Saba Lou

The Kool Kat: I try

Saba Lou: How come you speak some German?

The Kool Kat: I've been learning German on the down low for like two years on Duolingo but it hasn't

progressed much so I'm trying my best.

Saba Lou: Yeah Duolingo can help you to a certain degree but unless you're really speaking with people

you can't really get it. It's mostly AI but I want to change something else but we'll see how it goes.

Yeah. They have some weird sentences on there.

The Kool Kat: Yeah in my opinion is a bit too freaky, but thats for a different day you know? Yeah. But nice

to meet you again!. And thank you for coming on the, you know, on the interview. So nothing too crazy. It's

just like an average conversation, with back-to-back questions, but be yourself and relax. Yeah. Nice. So

yeah, this would be my wonderful friend.

Former Kool Kat: Hello.

The Kool Kat: So the first question I have for you is,

Question 1

As someone who sang early in life, do you think you have an advantage compared to people who

picked up music later in life?

Saba Lou: I don't know if I would call it an advantage, but it does definitely color my experience of music.

And there is, of course, something to be said about

to just about the experience of doing anything really early in life and how early in life there is no separation

at all between all of the things that you perceive. Even, you know, you as a person, you're not even fully

formed as you don't really have an identity yet properly. So everything you're doing is perceived in this

really open space. And so I guess that

there is a naturalness that comes with having music and also performing and singing yourself and the

physical experience of doing that and doing it communally with people and in front of people that possibly is

the most, the closest to an advantage that would come from it probably because, um, Yeah, when you're

not conscious and also not self-conscious, thereby, you're not so worried about a lot of things and there's a

freedom in doing things as a kid. And so when something like music is a focus in just your life in your life,

by which I mean it's not a focus because you're not focusing on it, but when your parents are arguing that

and consciously integrating it, then it means that it's such a strong presence everywhere. Actually, the

opposite of focus, just it's everywhere. Then, yeah, it does tend to... like deeply weave itself into you, I

guess even in ways that even just by answering this question I'm realizing how deep it is.

The Kool Kat: wow thank you for answering um good answer by the way um

Former Kool Kat: steps up to the mic

Question 2

Could you describe like your first experience ever like picking up a guitar and if you play any other

instruments

Saba Lou: I, my dad is visiting me right now and we were just talking yesterday about my very very early

experiences playing guitar. I still have the guitar that I started playing out on, it's a half-size nylon string

guitar and I was so frustrated

And just by the feeling in my fingers, my tender, tiny fingers, I was like probably five or something when I

started to kind of play in a more than just, you know, kid kind of way, in a more controlled way. But I wasn't

really, I don't know, regularly.

practicing it at that time but I used to get really really mad all the time playing and my dad was laughing

about how whenever something wouldn't work the way I wanted to there would be a point where I couldn't

go beyond that in the session and I would have to go and like “why are you making me do this” he was

saying and he's like I'm not making you do it like you want to do it you want to try um

And I do play other instruments, but actually before I leave the guitar, I want to say I don't even actually see

myself as a guitarist. I use the guitar to accompany myself, but I'm realizing more and more how

The instrument that thus far I really identify with the most is my voice. And that's the thing that I have the

most control over, I have the most experience with using. And guitar is something that, or generally

instruments, the other instruments that I like to play are bass, both electric and also double bass.

and now recently some piano, but those are dabblings. I'd like to do that just for the learning experience

and just for the cultivation

um that comes with it not just the muscle cultivation but just the spiritual experience with the different

instruments I find it really interesting and nice um but I wouldn't want to put any pressure on that or feel

comfortable performing necessarily I've played bass um for shows a little bit I played um a show with my

sister's band whose bassist was out of town and uh I'm open to doing stuff like that just as I practice and

progress, but I actually don't see myself as an instrumentalist that much.

Former Kool Kat: That's very interesting.

The Kool Kat: I have a question. I didn't write this down, just off my head.

Question 3

So when you first made music as a kid, and I guess enough is worth to say, hits puberty, did your

voice take like a hit when you were singing? Or was it like a natural progression from, I guess, kid

to adulthood? Yeah.

Saba Lou: Yeah, it was definitely natural. I mean, women go through voice change, but obviously less

violently than boys and less noticeably. And it's more something that it just kind of happened that at some

point I was re-listening to my first album, which only I still can't really do. I'm not quite ready yet, but I can

slowly do it now and I can slowly see change.

that there's something really nice about it and about the youthfulness because at this point it has been

almost 10 years since I wrote some of those songs, not recorded but wrote. And so it's more like I was

listening to something and then I realized, wow, my voice changed a lot since then. And it was also actually

just recently when I was recording the third album over the, or one year ago now,

That I noticed that I was favoring a key that...

I was writing a lot of songs in a similar key that felt really comfortable for me now and then I tried to play

some songs off of the second album and I noticed oh wow I have to make this lower because it justdoesn't... I can physically do it but I've noticed how it's pressuring my head and it's uncomfortable it's not

liberating to sing that way and I don't know to what degree that's just really

age-related maturing of the voice or how much is also just personal development that changes my

approach to singing because there's also a certain kind of pressure in general in the vocals of the second

album um that I can feel comes from that I was 18 and it's different already now and I still have tension like

that that I can already see in the future is going to ebb away of some more but uh

I can't draw a line there how much of the actual just higher-ness of the voice comes from that pressure as

well. I know, good answer. - might change

Question 4

So could you like explain like the feelings that you had when you first released Planet Enigma and

like what were your ideas that brought together your first album?

Saba Lou: The first album just kind of happened. I didn't really try to make an album and it's just the first

songs I wrote, meaning that I wrote those songs over the course of several years without any kind of

targeted effort to create a whole. It was when I was 14 that I was writing the first songs on that album.

And then we just kind of recorded them in spurts. And then there was some collaboration on there because

just my dad's acquaintance, longtime acquaintance, Ryan Samble, was in town and we were hanging out.

And then it just kind of happened that he was on one of the songs. And then my dad was suggesting...

another friend of his from the Spitz, Aaron, who was on Planet Enigma, the title song. And the feelings are

really interesting to reflect on now. These are very nice questions. It's nice just to look at my own musical

development through, guided through these questions. They're very nice.

The Kool Kat: Thank you!

Saba Lou: So I guess, The feelings are general. There's a lightness from just curiosity about the world and

the very, very early beginnings of something. Like the first things that I was singing with my dad that he

recorded when I was actually a kid still, those are probably more seeds of

And then this album was the first kind of sprout. And you know how when you see a sprout, you can't tell

the shape of the plant yet. And oftentimes the first sprouting leaves are actually the same among a huge

amount of plants. And you just know it's a sprout. And that's something that is coming up right now when

you ask that question.

And it's also, it's just been a while. So there was always a tentativeness about everything. But also an

innocent kind of clarity of just, this is just how I'm going to do it. Like, for example, the instrumentation or all

of that, or how I wrote the harmonies that I sang myself, all of that wasn't planned or anything. It was just

oh this is the guitar that I like to play at home so of course that's the guitar I'm going to use and oh we have

this organ so I want to put some organ on it and then I'll play the chords just on that organ and

there isn't any music theory that went into how I was doing the harmonies. It's just, oh, I, for example, also

intuitively right away, all of my harmonizing was higher than the normal vocal, which is also something that

I think makes a lot of sense with this youthful 14, 15, 16 year old innocence and just upward movement of

that age in general, that it didn't even occur to me to do a lower harmony.

which now is something that I consider if I write something. I think about just the spectrum of what do I

want? Do I want to bring in a darker tone? How does it resonate with what? As in how would a lower or

higher harmony resonate with that moment? What does that mean to me? How does it feel? Like a lot of...

not only thought, but just a lot of consideration, both on the body level and the mind level would go into

things now that just was not part of my universe at 15.

The Kool Kat: Thank you for your answer. that was Really good.

And very in-depth as well, thank you. My question for you is, how does falling in love reflect

Question 5

How do you write your music? And has it shaped you I guess on and off the booth?

Saba Lou: How falling in love shapes my view on music? And can you repeat the last part of the question

again?

The Kool Kat: Like, how has it shaped your music over the years? Like, when making music and outside

making music in your own everyday life?

Saba Lou: How falling in love has shaped my music making?

The Kool Kat: Because your music, it is very romantic. Whether it's intentional or not intentional, I get lots

of romantic vibes. And I don't know, everyone has their own perspective on love. And I would like to know

yours.

Saba Lou: That's such a cool question and such an interesting...

observation. It's always so nice when other people say how they feel about your music because I have my

own thing, my own relationship with it, and it's really interesting how it meets people and what it does in

their minds and bodies.

The Kool Kat: I've been entranced.

Saba Lou: That's such a nice word. Thank you.

I understand what you say about that it's romantic in general and I think it's something that I've only

recently began to realize and embrace about myself because before I was always very, in my conscious

life, I was always very focused on really rigid discipline and I was oftentimes very self-punishing and self-

denying and very strict with myself.

which actually totally makes sense then for that other side to break out in my music without me even really

noticing it and for it to be actually exceedingly gentle showing this whole other side of my personality which

now is more naturally integrated.

And that actually makes sense that it would be so particularly romantic because I was actually not really

practicing that in my life very much. And I was aware, I remember being, this is actually very cool because

you're making me remember a fleeting thought when I was in my old apartment where I wrote most of the

second album, a thought of where I was like, most of these songs are love songs. Why?

I'm not writing them about specific people. Why am I writing about that? And it makes sense, of course,

now, in retrospect, because love is just an undeniably grounding, important, life-giving force. And that if I

wasn't consciously tapping into it so much, that, of course, my subconscious would be bringing it into my

life because you need it to sustain yourself. So...

I would say in terms of romantic love, before I found my partner now, I fell in love one and a half times.

The Kool Kat: One and a half time?

Saba Lou: once it turned into a very short-lived relationship that was very strained because of external

circumstances, but I'm still, I hold the person very close to my heart and we're still friends because that's

just what that kind of love means to me anyway, is that it's on the basis of a true connection to a beautiful

person.And then the halftime, it didn't culminate in anything. It kind of had its climax below a threshold of it really

becoming anything. But it was also really beautiful because it was definitely in loveness. I was definitely in

love. But again, it's still complete. It's

it's complete within itself without having ever become more than a, um, an exchange of, of letters. And, um,

there was the language barrier and also, and just a physical distance that created an illusion and allowed

this, uh, this, this,

romance to live in this ephemeral spirit, a sphere that just doesn't exist in real life. So once we were

together physically, it was just obvious kind of right away. Well, not right away to the degree that we could

say it, but just, it just kind of began to, to, to wither away in a, in a beautiful way, in a natural way of like, oh,

okay. Now that I actually see you in person and that I see the way you live and that I'm

near you, I can see how it doesn't make sense. And we were just never meant to be together. And we

wouldn't have even been so interested in each other if we hadn't had this language barrier and this physical

distance. But so that's a tangent on just in loveness in general. And all of that, I could go on to a million

tangents of just

the feeling of wholeness and peace that I have now with my lovely, lovely partner, Alexander. And so I only

ever wrote one song that was actually about a person. That was actually about a romantic love situation,

which was my first boyfriend, the one I'm still friends with. And

this song is on the third album that's coming out now. And I never told him. So in case he sees this, that's

how he finds it. And maybe I'll use this as an inspiration to just tell him. And that was a moment where there

was actually a melancholy in how I wrote that. The song is called My Mommy. And I had an overarching

feeling of, okay, there is a question.

a thrill and a bliss now in this beginning, but I already know that this situation can't continue and it can't

really grow just because it's comp, it's very complicated and, um, not because of us directly or not because

of issues between us, but because the circumstances were complicated, I could feel there was a strain

that, um,

that it was possibly going to tilt soon. And so I remember writing that song as an idea of like, I'm going to

harness this and just harvest what's here now so that I can have an imprint of this. Because that was the

first time that I was really in love, that I had felt that experience. And I just thought, I want to paint a picture

of this.

and remember it and it's very dear to my heart now also and it's very nice to see to have your own life

history and your own songs and lyrics how you would have said something back then because it's so

different if I describe it now so that's a very long answer that I don't know if it really answers your question

but it's certainly inspired by it

The Kool Kat: Oh, okay. Thank you for your question, your answer. Really good. And like talking and

sharing your feelings is never wrong. Please express yourself how you want to be expressed. And we

enjoy it over here. Yeah, ibi maybe your turn.

Former Kool Kat: So I was noticing like within the album Novum Ovum there's a lot of like jazz influences

and it has like quite a summary feel compared to the album you did with Lord High Executioner, Human Z

which has like a lot of avant-garde sounds.

Question 6

I was wondering like what's your relationship with being a multi-faceted artist in terms of genre and

like what are your favourite like niche pockets to like dip into when you're listening to music?

Saba Lou: First of all, it's actually really interesting for you to say that I made that album with him because

that's actually something that I don't even really think of in my repertoire because it's one of the examplesof where through my dad in this case, he has a friend who needs some backups on something or has an

idea and I was just on hand and I'm just thinking, oh yeah, cool, I like what's

being made here and then I joined it but I consider myself only just a couple of threads into the tapestry of

someone else's art in that case. It's actually cool because I do remember now through your framing that

that is something that of course I was a part of. But so the jazzy influences on Novum Ovum came

definitely through my band

because my drummer and pianist who played the synth bass on that album, they're both from a jazz

background. And that's really, it was really fitting. The guitarist, he wasn't from a jazz background, but from

like a rock and roll kind of punkish scene, which is also really cool because they both, both of those sides

kind of helped me fill out

or translate into music backgrounds that i had in a way and actually the jazz side is not so much a

background that i had in terms of growing up with listening to a lot of jazz

But it has more to do with the fact that through their jazz experience, they had the skill and sensitivity

necessary or not necessary, but just beautifully inviting and empowering to mold around the gentleness of

what I was writing with still this kind of fierceness from the rock and roll side. And that's something I

definitely grew up with a lot. And

dipping into different pockets, I guess, is a beautiful joy in life. And so I think that, um, the more different

things I can try, um, when they naturally arise and, uh, and offer themselves, uh, the better it's, um, it's

always really, really cool to be invited into someone else's world and, um,

and invite others into mine and see what happens when we make something together.

The Kool Kat: Cool. Cool Yeah. I hope it does. My question for you is that

Question 7

if you were born in the 2000s and you could pick any decade, decade you were, you would like to be born,

which decade would you like to be born and why New York? My bad, actually. I messed it up. Sorry. If you

were born in the 2000s and you would like to be born in any decade, why would be a reason? And would

any decade resonate with you musically? I didn't say that well.

Saba Lou: That still got across. That is a question that I have thought about before and that has so many

different levels of answering it because

I can't help but always try to consider a lot of things that go with something like that. So my first answer is

that even if I could, I wouldn't choose to be born any other time because the person or the creature I am

arose from a multitude of backgrounds and stories and times and I was ready to exist now and I'm meant to

be now. And then...

there's all of these considerations. If I, aside from that first answer, which I considered complete in its own

way, I also want to explore the other answers though, because my first thought immediately always is

that there is no other time where I, within, for example, the last hundred years, let's say, and then it also

goes further as well. But there's no time where I think that I would have been particularly safe or even just,

for example, being mixed race. I don't know where I would have existed and how my existence with that

identity would have been.

For example, Germany would not have been a better place for me at any earlier time being what I am now.

And then it goes into what is me, what defines me and which one of my identities are we going to even go

with? So obviously me as I am now just transported into a different time is a very different thing than, for

example, my spirit.

arising somewhere else at some other time in a different body maybe where I wouldn't have certain issues

that a time traveler version of me would but I'll try to just answer the music side of it and even there I find

myself not really wanting to uproot myself from my my context including my temporal context because it's

really beautiful how much I canout of just recorded music experience from other decades now as well. And I can still feel it inside of me

like that. But I guess that aside from all of the considerations about actually living in that time and whatever

that means, I think I would like to experience in really ancient prehistoric times when humans started to

make music. Because I think that

We must have sang before we spoke just because of the feeling, the vibration. And when you live in a

world where you don't have all the thoughts that people have now, and you're not living in that kind of

world, you're living in a unity with your community. And it's really a deep sense of oneness with the tribe

and the nature and everything that

I think that it's very intuitive. People would have vibrated with their bodies and sang together also and

discovered something like that before they discovered speech as we know it. And I think that would be

amazing, whether or not it's the beginning, to experience a time like that and what music meant to people in

that time.

The Kool Kat: Cool. Thank you.

Question 8

I wanted to know what it was like growing up with your dad being King Khan and since he was such

an eccentric artist and what your family life was like growing up.

Saba Lou: My family life was very chaotic, very full of input.

And unfortunately, a little short on the rest and space that also would have been very nice and has led to

some issues that are being resolved now, though. And my dad, being who he is, brought us a lot of

freedom and

freedom to express ourselves and an invitation to pursue the arts as they naturally were just flowing from

us. And I think that that is a beautiful gift. Our mom is also an artist and she made all of our dad's

costumes. She sews and she introduced me to

knitting and all sorts of other textile arts, which are things that I actually really actively pursuing at the

moment. And she also makes beautiful silk paintings, which I wish she would be doing nowadays again.

But they brought a lot of chaos that we are still sorting out the aftermath of.

But as long as that is possible, which is really nice, we've been patching up things really nicely, I think. My

sister and I have been growing closer and have really mended some miscommunications there. And there's

something happening between us and our parents as well, conversations being had and things being

cleaned up, by which I'm trying to say that having a dad like that is obviously complicated.

Former Kool Kat: Oh Okay.

Saba Lou: because there's some basic requirements that children have to just be given a certain amount

of space to develop and even just volume-wise quietness and space-wise just child-friendliness for them to

do their thing. And their lifestyle as in our parents' lifestyle definitely cut into that.

in a way that made us have to get very creative with our development, which means that we are wise

beyond our years in many ways, and also a little bit developmentally stunted in other ways that we have

some catching up to do, just in learning how to manage our feelings and how to relate to other people.

Because, for example, it's not a normal or not an average situation for kids to grow up

and wake up and have strangers in their house all the time. And on one hand, it makes you really flexible

and it gives you a deep insight actually into humans, just having this huge amount of experience at a very

young age with travel and people of all sorts of different backgrounds and people doing all sorts of differentthings. But on the other hand, of course, it's also just a lot to take in and it's very important for kids in the

optimal scenario

in the optimal, probably non-existent scenario, to just have that space that we oftentimes didn't. But so it

depends on the time of day and where I am in my cycle and what's going on, how I feel about all of that.

And, but in general, I don't think that it's a bad thing to have struggled. I think that it can be a gift as long as

you realize that you need to shed patterns and that you need to let things go and change. But then you

actually end up having some really amazing results.

leftovers that or not leftovers but I'm looking at it more like washing away a bunch of mud and then finding

these amazing crystals that you couldn't have found if you didn't have all the mud on top that you had to

actually do the process to wash off because if you weren't hurt enough then you're never gonna go down

into the muck and have to deal with it really

But that's a long process that I'm engaged in and so is my family. And it's supposed to be a process. So I

think that I can learn better and better how to be grateful for those beautiful things, how to be critical of and

vocal about those things that were deficient. But I don't have any doubts that it's going to continue to get

better.

as it already has.

The Kool Kat: Cool. And definitely will. Just keep on trying your best. The meeting ends in two minutes. So

honestly, thank you for sharing your career with us, sharing your feelings and just being very open. Thank

you for that. Some people aren't as open as you and we really appreciate that over here in the local cats.

So thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Have a great rest of your day, honestly.

Saba Lou: Thank you, chieme and Ibi, for asking really beautiful, sensitive questions and holding a very

nice space. I also really appreciate your punctuality and checking in with me about when the appointment is

happening and just the communication overall. And I'm really curious to see what happens. When I

checked out the website, I was like, oh, I totally want to do this. And I continue to think that now that I have.

The Kool Kat: Thank you so much.

The Kool Kat: Thank you. A little throwaway thing before we leave. We had an interview last week with

another band called The Drop 19s. And the whole time, I was kind of stressed. So I was playing two songs

we made the whole time. I was playing Until the End and Velvet Night the whole time, the whole way

through the interview. And it helped me so much relax and just stay in reality. So thank you for making

amazing music. And please never stop making amazing music.

And you have a very promising career, honestly.

Saba Lou: Wow. That's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

The Kool Kat: Thank you. Anytime. Awesome. And so I update you about recent events. Have an amazing

day and have an amazing rest of your week, I guess.

Saba Lou: Thanks.

The Kool Kat: Of course. Take care.