Tone Glow 196: Leila Bordreuil
An interview with the Brooklyn-based composer and cellist about disability, Marina Rosenfeld, and her latest album, '1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire' (2024)
Leila Bordreuil
Leila Bordreuil (b. 1990) is a Brooklyn-based cellist, composer, and improviser from Aix-en-Provence, France. Throughout her adolescence, Bordreuil studied music in the conservatory but also found a deep interest in the raves happening around her. This interest in electronic music led to her craving the same sort of intensity while playing the cello. She learned about spectralism while studying under composer Marina Rosenfeld, and her practice currently focuses on the inherent sonic qualities of the cello, utilizing extended techniques, unorthodox amplification, and sound-spatialization to draw out the instrument’s infinite possibilities.
Bordreuil has released numerous collaborative and solo albums throughout the past decade. These releases include works with artists like Lea Bertucci (2015’s L’onde souterraine), Michael Foster (2016’s The Caustic Ballads), Zach Rowden (2017’s Hollow), and Biliana Voutchkova (2022’s The Seventh Water). Her solo albums include 2019’s Headflush, 2021’s Not an Elegy, and last year’s 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire. The latter was one of Tone Glow’s favorite albums of 2024. It features a live performance at a cookout party she hosted, where she improvised on a modular synthesizer while old footage—taken by her partner’s family for insurance purposes—was projected.
Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Bordreuil on November 12th, 2024 via Zoom to discuss her childhood, the welcoming nature of the experimental music scene, and the ideas animating her latest album. Bordreuil will play a show with Lee Ranaldo this Saturday, November 8th at Chicago’s Graham Foundation. The event is hosted by LAMPO; more information can be found here.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: You grew up in the south of France—what was it like to grow up there? What was your household like?
Leila Bordreuil: I grew up in a semi-rural area about 30 minutes outside of Marseille. I didn’t come from a musical family but I, of my own volition, started music at a really young age and entered conservatory. Then I did a special school program where you had less class hours and more conservatory hours. My life was very dominated by the conservatory growing up; all my friends were in the conservatory. Then as a teenager, there was a lot of techno in my hometown, so I started going to raves a lot. That was my musical landscape.
I know you started conservatory when you were 7 years old. How old were you when you started going to raves?
14, 15.
As you got older, I know that you felt stifled by the conservatism of the conservatory, but I’m wondering what it was like for you as a little girl. What was that like? What sort of memories do you have of conservatory when you were around 7 years old?
Wow. That’s such a wild question. I have to think about it for a second.
Take your time.
It’s kind of two fold. So everyone else in my class also went to conservatory, and we were the nerds because this is at a public school. All my friends were musicians, though none of these friends became professional musicians. All the games we did were sung because we were learning songs, and we were speaking to each other a lot through music. But then on the other hand, the pedagogy was really intense. My cello teacher never told me I was good. It wasn’t until last year [2023], when I saw him again for the first time in 10 years, and he said, “You had some of the best right hand technique in the class.” It was very punitive; as a child, you could feel that there was this pressure. But at the same time, your whole social life revolved around it.
How did you feel when your cello teacher told you that?
It was really emotional and I realized the tough love. I think when I started getting into techno, I wasn’t practicing the cello as much as he wished I was (laughter). It’s this battle between this really strict punishing approach to music and then these slivers of true love for it.
What were the moments where you felt this true love for music?
There’s this cello ensemble piece called “Bachianas Brasileiras”. It was by Heitor Villa-Lobos and it was written for twelve cellos. All the parts were different levels. So when you were 7 you played the easy part, and then when you’re 18 you played the solo. That piece is so beautiful. I straight-up felt musical ecstasy in playing that piece. Even as a child, it felt really good. So there was definitely a true connection to music even as a child.
Your parents weren’t artistic, but they still allowed you to go to conservatory at a young age, which is pretty amazing. Are there specific qualities about your parents that you feel were important in making you the person you are today?
They both loved music. My parents have an insane CD collection and I listened to it a lot. There was a lot of baroque music, so I initially wanted to play the viola da gamba, but my parents said no (laughter). I really liked baroque operas and my mother had a lot of New Orleans jazz as well because my American family—my mother’s family—is from Louisiana. I played those CDs a lot. They loved music and were supportive. It’s interesting—I introduced them to experimental music and they really like it.
That’s awesome.
So yeah, the household likes weird music and supports weird music, but they’re not artists.
I wanted to ask about your first experiences with raving. What were the circumstances that led you there? Were you already listening to techno prior to this?
Techno was a thing in the south of France. That music is widely absorbed, accepted, and understood. So you don’t really get introduced to it; it’s just what people listen to.
Exactly, that makes sense.
What initially drew me to clubbing at a young age was the partying and whatnot—I was searching for extreme experiences. At the same time, I quickly started to understand music and the difference between techno songs. I had some older friends who took me to clubs that had more interesting techno, and I think I became more intentional about which DJs I would see. Of course initially, I went to a lot of techno shows before I even cared about it, but eventually I really cared (laughter).
At what point would you say that you really started to care?
I think when I was 15 or 16. Minimal techno, which originated in Detroit in the ’90s, really took off in Germany in the mid 2000s, so that was kind of a shift. A more experimental shift. I’m not a fan of German minimal techno, but I think I witnessed the development of a new sound and that’s when I started paying attention. There was that, and there was also Miss Kittin & The Hacker, who were really popular and came from another town in the south of France. They were sort of this industrial version of techno—“electroclash.” These things that were fresh and different made me feel like I was part of something exciting and new.
I know that you went to Bard in your early 20s. What was the decision behind going there and not down a dance music route?
I tried to get into dance music—I DJ’d a bit in college and tried to make tracks with Ableton. Machines were just boring to me. I just wanted to touch, you know?
I get that.
But I did want that same sound. I wanted that unbelievably strong sound you find in electronic music. I wanted to make my cello as powerful as the thump of a subwoofer on a techno track.
This makes so much sense to me. You studied under Richard Teitelbaum and got into spectralism, and these seem like the paths someone would take to make their music sound immense. You can’t listen to spectralism and not go, “Holy shit, what’s going on?” Do you remember when you first heard spectral music?
Oh, do I (laughter). Marina Rosenfeld introduced me to spectral music. She said, “Check out Gérard Grisey” and I listened to Partiels—it completely rocked my world. It’s acoustic instruments and timbres that are so far removed from what you would expect acoustic instruments could do—it’s this classical music but with infinite sonic possibilities. I had a whole phase where I was really obsessed with him and read everything I could find. I wanted to become a Grisey scholar.
As I said earlier, I know that you felt really restricted by what the conservatory taught. What specific things about conservatory did you dislike?
As in, what is it about conservatory that I didn’t like that pushed me away from the classical world?
Yeah.
Well, I think the conservatory was ableist. I didn’t really have a choice because when I was 18, I got sick with a neurological condition. My mind-body coordination was off. I couldn’t do exactly what was written on the page because I had my own sense of time, and I had tremors. My cello teacher at Bard said, “You’ll never become a concert cellist. Your hands are shaking and you’re playing offbeat.” He kicked me out of his cello class. But then I found a way to play the cello that worked for my condition.
And what was that?
I found that repetitive motifs put me in a cycle of muscle memory where, if I lose consciousness, my muscles keep doing the same movement. So repetitive and drone music were this band-aid. Then I started amplifying my cello at really high levels to bring out the harmonics that would come out of my tremors—I was bowing very lightly and bringing out the harmonics with amplification. So that’s how it was born and how I created my voice. I still make these repetitive motifs and I still amplify my cello a lot, but in a different way.
How did you find out that these repetitive motifs and drones were things you could work with?
I figured it out because I would have these instances where I was walking from one place to another and lose consciousness. I would regain consciousness like 200 feet later, but was still walking. So that’s how I figured it out—these non-musical experiences where I kept doing the same activity despite being unconscious.
I’m trying to get a sense of the timeline. Did you learn these things and then decide to go to Bard?
I went to Bard first and then I got sick. When I started at Bard, I was still playing classical music. I mean, I was doing both, but I really closed the door on classical cello.
Is that something that’s still hard for you—the fact that you had to close the door on it?
No, I wouldn’t want to be doing that. I’m not aligned with it politically or personality-wise. I’m not that great with authority in the sense that, you know, Mozart has really specific notation. There’s only one way you can play it, and you can measure the quality of how well you are playing it to other people because they’re playing exactly the same thing. The opportunity for comparison is just very high.
I do want to ask more about Marina Rosenfeld. What was it like to have her as both a mentor and as someone you collaborated with?
Not all the students in the music department truly cared about experimental music, so when you did care, you could have these special relationships. I feel like Marina gave me an education beyond the classroom walls and I owe her a lot. A lot of her mentoring was about critical thinking and expanding my conceptual imagination. But she also helped with gigs when I first moved to New York, including a Christian Marclay piece at the Whitney Museum in 2011. In retrospect, I’m also thankful Marina was a woman. I don’t know where I would be today if Marina weren’t a woman—she helped me realize what I was capable of doing. I think at the time, and this was more than 15 years ago, the place of women was very different. There were just a lot of men around, and I was the only girl in the electronic music department. So I’d say studying with Marina was also a lesson in female empowerment for me.
In hearing you say all this, I’m wondering if there was a certain point at which you gained more confidence in being in these scenes.
Well —here’s the thing. In moments of low-confidence, I could always rely on the fact that I got an early start on the cello and that I had been doing this my whole life, like “this is what I should be doing.” I would just remember that this was my strongest skill and what I knew best.
What was it like to release music for the first time? I think the first thing I heard from you was the Zach Rowden collaboration Hollow (2017).
Hollow! I love that tape.
That one is sick. And you had all these collaborations early on too. L’onde souterraine (2015) with Lea Bertucci and The Caustic Ballads (2016) with Michael Foster. What was it like to release this music back in the mid-2010s?
At the time, I was deeply involved in improvised music and I wasn’t playing noise music yet. I mean, I was kind of playing noise music but I didn’t know what it was. And improvised music calls for collaboration, so that’s why I was doing so much more of that back then. As I started opening up to other genres, I found myself and my solo work, but I had to go a little bit further than the improvised-music, acoustic instrument sound.
Do you remember the first time you were in an improvised music setting?
The first person that I started improvising with—not just jamming but actually improvising with—was the saxophonist Michael Foster. We were 18, so that was 16 years ago. We still play together—we just played two weeks ago in St. Louis.
Wow, how was that?
It was fantastic. Michael and I just took improv really seriously, and Michael would book a lot of improv shows. I think Michael is my favorite sax player of all time—shout out to all the music he’s made.
You said you took improvisation seriously. What did that look like?
It means we really thought about it. We thought about techniques and problem solving. It went beyond just playing for pleasure because we were trying to figure out how to make something that only made sense while improvising.
Were there specific practices or techniques that were breakthroughs in your time of improvising? Like, in reflecting on your practice today, what can you credit to those years when you were really focusing on improvisation?
Listening—it’s as simple as that. Listening when you’re playing improvised music is a whole next level of listening. What are you listening for? In a non-improvised music situation, you’re listening for the beat, the pitch, the volume, and the other people playing. You have to think about all these things in improvised music too, but on top of that you have to listen to what people are saying while figuring out how to talk yourself, simultaneously, without talking over others. Isn’t that a crazy mind game?
I’m into what you’re saying because it’s making me wonder—how much do you feel like your personality comes through in your playing? Would you be able to name certain qualities about the way you tend to improvise? Are you playing in a way so that others can listen for specific things in your performance?
That’s really interesting. I mean, I’m really into supporting the general vibe. I don’t really like to take the lead. So I try to think of a sound as a whole and I try not to imitate. A lot of improvisers imitate each other throughout the set and I think that is a mistake.
Why is it a mistake?
Because then it’s really just one sound, you know? You can play a very different sound and it will go well together even if it is very different. So, I like supporting but that’s kind of the nature of the cello too—it becomes a support instrument. Sometimes I’ll feel confident that we need to get out of whatever zone we’re in, and I’ll speak up (laughter). I’ll speak up and I’ll be followed because that’s how improv works—if I speak up they have to follow, and if they speak up I have to follow.
Obviously improvisation is this constant communication, but I love that there’s this dynamic of power that’s at play with regards to following and leading.
Absolutely, but it’s complete equality. This is partly why I love improvised music so much—improvised music is like a utopian society where people listen to each other, support each other, and take turns leading things. If someone falls apart, then everyone falls apart.
Do you feel like improvisation has impacted your everyday life outside of music?
That’s really interesting. I think the nature of improvised music has influenced my visions of hierarchy. I think hierarchy is the source of a lot of what sucks about this world (laughter). Improvised music doesn’t have that so that’s cool, it’s a place I can go to.
I’m now thinking about what you said earlier about your neurological disorder. A lot of life doesn’t cater to people with disabilities, and I’m wondering if that’s something that you have reflected on in the context of the arts, whether in experimental music or not.
I think that my disability is what brought me to the “weird music” scene in the first place. The whole point of that scene was that it was accepting of “differences,” of things that are “out of the ordinary.” In a lot of workplaces it was like, “Oh, you have a disability… you’re doing things in a different way and it’s weird.” I felt like joining the freak music community was the first time in my life I felt comfortable with my weird self.
Is there a reason why you said differences in quotation marks?
Yeah, because I think everyone is different. Everything is different. It doesn’t really make sense to say that something is different from the norm because the norm doesn’t really exist—it’s just a social construct.
I want to talk about your solo work now. What do you feel makes you distinct? What were you trying to do in your early solo work on albums like Headflush (2019) and Not an Elegy (2021), especially now that you were outside of this collaborative improvised music setting?
All my sets are improvised, and who I improvise with in my solo work changes. Headflush was recorded in a really resonant hall in New York where I spent a lot of time practicing, so I was improvising with the room. It was about triggering psychoacoustic effects. In Not An Elegy, I’m playing in a subway station and improvising with that. In my latest album [1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire (2024)], I recorded everything live in stereo so I couldn’t mix or edit it. So there’s the live track [the title track], and then all the studio tracks [on Side B] are actually live improvisations on my Tascam 4-track. The last thing I said may not make sense, though, because I’m not improvising with anyone here.
It makes sense to me though. With the new album, there’s the VHS recording that you’re interacting with. It’s funny because, while you were saying all this, my immediate thought was, “Wow my question was dumb because of course you’re always playing with some sort of partner.” It’s just that the partner can be a little bit nebulous.
Right. The modular synthesizer I use throughout this album is really its own creature. Every time I go on stage, it doesn’t sound the same as it did at soundcheck. So for that last album and my live sets these days, that synth is my improv partner… except it doesn’t really listen (laughter).
That’s so good. This sort of ruptures what you were talking about with regards to this utopian improvisational setting. So what has it been like to play with your modular synth and how have these experiences been different from your live performances in the past?
I just want to be kept on my toes. I think I get bored if I’m not improvising—it’s just not as interesting for me. When I’m playing solo, I’m always including an element that I can’t fully predict. So a performance could be site-specific and involve playing with resonance, it could be playing with the soundscape in a subway or just using gear that is imperfect. That’s kind of what I do with my sets these days. I use this gear that’s all analog, a little bit imperfect, just too much to handle for one person—there are too many pedals, too many knobs to control. Every performance I do I make a “mistake” (laughter). It’s chaotic. There’s so much going on and it’s not completely controllable, so it’s impossible for me to execute my performance “perfectly.” It’s gonna be messed up, but I’m gonna save it by doing whatever trick I have up my sleeve.
Do you approach these performances in a way where you’ll have to problem solve? Like, do you make it intentionally challenging so that you can never feel at ease?
I think I feel at ease because I know all my sounds really well. I know which ones feel good, but there’s enough going on and there’s enough that’s analog and physical and subtle. I’m always doing feedback, and I’ll move the cello one inch and it’ll sound completely different—it changes pitches or it disappears. I know all my sounds really well even though they are all almost impossible to control. So I’m actually very comfortable because I know I’ll always find my way.
With this new album, I wanted to ask about the party it was played at. What was it like?
Oh my god (laughs). That was such a good party. My partner and I booked this show and he curated it. The show was in my building’s backyard and it had Aaron Dilloway playing with Evil Moisture, Samara Lubelski, Grout, BK, and Unica Forma, which is a harsh noise project. Initially I asked Aaron to play because I have chickens. Aaron had this amazing ESS Chicago livestream concert with chickens.
I remembered when it happened! It was so sick (laughter).
I’m sure a lot of other people remember it too, it was pretty sick. So I said, “Aaron, this is an insane idea but do you think you want to do a live version of these chicken pieces in my backyard?” (laughter). He was pumped but both of us realized really quickly that it was an insane idea and that the chickens would be scared. It was not gonna be possible, but he still played the show. We went a little crazy—we got a quad system, we brought in subs. So many people came that we had to turn people away. It was a really wild show—one of our craziest. We’ve been doing shows in the backyard for 10 years and that one was insane and instantly killed the grass. It destroyed my whole yard and it took a week to clean up. It feels really good to have it archived.
I’m wondering about the source material for the VHS. In the album description it’s mentioned that it is your partner’s dad’s VHS. How did you first stumble upon that?
So my partner digitized a bunch of home videos from the ’90s and it included this very strange video called 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire. It was made for insurance purposes because his family’s garage had burned down; the video has these slow zooms on every single object that burned and it’ll show the serial number if they’re still there. But these objects are really odd ’cause they were in a garage: a boiler, bicycles, shovels. The fire was not that tragic because it was just, like, shovels (laughter), but the video was so strange and my partner was like, you should make a music video with this. I was like, “Oh, I’ll try it out for the cookout.”
I want to ask about the B-side of the cassette. What was it like to revisit the material in a studio context versus this live party performance?
The story is that Aaron said, “Oh, I want to release this and I have a bunch of C30s and C60s that I want to use.” The set is around 25 minutes. We couldn’t do a C30 because we would’ve had to flip the tape in the middle of the climax. So we just had an extra 40 minutes that we needed to fill and I was like, “Oh, I’ll just use the same gear through my 4-track and record it in stereo so that I can’t mix or edit it. We won’t make it available digitally. It’ll just be this funny secret bonus. I had recently mentioned in an interview in Rocker Magazine that I wanted to make elevator music. Some sort of noise muzak. Aaron had read the interview and suggested I try it out. In the end, we liked it and thought it should be available digitally. I made the music in a week. I just wanted something really raw and in the moment with emotions, and it doesn’t sound very good because I recorded it on the cassette and couldn’t really mix it. I like that about it. It’s lo-fi and full of “mistakes.”
I have to ask, what’s the secret to a good party? What makes a party a good party?
That’s a really interesting question. I have to think about that. It’s a question that deserves a really good answer (laughter). I think a good party is about breaking new heights, and I think this party was good because we went the extra step with the sound-system and cooked food all night long. Everyone played really good sets that night and it was just good to see this DIY thing at someone’s house become this very legit event. The sets were high quality and they sounded really good. It just gives. It’s inspiring to do more. I think the secret to a good party is to maybe go the extra mile, unfortunately.
I remember after the Laurel Halo show on Friday, there was a point at which you were talking to her and she said that she was going to smoke. You said, “Well, if you’re going to smoke, then you know that I’m going to smoke.” You mentioned that night that you were a big smoker. Is there anything you’d like to share about your relationship with smoking?
I love smoking. So deeply. I’ve been smoking since I was a teenager. The only time in my life when I stopped was when I was in the hospital for a week and they wouldn’t let me go out for a smoke. I have nothing more to say about it except that I passionately love it. I’m smoking a little too much these days, so I was half-joking with Laurel like, “I’m smoking like a chimney lately so I won’t pass up any opportunity to smoke.” (laughter). I don’t know what I’m going to do when I quit smoking. I don’t know how I can exist without smoking.
What about it would you miss if you didn’t have it?
Coffee and cigarettes. The inhale and the taste. Vaping doesn’t work for me.
It’s completely different. Not the same.
It’s the inhaling and the taste, and I like rolling my own cigarettes too.
Yeah it’s nice to have a sort of ritual. I was getting into tea a few years ago and the thing I liked about it was that I was actually sitting down, I had these tea cakes, and was pouring with a gaiwan. It’s an actual ritual, and I imagine it’s the same thing for you when rolling cigarettes. There’s this whole aspect of getting your hands into it and being a part of the process.
Mmhmm. I think that smoking is contemplative—it’s a daydreamer’s friend.
Would you consider yourself a big daydreamer?
Definitely.
Something I wanted to ask earlier is about your interest in noise music. I know that you were really into Japanese noise music at some point.
I discovered noise online on some dedicated Japanoise website. For a bit of time, I thought noise music only existed in Japan. France had musique concrète, Japan had noise, and maybe America from my knowledge had noisy free jazz and the hardcore scene. My true noise love, though, is classic Midwestern American noise. I love Shredded Nerve, Burning Star Core, Aaron Dilloway, Robert Turman—I like either tape loops or that sort of warm noise.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
Wow. That’s a wild question. To be honest, I’m not sure I can relate to the concept of self love. Love is an outward energy to me. The love you feel for yourself is not love, it’s something else. I also feel like that concept is so entangled with marketing and consumerism. Think of the old L’Oreal slogan from the ’70s: “Because I’m worth it.” If you really love yourself, you will blindly purchase beauty products for yourself into infinity. It just feels individualistic, narcissistic and therefore profitable. So yeah, I can’t say I love anything about myself, except my most outward energy I guess—music.
Leila Bordreuil’s latest album, 1991, Summer, Huntington Garage Fire, is out now. Bordreuil plays with Lee Ranaldo this Saturday, November 8th at Chicago’s Graham Foundation. The event is hosted by LAMPO; more information can be found here.
Thank you for reading the 196th issue of Tone Glow. The three Cs to a happy life: cats, cellos, cigarettes.
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Great interview.