Portland, OR-based psych outfit Unknown Mortal Orchestra, led by mastermind Ruban Nielson, will release their new studio album Sex & Food tomorrow, and Nielson recently met up via Skype with director and fellow New Zealander Taika Waititi—who has helmed movies like Boy, What We Do in the Shadows and, most recently, the blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok—for a very Kiwi-centric conversation for Dazed, and it just makes me happy that they’re new best friends. 

Amid their reminiscing of growing up as part-Maori kids in New Zealand in the ’80s, Nielson and Waititi share their mutual respect for each other, with Waititi calling Nielson on of his “favourite artists ever” and Nielson calling Waititi’s Boy his “favourite movie.”

The conversation kicks off with some words on the apparent New Zealand inside jokes Waititi snuck in Thor (like “booze hag”?), and at some point it comes up that kids in New Zealand (at least Waititi’s crew) were under the impression that Michael Jackson and Bob Marley were Maori and Kiwis themselves. Along with the joking, there are real moments in the chat as well, with both artists discussing racism in their home country toward those of Polynesian heritage like themselves. 

Both Nielson and Waititi now live and work in the US, however, and they have interesting takes on the culture, with Waititi mentioning his disdain for the treatment of women and Nielson speaking against what he sees as fake optimism in the face of hard times:

Americans are very optimistic in a weird way. They constantly talk about the end of the world, but the end of the world always sounds really exciting. There’s all this doom and gloom on the news but it’s sort of like (an) adrenaline (rush). When things are bad in America and people are still trying to be upbeat it gets really creepy, like everybody is smiling while the world is falling apart. I have to keep going back to New Zealand every now and then so I can ask my friends that I grew up with, ‘This is crazy, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘OK, sweet.’

The discussion also includes the duo’s take on New Zealander’s aversion to being to “earnest or cheesy.” As Waititi puts it:

New Zealanders are, like, experts in cynicism. We’re good observers, because we come from a place where basically nothing happens. There’s definitely a mentality of ‘I’m stuck here and I’m not going to get out’ that informs the stuff we make, there’s kind of a cool darkness to it.

All told, experiencing two of my favorite ascending artists discussing their surprisingly similar roots—which are based in a place I rarely hear much about—is something I just can’t get enough of. Read the full discussion here.