Coby Sey and Rebecca Salvadori have uniquely intimate perspectives on each other’s work. The musician and MC has been collaborating with the artist and filmmaker since 2017 and throughout the course of their friendship Salvadori has captured the many different faces of the mercurial artist. Their Fact mix is a homage to this relationship, part visual mixtape, part experimental documentary. The work follows a conversation between the two that has been unfolding for years, serving as both a moving portrait of friendship and as an assemblage of scenes from two lives lived through art and music.
“For me, Rebecca’s subtle uniqueness when approaching film and visual art always shows,” says Sey. “Rebecca is effortlessly inquisitive, always asking questions, sometimes direct and sometimes subtly. Rebecca knows the value of allowing things to breathe and take shape in filming. There’s a fly on the wall element to it, where documentation and magic is present or being summoned by the subjects we’re seeing through her lens; through her eyes, through her ears.”
Over the last six years Sey has released several projects, including his first EP for AD93, 2020’s gorgeous River and his essential debut album, Conduit, has recorded and performed as part of Tirzah’s band, played alongside members of CURL, the sprawling community of musicians and artists he founded with Mica Levi and Brother May and participated in residencies with Tutto Questo Sentire, a collective featuring Salvadori herself, her sister and experimental vocalist Olivia Salvadori and cellist Sandro Mussida.
Though extensive, this is only scratching the surface of Sey’s rich and varied practice, an ever-evolving process that Salvadori has consistently borne witness to as part of her own singular approach to filmmaking. “I’ve spent considerable amounts of time either working or socialising with Rebecca and chosen to make the tracks for this movie by simply thinking about those moments we’ve had together,” continues Sey. “I took a very instinctive approach to these pieces and took my time as I tend to do with my music. To let the feeling and memories of those times guide my playing and creation of these songs.”
You can find Coby Sey on Instagram and Bandcamp. For more information about Rebecca Salvadori and her work, you can follow her on Instagram.