This issue features a microinterview with Julianna Barwick, conducted by David Givens. Barwick is a musician based in Brooklyn, whose music has been described as “transfixing to the point of debilitation” by the New York Times. Using her voice as raw material, she loops her own singing to create immersive sound environments that evoke everything from Gregorian chants to Christian Fennesz. Her discography includes a self-released debut, Sanguine, from 2007, and the EP Florine, which was given an honorable mention in Pitchfork’s 2009 Album of the Year list. Her most recent release is the critically acclaimed full-length recording The Magic Place.

–David Givens

PART I

THE BELIEVER: So you’re the younger sister?

JULIANNA BARWICK: Yep. Typically behaved as one, too, I guess.

BLVR: How so? Spoiled? Not expected to do much?

JB: Oh, no. Just the dreamer, making funnies, not taking things too seriously. I was climbing to the tops of magnolia trees and singing to myself.

BLVR: Is that still true of you—being a dreamer?

JB: Completely. But I can get stuff done.

BLVR: You seem to have a real work ethic.

JB: Yeah. My head is in the clouds most of the time, so I’m glad I have the tendency to work. I feel badly when I haven’t gotten anything accomplished in a day.

BLVR: Did your family move around a lot when you were a kid?

JB: Yes, it started in Louisiana. I lived there till I was five, then my dad took a job in a church in Springfield, Missouri, and we lived there till I was thirteen. We lived on a farm and had sheep and stuff like that. He was a youth minister for twenty, twenty-five years, basically worked around the clock. Then, when I was thirteen, my dad went to med school. He went to med school at forty-something!

BLVR: That’s amazing!

JB: Now that I’m in my very early thirties [laughter], I tell this story to everyone. He wasn’t that much older than me… and to be going to school full-time, and moving, and doing that with a family, and having sheep, and a full time job? It makes me appreciate how easy my life is. So if I ever feel like complaining, I’m like, What? And then it also makes me feel like one can do anything, you know?

BLVR: So he did it?

JB: Oh yeah. He’s a small-town doc in Oklahoma.

PART II

THE BELIEVER: You did Sanguine, your first record, then Florine. Did your working method change between the two?

JULIANNA BARWICK: Yep. It was really different. The first record I made with the guitar pedal. I would...