INTERVIEW: Amedeo Pace on Blonde Redhead

If you’re about to fall asleep and searching for a dream, it’s the Sandman that you call. On the days when you’re just looking to dream, Blonde Redhead will do the trick. Sand not included. 

Born from the New York underground scene, and established in 1993 amidst chronic ‘G’ thangs and the angsty smell of teen spirit, Blonde Redhead is the precocious brain-and-heart child of identical twins Amedeo & Simone Pace, and Kazu Makino. Since the beginning of their career with eponymous Blonde Redhead, they’ve created genre defining music while remaining themselves unclassifiable. Haunting and harmonious, dissonant and decadent—every album is a unique and irreplacable raw expression of their shared humanity, and particularly present on albums Sit Down For Dinner and Misery Is a Butterfly, mortality. 

The Shadow Of The Guest, a collection of new compositions and remixed pieces from Sit Down For Dinner, is an album that in form and content provokes introspective reflection. And I did just that as I listened through. Exploring my own relationship to expression, memory, creation, music, and the Blonde Redhead songs I enjoy most. In a surreal and serendipitous way, I was able to share this pensiveness with Amedeo Pace, posing a few questions of my own about the nature of self-expression and enduring pensiveness…

You’ve been making music with Blonde Redhead for quite some time, from the early 90’s until now. Not only do your projects encompass moments in music history, but they document where everybody’s head was during the time. Every song is an immortalized expression of, and reaction to this (I imagine). You’ve got 10 studio albums now as a band. How does it feel to have a musical archive of your life that spans 30 years of your emotions, of your thoughts, your connections to others and the outside world? Does it contribute to your reflection about your life? 

It’s strange. I rarely think of the past and ponder on our history as a band. It would be like looking at an old photo album and reminiscing on youth, which can sometimes bring mixed emotions. At times I do listen to old albums but it is mostly to relearn the songs to perform them live. Even then it is a world that is difficult to step in as I am not the same person and so much feels different.  We really try to live in the present and keep making what feels right and represents who we are at the moment. Life is so complex and discovering ourselves is a lifetime work as music is. 

Making music is a big part of who I am but there is so much more to explore and express. To truly achieve an understanding of who we are as people just making music isn’t enough. 

Every member of Blonde Redhead has spoken about the group’s dynamic at one time or another; the tension, the passive aggressivity, the conflict of creative interest. Yet here we are, in 2025, and Blonde Redhead is still producing emotionally complex and provocative compositions, years after your formation in 1993. To do something for 30 years takes patience, resilience, devotion, and a great deal of loving concern. In those 30 years I’m sure that your relationship to music changed more than a few times. Do you think that the conflict and tension that the group endured has transformed what making music is for you, into something beyond a passion, or mode of expression—something more akin to a religious practice? 

It has been an adventure for sure. I think conflicts, limitations, and tension have always worked out for us. In some ways we are very similar and agree on many values. When making music some tension builds but it normally resolves itself as we care for each other deeply. I feel that there is still so much to discover musically with Kazu and Simone. It feels like we haven’t reached our objectives just yet. I can’t say it hasn’t been difficult. At times any relationship feels overwhelming and suffocating and I have had my share of feeling like I have wanted to escape and never play another show ever again.  It’s hard to know if what we do has enough of a positive impact on the world. I hope it does. We need healing and positiveness and I hope that we bring a bit of that. 

When you’re not making music, what are you doing? 

Travelling, building and making things, seeing friends and deepening relationships with them and thinking of the next steps.

Your most recent release as a band, The Shadow of the Guest, is a collection of reimagined tracks from previous works. At this point in your life, are you finding yourself more introspective, more pensive than what you have characteristically been, inspiring the remix of old songs? Or has your creative process changed, focusing on making previously explored themes new again, characterized through a change in perspective or execution? 

The Shadow of the Guest was something Kazu really wanted to experiment with. In her mind she heard a choir of children singing as we were making Sit Down For Dinner in a couple of the songs. We then later made it happen. The rest is just bits and pieces that she and I worked on to create something you would fall asleep to or relax and meditate to. It was an experiment which wasn’t meant to be part of an album. We felt good about them so we decided to include them in the EP.

“Oda a Coda,” the album’s final track, includes powerfully bittersweet mariachi instrumentals, giving the melancholy of the original melody a sense of dignity, a soft yet powerful presence. What instruments or musical styles do you emotionally resonate with the most that you haven’t had a chance to incorporate in any of your songs yet? 

Orchestral work would be wonderful . Woodwinds and string arrangements as we have done in Misery is a Butterfly and experimenting with nature and sounds that we as humans relate to deeply is also something we are starting to think about. 

Do you ever feel that there are things that music cannot adequately express?  Do you feel like there are things that can only be expressed musically?

I feel music expresses deep emotions, complex feelings, states of being and what words sometimes can’t express. It goes deep and sometimes expresses the inexpressible. I don’t know what it can’t express. Maybe just concrete facts, or the texture of material or the taste of food ….. I never thought about it. 

Which Blonde Redhead song is most special to you and why? 

I have a deep feeling towards “Distilled” and “My Impure Hair”… not sure why. They feel real. 

Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking inspired the title of your tenth studio album, Sit Down For Dinner. I’m curious to know about any other influences you may have. Are there any literary figures that have inspired your style as a songwriter? 

Not the style of writing but maybe just the attitude towards life. Pier Paolo Pasolini with his books and poetry, Godard with his films and dialogues, and many more.

What is it like when Blonde Redhead jams out together? 

Fun, but we usually don’t jam so much …. more than a jam it feels more like we’re writing, finding melodies, harmonies, and trying to find ways into the music. 

Your discography is full of many eclectic layers of form, rhythm, and melody, all bound together by profound lyricism. Your music brings me, and so many others, a sense of completeness, and transcendence—I feel it most strongly with “Misery is a Butterfly” and “Sit Down For Dinner”. In what ways do you think that committing your life to your art, to your band, has offered you chances to feel a sense of completeness, or transcendence?

Sometimes while playing live. Normally it is hard work as you are always in front of a mirror observing what comes out. It is hard to lose yourself unless maybe there were drugs involved which we never did during shows or practices. I lose and transcend sometimes watching a show that I love. Music definitely completes part of me. I have been doing it all my life and without it I think I would feel lost.