A Chat with NMDA and Isabelle Rose (15.01.26)
NMDA’s latest collaboration with Isabelle Rose, ‘Bad Dreams’ dives deep into vulnerability through lush, high-fidelity sound. Blending jazz, chill-hop, and electronic textures, the track transforms recurring nightmares into something intimate, expansive, and emotionally resonant. It’s an ambitious meeting point between electronic experimentation and soul-driven storytelling. We speak with the pair about ‘Bad Dreams’ and more.
OSR: ‘Bad Dreams’ draws from deeply personal experiences. How did revisiting your recurring nightmares influence the writing process?
Isabelle: The song has a great deal to do with the frustration of recurring bad dreams. Whether it’s the desire to keep sharing them with a partner who doesn’t want to hear the details, my inability to remember good dreams, the way weed can change my ability to recall, or the fact that no matter how much therapy I receive, nothing changes. It’s that persistent nightly experience over the last 6 years that really drives the passion and anger behind the song.
OSR: Isabelle, your vocals are simultaneously raw and tender. How do you channel vulnerability without feeling exposed?
Isabelle: I would say I do feel exposed after channelling my vulnerability. A good number of people in my life have inquired about the topic of the song, and I’ve had to explain the persistent bad dreams. It makes me feel broken and damaged, but that’s what I bring to the song every time I play ”Bad Dreams’. Performing the song becomes therapeutic, and although I may feel vulnerable or damaged, I know I’m not alone in my experience.
OSR: NMDA, your production creates a lush, jazz-infused electronic landscape. How do you approach translating emotion into sound?
NMDA: When I sit down to write, play, or produce, I take an inventory of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions, particularly when I intend to write rather than in a practice session. I ask myself what am I feeling right now, what is the theme of my day, what do I need to express? A lot of the times this dictates which style I’m going to be creating in. If I’m feeling deep emotions, generally soul styles will come out; if I’m in a chill mood, then I’m craving a boombap chill-hop style song. When I’m feeling euphoric, or highly energized like after a run, funk energy comes out. It’s all mood-dependent. I come to the studio with an emotion and an idea, the rest is unexplainable – I’m a reactive creator – I hear a part in my head, I get it out into Ableton, and then I hear the next part and so on and so forth until there is a form. Once you get to that little 32-bar form, you can hear the rest.
Inspiration seems to hit often at the most inconvenient times – in the car, at work, somewhere far away from the studio. There’s a moment for every part when it clicks, and it just feels right. Isabelle and I will sit there and go, “That’s it! That’s it! You hear it? It goes like this, it has to go like this!” Like this overwhelming certainty that it was always meant to be expressed in exactly that way. Alex Grey once said to me, “It’s like the spirits are speaking through our art, like the idea came from something above us.” And I thought that was an excellent explanation because a lot of times I have no idea how I came up with the parts – they just felt like they went together like a puzzle. Many times the idea takes on an entirely new sound than I had anticipated at the beginning.
OSR: The song moves between anxiety and catharsis. How intentional was this emotional arc when crafting the track?
Isabelle: The emotional arc was intentional. It is apparent in most, if not all our tracks. I am an extremely emotional person, and I allow that experience to flow through the music. I believe it’s why anyone listens to music, to touch into their emotions without reason or explanation. That’s my favorite listening, when I can feel the song in my gut, and it provokes movement, physically, emotionally, and mentally.
NMDA: There is generally little intention at the start of our creative process, but it becomes very intentional as we progress. We try to encapsulate our mood and what the music’s mood is. I’ll often ask Isabelle, “What does this feel like to you? Dark, sexy, angry, chill, fun?” Once we have an image of what it sounds like, Isabelle will start lyrics and we will have an idea of what it’s about and then it becomes intentional – this song is about X, this song is about Y. Sometimes we will go back and story board the song as we are doing this week – this part is about X and the next part is about Y coming from Z’s perspective.
OSR: Both of you have a history of collaboration. What makes your creative chemistry unique?
NMDA: Our similar influences and genre preferences help a lot – we both find ourselves on similar emotional planes when we’re together. In reflecting on this question for the first time now, it’s obvious to me, we feel deeply in life, and it can be heard being expressed through our creations. We are letting our souls out into the world through harmony and storytelling. We sync on our feelings and have the same goals when we get into the mindset of a tune. I love to sing, but I’m not a singer. For me, Isabelle is the female vocal expression embodying my deepest emotions – she is, without a doubt, the best female vocalist I’ve ever heard, and I want the world to hear her. She makes it easy for me to write because it’s like having another version of myself in the room, but this version sings like Amy Winehouse.
Isabelle: Our creative chemistry comes from time and consistency. We met in 2017 and have been creating together since. It was my sound and NMDA’s inspiration to create that fueled the initial fires, and then it became our dedication to each other’s musical endeavors. We knew early that we’d be each other’s key to success. No matter where we’ve lived, we would make a plan to see each other at least once a month to create. It’s that persistence to the goal that stokes the fire of creative chemistry and allows it to burn so hot!
OSR: Fear and resilience are central themes here. How do you hope listeners connect with those emotions?
Isabelle: As much as I hope people aren’t experiencing bad dreams on a nightly basis, I hope a song like this makes someone feel less alone or broken. It’s that fear followed by resilience that hopefully inspires the listener to honor what happens in their subconscious and know that they’ll survive. For me, having lived this way for 6 years, I see it as a gift that drives my music rather than a life sentence.
OSR: Were there moments during production or writing that felt particularly challenging or cathartic?
Isabelle: The challenge was deciding on the small nuances in the song that made repetition interesting. “I had a bad dream” is said often, which is simultaneous with the bad dreams that happen often, but it was the effort to make it sound different each time it was sung.
OSR: The track balances darkness with light. How do you find beauty in difficult experiences through music?
Isabelle: NMDA is my best friend, and that’s what has seen me through the difficulty. We were never doing this for fame and fortune, but we did this because we love our creative chemistry and honor our musical relationship. Finding someone who wants to go on a creative journey like this is one in a million. I remind myself, finding NMDA was the hard part; the rest is a gift we keep receiving.
NMDA: My guess is it’s equivalent to therapy – sometimes we just need to vent, let things out before they consume us. I’d say it was musically intentional to have chosen an instrument track with a hypnotic but relaxed feel and integrating an unsettling lyrical subject, similar to our track what’s going on. Deep lyrics on the subject of mental health with relaxed music – the uplifting instrumentals balance the expression of the difficult experience.
OSR: How do your personal experiences inform your artistic choices while still keeping the song universal for listeners?
NMDA: I’m not sure that it is ever our true intention or aim to keep our music universal for listeners. Music is born from our emotions; it’s a deeply personal art, we create what feels right to us, and we hope that our music finds the audiences it resonates with. We both draw from personal experience, emotions, and even our surroundings influence what comes out.
Isabelle: For me, songwriting starts with honesty, moves into creativity, and ideally ends with relatability. I use this skill to comment on the world around me, and people listen to music to feel a greater connection to the world around them. Every time we release our songs, we build a new bridge between ourselves and the listener. As we see our work grow in popularity, we know that we are hitting a nerve. That response continues to inform our messaging and style in the hopes our songs will endure for years to come.
OSR: Looking back at your journey from ‘You Have To’ to ‘Bad Dreams’, what have you learned about artistic trust and collaboration?
NMDA: I think a lot of musicians would agree that having someone else alter your creative expressions can create some difficult feelings, and I think a lot of it stems from the fact that they’re used to hearing it one way, their own way. It’s hard to break that barrier sometimes. It’s like someone trying to cook in the kitchen with you. Fortunately for us, when Isabelle starts cooking, the meal starts sounding like a Michelin-star entree. I trust her creative intuition 100%. If she brings an idea to me, I know not only is her whole soul involved in it, but she’s going to bring it to another level.
Isabelle: We’ve learned that the only thing we truly have together is artistic trust and collaboration. Once the song goes out into the world, it’s out of our hands. It’s like raising a child and setting them free into the world. We just have to hope that once we’ve let go, we can come back to our trust and collaboration to keep making new songs to share. It’s a repetitive cycle. We remind each other every day, this is for life. Us, our musical endeavors, the music we put into the world, it’s for the rest of our lives, so how do we want to handle it? We want to lean on each other and believe that we haven’t even released our best work yet!
Many thanks to NMDA and Isabelle Rose for speaking with us. Find out more about NMDA on his Spotify, and find out more about Isabelle Rose on her Spotify.
