and genre. Why is ‘Candlelights’ chosen as the next release?
Dorian: I think, in a way, this song has a really different energy from the first single.
Ryo: Yes, we wanted to propose another type of form, which is the repetition of three cycles, in constant transformation, in opposition to the first single, which is more chorus-based. Candlelights is a song about processing the loss of a loved one, and trying to find a way to channel their spirit through their own faith, in fact, in this case, through Buddhist rites and Japanese funeral ceremonies. I personally wrote the lyrics as a mantra, where the energy is always evolving through this repetitive structure.
Peter: It’s like a lullaby. And it continues to repeat over itself and then stays in your head, instead of ‘let the words do the talking’, which is a clear chorus song. In the previous question, I said the word genre, a word that can be very disliked within certain music scenes. In this album, you navigate through drum and bass, shoegaze, DIY, trip hop, folk, spoken word, and so many genres. It is all done in a seemingly effortless manner, but did this come naturally?
Dorian: I think the fact that we’re both doing editing helped a lot. I’m doing video editing, and Ryo’s doing sound editing of films for a living. So it’s something we are comfortable working with. You have different layers: lyrics, melody, rhythm, textures, and the way they’re combined can create different stories. It’s like a long walk where you’ve got interactions that bring you to another one, and to another one, etc…
Ryo: It’s funny because we both grew up learning how to play and write music within a band, where we mimicked stereotyped genres, but for this project, it was a completely different process. You have to lay all of your materials inside a timeline and figure out how they can coexist and evolve together. I think that’s why we never actually talked about genre.
Peter: Yes, listening to the album, one would think that it’s really complicated to do what you guys have done, especially on a first record, as it is intricate yet nuanced as it is.
Ryo: As we were completely improvising and recording stuff without even knowing what would be kept, it was a long process of listening back to all the things we had made during the recording, with a different perspective. Oftentimes, when I was playing and recording some stuff and was thinking like “this is great”, it ended up being something we didn’t keep, because it was sounding maybe too “obvious”, and instead I chose to keep the more meaningless tiny bit of guitar melody line, for example. It’s a little bit like the concept of “écoute réduite” (reduced listening) in musique concrète, not to think about the source, but to think about the sonic material in itself.
Dorian: Also, for example, nothing is blurry; is a song made in one shot. We were recording an hour-long session, and when we listened back to it, it was the way it should be, no need for any extra work or re-takes… We just took this minute and a half. It’s funny because there are other songs we worked on for months.
Ryo: Yeah, actually, for most of our songs, the structure came really early. After that, we needed a break at one point and in total two years to re-work, edit, and mix!
Peter: It’s interesting how the start of something is often where you get the beauty and then the rest is trying not to overkill it. It’s like a painting as well: you can have a really good primer jet (first layer) and then people are like “oh, I love it”. And then you work on it and ruin it, and then you have to work very hard to find that beauty once again. But you have to go through a part where you’re really unsure of what you’re doing.
Dorian: And it could also be super dangerous. Sometimes, you can just kill what you did by flattening it out.
Ryo: Oftentimes, we kept the original recording as it was, with its imperfections. I remember wanting to re-record everything because it was in my “sound engineering perspective” the right way to do things, but in the end for most of the sounds we kept the original because it had that premier jet charm.
Peter: I would like to know more about your chosen lyrics from both of you. I feel like you both wrote them separately, but did you? And then does it differ from how you compose and produce your songs, instrumentally speaking? How did you bring about your lyrics to one another and then fit them in the song?
Dorian: I can say that it’s the only thing we did separately during all the entire process of making music. It’s also because we have different ways to write. For me, it was more like notes I had in my phone and in my notebook. It was a work of collages in a way.
Ryo: I had a totally different process of writing, which was mainly based on how to phrase something in the moment. Find the melody within pure instinct and to not be stuck with already written words. And the lyrics came after that. But I don’t know if I’ll do it again because it’s a really fastidious process ! (laugh). It’s like doing Sudoku with words to perfectly fit the right syllable at the right place.
Peter: The theme of nature is really present in the album. I feel like the genre I would give it is ‘industrial acoustic’. It’s like in a city, but you’re in a small park that you really like. You can hear the people shouting, the cars beeping, but this is the place that keeps you happy. Does that actually echo maybe the way you live your life?
Dorian: I think it also talks about learning how to live in this capitalist world, and trying to find a way to not feel so doomed in a way. Trying to capture the reminiscence of the good memories and embracing them, so that they can give you hope. It helps to feel alive and to keep going.
Ryo: The album is quite haunted by past memories and how to confront them when they resurface. I think like, for me at least, the album talks a lot about this, like in different life situations, whether it’s by rediscovering your teenage secret notebooks, having revelations about your family, or trying to figure out how to grow up as an adult within a completely different society as our parents for example, with different expectations.
Dorian: But I think it’s also the end of a cycle. We know we’re starting a new one. So everything is compacted in a lot of memories.
Peter: I want to understand more about the album tracklist. How was it to decide the chapters of the album? And how important was it for you to depict one whole piece?
Ryo: We selected the key songs that we wanted to rework after 3 months of writing demos, and based on these building blocks, we added interlude-like songs and completely changed the structure of some other songs that were too complex. For example, the last song of the album Disappear Behind was taken from the outro of a demo, and we made a whole song based on this little loop.
Dorian: I think it’s the same kind of process, to edit a song and to edit an album, but at a different scale. Something about how to narrate. It was clear to us that, for example, underneath would be the opening song, and disappear behind would be the ending. It just felt how it was supposed to be. The first version of the track list was more like mountains, with ups and downs, and it was super complicated to listen to. So we decided to strip down some tracks and build an album with a more coherent identity. After these changes, it meant something totally different.
Peter: Yeah, something that goes together instead of, like, having a collection of singles and the other songs. Here, it’s not the case, and it’s also the way the album is formatted that you kind of have the whole thing instead of just like three songs that work really well. Most people who will listen to your music will want to listen to the album instead of just one song.
Dorian: Yes, we hope! The fact is that ‘normally’ you do one single and then another, so your music can be discovered on streaming platforms ‘cause you’d be curated on playlists, etc… and then you release an EP like one year after that, and then you make an album. That’s often the logical process. But we composed everything as a block.
Ryo: Yes, and we know it’s not strategic at all (laugh). I think we made that choice because we were boiling to make music for so long. We had to make something big, maybe to prove to ourselves that we were capable of doing this. And then the rest will follow, you know, the rest will be easier after that.
Peter: So for mixing and mastering then. How did you guys do it? As you chose to do it by yourself, finally.
Ryo: It was quite challenging for me because I’ve never done something like that. It’s generally good to work with another person for the mixing process, because you need your music to be heard from a different perspective, even if it goes against your initial intentions sometimes. But we didn’t really have the money to do it properly, and for this first release, I think we wanted to go full DIY, to at least try to know what we were capable of.
Peter: Then the last question, which is probably like a magazine question. After the release on the 18th of November, what have you planned next?
Dorian: We will have a release in Paris on the 5th of December, and another one in Brussels. We are also organizing a tour in Europe in January with our dear friend Vanilla September, and another EP is in preparation… We’re looking forward to sharing these new tracks!
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