As a woman in full labor, getting into a car is not an easy feat or a comfortable thing at all.
Evening, everyone, Welcome to a new episode of the podcast number eighty eight. You've not come here for Coronavirus Chat, obviously, but simply to say a lot has happened in the weeks since we started putting out the first few episodes in this new series of midnight chats. No doubt with many of you, your usual routines, including your podcast listening habits,
have been turned upside down by what's going on. We just hope that whenever and wherever you're listening to this, that you and those close to you are healthy and staying connected. Hopefully this podcast can give you a brief distraction from all that, and we'll keep them coming as best we can. But on to tonight's guest, Dan Snaith, a man who produces music under many guyses, but it's best known as Ariboo. The chat you're about to hear was recorded in the first week of February this year,
twenty twenty. Dan was kind enough to invite me around to his house in North London. We wound our way through his hallway and down a set of very narrow stairs and into his basement studio where he works every day and makes his music. You may or may not
pick this up on the recording. I can't remember if I left it in, but part way through our conversation upstairs, his young kids arrived back from school, and after we recorded this, they were leaping about in his kitchen doing a impromptu dance competition, which was a lot of fun, and they were very sweet and very welcoming, as was Dan himself. As many of you will know, Cariboo has a new album out. It's available now and it's called Suddenly.
I recommend you check that out. Going into it, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the chat because as a producer, Dan has a reputation as a real technician, someone who takes very seriously his craft, and that's true. But the guy I met was very warm and conversational and deeply caring about his family and the major issues affecting the wider world, and just great company. It doesn't surprise me that he's really well liked within his community.
So let's get into this. Stay safe, support your loved ones and your neighbors, and your favorite podcasts. This is Caribou on episode eighty eight at midnight chats and a quick reminder. As well as this podcast, we also make a monthly independent music magazine. It's called Loud and Quiet, and subscribing to that supports what we do and helps fund this podcast. All the information is at loud and Quiet dot com slash subscribe. In terms of just to
describe to listeners of exactly where we are. You've been so kind as to let us record this in your home studio. I can see an incredible amount of vinyl records. How many do you reckon? You've got there?
Well, this is just there's something. They're also taking over the living room upstairs. That's not all of it. No, no, this isn't all of it. It's maybe a thousand records or something, and then there's a couple more upstairs.
But we got over here.
Then we've got some Fender Roads and an Oberheim Obi eight and a Juno one oh six synth modular synth over there. There's like a kind of black curtain over here, behind which there's a drum kit for drum recording, and then a little use that as a vocal booth as well. But it's worth saying that it's a mess. I would say, at the moment, there's stuff everywhere, it's hard to find a spot to put two chairs down here.
At the moment, can you tell me a little bit about this space, and like how long you've been making music in this room? How far does it go back? And what did it used to be.
Yeah, So we moved into this house when just before our first child was born, which is about eight and a half years closer to nine years ago now, and this room is this is it's a classic London terraced house. And this was like a coal hole, you know, with a you couldn't stand up in it. You could barely stand up in it mud floor. But obviously when we were looking for a place, I was like, I'd never had a room that was like a studio in any sense, Like this room at least now has sound proofed and
stuff like that. And so that was the thing we were looking for. And so we moved in here and converted this place with the help of some very able bodied people who know how to build things. And I'm not pretending that I did it myself. Let's put it that way. Finished this little room down here and put a bunch of gear in here and then made Our Love and the new record suddenly in this room, and I'm here every day.
I was gonna says, spent a lot of hours in here.
Oh yeah.
Given the fact that it's in the basement of your house, how does that mean that your work life, if you like, and your sort of home life interlink. I mean it's literally you can sort of knit from having your breakfast to coming downstairs. Like, how does that actually work on a daily basis? What does your sort of routine that?
Like, those two parts of my life were completely inseparable right there together, And wake up and take the kids, get the kids fed, and take them to school, and then I'm back down here. Kind of until I used to work all hours, every day, all the time. Now I work much more kind of nine to five and then come up. You know, I just emerge from that.
My kids are used to be like popping out of that door at the top of these little stairs from the basement and being dad in dad mode until they're in bed, and then maybe later when everybody else is going to sleep in the house, I get back down here for another few hours.
To sneak back down, Yeah, exact midnight like the equivons, like a midnight face, but with just samples or something exactly.
I mean it is.
That's one thing I love about it is that it's here, available, ready, whenever you know it's I don't have to think, Okay, I'm going home for the day from a studio and it's always here if I need to run down and make a note of something or record something, or do you know, it's right there.
When you're working on a project. Does it ever get to consuming? Because I suppose the opposite argument that you know, people work in different ways that they some people would prefer to have a studio somewhere else that they the moment they walk out the door, they kind of shut the door and they're like, well, I'm coming back to that tomorrow, whereas you're sort of like this is so accessible. Yeah, it can be like I'm just gonna nit down and
just sort that. So, yeah, there's any kind of friction those in that sense.
Yeah.
The I mean the thing that the risk would be that you can never turn off, which is a kind of contemporary not just in my line of work but in everybody's work these days, is you're expected to be available at all hours. But that used to be the situation when before having kids, I was just it was always there and I'd always disappear. Now I'm just have developed the habit of delineating that those chunks of my
life more. For a couple of weeks working on this album, Sam Floating Points was away on tour DJing, and he was like Dan, like the studios. He's got a proper, real amazing studio. You can see little videos of it online and stuff. It's incredible and it's you know, a dedicated space where you go and you open it up, and you lock it up at the end of the
day and you go home. And I recorded in there for a couple of weeks and it was really productive, probably because he's got it's like a vintage synthesizer museum in there, but also I did get a sense of that, which I've never had a separate space. I've always worked like from beside my bed, you know, in my bedroom when I was a teenager and getting older, you know,
the same thing. Until we moved into this house and I got a sense of that, Oh yeah, it can be good too, because they're less distraction and things like that as well, So you go there for a concentrated period of time, but there's nothing else to do there.
You're just working all the time.
But in the end, I mean it's evident in the music that I make, particularly on this album, my personal life ends up in the music that I make. So it makes sense for them to be alongside one another.
And even though we can see an awful lot of music here today, all these fun and records that we've already mentioned, you did have a bit of a clear out this week. You took some took some music, and you took some equipment down to your local ox VM shop. Yeah, beyond the obvious reasons of that, being able to go to a good cause and make some some money for charity. Yeah,
what do you like about doing that? Because you know, it always seems to get a bit of traction when it's like, oh, Carabow's left some some sort of gems in the local charity shop. So what was it that you like about doing that?
Yeah? I did it once before.
I just love's say, like, these record shelves look full, but actually if I if I kind of grab them and I pulled, there's like a good couple inches on either of these, yea, and before there's look, there's even like four or five inches spare down there. Before that clear out, these was like wedged in here till it was like a solid wall. You couldn't get a finger in anywhere. So the ones upstairs there's actually more space. It looks it doesn't look like I've had a clear out, does it.
It's still looking pretty jammed. I've got to ask as well, how do you how do you arrange your vinyl? Is it via alphabetical? Is it genre?
Is it?
Is it any system?
Well, this is all It's like dance music, club music up there, hip hop down here? These three this is more experimental music. So upstairs is like jazz and rock, and it's genre basically.
Yeah.
How often do you visit a vinyl record? You listen to it every day? You like a couple times a week? Do you never?
Like?
I mean, I find myself going through kind of periods, Well, listen to it lots, and then maybe a couple of weeks will go by, and then I'll won't listen untill and then I'll go back again. Do you know what I mean?
I mean, the honest answer at the moment and part of the reason for the clear out was that barely ever. You know, music's available to us all digitally, universally all the time, and a lot of these records that I really love I've ripped onto a digital file and that's the way I'm going to sample them and manipulate them as inside a computer. Eventually, I've got down to the point where I'm just keeping the things that mean something
sentimental to me, which is still a lot. Once before, I'd taken a pile of them to the same ox vam without intending it to be a thing, just like taking them in there, and they posted on social media like.
Hey, dance, just been in here, and they were.
Like we we're swamped, and so I was like, okay, well, actually that seems to be a big part of what I like about. You know, I've spent my whole life learning about music, accumulating music that I like. And one thing that I can do that seems nice and generous and people appreciate it is like some kind of sharing it. This obviously is like raising money for charity is the
other thing. But realizing that people have that connection with like, oh, what's what and I get that I totally remember as a kid, and even now, you know, oh, what's that person been listening to that? If somebody who's music I'm interested in. So this time I was like, okay, I'll do a proper clear out, get a few one hundred records together and take it down there all at once. And yeah, apparently it was. It was very busy, busy yesterday.
It's good.
But there are a few bits of kit as well, because is this something presumably you kind of like quite like the idea that somebody picks a bit, picks a bit of kit, plays around with it, maybe ends up on somebody else's album one day, whoever they might be.
There were a few bits of equipment. I've done that before. I've done it just on the eBay and things, you know, just sold things. And I sold a little sampler that we used to use on stage and I had forgotten to like delete the samples off it, and the person who bought it was just like, hey, I just arrived, and by the way, are you Caribou because hit this button, like a part of your record appears, you know, it's
things that we'd be triggering during the show. And I was like, oh, yeah, I probably should have, but it's Yeah, it's nice to feel that kind of sense of lineage and you know, connection. I imagine people might like that. I like that idea. For example, the last album Our Love was mixed on Nigel Godrich's mixing desk, and like that was amazing to think like it was from I think it's called Ocean Way Studios and Los Angeles he
got it from. And to have that sense of like, whoa, this has been so much amazing music's come through here, and he's mixed so many amazing things on there in this room.
You can see.
This is like not a kind of don't have that thing of big grand studio equipment and stuff, but I like that idea.
Yea, it's kind of appropriate that we're here recording this podcast in your studio that's at home, because home is a real like central theme to Suddenly, which is the new Caribou album. Home and family and life and love and loss and all those things. So just tell me a little bit about how those elements those things is everyday things Violes Moss make their way into your music.
Over the years, I've become comfortable having more and more of that personal stuff end up in my music. It's a requires some kind of degree of confidence to know that people are going to hear those personal things about my life and put them in the music. And this in the past five years while I was making this record, unlike previous times in my life, there are just so many of these big, often quite difficult moments in my family.
Our love I was when we had our first daughter in the kind of world seems new and everything's shiny and rose tinted and everything it's kind of it's utopian feeling. The last years while I was making this, there's been loads of happiness. I don't want to make it sound like it was all misery and difficulty, because it wasn't at all. But the big things that shaped like that kind of brought our family together. Unfortunately, a lot of
them were difficult things, like my wife's family. There's a death of somebody with a heart attack not much older than me, and and then that catalyzed a divorce, and so her family was My wife and I've been together for twenty years. You saw our nieces living with us in this house, so I'm you know, I'm there as
close as my family. There's no distinction really, and that just like Rocked the kind of foundations of all of us, and particularly ended up being I ended up myself and my wife ended up in the situation of having to support people that were even closer to these things than than we were.
And I think the music helps.
Some of the songs are like a you know, a letter, a tribute directly to the There's the song New Jade is like a tribute to the to my wife's sister who went to escape this toxic marriage that she'd been in for decades and was so strong and brave and resilient in doing that, and I wanted to, like, you know,
pay tribute to her and capture that. And so yeah, it would have been very, very strange had these things which like shaped my life not been on this record, you know, I'd be like looking back and thinking it doesn't represent what was happening in my life at that time.
And some of the songs on the album are not just kind of like first person perspective your thoughts on those situations, but almost kind of imagine through the eyes of those people.
Is that right? Yep, that's true that it.
Comes from your natural empathy around the situations with your family members.
That role of being supportive and comforting or empathizing or you know, and then also processing it myself. All of those things are kind of happening together, you know, and that's what the music allows me. And on all these difficult things in the record, I think it still sounds quite there's kind of melancholy elements in it, but it
still sounds quite affirming and positive. It was about finding something to give comfort, to be some positive in some sense out of it, and the music does that for me as well.
You know.
It's like it's a way of processing difficult things and making something constructive or even sometimes joyous out of it, you know, making those difficult things work in some way.
Do you think music kind of plays almost like a sort of meditative role when something something big happens in your life, something you weren't expecting, whether that's the loss of somebody or whatever, it might be, big change. Some people kind of find sort this in like doing some exercise, like maybe going for a walk, like get some fresh air,
whatever it might be. If you come to understand music, is it playing in almost this sort of like a therapeutic like meditative For sure, you poscess in your own thoughts something.
Absolutely, Yeah, for sure. And I mean another way, it.
Just occurred to me, like people will rely on other people's music to process things, you know, when they're going through a difficult time. People have told me that about other music that I've made, or you know, I know other musicians who've or just friends who've relied on a record to help them with that. And but my impulse in that kind of situation is to make the music that feels like it'll do.
That to me.
Okay, it's some footsteps upstairs, Yeah, your kids, if I back from school.
Yeah, it's that time. It's three forty five. The tiny feet are running over the floors above us.
How they spend the next few hours.
So they're very different in ages. An eight year old and there's a three year old. The eight year old now just wants she's a real writer. She'll just spend her time writing and creating all these projects herself. She's really like invested in environmental action as well, which is I mean, is a thing for kids these days, right unfortunately, because we've left them in the scenario where that's relevant. So yeah, she's really focused in that way, which is remarkable to see.
The three year old.
It's just like a ball of fun and trouble and energy. So yeah, they have very different moods modes that they're they're after school takes. Yeah, but they're both sociable kids, so that often there's like often it's those that sounded just like the two of them, But often it's like ten kids come plowing into the house after.
Off of the classes coming back.
Yeah, which is it feels so nice and it's really really nice to have that kind of a house where it's like the doors are open all the time, people are coming and going.
It lives.
This neighborhood we live in is kind of like a bit of a sesame street. Maybe it's not a British appropriate reference, but like definitely we get that. You know everybody, We know every You can't I can't walk out of the house without like saying hello to five different people, which is really nice.
Before we talk a little bit more about suddenly, I guess I suppose we should wind back a little bit. We talked about our in that period we were to look back to sort of twenty fourteen twenty fifteen, and like the music that you'd made, that record took you all over the world. The biggest stages you ever played the biggest song that you've ever released, Like, coming off the back of that, what were your initial thoughts going
into the process of starting to write new material. Did any extra thoughts, any extra baggage, any extra pressure come with any of that?
It was all really affirming. You know.
I kind of made Our Love as a I mean, Swim had seemed like a big step up for me, and I made Our Love as a kind of thank you and to share directly with the people who my music had kind of connected to. And it kind of lived up to that potential. You know, it can't do without you. When I was making it, I was already picture playing at Glastonbury or playing it wherever, and it had exactly that kind of life, which is so wonderful.
I mean, when I'm so fortunate to get to play the shows that we get to play, and travel around and share that music, have my music mean something to people, that's such a fortunate thing that I don't I don't lose sight of or take for granted.
So that's what that album was all about.
But then I also realized, like, okay, you know, I always, to some degree think of myself as.
Like musical weirdo or outsider.
You know, I'm never going to make bona fide pop music, you know, really popular pop music. I was like, I can't just keep chasing that thing. I can't try and make another can't do it that you are like top, you know, take it up to another level every single time. That's not a sustainable, sensible thing to do, and that
will be frustrating and drive me crazy. So instead it was like, well, you know, people have been very generous in the past with following my weird trajectory through different genres, different styles, music that's quite unusual or idiosyncratic, eccentric at times, So I don't need to be afraid of that, you know. I think that's that's kind of the thinking that you can get into when things have gone well. You can think, okay, I'd better not take any risks because that's not what
people want from me. They you know, that'll ruin everything. But I was like, no, I'm not sure that's true, and particularly like I feel like we live in a time when there's so much music everywhere that the music that actually connects with people and has a life is the music that stands out or is different or has presents like things from a slightly different angle or lens. So it was kind of like, I feel like I don't need to worry about those things, and I didn't
really worry about it. Instead, it kind of gave me a kind of impetus to highlight those idiosyncrasies and eccentricities in the music, which I think you hear in the kind of way that the songs will take drastic left turns, it will be a genre shift halfway through a song, or the bottom feel like the floor dropped out from underneath you in a different You'll be in a different world all of a sudden, And that felt exciting and
different to me. That's not been something that's really been on my pre records, and just from a kind of producer's self, in my very particular perspective, I always want to feel like I'm doing something different. I don't want to feel like I'm treading over the same territory.
The space was sat in now. I mean it's not a big space. There's a lot of stuff in here. So like what I'm imagining is that actual you're working on music is a fairly kind of solitary experience. So who are the people who are your sounding boards through the process of creating suddenly, because like you say, you have tried a few different things, so presumably it's various stages. You wanted to say to people, I've done something a
bit different here. What do you think of this? This is not my you know, I've not done this before, or you wanted just to seek those little bits of feedback or reassurance or whatever it might be.
Yeah, it's my wife and Kieran a fortet and you know I make so much music, and I make so I made nine hundred and something draft ideas for this album, which is just a crazy stupid I mean, it's like it's almost like somebody I should be referred to, you know, psychotherapist. So when you hear that number. But I make that music because I enjoy making it, and I make it without any pressure or critical thinking.
About is this good? Is as bad? Is it fit on the record? Is it not?
I just make it, tinkering around the same way that I've always done since I was a teenager. It's just a part of my life that I enjoy like I can't imagine being without. In that respect, it doesn't matter to me that ninety nine percent. I mean, yeah, you know, like the vast majority of this stuff will never see the light of day. But then there are definitely there are definitely some that I'm the vast majority that I make are like Okay, that doesn't add anything to anything.
It's just like it was fun to do. But nobody ever needs to hear that. Fine.
Then there's a bunch that I like, feel pretty confident about, and then there's ones that I there's also ones that I like, you say, they are something different, there's something unusual, they are more of a risk or more of something. And having my wife and Kieran hear those and then they're both brutally honest with me, you know, they'll they'll be that's important. That's really important for me because I'm
so close to it. I need that perspective. And there are times when I'm super excited about something and they'll just be like, no, sorry.
This is this isn't this isn't particularly, But when it comes to your wife, then is.
Oh yeah, oh totally.
She's she can be exactly as she should be. You know, it means she cares about what I'm doing. You know, it's not letting things just slide. But it can be difficult to hear for sure.
What about we've already mentioned your two daughters. Do they take an interest in what you do? Do they come down to the studio listen to the music because you're making it? If they kind of particularly older daughter perhaps like she's been kind of bitten by like the music bug.
So the three year old comes and sits in that chair that you're in right now and ask me to swivel her around. It's like a spinning chair would be quite fun.
That's her thing.
The eight year old does I just want to hear it now, and does kind of understand the whole idea, you know, like gets that I'm going to release an album and then I'm going to go on tour and I'm going to play at festivals, and she's probably gonna come and see some shows and et cetera, et cetera, and that you know that it came out of me being really into music as a kid and playing the piano lots and this.
Gradually she kind of gets the whole picture to.
Some degree, well just surprisingly complete degree, probably because she's so so commonplace in her life. There was a great moment I can't remember the exact wording. But there was a time when she was like describing you know, like, yeah, what you know people end up with like a normal job like musician or et cetera. We were like, hang on a minute, Like the musician isn't really a normal I mean it's fortunately there's lots of people to do it, but it's not like what people think of as a
normal job. But she's so inside that world where obviously I have lots of friends that are musicians as well. Yeah, she really wanted to hear this album and gave it a good, good listen and thought and she said to me very seriously, like, Dad, I think Home is going to be the most popular thing you've ever done.
Which is I was like, great that come from yeah, having great approval.
Yeah, and she she plays piano. She comes down here and plays these drums. Sometimes. One thing I'm cautious about, and it's not where I come from at all, the like kind of having music force, Like I love music, so you've got to love music.
I don't.
It's I mean, it's everywhere, so if they want it, they it's available to them. But I never had that and I don't want that to be the way they get into it.
It's like this little pushy dad socker coach thing, isn't it just being like you will do this thing, like yeah, you kind of am good to maybe resist that.
Totally back to whatever they get to do.
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean we talked a bit about some of the loss unfortunately that went into the making of this album. But obviously your second daughter was born during the making of this record as well, I'll say, and from what I've read, that was quite an eventful experience.
Yeah, so that was another sudden development in a different kind of way. She was born on the Caledonian Road, I mean literally onto the onto the road we were. We don't have a car, so we were headed towards hospital in Houston, uh and my wife was in labor and it was like we'd made a plan that to have a dula like this woman who's a midwife at a hospital, but then she was going to come and assist us, but also drive us to the hospital. That was a key part of the plan. And because like
otherwise you're in a taxi and that's even crazier. So and then I was like texting her during the day being like I think, you know, it's like things are picking up here, you know, when she was at work at the at a hospital, a different hospital, when do you think you can get here? And by the time she did get here after work, because it can take a long time. By the time she got here, she looked, took one look at my wife and like just her face like fell and she was like, We've got to
get in the car right now. That was a crazy scene. You know, for one thing, just as a woman in full labor getting into a car is not an easy feat or a comfortable thing at all. Then you know, like driving, getting stuck in traffic. You know, it's London, you can get stuck in it's a spot because some lorries pulling out or whatever. And by the time we got we were we were close. We almost made it
for the record. But then at some point on the Caledonian Road, my wife was just like, this is happening right now, pull over the car and the woman, the midwife, ran around, opened the door. The baby was born. Our daughter was born. Like that second, you know, there was no waiting around. And then thirty seconds later we were all laughing and crying sitting there. There were people, you know, just people all around and nobody really noticed that this
was happening. It's a weird one of those things where people are you're in an urban environment, but people are so focused on their own thing they it's crazy, really crazy moment.
I suppose one of the nice things about that, as no doubt stress but as it was at points a lot of people, most people wouldn't really get the opportunity to go back to the place where they were born. Yet your daughter's going to have a life where you can go back to the exact spot.
Which, yeah, it's pretty cool actually, Like we do go past there on the bus or in a taxi or whatever and say, hey, live that's where you were born. You know, yeah, that's that is an interesting and it'll it's the same for us. You know, that spot will never be the same as well. Again we've we lived on Caledonian Road actually for several years, so it seems like an appropriate place for it, I mean, aside from a hospital, which would have been another appropriate place for it to happen.
Presumably the title suddenly is reference to these things that have come along in life without any warning.
That is what it refers to.
But I have a weird kind of backwards way of arriving at it and the meaning behind it, because it was this daughter that was born in a car or on the road, that had just added this word to her vocabulary. She was about to turn three, and everything was suddenly this suddenly and actually actually those were two words at the time, Actually this, suddenly that. And I was desperate to find a title, you know, this is
I hate finding album titles, song titles. And it was like past the deadline of when the record, the record's done, everything's done, and I don't have a very good picture or perspective necessarily on exactly what it was all about, because it's such a blur trying to get it all finished and stuff. And my wife spotted her saying this word over and over again, said what about that suddenly?
And I thought of it, and I think my wife thought of it in respect in reference to the kind of sudden musical changes in the music, because there's quite a lot of those, you know, there's those moments.
I thought, oh, yeah, maybe that's sense.
And then I would play the album to friends of mine and they would use the words suddenly to describe the music, and I was like, Okay, maybe it makes sense. And then it was when I was press person that was writing up the press for release, was like, tell me something about like the circumstance of making this album, what your life has been like, all that stuff. I started writing it all out and realized, like, this is
how I was. I was really blind to that fact that the shape of my life is being changed by these sudden things. And that's what all these songs are about. They're all about these things. So it's funny how appropriate it is given that I know it has come up with by a toddler or yeah, it's just it's weird the way it seems so inevitable now, like it couldn't have been called anything else. But and yet I didn't have the forethought or the perspective to be able to see that myself at the time.
Continuing on the sort of theme of family, there's a sample of your mother on the album, isn't there? Can you tell me about that? Where did that come from?
So that came from My parents are English and they moved over to Canada. My dad's in academics. We got a job at university over there, and before I was born and my mom's parents were still here, so she would make these tapes, you know, cassette tapes. This was the late seventies, early eighties, that she would record of
us doing stuff. You know, I don't know, her reading to us, my older sister's reading something they had written at school, or playing something that they learned on the piano, or et cetera, et cetera, that kind of stuff, or even just her talking describing what we'd been doing as a family, like a kind of letter, but an audio letter. And there's a whole bunch of these tapes that spend a probably a decade. But then probably things got too busy or you know, I don't know, for whatever reason.
We weren't little kids anymore, so it didn't make sense to do these that she would send back to her parents, and I kind of knew they existed, but then we got them back when my grandparents passed away, you know, inevitably, and I was like, well, I can nobody else has a tape recorder, tape deck I can record.
We should have these, you.
Know, this is like a great piece of family history. Yeah, lovely thing to be able to keepe. Absolutely, and it's you.
Know, there was unlike my daughter's life where every moment is documented and record in some way. There's not that much of my childhood recorded in sound or video. I digitized all this scented around, but also just like listen to it because it was fascinating to hear this, the kind of reality of what life sounded like then versus
our kind of remembered remembrances of our childhood. And then it occurred to me, you know this album, this is what the themes about family and were so en mashed in the music that I thought there should be some part of this on here. And I found this part of my mom singing she's saying to my sister, who's this is before I was born, when my sister was like a two year toddler, two year old, and I just found a spot to find it to place it on the album.
It just seems so apt given all the stuff that we've talked about that that's included on there. You mentioned it earlier earlier on about your daughter's passion for sustainability, for environmental issues, and the fact that you know, like you say, we're the younger generations, people younger than yourself and myself, they're having to be incredibly active in that respect.
Because you know of our generation's lack of action. Do you think a lot about the issue of sustainability and how does that kind of work in parallel to you just you your job and your lifestyle and things like that.
Yeah, so, I mean it is something that I think about a lot, and actually so i've and it's something that comes up in discussions with musician friends of mine all the time. There's a lot of travel and flying around, and festivals have a huge footprint and et cetera, and there's I feel like there really is a great desire amongst musicians and in the music industry to be sustainable, be better, but people are kind of like paralyzed by
not knowing what to do. All of us are kind of none of us are outside of this problem, you know. So it's very hard to feel like you can make a statement when you're compromised yourself. And that's definitely a way that I feel. I feel like, how can I say we should do this when people are like, yeah, get on another plane to another festival. So but this time, I've I mean, it's critical to the degree where we
have to put that aside and act anyway. So there are a number of things that I've done for this
record and the tour. We've been offsetting our travels for a decade now, the tour, but this time we're going to We got Julie's Bicycle is a really good nonprofit that does kind of audits and stuff for businesses, I think in general, but maybe particularly creative industries and stuff, and they did discussed with us the best things we can do regarding the tour aside, you know, offsetting obviously we're going to offset the whole tour and everything, but
minimizing the footprint of various things, and then also within to do with the production of the record, manufacturing the physical copies in such a way that it has the least impact.
The CD comes.
In entirely cardboard packaging using recycled paper and FSC certified materials, which is something that the labels that I'm working with already do. Offsetting the entire footprint of the production of the music, and also of the streaming.
There's a good book that's just actually.
Been released that I haven't had an advanced copy of about the footprint of streaming and how it's significant. It's not like, oh now there's now people listen to it in the ether, and that doesn't create any problem. So it's something to be aware of, and I'm going to continue, as the album's listen to, to continue offsetting that. It's something I think about all the time. I think, and I hope we will see I mean, but it's still
super problematic. Like I say, I don't feel like I have a good answer or a complete answer in any way.
Everywhere I turn.
I'm talking to musicians that are thinking about this and trying to do things that is different from five years ago.
Tell me a little bit about how you feel that that's changed the last few years.
There's a change in that for sure. That's definitely the sense I get. I would say the thing that really changed it for me and gave me the sense of that I needed to make that decision personally and stop worrying about being a hypocrite when we're all to some degrees hypocrites. But I realized that the kind of touring footprint is larger than I mean, we're you know, we're currently that's what we do. We calculate every aspect of
it so that we can offset it. So I'm acutely aware of exactly the consequences of this is an interesting thing. I can say this actually with Julie's bicycle. We did an audit of our UK tour and I was like, it's the UK trains everywhere. We can just travel on trains. The lighting and stuff will have to go in a truck, but we can go in a train and then stay
in hotels and instead of going into tour bus. And we did the worked out the numbers for it, and actually the cost of even we share hotel rooms, two of us to hotel rooms, so is to kind of minimize our impact. But even so with like four hotel rooms or whatever it would be a night, their footprint. You know, think about what you do in a hotel room. You could turn the heat up and like all the laundry gets washed every day and et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. Yeah, you're not thinking in the same way that you are at home, or yeah, it's somebody else's problem kind of thing. And we realized surprisingly because on a tour bus we don't get hotel rooms. We just stay in the tour bus and we use the shower in the venue, and we're you know, the footprint of those two modes of doing the UK tour were virtually identical,
which was totally a surprise to me. I mean, this is a big thing for me, is that we must be like evidence led, because I don't want it to appear like I'm doing this to be worthier, holier than now this is about. This is a situation where the important thing is that we are minimizing some physical thing, which is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted, and that that's we need to be evidence led in doing that.
One of the things that really like turned up the metaphorical temperature to use an unfortunately relevant metaphor is this book called The Uninhabitable Earth by Yeah so David wall as wells Yeah, which is just devastating. I mean, like it's a crushing book to read. And for those listening you haven't read it. It's like, you know, it's very sober. And he wasn't even kind of an evangelical environmental activist.
He came to this quite recently, and he just goes through and assembles all the kind of you know, very non contentious mainstream evidence about if the temperature global temperature raises two degrees in the next forty years, these are the things that will happen, and then you know, it doesn't stop in another forty years, that'll gone up another degree or two. And he goes through all the scenarios
and it's just mind boggling. I mean, it's so devastating, you know, like agricultural decline, like massive sea level And it also dispels the myth that this is a problem that's happening somewhere else. I think that's the big thing too, is that people are like, ah, yeah, this is happening to like somebody I don't know on the other side of the world wherevers you read this book and you realize that is not the case at all.
You can't not read it and not feel compelled to take personal action. I think, like the first thirty five pages, the introduction as it were, also does it quite a thin interesting job of explaining how the climate crisis hasn't been addressed to the degree that it needs to be so far because of the fact that it feels so enormous that people can't basically get their head around it. Those conversations that you've had with people behind the scenes.
Does it feel like now there's like a kind of swell of conversation happening, and do you think people will be in I used to get together and work a path through it. You kind of see it, you feel quite positive about that.
There's times that I feel positive and there's times I feel defeated and by the whole thing. Yeah, I think there will see. You know, I have friends in the music industry who are working on doing really big projects and things that will hopefully come to fruition in the next few years, like raising huge amounts of money because we need, like it's all very well to stop DJ x Y and Z taking private jets that contributes, there's no question, but we need like big systemic changes in
our society. We you know, inevidently, like we definitely do need to see those things happen. And so it's good to see people who have a lot, you know, the music industry when united can like mobilize in a really big way. And I'm starting to see it's all very
well us off setting our tours and whatever. Sure, but there needs to be people with bigger, bolder ideas, and I'm starting to see those things happen, and hopefully that's something that you can like, you know, sign on to and join join up with and contribute to in some way. But in the last two years even there's being a real change in mentality about about the scale of the problem and about how crucial it is that we address it now.
I'm interested to know. We talked a bit about suddenly the record. We've talked about your kind of passions and your interests and your family and everything else. We touched upon where we're talking about you taking the kit down to Oxfam and the records down to Oxfam. That almost sort of passing of your experience. You're passing of your knowledge. You know, you've been making music for a long time. You're clearly still kind of learning yourself every day with
your with your art, your technique and everything else. But what about passing on your skills? Do you feel a sort of duty to other producers you meet young producers, other people that are in the kind of industry so to speak, that you just sort of want to be like, Hey, I've spent a long time learning about all this stuff, Like I can help you by giving you some knowledge or some well quite literally give you some equipment in some cases. Yeah, yeah, how important is that to you?
Very important? And it's really relevant right now. Actually, I mean, it's kind of reflective of the fact that Kieran was that person for me. He helped me get my music signed in the first place, and he's always been that kind of sounding board and feedback. And then I look around in his life and he does that for so many people that people in our little world of electronic music aren't aware of the number of people that are asking Kieran.
Hey, would you mind listening to this and tell me what you think? And et cetera, et.
Cetera, people starting out, people very well established. And I've realized like I've been a beneficiary of that, and not just from Kieren, but I've had lots of good kind of mentoring in the music world about anything music, but also like the practical things of how to do this and that, and so I do.
There are like a bunch of.
People that I do that same thing for, and I feel very you know, happy to be able to be that they ask me and are interested in my opinion. But on another level, this is something that is in the is kind of in the works, are bubbling along and hopefully will be manifested sometimes soon, but it's very
somewhat hypothetical at this point. But I just DJ'ed at Cosmic Slop, which is this club that's run out of a charity called MAP in Leeds and it's this friend of mine, Cosmic to Tom Smith runs this incredible charity that deals is set up to teach creative skills to children,
kids teenagers who are excluded from mainstream education. And he's been running this for ten years incredibly, and it's all and he's also like an incredible high fi sound system not so, He's built like this unbelievable club with the greatest possible sound you can imagine, for like one hundred and fifty two hundred people and never announces who's playing. Sometimes it's just him and the other person who runs it, or sometimes it's you know me or Sam floating points,
Kieran whoever. Various people have done it, and that funds the whole model for this program, which is amazing. He's managed to buy this building that was a bigger fundraising raising drive, but he's built bought this huge building that situated in and that is so inspiring to me. And so I'm kind of interested to see if there are ways that I can be more involved in things like that, or you know, I guess I've come to realize that just fundraising in general.
I don't know that I've done a couple.
Of gigs for Choose Love, Help Refugees and stuff like that. This is a platform that I feel very fortunate to have. And I hope this doesn't come across as like preachy, fucking holier than now, But it's just I've got to the place I always wanted to get to, and now it's time to like turn around and see who I can use this platform to help.
Anyway. Good Night,