It’s been a minute since I posted anything, but regular Neoterika service is at last being resumed. Thanks for sticking around if you did and come back I still love you if you didn’t. The story of the long hiatus is strange, a tale too tall to tell here. Suffice to say I went to Alaska and unexpectedly didn’t have internet. No streaming at all for months, can you imagine. I can’t and I lived it.
I’m celebrating my return to civilisation with a bumper selection of tracks (check out Neoterika vol 19) along with an interview with the brilliant Old Man Diode and his sometime collaborator, the also brilliant Rick Holland. We did this interview just before I went away (in May) so it’s criminally overdue, but no less fascinating for all that.
N: How did you first start making music?
OMD: I don’t really remember starting, my mum had me and my sisters playing the piano from 4 years old, it was always a massive part of my family life growing up, still is today. I studied classically until my twenties started DJing when I was about 15, became a proper jungle monkey, then got into production at music college, switched from Classical bass to electronic music and have never looked back
N: What where your influences early on and what came to influence the direction you’ve ultimately taken?
OMD: I think a really wide range of music has influenced me over the years, I’ve always been into contemporary music and new sound, ways of using the spectrum available to us as a creative tool. I was very heavily into the jungle and DnB scene in the 90s and early 2000s, most of my vinyl dates form around then. Being a teenager in Bristol in the 90s, you were surrounded by underground music, Full Cycle, Portishead, Smith and Mighty, all that’s stuff has always been a strong influence on me.
I was also into guitar driven music, and distortion, there’s still a part of me that wants to play in a metal band.
I don’t know if I can say that I’ve taken a single direction now, the work I’ve been doing with Rick over the last few years had some pretty clear confines and elements that we were exploring but alongside that I’ve been playing with other ensembles like Jetsam, producing and engineering with other projects like Sion, Deathray Trebuchay, working on various projects that came through the WW studio and working on installations with artists like Sophie Clements. The next chunk of music I want to work on will be less song driven, more noise probably. I think that all of those influences, from Stockhausen and Steve Riech through to Ray Keith and sun0))) are there in everything I make to a greater or lesser extent.
N: How did your collaboration with Rick Holland come about and how did that then extend to collaboration with the other artists on The King Krill and beyond?
OMD: So Rick and I had worked together on a bunch of different projects intermittently for various people for about 10 years before we started on the OMD/RJH collab. We wanted to do something that focused on the two of us, writing without an end goal, just to see what would come out, there was never supposed to be a live show, that all came later on.
Personally, I spent a lot of time writing really complicated music before this project so I wanted to really strip that back, not allow any sound in without a specific justifiable reason for it, keep everything minimal. I also was always amazed at how much other people bond to words in music, for so many people it’s all about the lyrics and I don’t tend to hear them, I couldn’t tell you the lyrics to most songs that I like, so working with Rick was a kind of head in challenge to that part of me, I love the way he uses language, the way he can leave space for interpretation and personal referencing in his work. We were looking into writing in collaboration with equal weight to all elements, words supporting music, music supporting words.
The rest of the collaborators are all people that I had worked with before, through WW Records/Music or the WW studio. I’ve known Beth for years, from when we were both back in the West Country, Andrew Plummer did a performance with me in Jetsam, Onallee was someone I’d wanted to work with since the whole Reprazent thing kicked off in 97, and so on. The binding thing with all the vocalists is that they a have a unique and amazing voice and an openess to collaborating that made the whole thing possible. We explored a bunch of different processes, sent in stuff to each other, taking inspiration from one place but the most successful was three people in a room, starting from scratch and vibing it out, then everyone is in every part, nothing gets pushed too far one way or the other, the words work for the vocalist, everyone’s happy with the groove and what we end up making is more than the sum of parts, different to something anyone one of us could invent alone.
RH: A mixture of Goldie’s Timeless and 1990’s DnB appreciation brought us together really, in our young years. It’s been such a great privilege to meet and work with the artists Jo and Guy brought in and we’ve all developed a lot in the process and heavy new pulses have been set in motion by the whole experience.
N: Tell us about the new single. (Although it’s no longer new by any stretch if you missed Morning Gate earlier this year it remains essential listening)
OMD: So, Morning Gate feels like a kind of culmination, we started the project with Beth on a tune called Rise Again, then on to the first single, Open Blue, with no plan other than making something in the studio, no live show, just the music. Then as the project grew, the need or relevance of a live show became apparent so we started on that, that’s when Guy Wampa got involved playing drums and later on David Altweger’s video wizardry, the live shows then influenced how we were writing music, we wanted/needed tunes that could rock a dance floor. That lead to the Keep on Running/Catapult release with Beth and I Am Fya (who’s touring with Kate Tempest at the moment), maybe we felt like we lost something from the initial writing or, at least the freedom of writing with no brief and that lead us kind of back to were we started but having learnt from the journey so, Morning Gate is a celebration of everything that we’ve done I guess. It feels euphoric, it’s open, it’s got motion to make you want to dance, kind of pulls all the strands together.
N: Morning Gate sounds in parts like a love song, but elsewhere it seems to deal with the same ambiguous state of company and isolation as your previous work in this collaboration – can you tell us a bit more about the content of the piece and how you guys developed it?
OMD: I think that sums it up pretty well, it’s a love song but to whoever or whatever you want it to be to. The areas we covered in the King Krill are still there, being part of a society or group but also being completely alone are still there and I think it’s something that were drawn towards when we works together.
RH: Lyrically, the content came about in real-time conversation during the writing process. This was the case with a fair few of the tracks in this project, and I think this feeds in to the patterns you have described, these are the preoccupations or mindstates that we brought to the studio on any given day. Life follows those rhythms, of wonder and saturation and excitement and defeat, and ‘I sleep in a full beam’ quite neatly sums up just how much flies by us as modern urban human beings, and how important the peaceful solitary place within us remains.
N: Is it a good time to be an experimental artist at the moment? While I see a lot of conservatism in the current pop charts and around mainstream EDM there seems to be a simultaneous explosion of really strange music bubbling up under the surface.
OMD: Yeah that’s a fair assessment, I don’t know really, I don’t know if it’s ever a better or worse time, there’s some really interesting stuff happening, lines are blurring and music that would have been completely fringe a decade ago is seeping closer to the mainstream underground, there’s more of an acceptance of contemporary “classical” composition and elements of sound art and that’s leading to some great music being written. At the same time, the social media noise and blather, the lack of decent income streams etc. is pressuring the vendors, salesmen, press and promoters to not push the boundaries to far. Its been interesting seeing the response to this project, it feels fairly commercial to me, drums, bass vocals, song forms etc but we’re definitely classed as being different, not conforming to genre, one foot in DJ culture, another on the band circuit and the industry isn’t really set up to handle that. So, I don’t know haha! It feels like swings and round abouts.
RH: I think it’s the best time in my lifetime to be an experimental artist, because it is now, and there is an environment that is making sound. The challenge, as OMD says, is to arrange a difficult economic life around exploring what is really there. That takes love, and real focus. What Jo and Wampa have done is brave (setting up their own label), they have to fulfil many roles at once, in curation, production, business – that is a difficult space in a climate that favours safe bets. But my advice for a young artist would be that there is a space for you but you should totally love the thing you do, live it every day. If you do this the rest will arrange itself around that focus.
N: Who should we be listening to right now?
OMD: Everything! Itoa is going from strength to strength, Ben frosts Aurora album is a stunning piece of work, as is Andy Stotts faith in strangers. We’ve got some great stuff coming up soon on WW records, more work with Llywelyn Ap Myrddin, more from Sam Mumford and great cross over collars with all of those. we’re trying to work out a multi artist live show that will hopefully be coming out in the autumn.
N: Are there any plans for further live shows, I believe you’ve mentioned in other interviews this is the last collaboration, at least for the time being?
OMD: Yeah we’ve got a couple of live shows booked in, Bristol at Mr. wolf’s on the 25th of June and 93 ft East on the 26th, the london show will have most of the gang down, full visual show etc. and we’re in the process of securing a few more over the coming months (N: You can keep abreast of new shows on the Facebook pages for Old Man Diode and WW Records). This isn’t the end of collaborating with Rick or Beth or any of the guys involved so far, it’s more that the specifics of the sound and the process have had their time, theres more material on the way but it’s got a different vibe and we’re not all in the room anymore, we’re talking about giving space to individual elements more. Also Rick is working on a new Book, Beth has been playing out a lot more with her own band, Chris James and Stateless will be launching a load of new material soon, all of that is changing the way we work and what we want to make.
N: What’s next for Old Man Diode?
OMD: So, as I say, there’s some more material in the pipeline and probably a new live show, maybe less dreamy and heavier. I’ve been working on some remix/collabs with Sam Mumford and Llywelyn Ap Myrddin. also might have to get back to my roots, there’s been talk of some Jungle collabs, no pretention, just dance time so, a load of stuff basically! The future is bright and eclectic.
N: …and for Rick Holland?
RH: I’m making a new book, getting totally involved in all of the stages needed to put that out independently. Part of that process involves road-testing the material and finding the right formats for it.
Our experience has changed dramatically, even with the cultural meme of ‘book’, so it is a deep process that could go on a long time without a deadline. The self imposed deadline is for a summer release, and I am at the stage now of testing writing by performing it, unaccompanied readings and improvising with musicians. As Jo said earlier, I hope to present work that people can totally inhabit and find their own way through, that is vital for you every new time you engage with it. I re-heard ‘Clearing Song’ from our album together ‘The King Krill’ the other morning, and swam deep into it, this seems to clearly sum up our landscape at the moment, a human communion and our individual beings battered by data. Yet it is an undeniably wonderful time to be alive, things are bubbling hard. It’s me and you out here.
Thanks!
Check out Rick Holland’s website for more on the poet and to buy his new book, Story the Flowers.
Check out this awesome mix Old Man Diode did for our mix series!
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