ireallylovemusic vs mothboy
first things first, bravo on the new album simon, it’s a very impressive album.
the cover is red, as is the cd itself. very. any particular reason for the choice of colour?
cheers for the compliment , basically got fed up of being associated with all things dark and black and miserable so i thought fuck it , why not go for bright red. even down to the cd itself , just a big block of red.
i love the fact that the cover appears to be quite a random circular white image, then you look closer and you realize its cars/buildings/airplanes/trees with the trees being the outer perimeter. does this represent a message, about looking closer to see the truth in something, or is it because it just looks great (which it does!)
well , basically i’ve been getting into these almost “product” looking covers ,like the last albums by modeselektor , phon.o etc something with an identifiable theme and image but pretty minimal… almost like a ‘brand’ instead of classic art. so i basically forced the guy designing it (chap named le peep) to think along those line and to use as much bright red as possible. he did a killer job with it , the circles and the imagery i like but he got his wires a bit crossed ,he knew i was moving to bristol from london next year so he kind of assumed that bristol was the countryside so he said that the design was based on me being a true “deviant” and moving from the bright lights of the city to the countryside .. i had to inform him that bristol was like the 5th or 6th biggest city in england and i plan on living in the centre. but the design looked ace so i said we’ll stick with it.
then you open it up, and the style change is quite dramatic, from the minimal clean design of the cover, to an up-n-close natural looking portrait of yourself. quite a stark opposing use of imagery.
my mate martin cornish did that , he’s a really talented artist (though he’d probably prefer sitting around doing crosswords then open up an exhibition) , does great photo-realism and i wanted him to do a portrait , people have an image of electronic artists being faceless , and if they’re not then generally po-faced and serious. so it was kind of an in-joke. the actual painting is pretty big .. my mum has it now.
how long did you have to sit for the portrait – or was this done from photos of your goodself ?
its from a photo of me sitting in the garden , though without grass and stuff in the background.
in fact, why choose a portrait as opposed to a photo, do you like making life harder for yourself ?
just thought it was pretty funny. plus i hate having photos taken the idea of my actual face stuck on something makes me feel a bit ill. at least the painting can lie a little bit.
before we get into the album, let’s get the smash hits question out of the way – why mothboy? a school nickname given due to some schoolboy antics, or a genuine love of the moth ?
nope , neither. me and my partner were sitting in a graveyard in deptford drinking cans of lager a few years ago , and it was carved into this moss-ridden wooden picnic table we were sitting on …. so i nicked it.
now to the album, is there a backstory to the album to its creation? does its title provide an insight into the albums intentions ?
the first album was pretty flippin dark and was called ‘the fears’ , i knew from the start of this one that i wanted to go down a more playful route sound-wise , so the word “deviance” seemed to be much more appropriate. i had the idea of the album mapped out and written down in note books before i made a single note.
the album seems to have pulled back on the harder edged darkness that pervaded your debut. was this done for specific reasons, or just a natural development of the mothboy sound ?
i just wasn’t as miserable in the past 18 months as i was in the 18 months when i made the last album.
did you intend it to be more accessible, or is it that we, the listener, have caught up ?
i think you hit the nail on the head there. i think with the modern format of accessing music these days the more , lets say , experimental side of music is now easier to get hold of , therefore if radio 1 play a break-core , dub-step , click-house or alternative hip-hop record no one really bats an eyelid , and its happened in a short period of time. i also wanted to move on with getting tracks sounding more solid and rounded and less intimidating, so i think it’s a case of (hopefully) good timing.
i always find that albums that have an ‘intro’ (as this does), seems to imply some kind of concept. was this the case, or did you use the radio whitenoise/random pirate radio snippets to mentally drag the listener into the world of the illicit radio broadcasting as some kind of scene setting device?
all the tracks in the radio intro are actually old (unreleased) tracks i made and just wanted to kind of remind people of where i was coming from , also living in south east london i only need to flick through the tuner on my radio in the car and you get something different each time from pirate radios. i always liked that. the female voice at the end is actually taken from a show in the usa. i just glitched it a little.
several of the tracks seem to lovingly revive the long despised genre of dark instrumental hip hop. are you concerned about someone using the phrase trip-hop for such track
as knowingly named as triptych, or are you reclaiming the phrase and style for the good of mankind, or would you give me a thumping if i dared use such a lazy connection?
nope , mo wax records from 1993-96 is probably one of my biggest influences , and the whole early 90’s bristol sound in general. that track was meant to be a nod to it but with a more modern edge. with a track like ’triptych’ used 20 or so 1 second samples from easy listening records found in a junk shop to get the pieces i needed to make the track , just the same way old school trip-hop was created. weird it got maligned as a genre.. i guess because they called anything remotely chilled trip-hop and half the time it was shit. but , you know tracks like ‘contemplating jazz’ by attica blues , ‘gone west’ by howie b , early bristol scene stuff ,the prunes the first couple of massive attack 12” .. these are fucking amazing records.
as the album progresses, it seems to dip into all manner of styles, (sampledlica, hip hop, idm, electronica, d-n-b, soundtrack), i guess this means there are lots of experimental/demo tracks left on the cutting room floor, how did you decide on which tracks to use in the final selection ?
whether they sounded right , there are differing versions of a lot of the tracks. i got lost a little on earlier versions , in fact the rhythmic part of the last track was changed 4 or 5 times.
how do you go about creating your music – are you a laptop man or a real instrument kind of set up. is your spare room full of old synths, or is it all soft versions?
mixture of both , i like to use a sampler based method , i don’t use soft synths. so basically my set up is my laptop with non-too complex software on it , turntable , unusuals junk shop records , guitar , microphone , fx unit , mixer that sort of thing. it helps getting nice guests aswell. but everything gets sampled in and re-created and changed to make unique sounds. synths and drum machines and soft synths do my head in a bit , i’m more happy getting a tiny piece of sound from somewhere and building it up in the sampler. i sequence on my laptop of course.
i am very aware that people with laptop made music can easily get into the trap of never finishing a track, as a sythpad can be constantly tweaked, ‘its never quite there’ etc, do you set yourself limitations per track, or bounce them off friends for feedback?
i send “versions” to a trusted few and grab a feedback , not saying i take much notice of this mind you. i think the moment a track sounds like self-indulgent micro-edit-wankery then i stop. i prefer a decent groove and a hook and a bassline. endless tweaking is for maths teachers.
do you have any intentions of playing this stuff out live, or are you not interested in the whole gig scene ?
i took versions of this album on tour in the usa and canada , in september and it worked. i actually play live quite a bit , mainly places like berlin (love that place) , france and have played london enough. i think gigging is important , though it is harder to find shows as an electronic artist as you don’t get taken too seriously , unless you have an obvious retro image and dull 80’s electro presets people tend not to book you.
2 of the albums highlights are the tracks featuring vocals by akira the don, and son of king rebel on the epic closer down. i think its kind of mad that both of these choices are from your days when you dropped words on the playlouder site!
i’ve known jeremy even longer then that.. i think maybe 7 years or something? i like his voice and i think he’s a talented chap , the bands he was in when i first met him though were fucking terrible though. akira and me have done several things together now , actually when he was writing at playlouder i didn’t actually like him. i kind of assumed he’d be an extension of his journalism , and he wasn’t when we finally hooked up and started talking about music , he was just adam. the playlouder link was accidental really , i knew jeremy (son of king rebel) years before he worked at playlouder, and i started working with adam (akira) once he had left.
do you see yourself making a complete album with vocal collaborations ?
i’d like to do it myself if the truth be known , there was meant to be more vocals on this album it just didn’t happen. it was the track ‘outside’ with suzi c which was the first one made and because that track got a good reaction when i played it to people i kind of got scared to make more with vocals.
are you hoping that the album gets your name out there as an underground version of dr dre and you get asked by all manner of pop people to craft their beats ?
hahaha fun idea but cant see it happening , but if people ask then i wont say no.
how is it different making tracks with vocals as opposed to instrumental only ?
not much different at all , its just a different element you need to fit. both are pretty fun to do.. getting different results is just a bonus really.
if you had a choice beyond playlouder, whose voice would you like to add to your crafted noises, and why ?
well i’ve worked with quite a lot of people apart from the 2 people i’ve worked with playlouder related
.. but since you’re asking and off the top of my head liz frazier (cocteau twins) because you can add a lot of space in a track with a voice like that , q-tip (tribe called quest) because he kicks the shit out of any mc who he gets on a record with , steve ignorant (crass), nick blinko (rudimentary peni) for the tough no messing punk edge , then classic voices like lloyd cole and green gartside (scritti politti) , then the new school of uk hip-hop like jehst .. really into what he does , luca (drop the lime) as he has a lot of energy and once you get through his beats his lyrics are really good and then maybe someone like dionne warwick to throw the spanner in the works a bit.. i dunno , list is too long really. .. i’d like to work with sam marsh ex-vocalist and drummer from jacobs mouse (now in the volunteers) , with him doing the vocals and the drums.
and finally a couple of quick ones.
who has impressed you in 2006, music or otherwise?
subtle .. amazing album , and burial .. another amazing album.
what will 2007 hopefully bring to mothboy?
more shows hopefully , i play in athens , greece in february so another country i’ve never played , so more shows like that would be great. meeting new people is always good.
the album, deviance, is out now, more detail : here