The Many Lives of Real Clothes
photo courtesy of Real Clothes
It seems like important moments in Nico Fox’s life can be traced back to living rooms, in the company of friends. There was that time they were playfully tricked into starring in a friend’s music video. Or that time they found out they were accepted into law school. Or maybe that time they started the group project that would eventually become Real Clothes. So it makes sense it took us a while to find the right space to speak. Bouncing from a cafe that was hosting a comedy night to a dimly lit ominous side street, we made our way through a damp September evening in the Lower East Side to Davelle, a cozy, pint-size Japanese restaurant.
We settle into the counter. “Okay yeah, so this past weekend I was performing this song that I created with coding.” They start explaining the technical aspects of the song, but I need them to go slower, because I only got through my community college’s summer coding classes by cheating.
They broke it down for me as simply as they could: they set computer code to musical notes, and as the program printed out words, the code itself would then be translated into an arrangement of musical notes as it ran. The song they’re talking about had the computer print the word ‘love’ without stopping. They then turned the infinite loop of “lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove” into a melody.
My head reeled. It would not be the first time where I would have to redefine the music creation process for myself while speaking with Nico Fox, aka Real Clothes, a gothic avant garde musician based in Brooklyn. When they opened for Go Home, they had the audience in a trance, like witnesses to an ancient ritual. Fox began their set acapella, dim violet lights under their floating vocals while electronic breaks rattled the entire back room of the Crystal Lake Ballroom. The room was in love with their performance that night, clapping and jeering after each song.
“Yeah, the show you were at was maybe like the best show I had done. I’ve never had to wait between songs for clapping, which was a strange and new experience for me, but it was a really good feeling.”
Born to Haitian immigrants, they started their life in Richmond, Virginia. They are the oldest of two, happy to tell me how much they cherish their relationship with their younger sister. They went to college and achieved a degree in fashion merchandising. In their spare time they would star in music videos with friends and made mixes that featured songs from the prominent blog days of old.
Re: the birth of Real Clothes - Fox worked in a coffee shop in Northern Virginia that hosted an open mic. Here they got a taste for performing (Appalachian folk songs) and worked their way through the open mics in the area. They started a dreamy DIY rock band, musically talented friends, and played throughout DC, Baltimore, Richmond. While the band dissolved after recording their first EP, Queen of Daisies, Fox went on to turn to a more electronic, macabre sound.
This exploration of sound soon attracted attention when they uploaded a one off track of them speaking Creole to Soundcloud. A Japanese label, Hi Hi Whoopee, reached out, wanting to add the song to a compilation album. This opportunity turned into a habit for Real Clothes, as they learned to routinely scour Twitter for more independent label compilations to submit to. As a quick learner, these compilations give them an opportunity to adapt their style to whatever the label is asking for; plus Fox says, “they’re fun to make.” (Recently they released the trippy instrumental track “¡Bienvenidos a Green Acres Mall!”, their take on “mallpop” for the Canadian label Novatone Records. It’s a fun commentary on consumerism, and they find it’s a good way to get an audience primed for their set.)
On the recommendation of their parents, Fox took a brief interlude from music to go to law school in San Francisco. When they were unhappy with that, they tried Silicon Valley startup life, which also left them unsatisfied. They were creating plenty of playlists, but no concrete music. So they moved to New York. This led to the 2016 album Modulation, then their 2019 album Apotheosis.
Apotheosis, which they say was written during “a miserable time” after a few years in New York, turns out to be the material Fox performs the most live. And it’s easy to see why. A live rendition of “Cassandra x The Static” piques an audience’s interest, Fox draws in the crowd only to drown them with melodic noise. When I ask them to explain why they would choose to perform music that reminds them of a difficult time, the answer is obvious: “These songs resonate with me.”
Apotheosis (2019)
photo courtesy of Real Clothes
Precaution (2020)
And obviously that all changed in 2020. To keep themselves busy during the initial year of quarantine, Fox would bike from Crown Heights, Brooklyn to the Bronx — a 2 hour, 19 mile trip if you’re doing it correctly. How? “Idk I blacked out.” They had been doing 2-4 shows a month for the last 5 years before COVID hit. And to suddenly have nothing was, to put it as lightly as possible, a wrench in their routine. “I am a live performer, and I could not perform,” they explain. Biking was a way to compensate for that void.
Their response to 2020 was the album Precaution. The album is a grim universe with Real Clothes at the center, engaging with the world they way they know how. The album represents many different stages of quarantine: half a million people dying, racial injustice becoming a regular mainstream spectacle, and of course, booty calls from ex lovers. “I don’t want escapism, it’s much harder to write happy stuff.'' They would rather face the world head on. “It’s easier to write sad, sad is objective.” Precaution features Fox’s operatic voice bouncing off ghostly walls as their electronic layering and piano playing becomes more cohesive as a whole.
“Do you think anything has changed a year post Precaution?” I ask. Fox says their feelings toward the government and national racism are the same, they still apply, but Real Clothes believes things don’t get better or worse. They just change. The storm at the end of August comes to our minds; a viral disaster that saw subways and homes alike flooding with water and bodies. “A lot of those people lost their homes, those people don’t get help.”
Real Clothes told me they are the encapsulation of that meme “when you’re doing 10 things at once so you don’t have a complete thought” and assures me making their latest album is a part of those 10 things. The new project slated for release early 2022 is called Black Book, and it’s going to draw inspiration from different characters in their life. Similar to tarot, every song is going to have a different title in a different language like the Tower of Babel (“The Engineer” in Farsi, or “The Lover” in Spanish).
We end the night walking to the train station, Fox pointing out different locations with different allures. “That spot used to have a room in the back where you could just chill, you could just hang out there on a couch.” Even when so many businesses have closed, listening to Fox, the city feels like another living room full of friends coming alive.
You can find more about Real Clothes at their website and Bandcamp. And check out their new single Death of an Illusion (Nothing) on streaming platforms.
[Sanchez is a producer, actor, and wannabe dj. He thanks you for checking out this site. No, really thank you. You can find more of him on Twitter and Instagram.]