Interview: Oriana Gidi's Exceptional 'Frozen Spiderwebs'
- Kenny Sandberg
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
You've scored HBO documentaries and performed at the Centre Pompidou. Was there a moment writing "Frozen Spiderwebs" where you thought, wait, can I actually just do this?
I had to take breaks while recording Frozen Spiderwebs because I was laughing at my own lyrics, and just having so much fun with it. I mean, I was alone in my room recording little spider screams and yawns, and the story ends with spiders falling into a cake batter that a tree was making. It’s ridiculous. So there’s definitely a part of me that wants to be in that state all the time, but I’m so incredibly passionate about all the other parts of what I do (especially film scoring), that I could never give any of it up.
A frozen spiderweb on the London Underground sparked the whole thing. Are you always this switched on, or was that a lucky day?
Mostly this switched on, fortunately! I’m a very curious person, and as an artist that comes in very handy because I notice things most people might not stop to look at, and I genuinely find them fascinating and worth writing a song about.
You got Joe Dart on bass. How does that conversation even start? He actually reached out to me on instagram after seeing one of my videos playing the Armenian Duduk! It’s funny that playing that pretty niche instrument has actually allowed me to connect with lots of different people and other musicians whose work I admire.
Stone marimba, sampled flute, congas, layered synths: at what point did you know the production was done and you weren't just adding things because you could? That is a great question. This was a struggle with this song, because no one was gonna stop me, and I could have just kept adding stuff forever. Something that helps is time and distance, letting a song rest a couple days and coming back to it with fresh ears. Most times that will make it very clear when it’s done. But at the end of the day it’s never really “done”, you just hope for a moment where it feels right and you move on to the next thing.
You describe making this as "free and joyful." Is that rare for you, or is that something you've been chasing for a while?
It’s the main thing I’m chasing all the time with everything I do. Music can be a lot of things, it can be cathartic and intense, but it can also be really really fun. To make and to listen to. And the best part is I don’t have to choose, I can write a silly song that I find cool and exciting, like Frozen Spiderwebs, or I can write a sad, more “serious” song, and still find the process free and joyful. I strive to find that in every aspect of my life.
You're based in Mexico City but this song was born in London. How much does place feed into what you make?
In this case, a lot! The weather in Mexico City wouldn’t allow for a frozen spiderweb to exist. I was living in Paris at the time, and I was just in London for the weekend, and I remember thinking “this is the coldest I’ve ever been in my entire life”. This song was very “right place right time”, because I could have easily missed the web if the train arrived a minute earlier, or a million other things. Just yesterday I found the voice memo of me coming up with the melody with the “please mind the gap between the train and the platform” and the noise of the station in the background, and I thought, it is pretty cool what that moment turned into.
