The Songs That Cross Time Zones

For Montreal songwriter Elise Laurent and London-based producer Hana Reyes, distance is part of the composition. Their duo, North Window, began with a shared folder, a cheap microphone, and a habit of sending unfinished ideas at inconvenient hours. A melody recorded before breakfast in Quebec might become a harmony captured after midnight in England.

Their process gives new meaning to the phrase “remote collaboration.” Rather than meeting in a studio and dividing up tasks, Elise and Hana trade voice memos, fragments of lyrics, field recordings, and rough piano patterns. Each artist receives the other’s idea without an explanation, then responds instinctively.

The result is intimate music with a sense of movement. North Window’s songs drift between indie folk, dream pop, and softly distorted alternative rock, preserving the imperfections of their correspondence. In this interview, the duo discusses creative trust, long-distance songwriting, and the strange intimacy of hearing someone’s voice through a phone speaker.

A Partnership Built From Small Sounds

Elise and Hana first connected through an online showcase featuring independent women artists. Elise had posted a stripped-back demo recorded in her Montreal apartment, while Hana contributed a production sketch assembled from modular synthesizer tones and a field recording made beside a railway line. Their pieces shared a spacious, unsettled quality.

“We didn’t start by saying, ‘Let’s form a band,’” Elise says. “Hana sent me a message about the room noise in my demo. She noticed the radiator clicking between lines. That made me feel like she was listening to the whole song, not just the obvious parts.”

Hana remembers the exchange differently. “I heard a voice that sounded close and far away at the same time. There was a lot of air around it. I wanted to find out what would happen if I treated that air as part of the arrangement.”

Their first completed track was assembled over three weeks. Elise sent a chorus, Hana returned with a bass movement, and Elise rewrote the verse after hearing how the harmony changed the emotional center. No file was treated as final. Every part remained open to response.

The Voice Memo As Studio

The duo’s central tool is deliberately ordinary. Voice memos remove the pressure of making a polished recording, leaving behind breaths, room tone, missed notes, and sudden changes of direction. Elise often records while walking beside the Lachine Canal, while Hana captures ideas in her kitchen, on trains, or in the narrow hours before sleep.

“A voice memo has a different kind of honesty,” Hana explains. “When you open a recording program, you start thinking about microphones and levels. With a phone, you are closer to the actual impulse. You sing because you have to get the idea out.”

That immediacy also creates productive limitations. A distorted memo may suggest a texture that would never appear in a clean studio session. A clipped ending can become a rhythmic cue. Background sounds sometimes guide the arrangement, giving a song a particular geography without requiring a literal lyric.

Elise says the exchange works because neither artist tries to over-direct the other. “I might send a melody with no chords and say nothing. Hana has permission to misunderstand it. Her misunderstanding can be much more interesting than my intention.”

Element	Elise’s Approach	Hana’s Approach
Starting point	Lyric fragments and vocal melodies	Textures, pulses, and found sounds
Recording habit	Outdoor or domestic voice memos	Late-night sketches and instrument loops
Main strength	Emotional phrasing and narrative detail	Atmosphere and structural movement
Creative risk	Leaving lyrics unfinished	Allowing arrangements to remain sparse
Best exchange	A melody returned with new harmony	A texture reshaped around the vocal

Time Zones As A Creative Instrument

The twelve-hour difference between Montreal and London can make collaboration feel asynchronous in the most literal sense. When Elise is beginning her day, Hana may be signing off from hers. A message sent with enthusiasm can sit unanswered for hours, which occasionally creates uncertainty but often gives ideas space to mature.

“We learned not to interpret silence as rejection,” Elise says. “Sometimes Hana is working, commuting, or simply living. That pause has become part of the process. I get to hear my own demo again before reacting to her response.”

Hana agrees that delay can protect a song from immediate overreaction. “If we were in the same room, we might solve everything too quickly. The time gap makes us live with the strange parts. We have to decide whether something is genuinely wrong or just unfamiliar.”

Their newest material explores waiting, missed connections, and the emotional distortion of digital communication. A lyric may begin as a note about a delayed reply and become a meditation on memory. An electronic pulse can imitate the repetition of checking a phone, then gradually open into something warmer.

This approach places North Window within a wider tradition of independent artists turning isolation into material. Their work has a conversational quality that recalls the intimate storytelling found in this psych-folk single, while the duo’s production adds a hazier, nocturnal edge.

Leaving Room For The Listener

North Window’s arrangements are spacious by design. The songs rarely rush toward a large chorus or fill every silence with sound. Hana might allow a drum machine to appear only after two verses, while Elise leaves a final lyric unresolved rather than explaining its meaning.

“I like songs that trust the listener with a little uncertainty,” Elise says. “There should be a door left open. If every feeling is named, there is less room for someone else to enter the song.”

That openness is balanced by precise emotional details. Elise’s lyrics focus on gestures: a coat left on a chair, a light visible across a courtyard, a message drafted and deleted. Hana builds around those images with restrained arrangements that change almost imperceptibly.

The duo is careful with softness, too. Their music may sound delicate, but it is not weightless. Low frequencies, rough vocal takes, and sudden flashes of distortion give the songs a physical presence. The calm surface carries tension underneath.

What Distance Makes Possible

Both artists have worked in more conventional settings and understand the advantages of real-time collaboration. A shared studio can create momentum, and playing a part in front of another musician can reveal its emotional character. North Window does not treat remote work as a perfect substitute. Instead, the duo has built a different kind of musical conversation.

“Distance makes us document everything,” Hana says. “There are more versions, more little artifacts. A studio conversation disappears when it ends, but a voice memo keeps the moment attached to the song.”

Elise finds that record of development valuable. She can return to the first version of a lyric and hear what changed. Sometimes the original phrase survives. Sometimes it becomes a backing vocal or a title. The archive is part of the creative life of the project, rather than disposable material.

The duo also sees distance as a way to resist constant productivity. Since neither artist can demand an immediate answer, their schedule follows attention rather than a rigid rehearsal calendar. They meet online for focused sessions, then return to separate lives with a clear musical question to explore.

That balance has helped preserve the friendship at the center of North Window. Collaboration remains a source of curiosity instead of obligation, and the songs retain the feeling of two people reaching toward each other without pretending the distance is gone.

A Listening Guide For Long-Distance Collaboration

Artists drawn to North Window’s method can borrow the spirit of the process without copying its exact technology. The goal is to protect spontaneity while giving each contribution enough context to become useful.

• Send unfinished ideas before they become polished performances.
• Leave room for the other artist to interpret a melody or lyric freely.
• Keep environmental sounds that reveal where and when a recording was made.
• Agree on a small number of focused responses instead of endless revisions.
• Save early versions so the project retains its creative history.

The duo’s advice is simple: treat every exchange as an invitation rather than an assignment. A voice memo does not need to prove its value immediately. It only needs to contain enough energy for someone else to answer.

For more conversations with independent musicians working outside the usual industry patterns, the artist interviews archive offers a broader view of how personal methods become distinctive music.

The Next Message In The Chain

North Window is preparing a small collection of songs built around nocturnal imagery, vocal harmonies, and the sounds of rooms after other people have gone to sleep. Elise is recording new lyrics on Montreal walks, while Hana is shaping the latest batch of memos into arrangements that move between acoustic warmth and electronic shadow.

Their work suggests that collaboration does not require constant proximity. It requires attention, generosity, and a willingness to let an idea travel beyond its original form. In North Window’s hands, a phone recording becomes a letter, a delay becomes a compositional tool, and a song becomes a place two artists can reach together.

Follow North Window’s releases, share their music with someone who values intimate independent songwriting, and keep listening for the next voice memo crossing the distance.