ifitbeyourwill S06E28 • link3

 

Quiet can hit harder than loud when the songs leave space to breathe. For link3—the duo of James and sunniva—that principle wasn't an aesthetic choice so much as a necessity. Their debut, On The Outline, emerged from bedroom studios, repurposed equipment, and a shared conviction that releasing imperfect work beats hoarding it indefinitely. The result is a slowcore record that trades polish for proximity, and listeners are responding in kind: instrumentals scored to wedding aisles, fan-made recreations, unsolicited messages about memory and tenderness.

James writes guitar-first, melodies arriving before lyrics, arrangements built on restraint rather than density. Sunniva's vocals—shaped by years of imitating favorite artists until her own tone surfaced—lock into his with an ease that belies the duo's origins as an online connection. They met through happenstance, bonded over a late-blooming obsession with albums as cohesive objects, and committed to a DIY ethos that prioritized momentum over perfectionism. The bathroom fan hum on early demos? Part of the texture now.

The pair attributes much of their sound to taste as a curatorial tool—knowing what to leave out, when to stop tweaking, how restraint can magnify emotion. Acoustic hush meets gently produced textures; male-female harmonies circle each other without crowding. It's the kind of record that rewards patient listening, and its intimacy has found an audience hungry for exactly that.

Now they're eyeing Montreal studios and string players, hoping to carry their quiet core into higher fidelity without sacrificing the living-room warmth that made On The Outline work. Violin lines floating over guitar, a producer who respects silence, slowcore sensibilities with broader reach. The blueprint is there. Whether they can scale up without smoothing over the rough edges that made them compelling in the first place—that's the open question. For now, the bedroom recordings are doing the work.

Instagram