Whitney Wei: Let's talk about Home, the album itself. It's a spiritual, harmonic and physical representation of space and home. Berlin is also the adopted home, from what I understand of many of your members. So could you describe the album concept more and how it came about?

Noah Slee: We had group writing sessions, and also people would present their works. Songwriters in the group would also present their work, and then I was also writing songs. There were lots of different people contributing to the story of what this album could be. We got funding to go [to the south of France] and record the album, so we did the majority of the album in the studio [and former vinery] called Limusic. That was a very beautiful, cathartic experience because we were all together. It was during this process, and also having [new] people join the choir, [we uncovered] what this project and album meant to everyone, that there is, like, a sense of hope and belonging in our coming together. It only made sense for us—and the song ["Home"] was already written—to focus everything on home and what that means for the collective and also to the individual people and the ensemble. It was a really inspiring reaction after that realization. We created these postcards from home [written by poets]. What does it look like? What does that sound like? 

We also explored sound in a deep way. We knew there were a lot of choir albums that were inspired by gospel. It's such a skillful sound that people have practiced to be able to sing. Our group, though, felt a little bit more like a fragile tone to how we were trained vocally. We felt it wasn't a powerful, dynamic, kind of gospel tone, it was a bit more of a rounder, fragile sound. Dhanesh and I talked a lot about our influences, and how we wanted to shape the album and how we wanted to explore texture and sensitivity and softness. We wanted to explore that side of the voice, and that it doesn't have to always be a projected voice. It can be like a whisper, you know, it can be like a softer tone, and that is also just as powerful.

Whitney Wei: You spoke a bit about Berlin's music scene and how collective singing is not part of the culture, as opposed to other places in the world. Why are you based in Berlin, and what brought you here? What do you make of the music scene here?

Noah Slee: I ask myself that all the time, why am I here? When I first moved here in 2016, I really fell in love with the city, and there was so much that I gained as a human being, as a creative person. I felt like it opened up my mind in many ways, and I was able to explore music and art and myself. It's been a beautiful experience. I did notice at that time, though, that there wasn't much music —or you had to really dig for it—outside of techno, house, and electronic. To be fair, I'm a huge fan of and I also make electronic music as well, but I also enjoy other things like acoustic folk music, or jazz, or neoclassical. I realized that there wasn't much space for it. I was on the hunt, you know. Where can I find something else when I'm not trying to be on the dance floor and trying to experience something mellow or with harmony? Fast forward to now, there's been a huge shift, and a lot of really beautiful collectives. There's so much more diversity and genres, but there's always still so much room. The exciting thing is that there's still so many untapped creative endeavors that could be explored. [With A Song For You], Dhanesh and I wanted to collaborate on something that allowed our friends and people from the BIPoC community to be able to tell their stories authentically.