Lost And Sound

I had a chat with Hannah Holland - DJ, producer, composer, promoter, label boss. Hannah’s played a key role in London’s alternative and queer club scene since the mid-noughties, firstly as resident at the legendary night Trailer Trash and then with Batty Bass. She’s played everywhere from Panorama Bar to Fabric. Now, not only composing the music for Channel 4’s Adult Material, she’s debuted the krautrock tinged single Midnight Horizon from her new LP.

I know Hannah a little bit from when I was living in east London, but havn’t spoken to her for years. We had a fun, open chat reflecting on the energy and freedom of the party scene in East London during the early naughties, her early experiences being super young and going to Goldie’s Metalheadz nights, building up to a 9 hour set at Panorama Bar and levelling up with new work.

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This week, I had a chat with Chilly Gonzales, the suave  all round musical polymath. 

Where do you start with Chilly? From early rap-infused works where he declared himself the President of the Berlin Underground, to his sublime Solo Piano albums, via collaborating with Daft Punk, Feist and Jarvis Cocker. Then there's running his own music school (The Gonzervtory) to holding the Guinness world record for the longest ever solo performance and of course writing a book about Enya. We got into a flow that took in everything from the hidden genius in Iggy Azalea’s Fancy to the connection between chamber music and bedroom producers. A charming and erudite gent to spend an hour with!

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I had a chat with Ella Zwietnig, film composer, sound designer, performer and songwriter. I’ve only recently discovered the Austrian artist’s music, and I was really captivated by the sonic soundworld she creates and the incredible things she does with vocal arrangements. We spoke about the shocking lack of female composers getting work in films, how making electronic music is a liberating power and lots more. It was a super fun chat to have and I hope you enjoy listening.

www.ellazwietnig.com

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Fresh up on Lost And Sound, this week is a little different. It’s not just that Ed Dowie has made what is already being heralded is one of the album’s of the year, but that we have a shared history.  

We’ve been friends for 25 years and in the late 90s our band Brothers In Sound were briefly indie-electronic darlings.  His new LP, The Obvious I is being released on Pete Paphides’ Needle Mythlogy label, and has fans from Lauren Lavern to The Quietus and feels like a choral, almost pastoral English cousin of Kraftwerk.  At some point, we kind of abandoned the interview format and got into a ramble about music, creativity, social activism in songwriting and bad Harrison Ford films that you secretly like.

Ed Dowie’s music

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I spoke with composer and producer Robot Koch. His music is a real cyborg mix of natural stuff like strings and high tech immersive 3D elements. He made an album that toured planetariums and in a change of pace, scored the music for the new Christiane F remake Wir Kinder Vom Banhof Zoo. We had a really warm talk  about the universe and leaving Berlin for LA, amongst other things.

https://www.robotsdontsleep.com

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I zoomed across to Scotland to have a chat with the one and only Arab Strap - Aidan Mofat and Malcolm Middleton. 

About to release their first new album together for over 15 years - As Days Get Dark, I’ve always loved the band’s confessional lyrics, often pre-occupied with sex and hedonism, half sung, half spoken in Aidan’s Falkirk accent, and the atmosphere they conjur up around this. I felt like I was dropping in on two old friends having a good lunchtime natter and I loved it.

https://www.arabstrap.scot

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Fresh up on the new Lost and Sound I connected to Istanbul, to chat with the influential pianist and interior architect Büsra Kayıkçı. Her compositions have a unique way of capturing something in the moment and her social media presence, particularly on instagram has become, I think, a really positive beacon in a world where its still perhaps unusual in the west to see a woman wearing a headscarf in a creative role.

I love her sound, the space and emotion she conjures up and I was so fascinated to discover more about how she combines all of her different disciplines, this is what happened one snowy Sunday when we had a chat.

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I had a chat with pianist and composer Hania Rani, whose  two beautiful albums so far on the Gondwana label - Esja and last year’s Home to me, feel like the perfect listening for these  snowy days.

I love the atmosphere she’s able to conjure often with little more than piano and we got into a really nice conversation from Berlin to her home in Warsaw about, amongst other things, finding the things that give creative freedom, releasing sheet music, The Hobbit and pianos as objects.

Hania Rani Website

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I had an intimate and honest chat with Stuart Staples, frontman of Tindersticks,  who’ve been carving their  unique atmospheric music for over thirty years.

When I first heard them, I was immediately drawn to this kind of melancholic romanticism that they seem to tap so well into. I’d listen and in my mind picture a group of gentleman musicians that wear good  suits and read old paperbacks. On the eve of the release of new LP, Distractions, we had a conversation  from his home in France where we discussed the validity of being pretentious, film scoring, recording in lockdown and what drives his creativity.

Tindersticks

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I had a chat with Anna Meredith, who is the only person I can think of who has been awarded both an MBE and released albums on indie label Moshi Moshi.  

Mercury nominated Anna has been Composer in Residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and won the 2019 Ivor Novello Composer Award for Innovation. Not only that but was Goldie's mentor on the TV show Classic Goldie and at the same time I find her own LPs bristle with an impossible to define physical voltage . I love her unique approach to music, and we had a revealing and, I think, funny chat that debunks a lot of the romantic perceptions about creativity.

http://www.annameredith.com

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