In the wake of Toronto Is Broken‘s Section Nine album is a remix ep featuring SKMA and Furney, so we found out more.
Could you tell us when ‘Field of Poppies’ first started to come together?
‘Field of Poppies’ is quite a personal track built from quite personal circumstances. The track was written for, and about my daughter Poppie, and I wrote the instrumental in an evening.
It wasn’t until about six months later whilst I moved to London for a few months at the end of 2013 that I got Nuala to write and perform some amazing vocals for the track, based on unconditional love.
There’s an unmistakable link between you and the vocalist… who is she? It’s never a case where it’s ‘just a vocal’ in this.
Me and Nuala go back absolutely years, we went to primary school together and kept in touch since, she’s been an amazing singer ever since the age of seven, and she literally lived at the end of my road. It was just by chance that she was also living in London at university when I moved to London also.
We hung out a lot as I really didn’t know many people in the city and it seemed natural to get her to vocal on my album Section Nine, as I was writing the majority of it whilst in Greenwich.
Tell us how the remixes came about and who’s on there?
Well, the SKMA and Furney remixes were a pretty simple story, myself and my manager Jay Cunning brainstormed alot of people who we were really enjoying at the time and who would do the track justice. My remix on the otherhand came about at the very last minute.
I’d been dabbling in the house/techno tempo region with other tracks such as ‘Mirrored Walls’ and ‘Sorrow’, whilst also listening to a lot of Jon Hopkins and Moderat at the time.
The main idea was to slow the track down about and really squeeze as much emotion and feeling out of the original track in this remix, and also something more DJ friendly as the original is more of a ‘song’ than a dancefloor track.
Looks like you took your time with the video… sometimes videos can feel like a race against time.
The album ‘Field of Poppies’ featured originally on my debut album ‘Section Nine’, which is a very dark, cyberpunk and industrial themed recorded about the collapse of society due to their dependence on technology, but becomes more melodic and earthly towards the end of it once the dust has settled, so to say.
However, I wanted to contrast that with natural imagery of forests and nature, something a bit more spiritual, and subtle introduction of where the Section Nine story is heading next.
We did spend alot of time working on the video, going back and forth and spent alot of time getting it absolutely right. It’s paid off – I’m so proud of it and so is everybody else involved.
I know of your style over time so what influences you the most would you say?
Like I’ve mentioned before, I consider this track as more of a straight up ‘song’ than a dancefloor track. It’s really minimal in it’s production, and sounds very open compared to everything else I tend to make which has tons of detail and is very complex in terms of it’s production.
I like to gather as many influences as possible from many different styles.
I like to go through phases of listening to a lot of a certain music style more than others, metal, dark ambient, industrial, IDM, drum & bass, electronica and even acoustic pop / folk…
You’ve probably heard this many times before but it’d be near impossible to list every style of music that can influence me, it mainly boils down to the time and situation that I get to sit down and work on music.
What external influences do you have?
‘Field of Poppies’ is the first time I’ve let my emotions drive the composition of a tune, as opposed to a concept or sound design. the majority of my work begins with literally just a song title, and that’s often more than enough to get more rolling, with an idea for the atmosphere and overall vibe of a track.
What music’s occupying your mind right now?
Even though I have such a diverse music taste and palette, I recently took a break from listening to as much Drum and Bass as I normally do over the summer to let more of influences from the other forms of music I enjoy influence my music more naturally.
The new Dead Letter Circus and Bring Me The Horizon albums are absolutely stellar, as well as the new CHVRCHES record.
In terms of Drum & Bass the new InsideInfo & Mefjus track ‘Leibniz’ is a firm favorite right now: the bassline and groove’s super heavy!
Any shouts TiB?
Big ups to all the crew involved with the music video, Nuala, Nina, Zane, Courtney as well as the actors involved Aaron and Natasha. Also, all the SKMA lads, Furney, my manager Jay and everybody else at On The Rise Music!