Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I think one of the pieces I’m most proud of is ‘Closure’ which was my single featuring Nambyar.



I produced the track both in London in my studio in Shoreditch and in Amsterdam on a writing trip. I found this amazing single shot sample sound of a hit piano string and started the basis of the track by manipulating that audio and pitching it, then layering each audio file to create chords. I had the track for a while and knew I wanted to save it for something special. My session with Nambyar was my last session of my trip and after talking about our mutual love of James Blake, I knew it was the right session.

I started by freestyling melodies in the room, until we found the topline. I loved our voices together so much just singing in the room, I asked him if he wanted to feature and for us to sing it together. I then laid down analog synth layers with the Prophet Rev 2 and recorded Nambyar’s gorgeous electric guitar lines.

When I got back to London, I layered more analog synth layers with my Prophet 06 and wanted to experiment by creating synths with my voice- recording in varispeed so the vocals sound both sped up and formanted. I also found a great way to create an almost Persian sounding synth with my voice by running it through guitar pedals.

Finally, for the drop I chopped and looped the ‘uh uh uh’ vocal and slowly automated the formant up whilst widening and increasing the reverb tail to make a super washy melancholic feel.

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 think I’ve learnt to love both processes for different reasons.

I love working with people because you get to enter into their creative worlds and I always find I learn something. No one approaches melodies or lyrics in exactly the same way and I think there’s something so exciting about that.

But sometimes there are some songs I have to write on my own, and there’s a sacredness to that which I value more than anything. I think you then really get to explore yourself as a writer and artist which makes your sense of self so much stronger.

No opinions can sometimes be a bad thing, but I think overwhelmingly those sessions on my own have helped enormously for my sense of identity.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I think having done my dissertation on political protest music I always think about this.

On one hand I think music is always a direct reflection of society. It’s a real-time commentary on society and the world around us, and personally as an artist I think it’s so important to use my voice - whether that’s to just make someone feel less alone in what they’re going through, or to use my voice in a protest song. That’s also the way I approach releases.

On a different note also (pardon the pun), music is just constantly all around us, and I think certainly makes us happier - whether it keeps us company on a long road trip, gets us through that tough work out on a Monday morning, or wakes us up too early on a Sunday with the birds.

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?

I think this is actually what got me into music and made me love it as much as I do. My Grandfather passed away from cancer when I was 17- in the middle of my Alevels, and it was ‘Skinny Love’ by Bon Iver that got me through the grief and was always there for me.



I’d just turn to it, close my eyes, let myself cry and used it as basically a hug for my soul. I was also very badly bullied at school and I would lock myself in the school music rooms and just put all of my feelings into writing. I had no one to turn to and talk to, so it was like my therapy and outlet.

I think in every major, defining moment in my life, there was a song that helped me through it and I know that’s the same for a lot of people.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I think music is intrinsically mathematical, whether it be in the counts of each bar and rhythms, or when working with frequencies when EQ’ing something. I think for me, that shows that emotion, magic and science / maths are not mutually exclusive.

People always try to separate both the arts and science - but I think there’s so much beauty and art in just the cell make up of a leaf.

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?
 
No I don’t think it’s inherently different but I do feel the processes are slightly different.

I think it’s a more developed and complex form of creativity when it comes to something like writing a performing a piece of music because you’re actively taking a human experience and trying to translate that into a piece of art in the same way poetry or film or theatre does - there’s another layer or step to it.

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?

I feel like we’ll probably never be able to fully understand how and why but that’s the magic of music. I learnt at university that the way babies learn language is through melody, so perhaps that’s why we resonate with melody so much as humans because all language is in fact based on it.

I’ve also always found it fascinating how a piece of music that doesn’t even have any lyrics or is in a completely different language can resonate so much and bring us to tears.

I think there’s something intrinsically primal about song. I mean in every single major ceremony of our lives there’s song involved too.