Helsinki duo Femme en Fourrure oozes dark forces and delightful experimentalism with a sound that invokes bearing across several genres, including breakbeats, bass, folk music, trap and witch house. Having released both on the eclectic Top Billin imprint, Discobelle and Damon Kirkham’s (Instra:mental ) Convex Industries, the duo is now current with the upcoming Smell EP on Cocoa.

The guys sent us a brilliant mixtape, crammed with breaking barriers music that has inspired them for the release and we took the opportunity to ask a little about their recent ventures.

Forumist Sessions: Femme En Fourrure by Theforumist.Com on Mixcloud

Where do you find your inspiration?

Juuso: It goes in phases where I’ll find inspiration. I think I’ve written my best ideas while in anger. Recently the pressure of my blood has been really high, because of the recent political changes in Finland, imbecile racists, homophobic Christian Democrats and the so-called “True Finns”, misogynistic human beings. Although our musical pieces have been about misogyny in general more or less from the start.

Sandra: Negative energy definitely drives me as well, yet the goal is never to glorify it but rather to personally deal with it. What comes to the imaginary characters that are personified in the songs, they are pretty animal-like maybe because right now, to me, all human-like ways to verbalize any feeling or mood feel artificial and alienating.

How important is the visual presentation for you?

Sandra: It can in many ways actualize things that wouldn’t necessarily come through otherwise and at it’s best it brings along something new and unexpected.

Juuso: Music and visual should always go hand in hand. We’ve been lucky to have all these people around us who have contributed to the visual world of FEF.

We love the mixtape, please tell me a little bit about it.

Thank you! The first segment is by Juuso and the latter is by Sandra. Tracks and grooves that inspire and have inspired the recent lullabies.

I read that you will be performing as Paperi T this summer. Tell me a little bit about the collaboration and if you have any plans of performing live as Femme En Fourrure.

Paperi T is an artist from Helsinki, who we’ve produced two very well received singles. We wanted to contribute to Finnish music, because it felt lacking a lot in content and in production wise. We’re also performing live here and there as Paperi T’s band, which is fun, because it’s so different than people have used to. As in if we’re talking about an ordinary rap music live setting. Probably we’ll be performing as Femme En Fourrure again after the release of the new EP!

What’s the music scene like in Helsinki 2015?

Juuso: Small, but precise and inspirational. Lately I’ve noticed to get inspired more by my fellow musicians, than I was previously by artists from abroad. It’s unique. We have great festivals and clubs like Flow Festival and Club Kaiku, in which I play solo all-nighter dj sets every now and then.

Besides your upcoming performances, what’s your plans for the future?

Sandra: We have quite a few demos in the making that I’m personally really thrilled about. At the same time we’re both inspired by many different kinds of music that we’d love to include in our production, so I’m looking forward to see what the outcome will be.

Credits:

Words by: Gustav Bagge

Photography: Sakke Soini, Maria Kulina, Helen Korpak, Paavo Lehtonen.

Music video director: Miikka Lommi.