In Conversation with ANDI Vesper and ANRI Requiem

Here's the thing about TAKE2!, the music duo of ANRI and ANDI,  that nobody warns you about: they're exactly as chaotic in person as their music suggests. ANDI Vesper sprawls across one end of a studio couch like he's been poured there, while ANRI Requiem sits cross-legged at the other end, stealing sips from his iced coffee when she thinks he's not looking. He is. He just doesn't care. This is, apparently, the dynamic that produced one of the most talked-about albums of the past year.

TAKE2's album REQUIEM dropped toward the end of 2025, with the follow-up single "I'M UR TYPE" arriving a little over a year later. It was a familiar rhythm for them. World tours sandwiched between every release, venues swelling, streaming numbers climbing. After nearly five years of grinding without pause, the duo knew they needed to step back. They just didn't expect it would take more than a year before they found their way back to the stage.

"We kept saying 'next month,'" ANDI says. "Every month. For like fourteen months."

"Fifteen," ANRI corrects, not looking up from her phone.

"Fifteen months of 'next month.' That's basically a brand."

Since their debut project, PROGRAMMED 2 LOVE, back in 2021, the duo have tackled every record with an unwavering confidence that borders on delusional. They'll tell you that themselves. In those early days, they were working with a tight circle of producer friends, and the process was never truly a two-person operation. ANDI was quietly contributing to every track behind the scenes, though you wouldn't have known it from just checking the credits. By 2023, both of them had started learning the finer points of production and vocal arrangement, with ANDI stepping into a much larger role in the recording process after finally deciding on finally publishing under his own name. The learning curve was steep. But, the results were worth it.

Other ideas had slowly started coming together in the months that followed, including an off-the-record trip to Las Vegas to jam with JUN and NOA from Heart's Reprieve. If you're imagining something glamorous, don't. By all accounts it was a lot of energy drinks, borrowed equipment, and sleeping on pull-out couches. But something clicked. Tracks started taking shape. Ideas that had been floating around for months suddenly had structures and hooks and reasons to exist.

Then ANRI left her laptop out in the rain.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, in the tone of someone who has talked about it extensively and will absolutely talk about it again.

"It was biblical," ANDI offers. "Like, Old Testament. Wrath of God stuff."

"It was drizzling."

"It was a flood, and our album was the casualty."

The majority of their new material was wiped. There was, according to ANRI, genuinely no point in trying to recreate any of it. The band had zero interest in retreading their steps. That attitude is part of what makes their music sparkle with energy, but it also meant they were starting over. Again. From nothing. Which, if you know anything about the creative process, is the kind of thing that makes people consider career changes.

"We never want to sound like we're repeating ourselves," ANDI says, leaning forward like he's sharing something important. "But when you've written as many songs as we have, it gets harder to surprise yourself. At a certain point you're sitting there going, how many choruses can two people physically generate before the creative well runs dry?" He pauses. "The answer is a lot, apparently. We had a lot more to give."

They decided to lock themselves away at the start of 2024 to finish the record. No distractions. No Las Vegas side quests. Just the two of them and a studio and the creeping suspicion that maybe they'd peaked.

"I'm really proud of the album now," ANDI says. "But going in? Absolute wreck. It was the first time I was doing real vocals on our tracks, and it was the longest we'd gone without putting anything out. We'd already tried and failed to make this album twice. I kept lying awake at three in the morning thinking, what if we just don't have any more good songs? What if that's it?" He laughs, but there's something real underneath it. "That's a fun headspace to be in when your entire career depends on having good songs."

Turns out, he had nothing to worry about.

Over the course of two months, TAKE2! built something that felt like its own world. REQUIEM sits in the tension between vulnerability and contentment, the strange ache of being exactly where you want to be and still feeling like something's missing. A startling heartache. 

"We just had to shake the dust off," ANDI says. "Push past the ideas that weren't hitting until we found the ones that were. And once we found them, it was like..." He looks at ANRI.

"Like making our first album again," she finishes.

"Yeah. Reckless. Stupid amounts of energy. Staying up until four in the morning because you're too excited to stop."

"A lot of big stuff happened in the lead-up to this record," ANDI continues, quieter now. "We both went through real hardships. Things were intense, whether it was our own mental health or what was going on with family and friends." Making music together was supposed to be the escape. Instead, the songs became something else entirely: a way to process, to sit with the uncomfortable stuff long enough to understand it. "Those experiences pushed us somewhere we wouldn't have gone otherwise. I think that's the silver lining of everything we went through. If there is one."

REQUIEM is also, it should be noted, an absolute blast. The album-titled opening track "OVERTURE" is glossy and organic, a ground-shaking announcement that the old TAKE2! is gone and the new one is not interested in easing you in gently. "BURNOUT" might be the most electrifying song released this year, the kind of track that makes you want to drive fast with the windows down. For all the messy, uncomfortable reality woven through the record, there's still something transcendent running underneath it all. The darkness has a pulse. 

Early in their career, TAKE2! got compared to a sprawling and largely unhelpful list of genre-bending artists as fans and critics tried to pin down their experimental, electronic-infused hip-hop. None of the comparisons stuck. They never do, with bands like this.

"When we sat down in the studio, I really wanted to capture what we sound like," says ANRI. "Not what we sound like compared to someone else. Just us. And that's actually a pretty intimidating thing to try to do, because it means you can't hide behind influences." The band pulled from indie (filtered through the lens of PC Music), punk, pop, melodic rap, and dance. "But somehow we have this weird ability to make all of it come out sounding like us. I can't explain it. I've stopped trying."

"We sound like TAKE2!," ANDI says, with the confidence of someone who has answered this question a thousand times and has gotten very efficient at it. "That's the genre. We're just invested in making things that sound good. If it sounds good, it goes on the record. We don't sit around asking, is this hip-hop enough? Is this too pop? Nobody has time for that."

A lot has shifted in the music landscape since the band was last active, but TAKE2! have never been particularly interested in chasing whatever the current thing is. "We just do our thing," ANDI says. "And we've always believed our music has legs. A lot of our songs actually get bigger as they age. Even if something isn't a hit on release day, give it a year. Give it two. It'll find its people."

"It's music for the future," ANRI adds. She says this with total sincerity, which is disarming coming from someone who left an album's worth of material out in the rain. "That's the hope, anyway. That we're making something people come back to."

That belief is sustained by a fanbase that is, by any reasonable measure, heavily invested. Whatever sonic direction the duo takes, the fans follow with an enthusiasm that borders on alarming. "They actually care," ANDI says, and he sounds like he means it. "Which still blows my mind. We've always tried to be honest and bring real conviction to whatever we're making, and I think people pick up on that. You can't fake that stuff. People know."

Five years out from their debut, REQUIEM feels less like a comeback and more like a starting line. "That's the whole point, though," ANRI says. "Every record is going to feel different because we're still changing. As people and as a duo. We're still figuring it all out." She pauses. "I think the day we stop figuring it out is the day the music stops."

TAKE2! have built a reputation for ambitious live shows, with both members fully inhabiting their colorful and engaging stage personas in a way that makes you forget there are only two of them up there. The latest run of dates is, in their words, a "huge upgrade" from anything they've done before, which is a bold claim from a band whose gigs have always felt like they were trying to outscale the venue. "We're always trying to one-up ourselves," ANDI says. "We're not out here chasing massive profit margins. We want people to walk out thinking, that was the best night of my life. And then we want them to come back and let us do it again."

Before the tour kicked off, fans new and old flooded social media with a question that was equal parts endearing and existential: what do you wear to a TAKE2! show? When the music pulls from that many moods and styles, dressing for the occasion becomes its own challenge.

"Buy the merch," ANDI says, without hesitation. "Problem solved. Next question."

ANRI rolls her eyes. But then she leans in, and there's something genuine in her voice when she says, "We're just a couple of misfits. That's always been the deal. Show up however you want. Stay true to yourself."

ANDI nods. For once, he doesn't have a joke to add.

• From the pages of AO Press Magazine. Features & Interviews.