Yasmina Dexter, aka Pandora’s Jukebox, during her career has created a sound map that animates fashion catwalks. Soundscapes, horizons of meaning that need no translation
Yasmina Dexter aka Pandora’s Jukebox and Jonnine Standish about sound and artistic experimentation
What existential significance does a profession take on when listening predisposes you to become a collector of sounds? Yasmina Dexter during her career has created a sonorous map that from the most seemingly irrelevant details of our daily lives comes to animate fashion catwalks. Soundscapes, horizons of meaning that need no translation. The auditory sense is heightened, the beats move bodies and make them converge. This is how the dance floor becomes a microcosm of possibilities, the personal application for live encounters that impact on Pandora’s Jukebox’s professional future. The artistic experimentation of Yasmina Dexter embodies her work
Music is a detector of compatibility – in life and in work. This seems to be Dexter’s intuition, since her teenage years in the Nineties Slovenia where she also experiences the Desetdnevna vojna, The Ten-Day War. A conflict that imposes itself as a harsh declaration of independence. An attitude, the one of freedom and experimentation, far from the validation of professional success through social media. In London, Yasmina Dexter prefers to express herself on the radio, an old medium that reaches everywhere and keeps people company, even before audiobooks, podcasts and reels.
The ancients teach us that each place has its own genius, its own sound identity. Dexter recovers this lesson in the digital age. Technology allows her to isolate, purify and enhance a sound. She makes it electronic, stratified and hypnotic between projects with Fendi to the last Ferragamo’s campaign. Like a contemporary Parca, she weaves the vital rhythms of the world. The outcome reverberates through individual sound embroideries.
The following dialogue comes from a conversation between Pandora’s Jukebox and Jonnine Standish, co-founder of the Australian rock band HTRK
The sound of Yasmina Dexter aka Pandora’s jukebox
JONNINE STANDISH
I know that an interview with Yasmina Dexter is a rare honor but, to put you at ease slightly, the thing about being interviewed is that it’s like being in a math exam where you know all the answers.
You’ve got so much going on musically, at the moment? I see on Instagram you are working for Fendi?
YASMINA DEXTER
This month I’ve finished a few Fendi movies with different directors. Each film has four to eight different versions and lengths. Like between six seconds to one minute. It takes days to make.
JONNINE STANDISH
And recently you created the music for the Gucci FW23 runway. What was it like being in that set with your soundtrack playing in real life?
YASMINA DEXTER
I wanted to move in. The lime green Italian brutalist set design by Bureau Betak was a dream. The show sounded incredible live. The endorphins were real. I had my music team of James Rand and Amir Shoat with me, which was priceless. It was also mind-blowing working with the Gucci design and production teams. And your vocals sounded so good.
Yasmina Dexter (Pandora’s Jukebox) – Growing up djing in the underground
JONNINE STANDISH
Thanks. That was a dream I still can’t believe happened.
You are having a moment in fashion. How long do you think this will last?
YASMINA DEXTER
Forever? My biggest problem with fashion is from growing up djing in the underground. If I was working in fashion, I used to be a bit embarrassed about it. Younger people don’t realize the morals and restrictions we put on ourselves. It’s better to be open and choose the right surroundings. I was asked by a young friend yesterday about how I found my plan.
JONNINE STANDISH
Plan? We kind of fell into things.
YASMINA DEXTER
I just wanted to listen to music, dance and to look at people. That was my plan. And my dating, you know? That was my dating app. Looking at people finding somebody across the dance floor. What tracks are they dancing to? How do they move?
Dating App and Hookups – Yasmine Dexter and Jonnine Standish
JONNINE STANDISH
Have you ever been on an actual dating app?
YASMINA DEXTER
I did download Hinge. I was forced to. And I tried to fill it in. I was like, maybe I should go for it. That’s how it is now. Life. Then I had to write the quotes about myself, and I decided to quit right away. It takes the biggest joy out of the whole game.
JONNINE STANDISH
Is there a chance you met most of the people you work with now on the dance floor?
YASMINA DEXTER
Meeting people out was some kind of luck. And now I’m working with people who have known me for thirty years and they know exactly what I do.
Yaskina Dexter first job in fashion as sound designer
JONNINE STANDISH
What was your first job in fashion?
YASMINA DEXTER
Justin and Thea employed me for the Preen shop in Portobello Green, which was under that little section of shops under the bridge. The shop was entirely covered in papier-mâché in faded rose Financial Times newspapers. It was open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I made mixtapes in-store. That’s how I was asked to do my first fashion soundtrack, for Preen in 2001.
Friends used to hang with me for hours in the shop. I met Kate Moss there. She came in, and she was like, I want to buy what I was wearing.
JONNINE STANDISH
No wonder Preen named a dress after you after hearing that.
I want to get a sense of your morning routine, do you set yourself an alarm or do you wake up naturally?
YASMINA DEXTER
I wake up naturally. I am proud of myself that I reached the stage where I could just wake up naturally. No alarm. I think that in itself is such a luxury. I set myself my own working hours so I can be my best, tend not to work from 9 to 5, if possible, but love deadlines.
Yasmina Dexter: I work as a sound designer. I place the sounds by hand and they are not in pattern
JONNINE STANDISH
What is your working week like now?
YASMINA DEXTER
I work in my home studio half the week, use Ableton, import the visuals and I feel out the tone of the films, then I select and prepare sounds. I mark the cuts of the film frames to determine the BPM. Then I start to build the sound. In some cases, if the film is cut more randomly, as if freehand, I work on it as a sound designer. I place the sounds by hand and they are not in pattern. It is a delicate process that feels like hand embroidery.
The other half of the week I work with my engineer James Rand, with whom I have been collaborating for six years. We work fast together and he understands my made-up language. We process sound along the way, mixing, partially mastering and testing the sound on different speakers.
James has great plugins and tools, I have my own personal favorites: I particularly love the H3000 delays and echoes. We use the program Sooth to eliminate disturbing sounds, like ear piercing S and honks. It’s my favorite time. We concentrate so intensely sometimes that we stay in an isolated room with loud sound, no windows and low ceilings for ten hours straight.
It’s like God gave me an instrument. It’s about artistic experimentation
JONNINE STANDISH
Where do you find your samples?
YASMINA DEXTER
Everywhere. Samples are my instrument, because I don’t play any real instruments. I collect sounds. With all these samples being available it’s like God gave me an instrument. It’s about artistic experimentation
A lot of my sounds come from Bandcamp sample packs and subscriptions, and YouTube is probably my largest sound library. I collect SFX sounds, nature, like cicadas and swamp birds, desert winds, rainforests, sea waves, drones, film soundtracks, foley like crowds in the gallery or walking in heels on wood floor, sneezing. Also single hits and loops of percussion, bass, vocals, glitches, lush pads. During the pandemic I went into an asmr binaural audio vortex. It was the only thing I could listen to. It’s a big world out there and loads of folders on my YouTube.
I like finding nature or city sounds that are extremely well recorded by some nerd who has six views. Like 4K surround sound, somebody just walking down Tokyo Shibuya streets. It’s just not the same when you try to record on an iPhone. Although, I still use it. Everywhere. When we went to Hawaii together, remember recording the frogs on a lava field?
The sounds are rich and unusual and in mad rhythms – Pandora’s Jukebox
JONNINE STANDISH
I’m now using a Roland twenty-six portable recorder. I was recording at a clockmakers studio after hours last week. It’s a nice recording but there’s peak hour traffic sounds in the background which is a little distracting.
YASMINA DEXTER
I have the same. I’ve just remembered that I brought it with me when I came to visit you in the rainforest in Kalista. That forest where you live is so grand, I loved our walks. The sounds are so rich and unusual and in mad rhythms. Everything is so extra and thick. I remember trying to record a lyrebird with Conrad.
Send me the audio and I can clean it up, I have a program that can take out the traffic and distorting frequencies.
Death at the Club – Jonnine Standish and Yasmina Dexter
JONNINE STANDISH
Nice, thanks. So what is the next thing you are working on? Are you still working on artistic experimentation?
YASMINA DEXTER
I am booked with Fendi for a few projects, then I’m performing at the SAAL Biennial with Candela Capitán The Death at the Club, playing at Ricci Weekender in Catania, Sicily. It’s curated by Giles Peterson, and it’s a music and food festival. The chefs are on the flyers too. I am also making the soundtrack for a Ferragamo show. And then Cicciolina in Paris with Niki and Allegria.
JONNINE STANDISH
That’s a lot going on.
YASMINA DEXTER
Yes but I’m not as good at promoting myself as I could be. And social media stresses me out, the more I feel I must post the less I want to. My body is rejecting it all. I feel I need to rebel even further from that somehow.
Yasmina Dexter and Jonnine Standish about NTS mix
JONNINE STANDISH
It’s the idea that this is what is expected to be successful. All I want to do is say «Hello, here’s a glimpse of what I look like. Enjoy the things I’ve made for you. And you’ll see me again in six months».
YASMINA DEXTER
Exactly. Hope you like it. But if you don’t, never mind. Somebody else will. There’s always a crowd for everything.
JONNINE STANDISH
Is your crowd the same or does it change?
YASMINA DEXTER
I feel that my crowd sticks around.
Instead of aggressively promoting myself, I like for people to literally stumble upon what I do by chance. Having an NTS radio show is great for this. I was interested in how the sound travels naturally. The travel of the soundwave. I wish I could see a map. Sometimes I think no one is listening. And then, in the most random circumstances, someone says «I love your NTS mix with the pyramid cover».
Yasmina Dexter the war in Slovenia in 1991
JONNINE STANDISH
You moved to London right after the war in Slovenia in 1991, when you were 19, didn’t you?
Can you remember the start of the war?
YASMINA DEXTER
I couldn’t fucking believe it. We were celebrating, the whole of Slovenia was celebrating. We voted and now Yugoslavia was out. My school, an ex-vicarage designed by the Slovenian architect Joze Plecnik, had a concert space and Babes in Toyland were playing.
Afterwards we all went to a club and at about 3am the DJ told us we all had to go in the streets because the tanks were coming and we needed to barricade the streets. We went outside. Tanks were coming down the road. They were the Yugoslavian army who wanted to dispute. Slovenian buses started barricading the tanks in the street.
Ljubljana, Yello and Art of Noise – Yasmina Dexter Pandora’s Jukebox
JONNINE STANDISH
Do you remember the clubs you frequented during your time in Ljubljana?
YASMINA DEXTER
I was going to hardcore clubs, like Palma and K4 on Sundays were fab, one of the first legal gay clubs in central Europe. They were playing alternative music and MTV charts stuff. I loved MTV.
I loved Tuesdays at the Tourist club where Aldo from Borghesia was DJing. He played Yello and Art of Noise, Coil, Liaisons Dangereuses, DAF, Belgium Beat and Acid house. I was blown away hearing this for the first time at 14 and a complete teetotal. He was bringing underground music from his tours with Borghesia. He had great taste. A big influence on me.
YASMINA DEXTER
I was studying fashion, photography, graphic and industrial design. Fashion sketching and calligraphy classes were my favorites. I loved studying fonts, the rules of spacing, the different pens. I was good at handwriting.
My English was pretty good, from learning it in school since I was ten years old. Also from the radio and watching television in English. But still, it’s my second language and I’ve always felt a little frustrated, because I feel I have an underdeveloped vocabulary.
Yasmina Dexter – Pandora’s Jukebox. During my first night in London, I met Martin Gore from Depeche Mode
JONNINE STANDISH
Then to London?
YASMINA DEXTER
I was just waiting to finish my study, and then I was off to London. I moved with my life in a suitcase. Remember the suitcases didn’t have wheels. During my first night in London, I met Martin Gore from Depeche Mode. He bought me orange juice. It was in a club in Central London, just off Dean street. Maybe it was called Gossips and it was downstairs? It was like fifty people, tiny, low ceilings and I remember they were playing On TV by Renegade Soundwave. I turned around at the bar and there he was, Martin Gore. That was my first night in London.
Jonnine Standish
Jonnine Standish’s music has been categorized as “ambient/country/experimental”, which suggests she’s really hard to fit in a box. The singer-songwriter was born in the UK, but moved to Melbourne (Naarm) at the age of three. Since 2016, she’s called the Dandenong Ranges home, writing dreamy, genre-busting songs from her little house among the gumtrees of Sherbrooke forest.
Yasmina Dexter
NTS radio and Cicciolina Paris resident dj, Pandora’s jukebox offers sonic assemblages with hypnotic noir-dreamscapes and a multi-textured take on electronic music.
Federico Jonathan Cusin
