GB: So what's been going on in your world?
NICOLETTE: i've been loving myself. pouring love into the deepest depths of myself. in so doing, i discovered that we humans are of boundless depth, it just goes on and on...beyond depth. we just are really...boundless and deep beyond depth. words are inadequate to say what i mean! but everyone knows this, so my stuttering won't matter too much hopefully! :)
i had thought we humans were contained. but we really are not!

GB: I love reading your lyrics when I listen to your songs. I think you never veer from grappling with difficult issues in honest, intense, and interesting ways.  Life Loves Us seems to be a sort of intimately philosophical approach to explaining your approach to being a human being.  You seem happy. How did you get there?  How would you describe the difference in mood between records?
NICOLETTE: thank you for saying that. :) i think life as a bundle is a beautiful thing. this a belief i've always had, so i have been expressing that in my music as well. i don't believe in this thing of describing certain experiences as good or bad, i believe the whole bundle is just so. as it is, all of it, it feels like a tremendous and joyous gift to me. and that makes me happy, because it seems to me that to be given such a gift we must be very special. which of course we are. we all have an immense amount of power, and to me that's something to celebrate. on a personal level, suddenly beginning to experience this first-hand rather than just knowing it, this brought me to deeper levels of intimacy with myself and my loved ones, and that's ongoing...which makes me really happy too. i just decided to be more honest, and that made me start believing (and so experiencing) what i knew to be true - that love is all around. so, while my previous records always expressed the knowing of this, my current record also expresses my experience of it. which was always there of course, but i didn't see!

GB: I love the segments on the record where you splice in bits of conversation or reactions you had to the creating process. It interrupts the normal flow of just receiving the work of art and you begin to see the process and the kind of struggles and pleasures you had in making it. 
What was your thinking about putting that in there?
NICOLETTE: i had wanted to do that on my second album, but because i was rushing to finish i didn't give myself time to. i just wanted to have at least some of my loved ones saying their own stuff on the album, because of the warmth and love they surround me with and fill my life with. it seemed normal to do that since they are part of my life. also my friends come from all over the world, so they reflect the truth that the world is diverse but we're all family really. yes, all the interludes were really just expressing various facets of my life, and so binding the whole thing together as an expression of my life, which is a reflection of everyone else's life. just a whole river of events, sounds, things all tied in logically but lightly together, a tide of energy...that's life.

GB: High Wave makes me feel incredible, by the way. Just had to throw that out there.
NICOLETTE: that makes me very, very happy to hear you say that. that makes it worth making the song.

GB: Musically, what a fucking trip this record is.  At one point, I simply let go of the critical reins because there's just too much going on to try to speculate where you're coming from.  So help me out.  What were you thinking you wanted to do when you set out to make this record?  One thing I always think about when I listen to your music is the sort of ying/yang in sounds in terms of how you like to offer contrasts to your voice, which is extremely velvetly easy versus some of the beats you use,which have knife points on them.  Is that something conscious?
NICOLETTE: i really had no clear idea what sort of record i wanted to make, i had some spontaneous vocal hooks whose meaning i had no clue about, and just started to build tracks around these gradually, fretting because the process was much slower than i wanted it to be...! i wanted bouncy bass-led tracks but my musical intentions became much more subtle when i realised how much could be done with the equipment. i just went crazy working with these different textures i was creating and finding sounds which corresponded to the things i was talking about. my subconscious is years ahead of me in terms of wisdom, so i usually just let it take the lead, and it's interesting for me to discover what i mean as the song takes shape. usually i have no idea, so i blindly follow and it all becomes clear to me sometime afterwards. the yin/yang thing is that i love a dramatic contrast in sounds or in anything actually. i find it exciting because i'm dramatic by nature, and also i believe that together they express and resolve into a balance. so anytime i express myself this is there.

GB: What do you think about it, now that all is finished?
NICOLETTE: i love it very, very much.

GB: I was listening to your last record the other day and I was thinking about how profound Love Letter For Europe is today in light of the way that immigrants are now cast in terrorist terms.  What are your thoughts about the current political climate in the world?  I know that's a hopelessly general question, but I am interested to hear what you think about the state of the world in those terms.
NICOLETTE: people are struggling to come to terms with an emerging change in world consciousness. historically, we've reached a point where we are starting to realise that loving each other is not just some hippy ideal, but a practical means to survival, and in fact the only way we can survive. humanism rather than patriotism, and a more heart-led consciousness generally, are crucial to our survival, and we are seeing that now. with any new change in consciousness, whether personal or global, there's usually some kind of conflict because we tend to resist the inevitable.

GB: Thanks so much for doing this.  I'm very excited to promote the record.  It's not just the joy that it brings me.  I feel personally enriched and there were so many little epiphanies for me that I'm just grateful that you're bringing music into the world.
NICOLETTE: you are lovely and cool to say that so open-heartedly. and thank you for interviewing me.