Tyke never ceases to amaze. As if a subtle, damaging, sinewy new ep – the follow up to the likes of Do It Now, Closed In, Schizophrenia – wasn’t enough, turns out he’s gone one step further in on some of the more heavyweight psychological themes suggested by some of those earlier works. Even as far as questioning the actual TUNE that we’re hearing when we press play. Not to mention creations that appear from nowhere. And Vegetarian Zombies.
Then there’s that totally totally unique title, Flower of Life. Good place to start…
Hi Tyke, first of all what’s the Flower of Life exactly? This really intrigued me.
Now that’s a huge question, I could go on for hours about it but I’ll keep it blunt for the interview’s sake.
It’s basically a geometrical figure which looks flower-like: it stands at the forefront of sacred geometry and you’ll find it all over the world in religions, through science and into ancient history.
It’s said to contain the fundamental laws of space, vibration and time.
Overall, the ep is excellent: it’s really interesting and full of, well, life! When did it start to evolve?
I’d say I started it at the end of last summer, with a couple of the tracks done then and some going into 2014. I probably finished the last one around February 2014. So it probably took me around seven months to do. I made a few extra tracks over that period as well but I didn’t feel they were good enough for this project.
I want to ask all about ‘This Track Is Not Real’, I love this tune and the title…
If we take a person and hook their brains up to certain computer technology and ask them to look at a certain object, we watch certain areas of the brain light up and then we ask them to close their eyes and imagine that same object, the same area of the brain to lights up as if they were actually looking at it.
So who ‘sees’ then?
Does the brain see or do the eyes see and what is reality? Is reality what we are seeing with our brain or what we are seeing with our eyes? Truth is the brain doesn’t know the difference between what it sees in our environment and what it remembers, so it asks the question, what is reality?
Would you say you are a spiritual person? Do you believe in karma for eg?
I’d say we’are all spiritual…I just like to believe that we are equal and come from the same source and I try to treat people and life with this in mind.
Continuing the metaphysical theme, can you take us behind ‘Little Universe’?
‘Little Universe’ I remember well. I had just come back from a lovely sunny, peaceful and spiritual holiday in Egypt and it was the first thing I made when I went back into the studio, proving I need much more regular holidays!
How were samples discovered/sourced for this ep?
Most of the samples I came across for this project were more than usual: they came to me more naturally in things I was watching out of personal interest away from music.
I note an interesting collab here: can you tell us who Vegetarian Zombie is?
He’s a ZOMBIE who don’t eat meat. How bizarre and TWISTED is that.
And also on the collab front Prestige pops up here for ‘Cool Breeze’, which is a cool tune for the summer. When did you guys start working on this?
I think this was the last track for the EP that we finished, so it’s the newest as such from around February this year. I had it as a dub version with vocals from Daddy Earl for a while before we turned it into ‘Cool Breeze’.
So overall what’s your best memory of recording the ep?
It was probably ‘Flower Of Life’: I originally made half of it but the guts of it way back last year and didn’t like the idea – too cheesy for me but I stumbled on the project whilst looking for some inspiration at the beginning of 2015 and literally thought It’s not that bad, I’ll finish it quickly.
I really didn’t think much of it until I played it out and saw the reaction it was getting.
To me it felt like I had been given a title track out of nowhere, lovely!
What’s your feeling about D&B right now and how it’s going down in the clubs? What things really work right now?
It seems to me that D&B is in a real good place, it has as wide an audience as ever.
Clubs vary from country to city, but in general I haven’t a bad word to say about the vibes in them. I play a totally different set in clubs than I would on radio these days as for me in a club environment you want to try and tap in to people emotions and give them some good memories.
So to do that your selection to me has to be on point and varied.
And to sign off?
Watch out for me on BBC Radio dropping a guest mix real soon.
Tyke image by Chelone Wolf
Flower of Life
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