In Conversation: Chris Hyson
Intro
CHRIS HYSON: How are you? What’s going on?
KELLY KORZUN: I’m good. Busy summer with lots of back-to-back travel, but I’m finally back to the East Coast, with Chicago Jazz Fest being my final travel commitment. Nothing is ever final, as you know, but it’s nice to be home for a bit.
CH: How was it?
KK: It’s as great as it’s always been, but attending as media/press is very different from attending as a guest because it comes with more responsibility. As much as I love jazz, consuming it non-stop is exhausting. I’d find myself listening to Deftones in a bathtub after a long day to not overdose on jazz.
CH: To reset your jazz brain.
KK: Exactly. My abstinence from jazz didn’t last long, and you can see. Even though you’ve been working as a musician and producer for years, not that many people outside of the industry know who you are (especially here in the States), and you don’t do many interview appearances. The UK scene is relatively compact, and many artists, labels, and producers are tightly interconnected, with a lot of cross-collaboration between the artists and producers I’ve already interviewed or mentioned on METAL & DVST. It really feels like family, and I’m not even talking about, say, Yussef Dayes and Tom Misch who literally grew up together in South East London.
CH: Yes, we all know each other, but my journey hasn’t started here in the UK – I was actually born in Spain, in Seville. My mom and I moved to the UK when I was six after my parents split up. My mom was English, and my dad was Spanish, so I’m half-Spanish. My dad dies 12 years ago, but when I was little, my mom used to take me listen to Flamenco music and church music, which I’ve always liked, but my earliest memories of falling in love with music would be listening to UK garage music as a teenager. My mom’s partner at the time was a jazz musician and he had a big CD collection, a mix of UK garage, Relaxin’ with the Miles David Quintet records, and then a lot of 80s music, including power ballads like Celine Dion, so it was quite a broad mix. Later, I fell in love with classics, like top 100 songs of all time, bands like Police, and I still listen to it a lot.
KK: When did the jazz influence become more prevalent?
CH: In my late teens. There were some guys in my class who were into Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and it was my way into jazz. I’m 37 now, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is and how you do it. When I finished school, I felt a bit directionless, so I started working for an estate agent doing admin, and it made me so depressed because I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of life being like this when you finish school, you know? My mom was really amazing because she encouraged me to pursue music seeing how much I loved it, so I taught myself a bit of piano, but I wasn’t amazing at it. In my school years, I used to play sax, but I was a terrible sax player – I was scared to put my teeth on the mouthpiece because of the way it vibrated, the sensation was so weird, but I knew that I loved music and that I was naturally good at it, but not good enough on any particular instrument to apply that skill to my future, so my mom’s partner at the time said that I should play bass because it’s not as hard compared to other instruments and that everyone needs a bass player.
I bought cheap Fender squire electric bass, and practiced loads, and in that year and applied for a few colleges and jazz schools that were out of London, with a slightly lower standard of entry, but still great, less competitive, and I applied to the royal welsch college of music which is in cardiff, and the head of jazz there, Paula, was sweet, and she saw the potential. I worked hard, and met a lot of musicians, then I did a masters at the royal academy of music in London.
KK: Seville is amazing. Last year, I was speaking there at the creativity festival, and it was my first introduction to the city. Many amazing things happened to me while in Seville, and now I know that all of them happened in your hometown.
CH: That’s really cool.
KK: Seville is beautiful, and I appreciated how much they care about supporting arts, culture, and creativity locally. So, once you wrapped up your masters at the royal academy in jazz, did you go straight to producing or doing session work first?
CH: When I was doing the masters, I started to think more about music, and about albums, less about myself as an instrumentalist, but more about whole albums and the feeling they gave me. I definitely realized I didn’t want to be a jazz musician when I finished that school, and I wanted to make albums and recordings. That’s how I’ve met Lauren, she was a singer on the course. I approached her, I said I loved her voice, would you wanna write a few songs together. Then I invited some people to play, so we kinda casually got together and rehearsed, and she started improvising in the way she does. It was very refreshing and exciting her doing her things, it’s very unique, singing and talking, and the flirting between the two. I really wanted to record the music that we wrote together, so we went to the studio in whales, which I go to quite a lot, it’s like a cabin in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sheep in whales, for 3 days, and it was all live, in a live room, and I got back to london and I listened to recordings, and it all sounded terrible. It didnt sound how I wanted it to sound. This is wrong. It was strange because I spent money on it, and at the time I didn’t have money at all, and this was the realization that there’s a different way to approach making music in the studio as opposed to writing music and then just recording it live – that’s the way I’ve been conditioned to record music, rehearse with your friends, go to the studio, record it live. My friend Alex who is an engineer who studied sound engineering I spoke to him asking how can we focus on the drum sounds and the snares cause you can record to a click track, you can record individual layers, and that way you can focus on the drums first, and then focus on the guitars, etc. That was the first Snowpoet album that I produced, and I’ve learnt so much in the process of making an album. It took about a year to make, there was a lot of trial and error, and exploring. Alex knew a lot of technical stuff, the album came out, and at the time I was doing other jobs working as a bass player, and when the record came out, quite a dew people liked it, and I started getting asked to produce other people’s material. It was less of on-the-computer producing, and more of old-school producing. And then I did a couple of albums with Snowpoet, it was the main thing, it was just before lockdown that I got a big wave of artists wanting to work with me, that were a level up, Jordan got in touch, through snotpoet, he really liked music, this singer from california alison sudol, she used to be a big pop star back in the early 2000s, she used to be signed to Virgin, so I had to get my shit together to be able to produce for them, so I got more behind pro tools at that point, and since then it’s been a wild ride. I feel like I found my calling being a producer, cause I felt a bit lost when I was at music school, I wasn’t that connected to the craft. You know that feeling when you know something isn't right but you don’t know what it is.
KK: I feel like this is what drives musicians towards producing sometimes, feeling like you’re not good at playing a single instrument, Mark Ronson, DJ, and then a producer. A bit on the new book. He later started playing more instruments because this is what you end up doing as a procedure – sometimes you need to record something without having to call a session musician to deliver on it. It’s a legit career path for a person who is passionate about music, they trust their taste, they have ideas, but they don’t want to become a practicing musician. The biggest challenge is to support yourself financially, right? And there are many ways to do that, you can play gigs, weddings, you can join a band, you can work as a session musician, you can teach, but you can also choose to support music as, say, engineer or producer. Composing for other mediums like film and theater is another route to take, so if you wanna make music, you can absolutely tailor that experience to your personality type and your skillset.
CH: Or become a journalist in music.
KK: Exactly. I listen to that podcast with where you’ve mentioned that the challenge of working on the snowpoet record was producing contemporary music vs jazz music. What’s the difference between these two approaches?
CH: It depends on what you consider jazz. Would you consider Snowpoet jazz?
KK: New wave contemporary jazz music. But, to be honest, I don’t think there’s even a genre out there to describe it. It’s very unique. It’s off-genre, it’s your own thing. I honestly haven’t heard anything similar, to be honest.
CH: When it comes to producing jazz, when people ask me to produce jazz records, what I found it’s tough because people ask me do my thing when i produce a record, add texture, add ambience, create the world for the music to live in, put something around it, so the struggle I have with jazz especially when I’m tracking jazz we’re in the studio, a lot of jazzists are getting in their heads about their playing ansd improvising and wanting to play solos, and a lot of the musicians I’m working with are so good, that I don’t even listen to the notes they are playing in their solo, there’s more the general feeling of what they’re playing, I’m looking at a bigger picture, thinking about the balance, if solo is a bit too long, if I put myself in a position of the listener, there’s a lot of navigating musician’s mental state, that’s the tricky thing. Also how hard on themselves jazz musicians can be. I’ve worked with musicians in different genres who are aren’t near as good as jazz musicians on their instruments, but they are way more confident in what they’re doing, while jazz musicians always freaking out. Oh man, that solo, can I please do one more solo? It’s more of a social experiment of trying to get musicians to let go of their inner sabateur and make them trust me. Winning their trust. With other genres it’s not that at all. If it’s an indie rock folk thing, you have do deal with mental health issues in a different way, it’s their story, you need to be delicate in how you navigate it.
KK: Yes, it’s something I’ve heard about before that jazz musicians can be very self-critical, but on the other hand, when it comes to producing a jazz record, you can be pretty laid-back about the duration of the track, and you can allow for improvisation within the track, while I feel like when you’re producing a quote on quote commercial music, something that will potentially go on the radio, popular music, you need to think about certain parameters that need to be tailored to the radio or the platforms it’s gonna be introduced with. At least pop music back in the day had a very defined structure, which allowed the vocal delivery to stand out, and the lyrics to stand out. Production wasn’t oversaturated with effects and layers. Pop music is structured very predictably. Modern production is a lot about over-embelishments.
CH: It’s funny you said that, I was in a session with Jordan Rakei this week for his new album, just writing music, and we were trying to fight the urge, we were writing the second verse, we were like something should come in now, you know? No, let’s hold back from feeling like something new needs to happen every new section. It’s just that instinct that you need to give the listeners an element of surprise every 4 bars.
KK: I think this urge sometimes is a very selfish thing. For example, when you start out as a designer and you don’t have enough experience, you have this urge to show everything that you do in a single design concept and embellish it as much as you can, but it doesn't make sense because many of these elements are redundant. Being able to edit and refine only comes with experience. If it doesn;t add value to the track, why is it there? Just to show that you can add layers in the software you’re working in?
CH: Yeah, exactly.
KK: One of the things I really wanted to discuss with you specifically as a musician and producer is the juxtaposition between the U.S. market and the UK market. It always blows my mind that it takes years if not decades for a UK music act to break it to the US market. I’ve heard some opinions and some criticism about music artists in the UK not feeling like they are being supported by the music labels enough, or promoted in the right way. The US market is very commercial, and when the music is made, a lot of thinking goes into whether or not it’s gonna sell vs how good it’s gonna sound. Maybe because the musicians in the UK don’t prioritize commercial success, they end up creating music that makes sense to them, that they feel like making.
CH: It’s an interesting analysis, and I think I agree with you. It’s not like the labels aren’t that supportive, I think it’s more of the fact that apart from the major labels in the uk, it’s not that many labels to support the artists. Most labels are taking less risks. Big labels would sign up social media big following musicians that are doing a certain thing, and there’s a handful of UK musicians signed up by major labels, and there is a huge underground scene in London. Smaller record labels have less power, so in terms of marketing, it’s very capitalistic at the moment. The tops are doing well but everyone underneath isn’t. There’s a lot of great music being made here, but a lot of that music doesn’t have a home. I had a meeting this morning, he is a young alternative indie musician. He just finished the record, and he was like I don’t know what to do, should I send it to labels? And I said yeah, send it to labels, send it to distributors too because more and more musicians would rather have a distribution deal than a record deal these days because labels don’t have enough budget to put money into marketing in terms of hitting big streams for the hope that apple music or spotify are gonna put you on one of their editorial playlists. If that doesn’t happen, by going with a label, you’re just losing half of the money you’ve invested in your album to the label that can’t do much. That’s why I think the intention of making music is different in the UK. Sometimes lower expectations can be a good thing. Especially when you’re younger. It’s interesting, the older I get, I’m more conscious of having to please a certain audience. When I was younger, I didn’t give a shit.
KK: Which is interesting because I always thought that it’s the opposite order. The younger you are, the more you try to fit your product into the expected, to write a hit, but as you get older, you become so much more confident in your decision-making process, your taste, your intuition vs thinking about the audience. The audience comes last. If it drives you, it’s gonna resonate with everyone else. That said, I think as you get older, you tend to overthink the whole process.
CH: Yes, I think you’re right. It’s more about overthinking. In my 20s, I didn’t overthink. Now, if I start writing music. It’s not good enough. There’s enough voices to stop me in the flow, which I’m trying to work on personally when writing. But, yeah, there’s not a lot of support for the artists from labels. There’s not enough labels, and it’s hard at the moment to make your music heard.
KK: Do you feel like mentality plays any role in it?
CH: There’s a huge community that supports each other. As you said, we all know each other, it’s like a big family. If I see someone I know who’s releasing music, I’ll do try my best to liste to it and share it because I know how much it takes to make an album. support it in the world where there’s so much music being released and made. Real music lovers and musicians in the UK are aware of how difficult it is. To make an album there are so many things tell you not to. The costs, the formula of social media. So many things are getting in the way of you making music. The algorithms. So many musicians are introverted people, who don’t want to go on tiktok and do snippets of singing along, there’s a formula. Even if i don’t like it, I’ll still listen to it and try to find some words of encouragement.
KK: Yeah, especially today, when there's an overabundance of content. 11,000 clicks by Moloko remains one of my favorite live shows, but to think that ever since Roisin Murphy released her first solo record in 2005, she only had two US tours since then, one in 2016, and one in 2024 when I finally got to see her live. It’s a crime that it takes an artist of her caliber a decade to do a US tour. And these are not stadiums, they are still pretty small music venues. Budgets and resources are everything, I get it, but it’s still very frustrating to me. I agree that promoting your material is hard, you need to have an agent or a mediator because, as you said, musicians are not equipped to sell their music. Every artist needs an agent because most of us are not promoters by design. Companies like The Orchard are doing a great job promoting new releases, and it can be done by teaming up with a music label, or just teaming up with an artist. Many artists feel very uncomfortable reaching out to radio stations without a 3rd party. It’s like influencers are creating made-up agents so that it seems like the agents are communicating their pricing to the brands. If you had a chance to change something, a reform of sorts in the music industry, what do you think you would change?
CH: Labels need to distribute their money more evenly. There is room for a lot more music to be mainstream. The major labels waste so much money on..a friend of mine he is a mix engineer, they spent so much money on a music video for an artist, from stories I’ve heard, there’s a lot of people at the top just wasting money away where I think you can put more money into A&R, find a new act, taste-making should change.They need to take more risks, listen to the music and what’s going on, not based on how many followers artists have on social media, go to small venues in London, watch bands play and take more risks. Spending money wisely. Not spending half a million pounds on something that never even got released. There’s so much music that can be released with the help of that much money. In terms of gate keepers, there’s a lot of the streamers, who can curate playlists on apple music and so on, but having one person to decide what needs to belong to these editorial playlists, yes there’s a lot of music coming through, music is subjective, but that one person has a specific taste, and they might be in contact with specific labels promoting a certain artist, but if you split that job up between 10-15 people, you’ll have a lot more variety in what’s being pushed algorithmically. More taste-makers with diverse sound palettes, rotating different music, you’ll be funneling through more good music around. There’s so much great music that’s being made that just doesn’t get heard. Very select people at the top who have so much power. The music scene is always a reflection of society in the world in terms of capitalism and everyone following a certain formula. It’s always the music that does something completely different that makes everyone very excited. If you think about guys like mk gee and dijon, they did something completely different, their own unique sound, they are not following the trend, they set the trend.
KK: Absolutely. Dijon finally released new material and did a few new collaborations. Just the other day I was at the grocery store, and I heard music playing and I was like: no way they are playing Dijon here.Then I realized it was Bieber, which made sense because he co-produced half of the tracks on the album. There’s a certain professional deformation that happens to a lot of producers where they tend to analyze the music they hear. Are you still able to take your producer hat off and enjoy the music as the listener?
CH: It’s definitely the case, and the more and more I work as a producer, the more I naturally analuze what’s happening. From a production perspective, from a compositional perspective, structurally what’s going on. I can definitely enjoy music, but there are less projects and albums that really excite me. There’s vespertine by Bjork, one of my fav albums. For me it’s all complete, and I nevr think about production or technical stuff when I listen to it. When it comes to new music, I’m definitely guilty of thickening through tracks looking for this immediate dopamine hit, yes, I do still enjoy music, but I find it difficult sometimes to take this analytical producer hat, especially if it’s something that I like. I’m trying to reverse engineer. What’s this saturation, distortion, the reverb, then asking chat GPT…I’m still super inspired of music.
KK: do you feel like it’s easier to let go of that analytical process when lets say you go on vacation and you’re in a completely different mode both physically and mentally?
CH: Definitely. It’s so interesting you said that because I went to Italy just recently. For a week holiday and I actively noticed that I’m listening to music without thinking about prodiucon. I was listenion to barbara streisend and bonnie rae, cause I’ve never listened to their music much.
KK: That’s what the universe was trying to tell you is that you need to go on more vacations.
CH: Yes.
KK: A huge part of producing is actually consumption. In order for you to become a better prpdiucer you also need to be a consuymer, to know about new technologies, software, libraries, etc. Spotify put me in the 2% of music listeners worldwide because last year I lusted close to 100K minutes. Which means I spend more time listening to music than not listening to music. There’s no way I can forget my phone anywhere because I’m always connected to something via bluetooth. But sometimes I get a bit tired of listening to a lot of contemporary music, I don’t mean top 40, but rather music with contemporary production. A lot of that music share the same trends production-wise, which sounds very predibtible and repetitive, and then I feel like I neeed to klisten to something completely different to reset my taste buds. Like Italian music, its production is very 90s, it didnt change mich. I listen to some Spanish music, which I’ll never share with anyone because it’s embarrassing.
CH: You can share it with me.
KK: Considering your roots, I will. It’s a guilty pleasure playlist which I listen to when I’m on vacation. But on a serous note, I feel like it’s important to listen to classical music, world music, ethnical music, folk, etc. Do you have a reset music?
CH: It needs to be something of a strong flavor, like rap music. I like old school hip hop, I like biggie. I would love to work on a rap album one day. It’s usually music I don’t work on that I’ll end up using to reset, so I usually go back to a lot of old hip hop and rap records. Also, countries. Certain countries, spanish music, flamenco music I find really good, cause it’s just one thing, and it puts you in a certain place visually and emotionally, sometimes african music. And I’ll stay on it. I’m staying in one track, or one album. Listening over and over again. Staying in one area for a while. When I palette-cleanse. Recently it’s been square pusher. He was signed to warp. Kinda like aphex twin. There’s a tune called my red hot car. It’s from 2001.
KK: A bit like Aphex Twin, but I feel like it’s less dark. The glitches are similar.
CH: yes, it’s like a more childish and playful version of aphex twin. Still very mysterious. With a layer of complete innocence and giving zero fucks. I’m a big fan of both. And I find it also very palette-cleansing.
KK: Aphex’s music is all about happy mistakes made on half-broken instruments he’d buy on flea markets with nearly no money. No formal training also.
CH: That’s what I try to do now when I’m working on material, is trying to get the music education aspect out of my head and just listen to what’s happening in the moment staying away from my theoretical musical brain. These restrictions and structures stop you from the sound and see where it goes.
KK: Yeah, but I feel like it’s fine to have a certain framework as a point of departure, but no one is gonna kill you for not adhering to it.
CH: Naughty boy, how dare you!?
KK: On that note, I wanna dive deeper on the producing aspect and I also want to explain a bit more who the producer actually is. We’ve all seen these memes with Rick Rubin explaining that he’s getting paid for his taste and the confidence in that taste. Producing as a job especially if we’re talking about old-school producers like Rick Rubin and what they do is a bit hard to explain. Because he’s not that hands-on, but he’s there to steer the artists in the right direction.
CH: Spiritual guru.
KK: yes, to add value to the music, experiment, validate ideas, etc. so I came up with this interactive segment where you and I are gonna listen to five tracks that I chose, they belong to different eras and genres of music, and we’ll try to describe what we hear from the production standpoint, and just what overall feeling these records evoke with as little analysis as possible, just the first impression.
CH: Fun. Let’s do it.
KK: I’d encourage our readers to join us on this just to see if they’ll be able to hear what we hear or if they’d hear something else. Let’s start with Caroline by David Gray.
CH: his comment.
KK: To me it’s an example of the country music that I’d listen to (I don’t like country music usually) because it blends so many elements masterfully. It has electronic elements to it, it has an interesting texture to it. A lot of country music sounds the same to me because it’s very lyric-based. It has a nice steady buildup with this exciting band solo in the end. Phil Collins.
CH: his comment.
KK: This is the track that changed my life forever. If I had to pick one instrument to play, it would be drums. Yes it has this demo-like quality because of the drums starting somewhere in the distance. This drum line had so much energy to it. You’ve mentioned Police, and I love Stewart Copeland’s drumming too. Very instinctual. He is a fun drummer to listen to. He was on Drumeo not so long ago, and he’s still killin’ it. The energy he has at his age is insane. It’s insane that this whole album was entirely produced by Collins where he played all instruments. There’s not that many albums like that. Lenny Kravitz’s first album was also entirely made by him. Coldcut Timber.
CH: his comment.
KK: It’s interesting that you heard the ecological destruction. It’s built around the sound of a ventilator.
CH: Oh yeah? You’re right. It’s a ventilator machine. So cool.
KK: The sound of the machine that’s moving the air going in and out of your lungs. When you can;t breath on your own. It’s an allusion of the planet being nearly dead and having to support it’s vitals. Some of the samples are animal sounds. Stylized. Dog barking. Elephant screaming.
CH: Yeah, now I hear it too.
KK: I agree that it’s a collage of sounds, but it’s also an amazing example of a storytelling through production. Through the samples, the textures…if you listen carefully, you’d understand the message that’s being communicated, but also if you hear it at the party, you’d be just jamming to it. It’s a solid electronic track. It circles back to us talking about embellishments versus editing down and deciding whether or not something belongs to the track, does it add something? Does it help the track to tell the story? I like the intentionality behind the production. Saya Grey. empathy.
CH: his comment.
KK: I wasn’t familiar with her stuff until SOHN mentioned her in our interview as the music act that inspires him production-wise. Structurally, it’s very interesting. It doesn't follow any familiar structure. It starts off as a lo-fi singer songwriter vibe track, then it transitions to this jazzy tune, and it’s so fluid and so beautiful. It takes you on a journey without knowing where it’s gonna take you next. So refreshing. Reminds me of coco rosie in their early days. Mike Stern silver lining.
CH: his comment.
KK: What I like about this one is that even though mike stern is a guitarist, of course you expect guitar solo to dominate, but it’s balanced out well with other instruments. I like how it incorporates so many elements. It’s hard to create a jazz track like that. Looking at what we just did, you can tell that music is very subjective, and the richer the track is, the better it is, the more interpretations it will have. It’s almost like reading a book that you’ll keep coming back to at various points in your life because you’d find additional meanings. That’s also why producers exist. Sometimes there’s a need for the music to be interpret through the lens of one’s taste and sensibility. I think it’s healthy to turn to various producers to see how they can amplify the material.
CH: Exactly.
KK: What do you think is the role of producer today?
CH: The role of the producer is to guide an artist, take an artist on a journey from wanting to create a body of work from the beginning to end and being able to enhance and refine the individual voice of that artist, so that you’re making the best version of the music for the artist which defines them. Trying to get the best sound for the artist without changing them, as true and authentic to the artist as possible.
KK: I think the role of the producer has been overlooked for a long time, and I think right now there’s a growing understanding of why musicians need them. Meanwhile, there are so many tools out there, so much information, and today you can completely DIY the whole cycle of introducing yourself as an artist or promoting your own material. I’m not saying that it’s easy, it has its pros and cons, as we mentioned, but it’s realistic, and it’s empowering for the new generation of creators. You might not need a producer at all, and it’s ok. On the other hand, we know cases like Mariah Carey parting ways with Tommy Mottola and not quite being able to sustain the same level of success.
CH: Yes, but the question is, do you really need a producer or do you think you need a producer? There were some projects where half-way through I have said you don’t need me right now. You need time to figure this out for yourself. Sometimes there’s nothing for me to bring to the table. If I don’t connect to the music, it’s gonna be difficult to bring much to it. It’s genre agnostic, but I need to connect.
KK: I’m excited for you to work on a rap record though. I’m wondering what it's gonna sound like considering your love for old-school hip-hop. Let’s talk about Snowpoet for a second because you and Lauren recently released a new record, and, as I already said, you’re doing your own thing that’s very unique. Not that many artists treat vocals like a tool for experimentation, or maybe it has to do with the fact that the audience has a very specific way of reacting to vocals and connecting to it…not that many music acts where the vocal is leveraged like a musical instrument. I can think of Koyote. Lauren’s voice is an instrument, but it’s not overpowering other instruments, and it creates a feeling where a voice is a part of the tapestry. When you started collaborating back at the royal academy, did you come up with that sound right away?
CH: Laura likes improvising. Like Meredith Monk and a lot of contemporary vocalists who use their voice as an instrument. Laura would make noises, or hold a note, do playful stuff with her vocals, which is incredibly fun for a producer because you get to add so many vocal textures with different effects with distortion, reverb, delays and stuff. That became woven into the fabric of the album, and it’s an integral part of Snowpoet’s sound.
KK: The last album is even more introspective. Where do you see the project going in the future? Is it gonna become even more intimate or it gonna be something completely different?
CH: For every next album we do, we know the vibe we want to create, so I think experimental is the route we’d take. The next one I think we will do something thats a bit beat-driven. Recently I’ve been working with pro tools a lot, and I recently bought Ableton, and Ableteon is great for beta-making, so I’ve been practicing it. I saved a lot of it in my hard drive, so next time me and Lauren sit down, we’ll take that route. We always want to do something different, especially given that, as you said, the last album was lucious and introspective, so we want to switch it up with something more edgy.
KK: That would be very interesting, and you’ve already done more upbeat tracks like Roots while still staying true to your signature sound. There’s not a ton of beat-based electronic music where vocals are used as an instrument, so I’m very excited to hear what that new record is gonna sound like, and it’s amazing that you’re constantly developing yet preserving something that’s distinctly your own. I remember John Mayer once said that the way he knows that he wrote a really good song, is if he wants to mix and master it. Because it means that you’re gonna be listening to it over and over again, and if it becomes boring after a few listens, it’s not gonna sustain as a hit and gain traction, but if he wants to master it, it means it’s good. Do you have a criteria when it comes to recognizing if you created something really special? Did you notice any patterns, or is it just intuition-based most of the time? How do you evaluate the potential?
CH: It’s definitely a feeling thing, for sure. There’s definitely music of my own or Snowpoet where 60% of the way through I’ve started to feel to it starts feeling like a bit of a job I’m not as excited as I was when I started the tune, and most of the time I’d realize maybe it’s not the tune and move on. And sometimes someone says that they loved the song, but I wouldn’t feel as excited about the track as they are. I’m typically pretty excited about the music we’re making.
KK: You and Jordan have been collaborating on music for many years, and then he took a break, he had his first-born, and then he returned with The Loop. What are you working on with Jordan at the moment?
CH: For sure. Our relationship since What We Call Life has grown over the years, and I wrote it in the studio with his band, and there were five of us. It was great to work with them, they’re all incredible musicians. And with this album, we’re writing more one on one, our tastes are very similar, and we get excited about similar things in music. It’s been great working with him this year because there’s a collective consciousness that we have when we write music, and we don’t have to discuss much, we get into the flow state very quickly, and we’re able to generate ideas quite effortlessly. We’ve written about twelve songs this year, and they all have their own personalities, their own identity. At the end of October we’re going to Abbey Road for two weeks bringing in different musicians to produce the album properly because at the moment they are just demos. I get so much out of writing with Jordan. He makes me love writing music. When I’m writing alone, I feel like I struggle a lot, I hit the walls quite a lot. When I’m writing with him, we also hit walls, but we keep going, and each of us adds something new that makes the other person excited.
KK: This entire album was dedicated to his new experience as a father. and has your working style in the studio remained the same, or do you feel like something has shifted since he had a kid? Loyle example. It makes you go even more inward, but also it motivates you creatively even more because you wanna be the best version of yourself and lead by example.
CH: He just had his second child, and this tune we write together is called Don’t Be Afraid, which is the song that he dedicated to his little boy. Jordan has always been this amazing musical force, and none of that has changed, but now he has even more emotion and more life experience to be put into his music.
KK: I’m sure that working with so many artists over the years you’ve heard a lot of feedback, I’m curious what do you think what is your UVP as a music producer, what sets you apart from other producers out there?
CH: A lot of people say I bring a lot of details into music, the texture, emotional depth, expanding someone’s sound, not in terms of layers, but in terms of production deytails and subtlety. This is what really excites me. Enhancing everything that’s there originally. It’s not about amplifying a certain instrument, but rather finding ways to texturize what’s already there that captivates the listener and makes them wanna listen to the track again. You want to go back more and more and discover more layers to it. The mystery and depth.
KK: Do you think this attention to detail is something that manifests itself only in the way you’re making music, or just in your life in general?
CH: Definitely very attentive in life as well. When I’m on the train, I like to watch people, and how their faces are moving, what they are thinking about, wondering where they’re going. Some people say I’m good at doing impressions. I’m good at spotting elements in personalities. It applies to me as a person, that’s why I’m honest and raw when it comes to me as a producer, it’s my natural tendency.
KK: And it absolutely shows in all the projects you’re working on. I’m excited for the next move of Snowpoet, and I’m sure you’ll have an amazing time recording at Abbey Road.
CH: It was great talking to you, and I love your writing.When was the last time you were in London?
KK: Last year, for the 20-year anniversary of Silent Alarm at Crystal Palace, and it was raining all the time. ,
CH: Let me know when you’re in London next time. Hopefully it’s not gonna rain.