Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.
Most weekdays look something like this … I won’t beat myself up if I don’t achieve the whole schedule, I’m not saving lives here…
6-9am - Piano Practice
9-11:30 - Music work
12:00 - Gym
1pm - Lunch
2-4pm - Music work
4-8pm - Teach my piano students
8pm - Eat, then sleep.
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?
This was the creative process for my recently released album Contours.
Research concepts, literature, science, mythology and collate data
Record 360° material in interesting acoustic spaces
Created 360° structures
Improvise and compose musical material at the piano
Practise piano parts, tweak and hone material further
Collaborate with vocalist if the track has vocals
Record
Mix
Master
Artwork
360° video work
Create parts for musicians, rehearse and perform!
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?
I spent much of my youth and 20s playing music with and for other people. Playing music with others has shaped the musician I am, whether it was singing along with my mother while she played the guitar and sang at home, singing in a cathedral choir, playing at local venues in a rock band, various live acts at festivals, with string quartets and orchestras in concert halls or DJing in nightclubs.
Alongside that I’ve always loved the solitary pursuit of practicing the piano, producing electronic dance music, writing compositions or improvising by myself. I’ve produced, composed and created installations for many different purposes and many settings with various types of artists and on my own.
I love being amongst a mass gathering of ravers, a massive crowd at a festival, the bombardment of the senses when experiencing an orchestra in a concert hall, the head spinning experience of a surround sound installation, the meaningful song performed to mark of an occasion like a wedding or funeral, right down to the intimacy of playing and listening alone at home.
All of these things make music part of my whole life, that is why music is so important to me.
How does your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?
Music can be an indescribably beautiful experience, one that can momentarily take us out of the everyday madness. Being an outsider of many scenes rather than an insider of one, I am fascinated by the diverse and peculiar nature of reality and am drawn to art that highlights the beauty and depth of reality.
Humanity is at a decisive moment, a tipping point between catastrophe and utopia. This will be decided by our ability to unite and work together. I think because of the abstract nature of music and its ability to not be forceful with imposing opinions and beliefs, it can be the perfect medium to connect people.
Ultimately, the responsibility of a composer in the 21st century is about transforming experience, both by creating music and bringing people together to hear it.
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?
Music can be an incredible device for marking an important occasion; performing and arranging music for a friend’s wedding, a sound installation for a loved ones funeral or DJing a friends birthday party. In terms of dealing with the above-mentioned topics on a day to day personal level, music is with me every day, whether I’m in pain or filled with joy, I am always inspired by it and always inspired to engage with it.
My music room overlooks Deptford market and people always ask me whether it’s too noisy to make music. For recording purposes, it can be annoying at times, but it provides me with a constant source of inspiration, seeing people merge and interact through the window in front of me. Being within, and being able to observe a proper community, a constant stream of people all going through their own crazy experiences of life only fuels my inspiration.
When I look at them, I can only imagine what they are going through in their own lives, but this is a huge spark for me, and I’d much rather create and practice here than in a quiet secluded studio.
There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?
I am no expert when it comes to science, but I take a keen interest in the systems of nature and how to build them into my music, working mathematical processes taken from nature into the structures of my compositions. I work the data into the editing processes when editing the 360° microphone recordings. These structures work nicely as pieces and installations in their own right but for the album / instrumental material I like to improvise and experiment over these edits, using my ear and musicianship skills to come up with the material.
A random but interesting connection here; my great grandfather was a microbiologist studying tropical disease at the Royal Naval College back in the day. I studied music at Trinity Laban, which is based at the same site, now called the Old Royal Naval College. Although I wasn’t alive at the same time as my great grandfather, I’ve always thought of this as a somewhat meaningful and pretty cool connection.
Ultimately rhythm, harmony, timbre and everything else that make up the fundamentals of music IS science but the abstract and emotional nature of music takes it into another realm completely. What makes humans brilliant is that we don’t just do things to survive, there’s something a lot deeper going on, a somewhat spiritual journey.
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
I either obsess over something and strive for perfection or I just can’t be bothered to waste my time.
I have a nice coffee machine at home and I obsess over making the perfect cappuccino each morning, I think this is where the similarities end.
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
Humans are on a journey through time; sound and music have been deeply woven into the fabric of this journey since the beginning.
It is way too deep and fascinating to comprehend that pretty much every human society has unanchored sound as a simple survival mechanism to exploit the use of our hearing in an infinitely diverse set of beautiful ways. I don’t think we can unhook music from the history of the human race and truly analyze it as it’s own entity.
Life is difficult and poses many existential and physical hurdles, so maybe humans simply cannot be without music, the darkness of reality would be massively intensified without it.
