Q&A: The Double-Edged Sword Duo of Sex Week
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IZZY PETRAGLIA ☆
Photo Credit: Alyssa Vitalino and Dillon Camp
Pearl Amanda Dickson and Richard Orofino, the New York-based duo Sex Week, have been expertly walking the tightrope between serious and silly since their unplanned inception. A playlist made by Dickson for her friend Allison, Orofino’s roommate, led to a partnership formed by mutual fondness of one another’s taste.
Through working on music together for fun, the duo challenged each other’s skillsets to push the best creative results–eventually leading to the release of their self-titled EP Sex Week in 2024. They’ve now released their second EP, Upper Mezzanine as a reflection of their emotionally intuitive creative process and understanding of each other.
Sex Week are the epitome of a double-entendre. They possess depth without weight, and vulnerability with room to stay lighthearted. As pop music lovers, they embrace their fondness for the genre by disguising pop-structured songs with layered elements of folk, experimental, and alternative rock to create a digestible yet distorted sonic portfolio. Upper Mezzanine is a continuation of the world Sex Week is building.
LUNA sat down with Orofino and Dickson to dig into how their individual tastes inspire each other and their process-over-perfection mindset.
Photo Credit: Alyssa Vitalino and Dillon Camp
LUNA: So nice to meet you both! Are you excited for the EP release?
DICKSON: Yeah, very excited. It's kind of crazy. I'm like, whoa, two weeks!
LUNA: I'm so excited for you guys. I've heard it already, it sounds amazing. I'm sure it's probably very surreal having a whole second EP now. Given that this is now your second EP and the way you’ve described your partnership as kind of just happening from making music together when you did put out that first EP, how does it feel going from this just becoming an established thing from the first EP to now doing the second EP together? You've mentioned it feeling a bit more inquisitive, structural and you have a recognizable flow now, but can you kind of go deeper into some of the feelings behind it and the overall process?
DICKSON: Yeah, I feel like a lot of the songs in the second EP, except for “Money Man,” were the ones we didn't have time to figure out for the first EP. It felt like we could really dive into production and make crazy choices. “Coach” sounds so different from a year ago to what it is now.
OROFINO: Yeah just having so much more time with the songs and them living on our computer, and being able to be like “Let's just make this change and then sit on it” and then go back and think “That's not really right.” I think just having more fun with the sounds and choices.
LUNA: Cool! Then with the origin of you two, I've read about the playlist and all of that jazz. Richard, you mentioned how Pearl’s taste helped you discover a lot of new music from that playlist. I’m curious, with reference to developing new tastes, where have you been able to pinpoint any significant differences between each of your individual tastes? And with that, how have you been able to use those differences to your advantage in your music?
OROFINO: I mean, a big thing is definitely that a lot of the stuff Pearl had on the playlist that I really gravitated towards was stuff that I normally wouldn't have known of. Which is something even as simple as–I understand music in a very particular way, structure-wise. I played and studied music. So I feel like I have a very particular understanding of how it's “supposed to work” or something. I feel like the more experimental–even something as particular as a vocal style, something that can be spoken can be so much more impactful sometimes. I understand melodies very well, I’ll be like “I love this” or “This melody goes into this other melody really great. But messing with structure was very fresh to me, or something I never really understood until I was listening to the playlist.
I never really put in the hours to try and listen to something and totally get it. I don't really get it, but I get what I'm feeling. I feel excited because there's no real rule when it comes to music, it’s such an emotional thing. I would say that's sort of a big part of it, just structure and just how a song should and should not operate doesn't really matter.
LUNA: I always think about how music is so directly related to emotional presence. Without it, it's hard to communicate from a place where you’re not truly in touch with what's going on in your body when you feel or hear something. I mean, I'm not an artist, but I can assume.
DICKSON: No, totally. I feel like my thing lately has just been don't fight the song or don't try to make it into something that's not true to what is going on with either of us.
OROFINO: Yeah, like forcing something and saying “I really want it to be like this,” but that's not what it is. Maybe it ends up being this other thing that we didn't expect and we end up loving it so much. We just have to really let it take us there.
LUNA: When you don't think about it too much and it kind of just happens is probably when some of the best moments come out of making music.
OROFINO: 100%. Totally. So much of the stuff we do is Pearl just being like “All right, let me just see the mic,” and then we'll just press record. I’ll end up saying this is the song. This thing you just did off the top of your head is the song. Maybe we change some things here and there, but I would never have thought to do that. And that's really cool.
DICKSON: Well, same with the accordion part in “Coach.” You said “Just let me cook for a second.” I was like, what is this? Immediately, I knew that was right.
LUNA: And then Pearl, would you say there were any significant sort of differences between each of your tastes? And how would you say you use those to your advantage as well?
DICKSON: At the time when we first met, I was super into K-pop.
LUNA: My BTS poster is literally just out of range from the camera. You’re talking to the right person!
DICKSON: Yeah, I was super into TOMORROW X TOGETHER, girl groups, and 2000s K-pop like SHINee. I feel like that was fun to throw at Richard because I don't think he ever really listened to that type of pop music. That was kind of different. I would also say, I knew Deftones and I liked a few Deftones songs, but the heavier stuff I hadn't really gotten into. I definitely found a new understanding and love for music like that.
LUNA: And then on the opposite side of that question, have your similarities in taste ever felt like a roadblock for either of you?
DICKSON: Ooh.
LUNA: It’s a thinker.
OROFINO: We both love pop music, I guess it's still a difference, but we love pop music in very different ways. Something that I wish I was more in tune with are lyrics. I love lyrics, but it's not the first thing I notice or grasp in a song.
I really pay attention to the melody, the chords, and the sounds–that sort of aspect of it. The more straight-up musical aspects. Pearl is so lyric-heavy. I feel like I know a good pop song structure, so does Pearl. When we do feel like just writing a pop song that exists as a pop song, then we get to sort of dress it up and disguise it into something different. So it doesn't necessarily sound like a pop song, but at the end of the day, it has all the bones of a straightforward pop song. I think both of us love pop, alternative music, and rock music on top of that, and it feels like a good compliment.
DICKSON: What I was thinking was just getting away from emulating a sound that we both really like would probably be a challenge, and just letting it be what it should be with us. We’ll often be like “I love this thing about a song, I wish we could make this thing,” but it's steering away from that.
LUNA: It's almost like when you see or hear something and you think “Damn, I wish I thought of that first.”
OROFINO: Totally. I mean, there's so many songs that I hear and think “I wish we wrote this.” Especially if it sounds like we could have written it. And that's okay, that's great, because we wrote something else.
LUNA: Another thing you guys have said in the past that I personally love, is describing Sex Week as being serious, but also not serious at all. It has to always be a perfect balance. So with that in mind, where do you find the balance between having depth within your music and your partnership, without always needing everything to be heavy?
OROFINO: It's just really important in life to not take yourself so seriously. I always find that I never liked being that way, as a person. Neither of us do. We love being serious about what we're doing, taking things seriously and being genuine is cool, but also being cringe is cool. All of that should be embraced. Acknowledging that something we’re doing is silly, but we're serious about it is good, if that makes sense.
LUNA: Definitely makes sense!
DICKSON: I think there's something to be said for drama. I love drama. There is an element of unseriousness to just that word in general. Like just wanting to evoke some kind of thing. But there's also seriousness to it at the same time. There’s something there, I don’t know what it is.
LUNA: There could be a lightness and a sort of whimsy with drama. A double entendre moment.
DICKSON: I'm going to butcher this. I don't know what it is, but there’s some sort of theatrical thing where the best comedy has heaviness to it or darkness in it.
LUNA: It kind of goes with how a lot of comedians who do bits that are based off of their trauma. They're laughing at it and they want you to laugh at it because that's their way of expressing it. It keeps the heaviness of it alive, just in a different way, in a way that feels lighter to them if that makes sense.
OROFINO: Totally. I mean, the other day we were at the laundromat and this soap opera was on. It was really quiet, we couldn't hear it, but we were both so glued to it. It was so interesting to look at. Everything is very well lit but it was so heavy with what the themes are but it’s crazy. It's so alive and light at the same time. I love that so much. I love a soap opera.
LUNA: And even when you're watching it, maybe you can't hear it, you can just make up your own little stories for it. I low-key did that the first time I watched Twilight because I watched it without sound at a party. I was just making up my own words.
DICKSON: Twilight is a perfect one too because it's so not serious.
LUNA: I actually still haven't seen it with the sound on.
OROFINO: It's worth a watch with the sound.
LUNA: I really do want to lock in and watch it one day. But will I even appreciate it in the same way you guys did when it came out years ago? I feel like I really just had to be there.
DICKSON: I actually, I think the first one kind of holds up. I think it would be mind-blowing, especially with the music.
LUNA: Oh yeah, the soundtrack is crazy for it. That's kind of part of the appeal. You're convincing me. But going back to what you said about when you make music, when you’ve started with the base of a pop song, and you'll just work a bunch into it. You've created this sound for yourself where it's folky, it’s dazed, it's artistic rock and pop. Overall, just a crazy mix of sounds.
I’m curious more so about the feelings you've cited when you're creating music. I read that you’ve wanted to create specific feelings of riding a mechanical bull or being in a dungeon for specific tracks. Where in each of your own personal experiences or archives of information and inspiration does that sort of imagery come from to create a song that depicts those feelings?
DICKSON: Sometimes it happens more like we’ll reach a point in the production stage where we're listening, we'll say “Oh wow, that's the feeling.” It almost happens more as an “Okay, good, we cracked whatever that is.” Because now the feeling is there. “Money Man” definitely felt like that, where we were just trying to figure it out. Richard did a pass on it, and all of a sudden I felt that “whoa” moment where all the imagery is there when you close your eyes and you're just thinking about it while you listen to it.
OROFINO: I think for me, I feel both of us sort of get this way about songs that just stick with us and exist from other artists. I'll get visuals and I'll always try to take it out of a musical sense.
We both have movies, TV, paintings, and photos that generate feelings that you can get from just an image. Sound in movies does so much, obviously. Sound and visuals are so important together. So I guess when I'm listening to a song, I'll think “This makes me feel like I'm in a cabin in the woods,” or whatever. I try to do that when I listen to a song that I really like, or it just happens naturally.
When we love a song, we’ll want it to do something that captures a specific visual feeling. A lot of the time, it doesn't end up being like that, but it ends up revealing itself. Sometimes it’ll feel closer to riding a mechanical bull than feeling like being in a log cabin in the woods, and we won’t really know what that means, but we’ll keep going in the “bull” direction and see where that takes us.
LUNA: That's such a cool way to think about your creative process. With your interest in music, film, TV, and that connection between sound and visual, are there any specific eras in history, music, art, or any other media that you do tend to feel drawn to specifically?
OROFINO: I particularly am drawn to the sort of the ends and beginnings of decades–1989, 1990, 1991, or 2000, 2001. I don't know why there's always this weird cosmic shift that everyone seems to naturally go through during the change of a decade. It doesn't really happen anymore, but maybe it's not as easy to see when we're in it.
But from 2025, looking back, it's a lot easier for me to see what sort of things were happening in music. Like “Oh they're trying to overlap in this new way where this keyboard is in this song that it doesn’t necessarily fit in the song.” That's happening right now, and that's a new technology. So they're trying to incorporate a blend and I'm drawn to that combo of new and old.
DICKSON: I think I've just always been such an avid TV and movie watcher. Growing up, it was usually musicals. High School Musical was so life changing when I think about it. But then I also think about the movie that stuck with me because of the soundtrack was Project X.
The crazy party sequences with Kid Cudi playing in the back, I feel like I'm trying to chase whatever that feeling was when I watched that crazy movie for the first time. There's definitely a weird thing we have with visuals. We were watching a lot of Cronenberg movies making both of these EPs, and that felt like “That's the sound, that's the feeling of whatever it is.”
LUNA: I know you guys also work on all the visual elements of your projects together, and you're starting to build your own world within your music as a result. I love world-building within music. So when you think of that whole concept of world building, what does it mean to you? Is it a goal you've intentionally had, and if so, where would you want to take the world you build as Sex Week as you continue to develop your artistic career?
DICKSON: It was definitely intentional. I love music videos. I love Gaga. She was so amazing at creating that. I think for us, it's always a line of being seen as being vulnerable, but with a fun element to it–whether it's a wig or whatever. World-building is so important to us, especially creating little stories that fit the song so it feels personal, but it’s also not–it’s kind of a gag. In the future, I would love to just continue toeing that line between reality and what isn't.
OROFINO: We are so into the idea of world building. It's always been a part of our conversation when we started making music. We pay attention to the colors we see in images–the objects, the items, the places. All of these things are so important. So it is very purposeful.
There is always that element of it revealing itself, but we are very intentional. We love artists that have a whole world that's attached to them. There's so many that are so good at it that you understand what they are doing just by looking at it and hearing it. Without even doing much of a deep dive, you can kind of understand it. Or you can understand it, but you can see that there's something more there that draws you in and wants you to learn more about it.
I think Pang by Caroline Polachek was really good. I understood it just by looking at the artwork, and it sounds like how that looks–with the gates and sort of gothic dream thing. It just makes sense. But you're still learning and exploring when you listen to the album. There's all these different things that are influenced and part of that world, but it all makes sense together.
LUNA: Totally. And then with being multidisciplinary artists, are there any areas within your different practices that you have a goal to push yourself further into?
DICKSON: Probably just videos, directing, and developing those stories.
OROFINO: Yeah, I would love to just keep doing it and taking it to further levels every time. We're still learning how to do everything every day. We're not really good [and we don’t] understand how to do anything properly, but we will do things that feel natural.
LUNA: Everything is a learning experience! We never stop learning.
DICKSON: Truly–we'll never know everything and no one will.
OROFINO: Not knowing is really good and it's just exciting.
LUNA: Not knowing but opening yourself up to the experiences that can teach you what to do.
OROFINO: Yeah, I don't know how to properly set up my camera settings, but I achieve the feeling that I'm hoping to come across without really knowing what I'm doing.
DICKSON: It's very intuitive. I feel like we're just trying to figure things out–like with “Lone Wolf,” we had a bunch of ideas for the video and didn't get it in enough time, and then it ended up being just a long gray wig, there's the smokestacks, and then we were just there and figured it out. And we were like “Wow, this is it. This is great.”
OROFINO: On an iPhone.
LUNA: Period. I'm so excited to see what you guys continue to do. I have one more question about the EP release show, some UK dates coming up too. What can people expect from a Sex Week Live set, especially post-Upper Mezzanine release?
OROFINO: Right before we went on tour recently, we played a set with just us two. It wasn't a full band but we really wanted to incorporate something else. When we normally play with a full band, you’ve got a lot to look at, but this set was just us two so we wanted to have our friend dance with us. It was a full performance while we performed our songs. The third element is what we hope to incorporate into every live show–especially if there is a full band. Maybe it would be a full band with some fun sounds or theatrics–maybe an emcee in a costume. Just someone to be on stage doing something else to look at
DICKSON: We’re just trying to figure that out.
