We got married to [Smog’s] Our Anniversary. When you write songs, do you think about how listeners might carry them into their own lives, or do the songs stop being yours after they are done? Vanearle
When I wrote [2019’s] Watch Me Get Married, I thought maybe people would have that as their wedding song. But mostly it’s inconceivable what people are gonna do with a song. I don’t think about it too much because there are 100,000 places where it’s gonna live. Have I ever heard about any inappropriate uses of songs? I think having Our Anniversary as a wedding song is a little surprising, but maybe they’re realists.
As an appreciator of dub, if you could spend a week in a studio to collaborate with any dub artist at their peak, who would you go for? albertoayler
I’d have to say Lee “Scratch” Perry just because he was so crazy. He was like a little kid – just infectious excitement. I think that he would have been easy to hang out with. But also, King Tubby was such a minimalist and I’d be curious about how he determined when enough was enough – investing so much power in the fewest elements. Have Fun With God [the 2014 dub remix album of 2013’s Dream River] was very traditional – all the moves were taken from 70s Jamaican records. Maybe once is enough. But I do like the idea of recycling recorded things to make something else – that’s what initially attracted me to dub. If I did [a new remix album], I may do a chopped and screwed record.
I’ve heard that you lived in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, roughly between the ages of 12 and 15. What did you do for fun at that time? pinballfilms
I wasn’t quite a teenager, more like age seven to 12. There was a lot of farmland that we weren’t really supposed to be on, but we couldn’t help ourselves. And there was a particular farmer that had the most land, and he had orchards. I loved being in the apple orchards with all the trees lined up. The farmer would often come chasing us. Mostly it was climbing walls, going places that we weren’t supposed to be, exploring the river and fishing. In the last year I was there, I started getting into music and going to record stores. Moving from Maryland, the biggest culture shock was that when you’re in America, you’re just one of the guys, but when you’re in England in the 70s and you’re an American, you’re kind of from another planet. A lot of the [popular] music and TV was American. People were watching Dallas, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman and Starsky & Hutch. In a way, [being American] was like being a movie star. England at the time was a rough place compared with what I was used to, like that movie Kes. There would be gangs of punks roaming around and causing trouble, like A Clockwork Orange.
What do you think are good ways to support musicians besides going to concerts? In other words: is it time to leave Spotify? fredrikstai
I heard you watched The Sopranos during lockdown. Is being in the music business like being in the mob? ekaterinanovia
Obviously, buying merchandise or records. Is it time to quit Spotify? We don’t really have a choice. Someone else asked if the business is like the mob. I’ve been on an independent label [Drag City] all my life, which is avoiding the mafia. But then streaming happened and basically we were coerced into putting all of our music on streaming services. Drag City did hold out for 10 years or something. Then finally, with all the bands’ consents, they gave in – and they would be out of business now if they hadn’t. That, to me, feels a little bit like coercion or mafia techniques. In a way, they were forced into cooperating with this new thing where someone else is in charge of the money. That was the first time that it felt a little like The Sopranos.
Your records have been released on Chicago’s Drag City for more than 30 years. What would you say makes this label a perfect fit for your music and way of working? TheVisitor
I always think that we grew up together. We both started out at the same time and we figured out what we wanted, what our parameters were, what we were willing to do and do together. Especially at the beginning, they would confer with me about all the next moves and growth they were considering. As I did more records, there were new situations that I was facing as I got slightly more popular, and that was all stuff that we worked out together. I basically feel like it’s my label. In a very broad sense, I have complete control. If I gave them a silent record and said, “put this out”, they would do it without question. I think that’s extremely rare. No one can give me more freedom, there’s no reason to go anywhere else.
Who are for you some of the funniest lyricists, or lyrics? bertisg
Randy Newman, and songs like Love Story (You and Me) where he sings: “Someday he may be President / If things loosen up.” I heard that song decades ago and that was a very impactful line, just to know that you could put that much humour in a song, and it’s not just a laugh – it also has meaning to it. I remember when I was a kid and I heard Short People – that’s the kind of humour that a lot of people are offended by. His sense of humour is very sly, but also social commentary. [Pavement’s] Stephen Malkmus is pretty funny in a very out-there way – he has some straight humour songs, but a lot of his lyrics make me laugh because they’re verbal acrobatics.
Across your career, you seem to have deepened your understanding of how you can use your tools. Can you connect with the idea of being a craftsman in how you approach your work? savale
I’ve always hated that word when it comes to music, and it just does not apply to me. If that person could see me in my life, they would not even dream of calling me a craftsman. I picture a craftsman as the guy who’s got his tools all labelled in boxes and shelves and knows where everything is. I’m more of a drunk professor; I like happenstance and coincidence and mistakes. I know nothing about synthesisers, but I’ll randomly pick one and turn it on and start recording. I press some buttons and play something and somehow try to make it work. I’m only precise about writing the lyrics and then the rest of it is more like: throw it at the wall. I don’t know anything about chord progressions. It’s more being open and receiving things from wherever they come from. I feel more like a medium. A craftsman builds something out of nothing. And I think I receive things that are already built, and make sure the reception is accurate.
In the song Partition [from 2022] you sing, “Meditate, ventilate … Microdose, change your clothes / Do what you’ve got to do”, which stuck with me. Do you meditate? Ventilate? Microdose? Change your clothes? I meditate, too, and feel the space in your songs somehow. aimzo_d0t
Yeah – I think exercise, socialise, externalise … those are all the things that make sure that everything is flowing correctly and nothing is blocked or hidden. Meditation is crucial for me. Right after I moved to Austin around 2004, I think that’s when I started meditating. That was the first time I’d had a house and it was quiet enough. Up until then I’d been in apartments with thin walls. I was trying to reinvent my whole life, and so meditation was part of that. I wanted a backyard and a driveway, a piano. Kind of settling down. I was kind of a late bloomer, so once I hit my 20s, I wanted to explore the country and have the fun that I didn’t have in my teenage years. Then I had enough of that.
Would you allow your voice to be licensed for AI-produced songs? Nicens_boi
No. Does it scare me? It does. It’s just sad to me, really, the way people are devaluing everything with AI. I mean, we’re here. We’re humans on Earth. That’s the fun of it, being a human that doesn’t know everything and trying things out, experimenting and exploring. Being able to do everything without any effort is not fun. When some artist that you like makes a new record, it’s exciting – maybe they did something even better than the last time, or maybe they really fucked up and that’ll be really interesting and give a new dimension to that person. AI is never going to make anything worth thinking about. You could make 100 quote-unquote “Frank Sinatra” records but [sighs] … it’s just not human. Creating things involves growing as a human, and that’s not what AI is about.
Have you ever written a perfect song in your dreams, as happens in [2009’s] Eid Ma Clack Shaw? staypositive
Yeah – I’ve heard the most heavenly melodies and try to hold on to them in my subconscious. They’re never there when I wake up. I’ve heard amazing lines that disappear, like invisible ink. I’ve been trying to be in closer communion with my subconscious – before I go to sleep, I ask my dreams to show me something. It works sometimes. Dreams and music are very close kin, they’re these intangible things that hit you very hard. They’re both spirit things. It’s crazy that we dream and we pay so little attention to it, like they used to say: “Oh, it’s just the brain cleaning itself out.” There’s gotta be more to it than that.
