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Interview (Brainfeeder press agent) [5.2022]

The following is a barely edited dump of thoughts that I threw at my press agent when asked me to say some words about the album, to help them to write a press release for it. They sent over a few simple questions as prompts.

Q: Inspirations for the album… Musical:

I was listening to a lot of that 70s organic spacey sound, like David Axelrod “The Human Abstract”, "Le Planet Savage" soundtrack, Aphrodite's Child, records that were loosely a sci fi concept but really groove based. Kind of a hippie sci fi. A lot of the more overtly spacey but earthy records from that period too, Tangerine Dream, Emerald Web, Vangelis' more mellow smokey rhodes keyboard jams. The drumless parts of Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack especially, that over the top, slightly comic, yearning, mysterious sound. But just as much I listened to a ton of super modern R&B songs, like The Weeknd and Rae Sremmurd's more starry eyed tracks, and Frank Ocean and Solange's amazing song writing, especially how intimate and tender their records feel. The melodies and feel of some indie rock like Cocteau Twins and Grouper, for the same reasons. YMO's synth pop too, the brightness, layers and bounce of it, some Fatima Yamaha tracks had a big impact too similarly.

The drum aspect mostly comes from a different place, that's all so obviously indebted to rap production, but also the longer history of uk music. The beat tracks were mostly produced around 2018 when uk producers were establishing that drill syncopation, which I was listening to a lot. My rhythm sense was totally made by uk jungle, its sense, skipping, syncopation. It was amazing to hear that in mainstream music again. And jungle producers like Sully still influence my beat production. So does Jlin.

I also just need a certain amount of heavier, harder, tense music to balance out all the floatier stuff I listen to. Whether its stoner metal like Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard, or gloomy hip hop like Mobb Deep, or intense early Dillinja tracks. Those musics might be very separate socially but there’s often deep similarities in spirit and energy.

Q: Inspirations for the album… Non-Musical?

I really concentrated on music firstly, the recorded music that speaks to me now, and why it speaks to me at this moment in time.

I thought about music sensations I most resonated with, and what it meant to make them. I thought a lot about the people who supported the early Kuedo work, I wanted them to hear it and feel that it was for them. I found myself thinking less about the idea of the cutting edge in music, and turning more to what I deeply enjoy listening to, or to what’s really endured through history, even if it’s new to me. I realised that old music can speak to the current moment as well or better than new music. Particularly in terms of ecological, planetary anxieties, and hopes too.

In order to write an affecting melody or chord sequence, you need to pull from your own emotions and experience, there’s no way around that. So the deeply personal and lived will always be in there, if you’re trying to make something emotionally useful to other people at least. I am trying to do that.

Also when I write music, I’m far more interested in chasing the sensations of music I love, rather than referencing other music like an archivist. I think that different sensations of music resonate with us more, depending on what’s happening within and around us, personally and socially. I think it’s essential to be tuned into that, and how that is shaping you. What resonates now. Not what resonated before.

I tried very hard to make a release that flows from front to back as a sequence, too. I kind of obsessed about that. I wanted the idea of a whole album to work, to at least really attempt to endorse that idea. I wanted an album that had halls and corridors, for the tracks to feel like connected places, to move through.

I also used visual material as much less of a spark or crutch than I did previously. I feel like so much of the sci fi imagery I’ve consumed is now mapped to music and triggered by music, and I know where to find the music that conveys those visual signals. I get such a visual reaction to music now. Non musical feels contained within music for me now, ridiculous as that sounds. Music feels like a dancing, kinetic, metaphor, of everything else, containing it all. I love it lol.

Q: Who influences your production style? Particularly in relation to this record

In terms of the nuts and bolts of production technique, I guess I’m split between thinking about what makes spacey synth driven music production work, what makes rap and uk jungle work, and what makes pop and R&B work. The pop production of Frank Ocean, Solange Knowles, Tears For Fears, YMO. I had mostly finished the album production when it came out but Flying Lotus’ Yatsuke was a big inspiration and encouragement to me. I related to it deeply as a production, as a picture of sound. It’s one of my very favourite soundtrack albums.

I’m a parent so that experience is always influencing me when I write. A lot of the feelings in my music that people might call nostalgic, that’s never quite felt accurate to me. It feels more accurate to say they’re about childhood itself.

Q: Please could you provide a quote about your creative relationship with Raf Rennie?

I’ve been a fan of Raf Rennie since the mid 2010s, I’m really buzzed to work with him. We’d already worked on a design for a forthcoming re-release of Severant, and we felt we had a good shared language & understanding of each other. Some similar inspirations too, the original Alien film is a shared inspiration. He developed the Kuedo logo into his own full typeface, “Giger”. To me, his work has a minimalist, composed, slightly detached vibe, in a Kubrick-like way. I really like how it works around a more relaxed and expressive illustration, like Monja & Vincent’s.

Q: Anything interesting to say about how you linked with Monja & Vincent who did the album cover illustration?

I met Monja & Vincent when they asked if I could contribute any music to their graduate animation short. They said they the art style had been somewhat influenced by my music, which was incredible to me. I found the art they showed me so inspiring for my own music, it helped me write my own stuff. (I’m not sure what the status is of their film btw). So I asked them if they would be interested in making an image for the album.

Q: Between the music and the art is there a sort of world-building going on?

When it came to the art we initially tried some world building with visual motifs and iconography but it quickly felt too closed and specific, like making a place too defined, inhabited and pre-configured, owned. It should feel open and redefinable for whoever’s listening.

I didn’t have a conceptual conceit when I made the tracks or sequenced the album. But whenever I needed an image to anchor or aim toward, the images that came were something about the world after all this, if we almost lost everything, hot dry landscapes, remnants of this time, the wonder of this current green world, our relation to future generations, the waves of time. When I was mixing it, I imagined it feeling weathered by time, or out of place in time, like something crash landed, or excavated, half buried in the sand.

Q: How did you link with Flying Lotus and end up signing your album to Brainfeeder?

I met Lotus when he contacted me to see if I wanted to work on a short animated Bladerunner spin off back in 2017, directed by the Cowboy Bebop director Shinichirō Watanabe. We worked together for one crazy week on it, and it was a blast, really inspiring and fun. We worked again on another film shortly after, which was again was a really enjoyable and energising experience.

Q: Any anecdotes about the recording/composing process?

The whole album is strewn across almost a decade. Much of it was rough preliminary sketches from like 2012, 2014, 2018. Turning these into finished tracks and assembling them into a unified album, into something that moved as one body, that was a complex experience. It felt like negotiating with previous versions of myself, down corridors of time. Some were decent melodic ideas that I just didn’t have the compositional ability to develop into a full arrangement back then, I just didn’t grasp harmony well enough to realise them at the time. Almost a third of the album comes from rough sketches I had written for a second Kuedo album that never was. LIke the last track is two audio recordings stitched together of me playing synths late at night, back in 2013, during a brief period where I had a couple of hardware synths. They were single improvised single takes straight to single audio track, with blatant mistakes that I couldn't polish. A little odd hearing a much younger me trying to get better at playing keys, and then me now playing along with that again. Felt like time travelling.

In that process, I probably made some peace with that earlier version of myself too, for not having the confidence to finish it at the time. Most of the heavier drum tracks were written around 2018. In early 2021 I started the process of imagining an album release, writing what still needed to be written, arranging, mixing, finishing it up.


Image credits:
1: Alain Garaguer "La Planet Sauvage OST" album cover
2: Emerald Webb "Dragon Wings and Wizard Tales", album cover
3: Aphrodite's Child "666" album cover
4: Fumito Ueda artwork from the game Ico (referencing Giorgio de Chirico)
5: Horacio Salinas Blanch, cover for Spanish edition of a Philip K Dick book
6: Agnes Lawrence Pelton "The Primal Wing"