Timelines by Univore (Interview 2026)

Edition Fifty-Eight – Week Fifty-Eight; Unit 2:

Written by: Mercedes Barreto

Introduction

Some artists create songs; others create entire worlds. UNIVORE belongs to the latter category. The creative collaboration between Nicholas Flandro and David Bachmann has always existed beyond traditional musical boundaries, combining original music, visual storytelling, and written expression into a singular artistic experience.

Formed from a long-standing creative partnership that began in their youth, UNIVORE has developed a distinctive identity built on curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to embrace the unexpected. Their music moves freely between alternative rock, dream pop, experimental textures, and art-driven songwriting, creating a sound that feels both familiar and impossible to categorize.

Across albums including Beasts from a Silk Womb, Mysteries, Time Crystal, Conch, Sympathetic Vibrations, and Turquoise Hands, UNIVORE has continued to explore the relationship between sound and imagination. Their work invites listeners into strange, beautiful, and thought-provoking landscapes where humor, emotion, and surrealism exist side by side.

With every release, UNIVORE reinforces the idea that music can be more than a collection of songs—it can be a form of storytelling, world-building, and artistic discovery.

Short Review

UNIVORE’s music thrives on contrast. Their songs balance carefully crafted melodies with unconventional arrangements, blending moments of warmth and familiarity with unexpected twists that keep listeners engaged. The result is a catalogue that feels adventurous without losing its emotional center.

What makes the duo particularly compelling is their ability to combine sincerity with a playful sense of experimentation. Their compositions often feel cinematic, filled with shifting moods, layered instrumentation, and imaginative details that reveal themselves gradually over repeated listens.

Projects such as Turquoise Hands demonstrate UNIVORE’s continued commitment to evolving their sound while maintaining the creative curiosity that defines their work. Rather than chasing trends, the duo builds music around ideas, atmosphere, and storytelling—creating experiences that feel personal, unpredictable, and uniquely their own.

UNIVORE represents the spirit of independent artistry at its most ambitious: music that asks listeners not only to hear, but to explore.

Q&A

You have worked together creatively for many years. What first connected you as collaborators, and how has that relationship evolved?

“NICK: David and I met in High School in North East Ohio and were part of a larger group of friends that had overlapping tastes in music, art, and humor. That group influenced each other. Many of us played music together and made video art. So we started collaborating then, but formed Univore when we re-united in Chicago in 2009.

DAVID: A mutual appreciation for the avant garde in the visual and audio arts; a mutual attraction to the absurd, with the acknowledgement that too much absurdity can torpedo an aesthetic and reduce it to a gimmick; I have certainly evolved more than Nick has from our collaboration because Nick has always had far better taste than I have, in which case there was more for me to absorb from him than him from me; without our collaboration, I assume that the scope of what I consume and create artistically would remain narrow; for example, I had affinity for synthesizers before Nick foisted them upon me.”

Your music often blends sincerity with surreal and unexpected elements. How important is the balance between emotion and experimentation in your work?

“NICK: I think there are moments of sincerity, but many times in our work songs are created in character, written from the perspective of someone else—someone we invented.

DAVID: I hope and assume we get progressively more sincere with every new thing we create, while retaining some surreal elements for the sake of avoiding predictability and so that we can contribute something new-sounding and unanticipated to the infinite expanse of music out there; the emotion is always present in my music, no matter where I am in the drafting a new motif; I have to force myself to be experimental, and Nick will often naturally inject experimentation into the tracks I submit for us to work on, the result being that they are hopefully lifted out of the muck of boredom.”

How would you describe the creative philosophy behind UNIVORE?

“NICK: There is a absurdity to a lot of it. Irreverence for conventional songwriting and subject matter. I think that’s where some experimentation comes in. Some of our songs, especially from older albums, may have conventional pop structures, but the song could be about the deities people worship.

DAVID: My personal philosophy is that every possible idea/melody/beat is worth pursuing until it proves with absolute certainty to be artistically flaccid; the result is that we cast a wide net, sometimes maddeningly wide, in terms of the songs and sounds we pursue, whether or not they make it onto a produced album or not; one could say that we even lack a philosophy at all, in that we (or at least I) do not initially discriminate and will thus leave myself open to any influence that comes around, sometimes at the risk of over-stimulation and giving myself to many options to choose from.”

Your catalogue moves through many different styles and textures. Do you approach each album with a specific concept, or does the identity of a project reveal itself during the process?

“NICK: David and I work in different ways and share the initial songwriting duties 50/50. Speaking for myself, I usually have a sound I’m aiming for, or maybe a new instrument influences that record’s sonic direction. We have made concept records in the past. I see each record as a snapshot of what was going on in the period that it was recorded. But I guess that’s not unique to us.

DAVID: I’ll lean into my previous response to the creative philosophy question and propose that I never have a specific concept in mind, even for a song, when I first embark upon it; starting with the concept first has always felt constraining to my mind; I always start with melody, chord progression, beat, the sonic feeling of a track before it ever catches any lyrics or symbolism or theme; the identity of a project always seems to reveal itself, even if it’s through ambiguous signals and/or our own inability to commit to a theme for it.”

Where can we hear more, and why should we?

“NICK: The best way to stay up to date with us is to find our YouTube channel or Instagram (@univore) and follow us on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream music. Univore.com is a nice way to see our work and order merch. This is our 9th album so if you like what we’re doing there is a lot to feast on, and we definitely plan on making more music and music videos to support our new release. I could see a short film being made in the near future too.

DAVID: What Nick said.”

Anything to add here?

“NICK: Vinyl for our new record, Timelines, can be ordered here –elasticstage.com…-album
Univore loves you.

DAVID: We encourage everyone to add any of our tracks from any album to any playlist they are curating within their preferred streaming services; we appreciate that entire albums are not for some listeners and that the modern ear might fixate more on a single track than the larger body whence it came; we don’t blame anyone for this, as our attention spans have all been abbreviated; so please, pluck a track here and there, add it to that playlist, and impress that young man or woman or non-binary with something they’ve never heard of.”