Loud and Quiet Presents Midnight Chats.
Yeah, I had such a common by midnight chat.
Thank you for the introduction, John Grant. And here we go again Thursday night. It's late and we're back with another one of those midnight chats. Greg from Loud and Quiet here and if your interests fall into the very niche Venn diagram that displays the overlapping interests of Tracy Thorn, high speed roller coasters and the grammatical intricacies of the Icelandic language, then welcome to what's most definitely your dream podcast.
For everyone else, well, there's a bit in what you're about to hear where I basically fall of my chair when John Grant showed me a very funny photo of himself on an amusement park ride on his fiftieth birthday. I've already banged on in recent episodes about how the best way to support this podcast is to subscribe, rate, and comment wherever you're listening to us. But even better still is that you just tell your friends and family.
Maybe next time there's an awkward silence in the conversation, just blurt it out and just tell people that you like midnight Chats. But I'm not going to labor that point tonight, and I'm just going to get straight onto tonight's guest. And fact is, when we're researching these podcasts, which we do research, we tend to try and rummage around in the small footnotes of an artist's story to try and find some gold nuggets to ask them about.
And John Grant is a gift in that respect because he's done so many and I don't really like using this word, but quirky things. During his career. He's had an extraordinary journey from his very strict religious upbringing in the US through to his time in the old rock band The Czars, and then following that battling personal addictions and later launching a very successful solo career and even gone on to write songs for the likes of Robbie Williams.
Basically too much to fit into a relatively short podcast, but I do ask him about being nominated for a brit and writing the Icelandic entry for Eurovision.
So don't worry.
He has a new album coming out in October and it's called Love Is Magic, and it's about the beauty and absurdity of life. John was off to an award ceremony that night that we caught up to present one of his great influences with a prize. That's where we pick up and things end with him telling me about a song on this new album which features a swear word that we've never heard on the podcast before. So that's just a warning in case you have any small
children listening nearby. Anyway, until next Thursday when we'll be back. This is Midnight Chats episode fifty five, with John Grant lying on a painful looking sofa but staying committed to his decision for a full forty minutes. Perfect sounding good John, I'm gonna lay down, John, Welcome to Midnight Chats.
Thank you, good to be here, Thanks for having me.
You look nice and relaxed.
Now, thank you.
We're doing this. We're recording this for people listening. We are in a little studio in East London and we've got like a small sofa which looks like actually it looks very similar to the one that was in my grandmother's house for many years.
But hers was comfortable.
It's uncomfortable. Can you feel the frame through those those very old looking cushions?
Yes, and it's not comfortable at all.
Actually, yeah, when you stand up, you're going to be feeling it.
I think it would be too painful for me to try and change positions. At this point.
I've committed. I mean, how are you doing?
I'm fine. Like I told you before, it's a stressful day. But you know who's not having a stressful day.
You're after an awards ceremony tonight.
I am. I'm presenting Tracy Thorn with an award tonight, some sort of icon type.
Thing, the Aim Awards, which, if people haven't come across, that is an awards that celebrates independent music. Yes, well, you've worked with Tracy before, but that's exciting to be able to reward her genius basically.
Yeah, yes, I've decided that tonight I shall compare her to the Mississippi River in my speech, or whatever body of water made the Grand Canyon steady consistent, creating landscapes of incredible sonic beauty.
That's perfect. I think we've got that written down right.
I do. Okay, good, don't you think that's good?
That's brilliant. She's got a book coming out next year. He landed on my desk the other day.
Really another one?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, so not too like February.
She's so smart and clever and her command of the English language fills me with shame. She's quite amazing.
Yeah, what are award ceremonies like? Are they things like that? Are they like terrifying? Are they exciting? Are they There's nothing.
Good about it? No, except that moment when you get to present them with that award on that stage, But everything else around it is an absolute nightmare. The dinner. I mean, I'll be sitting there with Ben and Tracy, so it'll be great. There'll be so waiter that looks like a young fucking treat Williams or something, you know, serving and I'll be mistaking his professionalism and hospitality for you know, interest and a lot a life lived together, and you know it'll all wind and crocodile tears.
Other ones you've been to before? Did you do when you were nominated for a brit Award here a few years ago? Did you go to the Brads?
I did?
What was that like? Because that's a whole never that was tortuous, Okay.
Yeah, because it just goes on and on and on and on and on. And I lost Bruno Mars, which is fine because he's he's very good. I think he's very good at what he does. Great voice, great personality. But yeah, and I also met boy George that night, which was lovely, and he was really sweet and kind and so it was really good for me to meet him. And and yeah, but I had this suit on and I don't know, I just I don't feel terribly comfortable with those things. That's not my bag. Baby.
You mentioned language and command of language before. Now you speak five languages?
Yeah, probably four or five.
Okay, we've got listeners all over the world for Midnight Chats, but we've never been able to or I'm too I'm linguistically incompetent. So for people like living in Germany or Spain, we know that we've got listeners there, we've never had somebody on the podcast like before that's been able to speak so many languages. So if we were to say, like, welcome to Midnight Chats to people listening in Germany, what would I have to say?
Yeah, I had such a common by midnight Chat. That sounds better, doesn't it, Yatala.
What was the additional show?
Yeah?
You always see like a fan of language in general, and when did you know that you had an aptitude for learning new languages.
I guess that was my senior year in high school in the States, which is your last year before you go into college. That was the first year that German was offered at my high school, and I was a big Nina Hagen fan, and for that reason, I signed up for German, because I wanted to translate those Nina Hagen lyrics and be able to understand what she was talking about. And then I happened to have a great teacher as well, who sort of took me under wing.
She saw that I was struggling that year, and that was the one thing that I latched onto that year that I really I really excelled at it. And I got an easy A in the class, or maybe I had a B, because I even though I was really good at it, I just didn't like to still I was still always a bad student, but still sort of effortlessly got a B or whatever it was that I got.
And she, you know, she was somebody who sort of like she would go to a cafe with me on the weekend and speak German to me or talk to me about German, and she was wonderful. Her name was p Snider, and I've lost touch with her, unfortunately, but she was lovely. She moved back to Pennsylvania or something and back in the eighties and unfortunately lost touch.
Do you subscribe the idea that some people have a natural talent for learning ot the languages? Who do you think that everybody can be able that has the ability to do that.
There's so many different aspects about learning the language. I mean, pronunciation, like the ability to hear and phonetics is one thing. Everybody wants to be able to speak like a native and not have an accent. That's something that I've always been particularly good at, but it gets harder as your
age and your mouth gets lazy. And then there's also you know, grammar, There's also you know, listening comprehension, there's I think I really feel like it's important to understand the grammar inside and out if you truly want to master a language, because then you can have total control over the language, if you know all the rules, and then you can really express your personality and your sense of humor and all these important things in that language.
If you have that type of knowledge of it, just talking to people and immersing yourself in the language is a great way to go, but I think you need both. So I think you should be out there talking with people, just interacting, immersed in the society living there. If you can't do that, these days, there's all sorts of things you can do. You can read out loud in the language, you can look up things on YouTube, you can watch the news in that language, you can watch television shows
in that language. Everything's on YouTube. So you can immerse yourself in that language to a great extent if you create. You can create that for yourself at home these days quite easily. I think it's better to speak correctly and idiomatically and colloquially than to speak, you know, perfect with a perfect accent. I think anybody would agree with that.
But of course, you know, we want to. One wants to, I mean, one falls in love with the language because one likes the way that sounds, and one would also like to sound that way right when speaking it. But if you can't overcome your accent, don't worry about that. Just do the work, do the drills, do the leg work, and it will happen for you eventually. Just put in the work and you will make progress in the language,
and you'll make fast progress. In the language. There's and then there's there's times there's these key moments when you feel like you feel like you're actually going backwards and that you know less when you did that than you
did when you started. And that's I find, at least I wonder to myself and think that it's probably the brain absorbing a huge amount of information and putting it in order and making sense of it, so that those times when you feel like you're actually going backwards, you're actually your brain's just doing a lot of work and you need to just relax and maybe take a break, and you'll find that when you come back to it, you will have made progress, and lots of progress, a
lot more than you think. You're always further along than you think you are. But don't ever allow yourself to get frustrated and think I'm never going to be able to do this, because you can. You definitely can do it. There's a lot of people say they have no talent for learning the language. I'm not sure I believe that. I mean, certainly we have app we all have, you know,
aptitudes or talents for different things. But I feel like if you put the work in, you can get to a very comfortable level in any language.
Is Icelandic the most recent language that you've learnt, Yeah.
That's the most recent one for me. And that's the hardest thing I've ever done.
Really. Why is that? Why has that been so much more difficult? It is because it doesn't follow it as similar formula to some of other languages that you've learned.
Structurally, well, it's very similar to German actually, but it's still much more complicated. For example, in German, you know, you don't you don't have very many forms for each word.
Let's see you would have you know, for German, you're going to have like five forms for a word maybe you know in the different cases like de mann dan mann desmanus that has to do with the article, So you have and then you have a plural form d mena dane menoun, which is the plural, the dative plural where you just add an end to the plural or an e end to the plural, depending on what the word is. And in Icelandic you have sixteen forms for
every word, so that's eleven more forms at least. And then for example, you also have masculine, feminine, and neutral nouns in Icelandic, you have a very complex verb system like French and German and Spanish and Italian and Portuguese, all the Romance languages with the subjunctive and compound tenses and conditional and Russian, for example, the verb forms the verb system is also quite difficult because they deal with
something called aspect in the verb. It's quite complicated. But the verb forms themselves aren't as varied, and they just have one little particle Bui wait for the conditional tense, which you just add to the past tense of the verb. You had that particle and that becomes the conditional or the subjunctive. Yeah, so Icelandic it's just. And then the pronunciation is the hardest I've ever dealt with, much harder
than German Russian. And that has to do with well they say that that for English speakers the pronunciation is particularly difficult for people for native speakers of English. I don't know why that is. I certainly do believe it, because I've never struggled with pronunciation like I do in Icelandic.
I have to say things. I mean, I always had to read things out loud over and over and over to get them, and at the beginning, you sort of exaggerate sounds because you're getting your mouth to move, start to move in that way, because you need to retrain your mouth for each language. It's important to remember that your mouth doesn't move the same in those languages. And we don't move our mouths when we speak our language because we've learned to speak our language as easily as possible,
you know, and so we're very lazy with it. That's what other people do too, and they're very lazy with things, and that's what turns into dialects and different accents because we're just trying to figure out a way to say things as quickly as possible.
Do you spend the majority of your time? You know, it's still in Iceland now because obviously you move around plenty when you're on tour and things like that. But is that the main base?
That's where I'm based, But I'm not there very much at all.
What is it about the character of Icelandic people that you like. I've been a couple of times, and as well as it being obviously a beautiful country and spectacular once you once you get out a record can travel around the island, it is stunning, But I found the Icelandic people fascinating because of their resilience and their sense of humor and their or just various characteristics. I just
thought they were they were fascinating people. What what characteristics of Icelanders do you do you like?
I like their humor, and they're they're they're quite cheery and friendly. I mean, you really got to learn the language if you want to crack that nut, you know, if you want to get into that society. Same thing with I mean any language, I suppose, or any If you really want to get to the know the people, you must know their language. But I love, you know, I love colloquial Icelandic. I love the way they they
express themselves very in a very clever, funny way. But I don't know's it's that way with every single language. They're all very different, you know. And and Icelanders are pretty relaxed. They're sort of laid back. But that would, if anything, that would fill me with resentment because I
should probably relax a little bit more. But they've got sort of a like a Spanish or Italian relaxedness to them, a relaxed attitude combined with the Scandinavian style and Scandinavian other Scandinavian traits, like it's a strange combination of reservedness and and.
But also.
Like they have a phrase that the rat dust, which is one of the first things that you learn when you go there, that the rat dust, which means that you know, it'll it'll work out, it'll work itself out, it'll it'll get taken care of, don't worry about it, you know. When applied to business, that's not too exciting for the for the consumer. But in as far as everyday lifestyle, I mean, they they have figured out a way to thrive in this sort of difficult to thrive in environment.
Absolutely. If you've done and I sounded in winter.
Yeah, I've done several of them now and they're hard, they're difficult.
Yeah. So I mean again if anybody doesn't visited Iceland, but it gets dark approximately what time in the afternoon in deep winter?
Yeah, in deep winter, I mean it's it's it's you're only going to have like an hour of light, you know, in December and then and that's just twilighty you know. So it's yeah, it gets very it's you really got to watch your vitamin d intake and make sure that you're getting vitamin D, get one of those lamps, take a supplement, go to the gym, make sure you're moving, exercise, you know, eat right. I mean a lot of people up there just go whole hog into the sugar. Seems
like Scandinavians really struggle with sugar consumption. Well they don't seem to be struggling actually with it.
But yeah, in those deep winters, we need to get some energy levels going.
M h. Yeah, and sugar's Sugar's a killer when it comes to that. It's not doing anybody any favors. It's hard.
A few years back, did you enjoy the experience of collaborating on the Icelandic entry for Eurovision?
Oh? Yeah, that was weird. I was at first I wanted to hear what they were doing because I didn't really want to be involved in your vision because I don't I'm not I'm not really into that style and I don't really get crazy. I don't like to watch it either.
I was gonna says you fullowed it up to that point. Was it something you were like a way?
I mean when I was in Sweden, I watched it with everybody else, and you know, just sort of like a little bit horrified, but you know, Abba came from there, so you know it can't be it can't be that bad. But these guys that asked me to do this, to translate this song for them, I just really loved the song they were doing. I was surprised by what they were doing.
It was like this.
Punk pop, you know hit, and it was talking about children, like it was encouraging children to do away with prejudice and not judge other people. And and I really liked the message they were giving. And I really liked the people that wrote the song, and I liked the style of the song because it was quite different than other things that I'd heard. So I said, yes, so yes, I did enjoy.
It on the night of the war. Did you go to it or did you watch it in Iceland with other people watching it kind of cheering them along sort of thing.
I don't know if I saw it. I think I might have been busy, like out and about touring or something at the time. I don't remember seeing them perform it. I just remember that I kept asking how did they do? How did they do? How did they do? And I think they came in like thirteenth or something.
That's respectable, that's liked mid tables as such.
But Iceland really wants to win it. They haven't won it before, right, right, And so I I wasn't sure. I really thought they I mean, I thought they should win with that song, but I think I was skeptical because it was just too good.
Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing with your original it gets things that. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you've written a good songs, it's often about the other things that surround it, just the quirkiness of it, or the stage show or what eccentricity you put on your performance.
Yeah, it's so many different factors that you can't plan for it. And uh, yeah, you just never you don't know what's going to happen.
Away from came about Iceland. Now has twenty eighteen been for you so far? Was the start of the year finishing Love's Magic, which is the new album. What's been happening in twenty eighteen so far?
Yeah, I just was working on the record until finished it in March or April. Yeah, then I had some time off. I had a little bit of time off in Iceland, and then I have just started out on the promo thing. Now you know, the machine is getting going again, and soon we'll be, you know, rehearsing for the shows, and then at the end of October the first show will happen. And it's just all very quick, and it just goes very quick, and it's crazy. I can't believe it.
I read that you celebrated your birthday earlier this year by going to a theme park and going on some roller coasters. I did.
I went very jealous. Oh yeah, it was amazing. I went to Cedar Point, which I consider to be the best one of the if not the best theme park in the world or amusement park in the world, then one of the very best. There's another one in the States called Magic Mountain outside of Los Angeles, which also boths an impressive amount and quality of roller coaster. Okay, but Cedar Point was just in Crowit has a lot
of the you know, they're all competing. It breaks the rules and then somebody else breaks them, and then it brings something back and breaks all the rules. They had a new one this year called Steel Vengeance.
I saw a picture of this earlier and with people looking kind of terrified. On itself, it looked a bit rickety, like.
Yeah, it does look like it sometimes when you're watching it, you can see the the structure moving back and forth. Yeah, but it was the most incredible thing I've ever been on in my life. It is truly the best roller coaster I've ever been on. I could not believe it. I went on it six times.
Yeah, get off straight back in the queue. Yeah. What was so good about Steel Vengeance.
Well, I mean it's quite fast. So it's going like seventy five miles an hour.
Yeah, that is fast for Rodicas.
It's very fast.
Yeah.
I mean there's ones there that go There's one there called Millennium Force that's one hundred feet higher than Steel Vengeance and it goes ninety five ninety three miles an hour the whole time. I mean it's it's just relentless.
That was incredible.
I went on that several times as well, like three times. And then there's another one called Top Thrill Dragster that goes from zero to one hundred and twenty miles an hour in four seconds. It's done with magnets, so you're just sitting there in the car and then it shoots you like a rocket.
It like pollsat the sensation.
Yeah, but it put from zero to one to twenty and four seconds and then it rockets you forty five stories into the sky. What's called top thrill Dragster, right, and then there's one called King Daka in New Jersey and I had actually ridden that one first, and that's a little bit bigger. They broke the record that Cedar Point held with this one before. That thing took my
breath away, like literally sounds like it seriously. I mean I thought it was gonna that was almost too much, but it was incredible and we got right back in mind for that one and did it a second time right away.
Have you been to any of the British theme parks like your Olton Towers and Chestint and World of Adventures.
I haven't yet.
It doesn't sound as exciting as seed a Point to be honest.
Well, these are the biggest and fastest in the world. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's why it had to be there for me, you know, And I think, I mean, Alton Towers has some impressive coasters as well. They have Him Oblivion, which is like I think, like Val Raven, but Val Raven is the you know, the biggest one of that type that the drop coasters where they sort of let you hover with your legs dangling over the edge that you can see the several hundred foot drop in front of you.
I've been on Oblivion and we actually had to stop because the ride. This is the worst thing that you want to hear when you're at a theme park, when you get the message from somebody going was a member of staff coming over the pa and saying, we're just temporarily going to have to just holt the ride because of a technical problem. And you and you're sat there and your legs are just dangling, and you're, you know, you kind of.
You were dangling off the edge.
At that point. We were in the you know where you get onto the ride and you're you're already in the harness, you're ready to go. That's the point where we were. So somebody was out there on the on the track, so to speak, dangling in mid air. It wasn't us, but we heard the announcement and we were there for twenty five minutes.
So yeah, HORRIFYE. Well this one val Raven, that suitor point, which the drop coaster, it was long. I couldn't believe how long it was. Okay, I mean it was incredible. That was one of my favorite ones as well. I have to say I couldn't believe the the sheer number of impressive coasters they have there.
It does sound good Olwen Towers. When I was going up, they had this one called Nemesis that was announced. Yes, there was a big deal made about that when that came around.
I've heard of Nemesis.
Nemesis is good. Oblivion was better.
I think, what's Nemesis? Is it lupin?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't as fun as Oblivion because that is the one where you go in and you pulled the harness and your legs dangling and you kind of your yeah, you know, you're flying around your legs above your head and everything else, and you're seeing the sky in there just your shoes, which is quite exciting.
But that first drop is incredible. I don't know how much higher val Raven is than Nemesis. I mean they you know, it's usually a few feet. I went to one in Germany just a few weeks ago. They have one called the Kraku, which is the Kraken the cracking like it and it's a it's a drop coaster like this and it drops you into the mouth of the Kraken, which is just the circle of teeth. I mean, it's amazing, but it was. It was over in like two seconds.
It was completely okay. It was like a half or the third of the time of val Raven, which just seemed to go on forever, which is good for a coaster. But then at this German park they had one called the Flight of the Demon, which was one of the ones where you dangle on either side of the track. And I have to say that one is obviously made by the same company that made the Gatekeeper in Cedar Point, Ohio, which was just it was fun, but it was just
like a riding in a really smooth, nice car. It wasn't particularly scary or anything.
It was beautiful.
You're on the edge of the lake erie and so you're just looking out over the what looks like the ocean because they're so huge, those lakes. And it was fun but just very chill. But there was that company built one for this part called, like I said, Flight of the Demon, same coaster, you're with the harness with your legs dangling on either side of the track, and wow, that was more impressive than the one at Cedar Point. It was really very cool.
What was your entry point into your love of theme parks? Was it like a Disneyland thing?
Yeah, I think Disneyland might have been the first one.
Space Mountain, yeah, I think thunder Mountain was my first one. Was that Paris or Paris Disneyland Paris, Yeah.
Yeah, And I went to the one in you know, the the one in California anyway, Disneyland is in California and disney World is in Orlando, Florida. Yeah, those are the two biggies out, you know. So we went to the one in Disneyland in California and then and then I think it was Cedar Point after that because we I grew up like three four hours from Cedar Point, right,
So we had friends in Toledo, Ohio. Sometimes we would drive over from Michigan and then we'd stay at their house and then go to Cedar Point the next day. And those were like some of the greatest memories I've ever had. And they still have three, like three of the coasters there that were there when I went there in the seventies, so I hadn't been there since the seventies. When I went this this, you know, a month ago.
And that was a bit of a nostalgia trip as well.
Then, yeah, it was a nostalgia trip because I was there with my you know, I went there with my mother in the seventies and so I've met at great memories of her from that and my sister and our friends, and oh it was amazing. But they didn't have anything like what they have now. I mean, it was just a different world. The corkscrew was the biggest thing they had. And looking at the hill now it looks like it looks like a tiny little child.
It was that what we thought was the most exciting thing.
That was the biggest thing, and the adults thought it was scary too. But now they have these monster things. I mean, have you seen a picture of top thrill dragster?
No?
I mean it's forty five stories high.
That's like half of the shard in London or something, isn't it. That's ridiculous. Yes, do you get the photos? You know, when you come out on the other side and then they say do you want to buy this photo of you looking petrified? Do you have you got a collection of them? Amazing expensive?
If you give me that phone, if there's a phone charging, get on I can show you one right now that will that will surely delight you of me on Flight of the Demon.
And then I'm just getting John's phone so that you and showed me a photo with him on the Flight of the Demon.
I mean, people say I look like a demon from hell on it. Where's the thing?
That is absolutely fantastic. That's what I did when I said one word gravity, like are you.
But people said I look like a demon from hell? And that photo?
Is this your friend next to you?
I just think it looks like a like a groan of horror coming out of it.
It looks like you might be in pain. But yeah, I mean it's enjoyment pain. That is so good.
That girl next to me, she was the one interviewing me that day. They'd heard that they heard in Germany that I like roller coasters and tak me to the roller coaster park and then interviewed me afterwards.
That is that is brilliant. Her hair is exactly, Hey, what are we doing here? This here for we should be doing this? And what about Thorpe thought Park? Yeah, I don't they have a big woody I think the last thing I heard, Yeah.
You see the skinny puppy t shirt here in this photo as well.
Ah, wonderful. Yeah, that is good.
I just love this photo and I like her. She looks like she's just floated in from yoga class, right.
Yeah, hair is like vertical. It's absolutely brilliant.
Yeah, it's amazing.
That's the highlight of my day so far. That's brilliant. Speaking of brilliant pictures, the front cover artwork of your new album, Love's Magic is truly fantastic.
Thank you.
Definitely the best piece of artwork. Oh yeah. If you're listening to this and you haven't seen it, just immediately going have a look. It features yourself with a bird cage on your head. Tell me about the day that you put together that artwork.
Well, I was really annoyed that day because you know, I was arriving in Paris and at the hotel they were like, oh, we don't turn on the AC until June, and it was April and it was, you know, sizzling already. So as you know, as the spoiled American, you're really irritated by that. There's not a fan in sight, you know. Yeah, anyway, and yeah, so there's that, and then and then the the shoot was like ten hours long, so it was,
it was. It was a grueling day of you know, just went wandering around in front of you know, good looking men in my pants, you know, with them all fully clothed, and I just felt, you know, fat and disgusting and you know, you're in your fucking pants, and I just I didn't really enjoy that. But I you know, I always, I always want to commit to the vision of the artist and the photographers. So you know, it's like,
I don't give a shit if I'm miserable. I'm going to do it because I want it to be right. And it is right.
It's it's very right, you know.
Scott King, you know, designed that whole thing, and Johann It's I keep forgetting the photographer's name because it's it's not even that difficult, but it's sort of a much trickier name than Scott King, you know. But the photographer was great too. He had he understood what we were doing and he you know, he got some great shots.
I'm not going to see a better album cover this year. That absolutely not. I've made my mind up already.
Well, thank you.
I should ask you some questions about this album because we've you know, we've not already talked about it yet. We've been too busy talking about want to tell is love is Magic? How was the process of making this because you traveled to two places that are almost certainly not like each other, Cornwall and Texas.
I was in Cornwall, in Saint Bruard at Benge's studio and which is this idyllic, beautiful place, you know, at the foot of Bodmin Moore sold in the hillside there, and it's just absolutely incredible, incredible natural beauty there. And he has a beautiful house there, and he has this basement, you know, with all these wonderful scents and modular sense and it's truly a fairy land like playground, like fairy tale like surroundings. And you're never far from the coast
down there. So there's you know, beautiful little day trips to be had when you can't stand being in the studio. But we had, we just had so much fun. It was just criminal the whole time. You know, it was super super fun, and he's so incredible to work with, you know, and I really wanted to get the sounds right, so it was great to work with somebody that's a master of sound design like he is, to help me get where I was going, and then I just sat
there and composed. And then he was the engineer as well as well as you know, constantly showing me what to do or he was always doing all the poking around with the with the modulars because I wanted to learn, but I wasn't down there to learn. I was down there to make music, so you know, it would have
taken you know, ten years. So he's you know, looks like a you know, operator at a switchboard, you know, the whole time, and just very very fast and knows what to do and knows those instruments inside and out and has all the great classics, you know. He has an original three C Moog modular and a Bukla and the CVS, the Putney here from England, a museum of since yeah, and the Art twenty five hundred, which is
the most gorgeous thing you'll ever see. C S eighty from Yamaha, which is not a modular synth but probably the mother of all analog synse I mean, it's just incredible, you know, and things like Blade Runner were done on that synth with Vangelis Ervan Golis, however the hell one pronounces his name never know, and let's see what else. He also had an EMU modular and a Surge modular.
Just shocking. And I really fell in love with the Prophet The Prophet MVS from nineteen eighty five, which is an incredible, incredibly beautiful instrument with incredible pad sounds, the most delicious pad sounds you're ever gonna hear.
There's a song on the album called smug Cunt Yes, which is a word I've not said on this podcast before but I have now. And is that about anybody in particular?
Originally I was going to write it about Vladimir Putin, but he I think he's It became a much broader thing. It became, you know, it became just like a term for a term of exasperation when faced with these you know, money hungry, greedy, power hungry narcissists of the world who who will do anything, and you know, the destruction of any person or anything or anything in nature is second. You know, it's just totally uninteresting to them. It simply
doesn't matter. I think I've I've just expressed myself very poorly. But it's about you know, extreme narcissism and people who go out into the world totally self absorbed, without any self awareness, looking to destroy calculating. I don't know. So Donald Trump, I don't know. He barely fits in there because I don't know if he's capable of being calculating.
You know, exactly.
But I you know, I don't know the guy. But I hate this type of person. I don't like that. And you know, it's it's I think you have to be careful, you know, judging other people because you unless you've walked in their shoes. But there's also a time for just raw reaction to what you perceive as absolutely disgusting in art, you know, and so you know, the feelings of the moment are totally valid and smug cant is the only way I know how.
To describe it. It's an album that sort of reflects on both the absurd and the beautiful. To my mind, at least, like to find the absurd in everyday life feels very easy these days. You only have to just turn on the TV or I have to just get out of bed, exactly, have to open Twitter. Actually, yeah, that's true. Yeah, you don't have to get out of bed to open the window to an absurd world? Is that in a weird way? Can you find any positives
in that? As in, like, is it an inspiring thing that it can be so absurd in the same way that you know, like comedy can be inspired by that. Can you be inspired to write a song about that?
Absolutely? Absolutely, I think that's exactly what I do. I think I find it. You know, it's like you don't know where they'll laugh or cry? You know, I mean if you don't laugh, you will.
Cry, you know, so you might as well laugh.
Yeah, yeah, you know, if you don't laugh, you would cry if you were capable of it still.
Midnight Chats is a Loud and Quiet podcast production by Emma Snook Music courtesy of gold Panda. Search Midnight Chats on iTunes for more episodes and to subscribe. For more information, visit Loud and Quiet dot com.