Mickey van Seenus is a non-binary, Los Angeles based artist and performer who produces homemade, lo-fi dreamscapes. Growing up in rural California, influenced by trip hop, ambient house, trance and experimental pop, their debut EP, ‘Creature Comfort,’ showcases watery keyboards, crunchy drum machines, and silky vocals. Their first single, Under My Skin, is out now, along with a sick music video by contemporary art visual director Louise Faurou.
_Flaunt_ caught up with Mickey on their music video, EP, and biggest influence.
**What was the inspiration behind the music video for “Under My Skin?”
**The choice to use 3D animation was easy. It was the height of the pandemic, so along with so many other artists we were trying to find a way to create something safely that could breath new life into the track. At the time, I’d been obsessed with these old videos of male strippers from the 80’s. I sent those to Louise as a reference along with some other tidbits, all kind of in the frame work of technology vs. nature. She included all these trippy visuals, and it ended up this new little world. I often like to think of songs/pieces as a mini universe, with their own sets of physics and rules of logic.
**Who in the electronic music world has been the most influential to you?
**Electronic music is such a large umbrella. I certainly have more specific influences in house or industrial sounds, and so much of that I learned from my collaborators, especially Delroy. But Portishead is a longstanding influence that is also so personal. Dummy really was the soundtrack of my childhood, and shaped my ideas around production and vocal style. Beth is incredible.
**Brace and Bit was focused on capitalism, but I understand that Creature Comfort is more personal. What life experiences had a hand in the creation of this EP?
**Some of the tracks on Creature Comfort are 5 or 6 years old, so there’s a lot of growth and phases involved, but particularly my relationship with bi-polar depression and addiction. “What if” was something I said to myself a lot in my mid-twenties. What if it had been different, what if I had been different. The question of “do you like it here?” is a meditation on happiness and the moving target that is contentment. Pretty Good So Far includes field recordings of conversations with my mother about addiction and recovery. Beyond that, even hearing her voice over something I made is so deeply personal. I do feel like I really came of age in Los Angeles, so some of these pieces are a love letter to that. The title track itself is kind of just an outcry against kink shaming, but that overlaps with themes of counterculture and sexual autonomy.
**What’s some advice you would give your younger self?
**Wear sunscreen.
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