Mura Masa

I tend to respond quite naturally to what I’m gravitating towards, and I think because I listen to so much music, I accidentally tap into the zeitgeist. At the time, there was a lot going on at the Windmill in Brixton, and I was listening to a lot of Speedy Wunderground and Talking Heads, and I was getting really interested in Patti Smith and beat poetry. I felt very strongly that there was something interesting there that wasn’t being interrogated in pop culture. Long story short, I didn’t know but I had a strong feeling and just followed it. I think people are generally apprehensive to do so because they look at what’s happening currently, but it’s been a goal of mine to explore things that are bubbling under the zeitgeist. At the moment, I’m obsessed with Portishead, Smoke City and Sneaker Pimps, so I’m anticipating a trip hop moment. I think all you can do is follow what’s interesting to you, rather than trying to capitalise on some kind of moment.

Especially now because things move so fast. It’s almost banal to talk about at this point, but the speed of consumption of music has devalued it to the point where it comes and goes in a matter of weeks. It’s very tempting to fire out things that fit in the current moment. I think it’s a struggle for a lot of artists to not do that, and still find a way to make a living.

I’m lucky to have been imbued with that confidence by seeing some success from the early releases. A lot of people don’t get that opportunity to feel validated in what they’re doing. But that being said, I just think the best things have a truth to them and a genuineness. This is something that a former partner of mine taught me. That the essence of being cool is being 100% what you are. Not even in a, I don’t give a shit what people think way. But more like, I’m really interested in this. And I’m trusting that this will find people who agree with me.

I think journalism is suffering the same fate as music, where it’s just turning into a content mill. Everything’s become very public facing, just because it’s the fastest route to a) getting your work seen and b) making any money to survive as a creative. But what’s really exciting to me is exploring alternatives to that and asking how we foster community around a shared vision.

I also think people struggle with carving their own pathways because, ultimately, we all have this need for belonging. So people want to express themselves in ways that other people will align with because they want to belong to some sort of community. I feel very lucky because I have the queer community to find my space in, but a lot of people don’t have that.

Yeah, the destruction of the third space, as they say. That’s a really good question. If you want to talk about it on a local level in terms of London, more and more of my friends are getting squeezed out of being able to exist here. I don’t know what the overall solution is. But recently I started a small Discord community of creatives and like-minded people. We’re trying to gather around the campfire of shared ideology rather than moments that make you leave the house and spend money. I’m also building a studio space in Peckham that’s probably going to be completed by the end of the year. The hope for that is that it will be a sort of Warhol factory-esque space where everybody’s got keys and people are just milling around and meeting each other in hallways.

That, to me, seems radical, given the state of play in terms of how people gather around things online. For a space like X, for example, the idea was that it was this public town hall where anybody could have a say. But because of the proliferation of it, it has become far too big. You do feel the emptiness of it now more than ever, ironically, where it feels like people are shouting into the void and there’s no real dialogue happening. So I think it’s about finding alternative ways to work together on things. It’s been a cool journey, and I’ve been fortunate in exploring who I am as an artist. But there’s only a level of so-called success that you can achieve as an individual. You can see the hedonic treadmill that’s more and more, bigger and bigger, more money, more access. But how do you create a cell that’s bigger than any individual and how do you democratise something like that? And how do you create a feeling of exclusivity without being…

Yeah, kind of. How d’you make an exclusive area of inclusivity? One that says, if you have the right attitude, you’re let into this world. And how d’you protect that from the adversarial weirdly capitalistic attitude that a lot of people working in arts spaces currently have?

Yeah, and like you said, queer spaces have been exploring that for decades. There is a kind of, this is for us type of feeling, which I think is really valuable. And that’s not to say… well, maybe it is to say? I was gonna say that you want to be careful to not make it exclusionary, but maybe we need some of that. Maybe it’s time to erect some walls around things that you find important and valuable, and to protect them. Rather than just being like, the best way to treat this is to serve it to as many people as possible, on as big a scale as possible. And that’s how you benefit from it. When the way that you actually grow and cultivate a good community and a shared space is carefully.

Maybe they’re just overpopulated. You can’t possibly hope to share your ideals with that many people.

I fully agree. Those nights that you mentioned feel like the most vital – the most living and breathing nightlife – at the moment. I guess the same could be said about what streaming has done to the music landscape. Everyone is currently clutching their foreheads and being like, Jesus Christ, there’s no way to get seen anymore through streaming. Spotify just stopped paying out for music that doesn’t have more than 1000 streams and the way playlisting is handled creates a hierarchy of music. But the more that happens, the more it motivates people to look into alternative ways of organising. A lot of people are exploring Bandcamp and creating DIY record labels now so that they can just be around their friends and celebrate their music. I guess it’s a catalyst for people to rethink how they value art and how they value artists.

Yeah, and I don’t think it even has to be viewed as some sort of revolution. This is why my next album is called Curve. I just found myself saying it a lot. Like, I just curve that. I don’t even want to be on the same parallel line to that. I want to go around it and create my own way. I think that’s a better view because it’s less adversarial and confrontational. Yeah, maybe we also need to fight back against the systems that aren’t working. But the best way to get motivated via positivity is to almost ignore those systems and imagine: if they didn’t exist, what would be the solution? And in doing that, you’re exiting the dialogue that only benefits those systems.

We don’t realise how radicalised we are towards growth in the West. The baseline assumption is that it (your project) is going to be interesting and successful because of its potential for growth. And I just think that’s a road to nowhere. It is important in an economic sense to keep the thing going. But at the heart of the pure idea, it just needs to be useful for the people involved. It needs to be, as you say, creating these models and these pluralities of thinking. I think a lot of the Silicon Valley age has been about how to keep people on this platform by providing everything they need stimulus wise. But I’d rather be signed up to 30 newsletters that are about really specific things than just one newsletter that tells me everything I need to know about the world.

I’m seeing that a lot in the Discord because I just opened it up to a few of my friends, a few of their friends, and a few people whose work I really respect. There have been periods in that group of total inactivity. And my brain immediately started panicking, like, oh, no, it’s dying on the vine. We need activity, we need interaction. How do I stimulate this? It’s tempting to think that because something isn’t moving, it has no life to it. But, no, it can just be something that exists alongside our lives and becomes relevant when it’s relevant. That’s been a really calming realisation.

I feel the same about music because the lifespan of music is so different now from what it was when the original model of making and releasing albums was conceived. The example I always give is MGMT, who made their first album as a joke, essentially trying to write the biggest pop songs that they could. But they had the horror of it working and becoming a hugely successful band and touring the world. Then they made a return to what they actually wanted to be making, only to have those fans of the pop music to be disinterested – which feels like a failure but it’s not. Everyone said that MGMT’s biggest moment was behind them, that it’ll never get bigger than that. But then, just recently, a song off  Little Dark Age went viral and it’s bigger than any of those original pop songs ever were. There are so many avenues now to your work being heard in a different context or respected in a different way by a totally new audience. I think it’s more true than ever that you can make stuff that’s true to you, release it, and just let it exist in the world. Where before you had eight weeks of album promo to make it work, and if it didn’t, it’d get shelved and maybe discovered by some crate digger at some point. I think it’s an exciting time to do stuff.

This is my favourite subject. There’s a really good book by Hans Ulrich Obrist called Ways of Curating. I see that as my biggest pursuit, probably. I do have an artist project, but I think the more interesting role is that of the producer who is curating another artist’s output and helping them shape spaces to express themselves. I think an unsung role in music is having vision. It’s seeing who someone is, seeing what would be interesting for them or what they gravitate towards, and playing off that. It’s been really interesting exploring that this year, consciously working with lots of different artists on their own projects and not having to view their music through this myopic ego. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Yeah. And taking on the role of curation, whatever form that takes, makes sense in a creative landscape that’s so diverse and more populous. When there’s a lot of saturation, it becomes more important to be able to cut through and to highlight things that are interesting. This is why I’ve gravitated towards DJing recently, rather than live performance. It’s a heightened form of curation, where you’re curating someone’s whole experience of a venue. You’re presenting them with things like a gallerist and asking: what do you think about this? What does it mean when I play Playboi Carti right after playing Fall Out Boy? How does that make you feel?

And it takes on this larger mantle of being able to not just present individual works, but being able to juxtapose them and blend them to turn them into new things. To create edits that shouldn’t exist. That feels like a new frontier for me, like fertile ground to explore this plurality. I think people were exposed to that after the whole Skrillex Four Tet Coachella thing.

Yeah, right, it is. And it evokes laughter, which I think is really special. I love that feeling.

Yeah, another thing that might be interesting to talk about here is the death of irony. I don’t think irony is exciting or interesting anymore. I think people have clocked onto the idea that being ironic serves the agenda of whatever thing you’re trying to take the piss out of. There’s a slant now towards genuineness. Things that are really interesting to me feel like they’re not trying to take the piss out of anything, or do anything with a wink or a nudge or a tongue in cheek look. Just do the thing, be the thing that you want to!  That’s why Danny L Harle is one of my favourites. Because you could make the assumption that he’s doing some of what he’s doing ironically or for humour. But he really isn’t. He just loves that stuff.

He knows it’s ridiculous, that’s why it’s so great. Like throwing in a “Yes, my lord” in every song. He knows that’s funny. But he also just really loves medieval shit. You can feel the warmth of his love for it.

Yeah, I was there! There’s a picture of me wearing his cowl. It was really heavy and it stank of machine grease because it has to all be greased up in order to move. 

When I did demon time, I was mostly focused on an individualistic idea of hedonism. That, as individuals, we deserve to care for ourselves by finding ways to joy that are maybe a bit mischievous and looked down upon. And I think now I’m transitioning to the view that the secret spice that makes hedonism really good and vital is love. Love is the secret ingredient. Hedonism is fun, but when you combine it with the care and attention for another person or a group or a shared system, then it takes on this bigger mantle, where it can really bring a lot of meaning. It’s kind of what we’ve been talking about. It’s about seeking joy, but also, there’s a selfless aspect of care to it.

It’s all about people. And especially as somebody who makes music. I’m the sole arbiter of what happens. I’m not part of a band. I don’t have creative accountability to anyone. I’m not even signed to a record label anymore that isn’t my own. And just being in that isolated position of control, you realise, well, what’s the point of any of this unless it correlates to people who I know or respect or love?

I also think that it’s tempting to say these things and come across kinda wishy washy, hugs and flowers, it’s all about community and people. But I want it to be heard in a radical way where it’s like, no, fuck that other stuff. It’s all about this. It has to be almost aggressive. Because it’s defiant. It’s radical to organise and to commune in this way in a world that discourages that.

There’s a slight eye rolling that happens in my head when people talk about music as a gateway to some kind of imagined future. Because I do believe that that’s true, but I also think it’s a very lofty way of thinking. Maybe it’s just because of my background. But when people say that I’m like, yeah, okay, but there’s an NHS nurse working really hard to keep the world on track. But then I think maybe it’s just a rephrasing of how you imagine that, where the music, and particularly the spaces where it gets enjoyed, makes it so that you don’t have to imagine. These are physical manifestations of people’s dreams and ideals and philosophies. They’re using this space, the music, and the creativity that went into it to translate something ephemeral into something that’s detectable by the senses. So I think it’s less about how music sparks the imagination, and more about how music can be the sort of thing that we gather around to visualise these things in the real world. I think SOPHIE is a really good lynchpin of that, where she experienced a certain reality and she was talented enough to be able to sculpt that into audio. That was her medium. And every time she played, it was like being transported into that set of ideals that she held. I was thinking yesterday about her use of space in music, like when she uses reverb to create the feeling of a physical space versus when she doesn’t to create the feeling of an impossible space. The thing I like about music and how it mobilises people is that it makes it so we don’t have to imagine. Even the queer club spaces that we were talking about. Those aren’t trial runs or demos, like, look it could be like this. No, it is like this because we’re making it so. And thinking about it that way takes it out of the realm of philosophy and ideas and brings it into real life. This can be our reality if we will it be. Music is just one example. I think film is a really strong way of doing that. I just like spaces where people gather around art, I guess.

There was a trend in like 2018/2019 in music journalism, where everyone kept saying, “these nights and this music are a wormhole to another world.” And I was like, no, it is the world. You shouldn’t have to separate it and be like, oh, wouldn’t it be nice if it was like this all the time? It is like this. You just have to be present.

Actually, on the reverse cover of my next album, there’s a 4-point chart and the axis are: Abandon versus Presence. And Longing versus Ecstasy. And all the songs are plotted on this chart. And that’s just done by feel – you can feel when something has a longing to it or a presence. I wish people just accepted these emotions as reality rather than some sort of looking glass into another imaginary dimension. I think the separation of art and its effects on reality only serves to make art be taken less seriously.

That’s a really beautiful example of the art being a reason to gather, a conduit towards the feelings, and like an actionable reality that creates itself around that stuff. I think people are scared of that, though.

Well, you mentioned that there was food. I think there’s a cognitive thing that happens in people’s heads where it’s like, how can we be present for one thing and then enjoy another thing like food or art? It’s a misunderstanding that the food is the point. The food is just another campfire to bring people together and then the emotion and the thoughtfulness, which are the reason that you’re there, can come through that.

It’s really heartbreaking to talk to young men. Because they’re not in control of what they’re being exposed to or the ideas that they gravitate towards because of promises that this will make them feel seen or respected. It’s terrifying.

I owe a lot to my dad. He was this soft-spoken Glaswegian, a working class guy. He obviously had an affinity for art and poetry and found a way to protect that side of himself without compromising his masculinity in a traditional sense. I just grew up around a lot of sensitive men. Also growing up in the church is a weird thing. Because on the one hand, you have this dogmatic horror that’s going on all the time with all kinds of prejudices. But at the same time, you have grown men speaking in tongues and talking about how much they love this divine presence that cannot be perceived and is not seen. You know, it’s the opposite of toxic masculinity. It’s like pure vulnerability to a higher being. (Laughs) I guess what I’m trying to say is Christian men are beta cucks.

(Laughs) I struggle with this a lot, because I think I’m a bit of a misandrist when I think about it honestly. I don’t trust men, I don’t like most men who present as men in the patriarchal sense. I have a hard time believing that a man is going to do the right thing. And I think it’s a self-hatred that a lot of men wrestle with.

It’s a hard thing to talk about because it requires some hard truths and some self-interrogation. And asking people to do that at a time when there’s so much shit that’s designed to sort of make you feel bad about yourself is really difficult.

It’s simplifying the issue, but I think it’s a really good and simple place to start. Just talk to women and girls. Ask yourself: how many women are in your life? How many of them do you engage with on a regular basis? Not even just women but also people who don’t identify as masculine men. Are you making a conscious effort to understand the experience of people that aren’t like you? If the answer to that question is no, then you’re robbing yourself of a shared experience and a knowledge about what it means to be alive beyond what’s in front of your face. 

It’s hard for men, particularly white men, to confront it because you benefit so hugely from not thinking about it at all. But, we contain multitudes, and that’s really exciting. For me, that’s futuristic and 21st century. Yes, I am a man, and that makes up some aspects of me, some of my personality and my biology. But there’s this other divine feminine thing that you can tap into if you want. And I think there’s power in that as well.

And it’s fun to explore. Bowie, Prince, there are all these pop culture icons. Growing up watching Eddie Izzard was really good for me. She’d be just being funny, and then you’d notice that she’s wearing makeup and you think, oh, I didn’t know people could do that.

And like, all the Greeks.

Yeah, talking about fashion – why are there so few options for men? But of course, if you truly want to subvert it, why even draw the line? Just wear women’s clothes if it looks cool.

I would say, wear the dress anyway! The fact that it doesn’t fit, that can also be a statement. Once you realise that you can scroll through the women’s section just as easily as the men’s section, it’s just opening up a new area of the map. It’s like, oh cool! I didn’t even know I could go there.

I used to think of all forms of art as escapism. But I realised that by thinking of it like that, you’re doing it a big disservice. Like it’s not, it isn’t a portal. It’s a brutal thing, it’s not a means of escape. I dunno, we’re getting metaphysical here.

(Laughs) Curve – I’m sure there’s a really interesting conversation to be had. But I’m trying to look after the things that I love and care about and feel strongly about, and that isn’t really one of them. The way to think about it is like how I was talking about treating the streaming problem. Thinking, okay, well that’s happening over there. We’re gonna do our thing over here. Those two things don’t have to be in dialogue. AI is a totally different technical pursuit. It has nothing to do with art.

Yeah, it is, and that’s a valid thing to say. It’s a genuine conversation that needs having. But I can talk from my position and taste. There’s only so far you can go with it. Physically, it is replacing people at this point right now. But I think what it’s really doing is creating a new category. We’re just waiting for that point of cell mitosis where it breaks off and it’s like, okay, you either do an AI thing, which is cheaper and has a certain look and holds people’s attention in a certain way. Or you get real people to do it, which has a different thrust. Hopefully, eventually, we’ll get to the point where those things are separated category wise. I’m also coming from a place of privilege in that AI-generated music is currently complete horseshit.

It comes from a deep misunderstanding of what people appreciate about art, which is the people and the stories. People who understand things only on a base aesthetic level, they’re not the people I’m trying to reach anyway. I think the destiny of AI generated art is just like, wow, you did that with a computer? That in itself is cool, but the art doesn’t really have any warmth.

Yeah, AI art has zero rizz. There you go.

That’s yours, though, I can’t take that.

(Laughs) Yeah, I’ll just take the credit. I mean, that’s also a valid conversation. I work with a lot of women of colour, and as a white man and a producer, you just have to be careful about where you take credit, but also where you’re careful to be alongside someone rather than separated or above.

Even just saying this makes me feel like, oh I’m just saying the right things. But I’ve been working with a lot of women this year who are amazing producers, but they don’t even think of themselves as being capable of taking that credit. That’s a crazy dynamic. It was cool when PinkPantheress won the Billboard Producer of the Year. I thought that was just groovy. It’s such a fucking boys’ club, as well.

I think there’s been a shift in the language and in the trickling down of the ideology that we need to be thinking about this stuff. And it has created a division, but it’s not necessarily a bad one. But I think the statement that a corporation makes about what it’s doing to be a better corporation should be treated as a separate conversation because they just want money. Maybe it is important in that it disseminates a wider message or proves that there’s been a shifting of attitudes, but I just keep coming back to this idea of focussing on this stuff at a local level. This is a big epochal shift, these things are slow, they take generations to turn over. So all you can do is just carry those attitudes into your daily practice with the people around you, with the organisations that you’re part of, and with the work that you do personally. And don’t rely on other people to educate you.

Well, I mentioned trip hop earlier. I’m trying to intellectualise why I’m gravitating towards it. I think it’s something to do with the slower tempo.

Yeah, it’s pre-empting people’s exhaustion with quick, fast, energy driven music. It’s also about the emotional vulnerability of it, the moody air of trip hop – even though it’s not necessarily reflected in the music I’m making. In terms of something I’ve read, I read an article yesterday about this artist who divorced himself from the art world and is much happier as a result of it. Andrew Norman Wilson.

It’s a pithy takedown of the institutions that make up the visual art world, and the people in power’s obsession with the value of the art as social capital rather than what the art’s ability to signal something, and therefore have value. And it resonated with me for all the things that we’ve been talking about for a couple of hours. I just read that yesterday and I was like, yeah, that’s a true curve.