Something feels very natural about the pairing of Hubert Lenoir with Kirin J. Callinan. They're both showmen ripped from pop's androgynous, fashionable peak, eager to provoke but totally invested in making singularly stylish pop music. "hunny bunny" is the duo's first collaboration, and the music video for the noisy electro-glam tune premieres today on The FADER. Gabriel Lapointe and Noémie D. Leclerc direct the 16mm story of vampire skateboarders in love, and yes, it looks as cool as it sounds.
Here's Hubert on the song's creation:
Kirin and I met up in a studio in Amsterdam, and I was excited and terrified to show my ideas to him. I have so much respect and love for his work so it was surreal to have him with me. We recorded for two days, and tried every idea we came up with, crazy ideas and stupid ideas. Kirin is such a lovely person to be around and work with. He’s full of positivity, energy and joy, plus he’s lot older than me so he’s kind of a big brother/football coach. He told me, "trust yourself, Hubert!"
I was surrounded by English speaking persons (Kirin and the engineer Thomas) so it felt natural for me to write in English which I haven’t done in a long time. That was a big thing for me, but I couldn’t help putting two lines of French in, and Kirin tried to sing in French too. When we were recording the track I was always repeating the same words: it needs to be low key, low key pop. I didn’t see the hook as something that should come at you like a tiger but more like a snake, it attacks from the back and bites you without you knowing it. After those two days, we went back to finish our respective European tours and when I got back home I managed to mix the track with a few friends and worked with Kirin via FaceTime. Kirin had planned to add more guitars to the song but he broke both his arms few days after he finished his tour, lol.
Read our interviews with Kirin J. Callinan and Hubert Lenoir, and listen to Hubert's 2018 project Darlène below.
