- Hey Dancing In Tongues! Glad to have you here to talk with us about your latest release, “Petri Dish” and the upcoming EP of the same name.
We’re really excited to finally share this EP. The music itself has actually been finished for over a year, but we wanted to give the songs space to grow beyond just the audio and fully develop the visual world around them. That extra time allowed us to create artwork for each track and start building the strange, surreal universe that connects the whole project. And this is only the beginning — there are some pretty wild videos coming soon.
- “Petri Dish” is such a deeply emotional and personal track, rooted in your IVF journey. Can you tell us more about how the idea for the song first came to life, and when you realized it would become part of a full EP?
Writing “Petri Dish” wasn’t an immediate or easy decision for us. It came from a long period of sitting with the experience of our IVF journey and questioning whether it was something we could — or even should — put into a song. At first it felt too intimate, too exposed.
Over time, though, we realized that discomfort was actually the point. The song — and eventually the EP — became a way of moving toward something more raw and vulnerable.
- The track feels both fragile and powerful at the same time, blending hope, uncertainty, and tension in a very cinematic way.
That’s exactly what we were trying to explore with this track. We don’t think of fragility as something delicate or hesitant — it actually takes real courage to be seen in that place.
With “Petri Dish,” we leaned into that tension: the place where uncertainty and hope exist at the same time, and where showing vulnerability becomes an act of strength rather than weakness. That emotional push and pull is really at the heart of the song’s cinematic feel.
What was the creative process like in the studio with Lucas Herweg (LLUCID) and Jacob Bergson (TAUT) in Berlin? How did the collaboration with Designer shape the final sound?
Working with Lucas Herweg (LLUCID) and Jacob Bergson (TAUT) (together knows as “Designer”) in Berlin was a really inspiring and expansive part of the process. They’re both incredibly deep in their craft — not just technically, but in how they think about sound and structure. They have a real instinct for synthesis and texture, but also for writing hooks that feel immediate and memorable.
What we loved most was how they could bridge worlds: bringing that distinct energy of the Berlin electronic scene into conversation with the more pop-driven instincts we naturally work with as a duo. That combination opened everything up and pushed the ideas in directions we wouldn’t have reached on our own.
Collaborating with Designer added another layer of refinement and perspective, helping shape the edges of the sound and pull everything into a more cohesive final form. It became less about any one approach and more about finding a shared language between all of us.
How would you describe the sound of Dancing In Tongues to someone discovering you for the first time, especially with this new chapter you’re entering with “Petri Dish”?
Dancing In Tongues is shaped deeply by where we’re based — Brooklyn and the wider New York City music scene. There’s a constant tension here between raw club energy and more experimental, boundary-pushing sound worlds, and that mix really informs what we do.
We’re inspired by the hard, forward-driving club sensibility of artists like BRUX and QRTR, alongside the more avant-garde, textural approaches of artists like Lea Bertucci, Holland Andrews, and LEYA. That range gives us permission to move between intensity and abstraction, structure and openness.
On top of that, we keep a very direct, unfiltered approach to lyric writing. We lean into real emotional experience as the starting point, so even when the production gets expansive or experimental, there’s always a human core at the center of it.
- Dancing In Tongues is made up of Sarah Martin-Nuss and David Nuss, both coming from interdisciplinary and performance backgrounds.
How did music first become the meeting point for you both, and what pulled you into creating this shared project together?
We first discovered our musical connection when Sarah auditioned as lead singer for a punk band that David was playing drums in. The connection was immediate and so ecstatic. The next morning the bass player called David and said he wasn’t vibing with Sarah’s style, so we formed our own project without the bass player. That project shifted and eventually morphed into Dancing In Tongues, a name we gave our project in 2020. Our collaboration continued to unfold in everyday life-a romantic partnership, a creative collaboration, and ultimately a family life as well, all intertwined.
- Do you remember the name of the first song that made you love electronic music?
- We attended a performance of Suzanne Ciani on the Buchla synth and both looked at each other and said, “this is it!”
- Looking ahead, what does the future of Dancing In Tongues look like after this EP? Are there any dream collaborations, live concepts, or artistic directions you want to explore in the next few years?
Looking ahead, we’re continuing to expand the world of this EP into a semi-narrative, episodic short film that connects the tracks into a shared storyline. Rather than explaining everything, the goal is to open the music up visually and emotionally, while intentionally leaving space for ambiguity and interpretation.
We’re interested in work that doesn’t resolve too neatly — something that pulls you in, expands your experience of the songs, and still leaves you with questions afterward. That sense of openness is really where we want to keep pushing things next.
- What’s the one activity you love doing in your free time when not making music?
Sarah is a visual artist and works in the studio creating abstract oil paintings, continuing her exploration of texture, color, and gesture outside of music. It’s a space where she can work more visually and intuitively, in a different but related creative language.
David is an avid surfer and can usually be found at the beach whenever there are waves. For him, surfing offers a kind of reset — a physical, embodied counterpoint to making music, and another way of staying connected to rhythm and flow outside the studio.
- Can you tell us more about your dream and future collaboration and what do you hope to achieve in the next 3 years in your professional career?
One thing coming up next year is an EP that’s nearly finished with BRUX producing. It’s taken us into some unexpected territory sonically, and we’re excited for people to hear a different side of both of us — stay tuned for some surprising sounds.
Looking further ahead, our dream collaborations continue to sit at the intersection of music, film, and dance. We’re really interested in working with artists who think across disciplines, where performance and documentation can exist in the same breath rather than as separate outputs. We can imagine completing a multidisciplinary production in the next few years that blends these interests.
- This is all for now. Thank you for your time answering our questions. Where can our community find out more about your music and your future releases?
Please keep up with us on our Bandcamp and Instagram pages!
Stream link: https://open.spotify.com/track/25XyG2QMEWzAtUIYBlBGIF?si=14efbab7a03b4a02
