Psychologist - Interview - August 2011
By: Mike Harounoff
Our Artist Of The Week Psychologist's EP comes out August 15th Not Even label, he's also doing a launch party for it later which see's him make a rare live appearance - In support of this, Rockfeedback sent him some questions. Luckily, he answered them and e-mailed us back...
The EP is out today, how does it feel to have it out in the big wide world?
I originally wanted Parts One & Two of Epidural to be released within a week of each other, I just figured if the thing was supposed to be a statement then it would be so much more ballsy to do it so quickly that the press are surprised, like genuinely surprised, But I've fast learnt that there's no such thing. You guys all need at least a month or two's warning and then on top of that there were so many other problems along the way with this EP. Propeller was actually mastered on the same day as Waves of OK! Six months ago! So it feels like it should have been out a long time ago.
You're also playing a rare live show in support of the EP. Has there been a certain reluctance on your behalf to play live?
Yes, there has. I made it quite clear at the beginning of this project that I only wanted to do one official show for each EP, and that I wanted each show to be really tailored to suit the respective recording. Also, it's very, very difficult to get everyone in the same room at the same time to rehearse,Waves of OK was completely unrehearsed; like the lights went down on the night and we just prayed that all of the elements that had been rehearsed separately would gel. It went OK I think. But when you're working on a shoestring, actually when you don't even have a fucking shoestring, it's really difficult to get everyone all together and all rehearsed and I just think that's really out of order on a paying audience, it's not their problem you're skint, they've paid to see a show and they should get a perfect show. But actually having said that we've had so much fun doing this one that I think we'll probably keep doing a few live shows here and there while I'm recording the album.
'Propeller' is the 'spritual successor' to 'Waves Of Ok'. The theme of 'Waves...' was being a 'Guardian Angel' - is there an overlying theme to Propeller?
Waves of OK was about truth, this one's about lies. I'm lying to you. The characters are based on other people. Waves of OK is about looking out for someone, chasing them with a big blow-up mattress for them to land on, Propeller's about that same person having pissed you off and broken your heart so you chase them down the high-street with a meat-cleaver. Cut them from minge to tit as it were.
I can imagine emotionally, with 'Propeller' being a far darker record, it must have been quite an experience to create?
The two experiences of making the two different EPs was so apt. Waves of OK was a dream, we went in there, got the bulk of recording done in one day, went back to lewis's house the week after and just mixed solidly for four days and it was such a nice, homely, wholesome experience. His girlfriend Holly makes sort of experimental jewellery so she would be filing or blow-torching some poor bit of a sheep's face or something in the background and me and lewis were mixing this weird chamber music, and we'd all have breaks at breakfast, lunch and dinner to munch something amazing that Lewis or Holly had cooked and then watch an episode of Futurama at the end of the day and then go to bed. At the beginning of Propeller Lewis got offered a ridiculously well-paid job that was a three-month contract and it would have been stupid to turn it down so I didn't have his guidance anywhere near as much, so I basically produced the whole thing by myself, which I've never done before. Luckily I had Nathan Boddy to mix it for me and he really breathed the extra bit of life into it at the end. It was a pretty stressful time for other personal reasons as well and that didn't help, then when it was all finally done and mixed and mastered the sample that we were trying to clear got refused so the whole thing had to be re-sampled, re-mastered etc. And then the videos were a nightmare to make as it was working with technology I had absolutely no idea about and completely underestimated how long it would take to make and put a lot of pressure on the video makers, and then the live band are really difficult to co-ordinate as we all have different schedules that completely don't correlate at all. But in the end it's all fine because the EP is stressful to listen to and thats the point!
Both records come across as being quite theatrical. Do you ever find yourself getting a bit method with the characters you're creating?
Not really, I feel a song when I'm writing it if it's about me, but then when it's done I'm not really that bothered about it, I try not to sing it again until I'm recording it or performing it as you just feel like you're going through the motions and that makes the song less and less special. I hate rehearsing because it's just so weird walking into a day-lit room on a Wednesday and then trying to be the exact level of intensity as the character or the mood of the song. better to save it til theres an audience there to unleash it on! Although the first EP I ever released was called Stanislavsky, who was the grandfather of method acting so maybe I'm just bullshitting you.
Where do you envisage the next record you put together being in terms of sound and theme? Is it something you put a lot of prior thought into?
The album is going to be really fun because it's all songs that were written years ago, way before Epidural was even an embryo. I actually write albums lik a fashion designer draws collections, like spring and summer of each year since I was 16. So I've got all of these albums under my belt that exist in the form of lyrics and memory and thats it, no demos, no nothing. Hundreds and hundreds of songs all memorised, lyrics, basslines, drums, keys, guitars, strings, horns, everything all memorised. Gutted if I get hit by a bus! I don't wanna say too much about the album, but the songs were all written at a time when I spent a lot of time stoned and listening to Hip-Hop and Jungle and gimmicky turntablist albums. I really think the first album needs to be kind of a thank-you note to all of the music that saw me through my teenage years, and so I kind of want to use my oldest, most naive lyrics as well as it just fits, conceptually and because of that its going to be a lot, lot poppier than either Epidural EP.
Music often moves in cycles, and right now it'd seem it's electronic music's turn. What do you think inspired its new found prevalence, and did that have any affect on creating 'Propeller'?
Well, in terms of culture I just think laptops are the new punk, its nothing more intellectual than that, really. Kids used to have guitars, now they have laptops and laptops don't make very good guitar music. In terms of Propeller, I wanted it to be an almost comic jaunt through different forms of electronic music. Like everything at the moment seems very 'good-taste', there's all these very trendy, very hazy, vague, blog-friendly producers and it's all a bit 'lifestyle mag' for my liking, I miss disgusting, obvious, stinking house and garage and drum & bass and so I just thought it would be funny to make tracks like 'Disco at Twin Peaks' where it's overtly bad-taste eurodisco. I'm interested in how snobby we are towards certain sounds and how quickly whole genres fall out of favour. I think snobbishness is actually a good thing because it means theres something to rebel against and that's where new music comes from.
There's been two brilliant remixes out there, one from Angel Haze and the other from Blue Daisy. Both are quite new and innovative artists - are they the kind of musicians you view as your contemporaries?
Yeah, I guess anyone who is my age is a contemporary really. Blue Daisy is in my band and I have been extremely privileged to have front-row seats to his new Eps and his album, which are both fucking incredible. Angel Haze is actually someone Theo, who runs Not Even Records found, she's mental.
You've been particularly forward thinking in the way you've got your music out there - hand delivered promos, accompanying letters etc. Do you find it important to find innovative ways of 'working' with your music as opposed to relying on the way things are often done?
Listen, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and tell you I still go CD shopping! Old Skool! I love creativity of any kind. Music videos are so much fun (if they're good). Photography and graphic design are all gorgeous, amazing art-forms, live performance is so immediate and direct and can be really exciting. But I worry that we're gonna forget that the reason recorded music is so bizarre an art-form is precisely because of the fact that it's invisible. Thats why I got into recording in the first place, because theres something so ghostly about something invisible that can completely fill a room. I worry that people are gonna be made to feel inadequate for just being musicians, like theres no way they'll ever get heard if they don't get seen in a cool video or an app, thats a real shame but a real harsh reality of the future of music.
Finally, what does the future hold for Psychologist?
I really want a Weimaraner.
Propeller is out August 15th on Not Even. The launch party takes place tonight and London's Electrowerkz venue, tickets availalbe here.
Propeller EP by psychologistmusic
Artists in this article: Psychologist