Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you guys are doing well today.

An exciting, exclusive conversation and interview with the one, the only composer, band leader, guitarist, and songwriter, Mr. Geordie Greep. His new record, The New Sound, has just come out recently, reviewed it as well, one of my favorite albums of the year thus far, and really excited to get into it with him over this new album and anything else that comes up in the conversation.

AF: Geordie, thank you for taking the time and coming through.

GG: Thanks for having me on, man. It's good to be here. And thank you for a very nice review. It's not to say thank you for it being a good review, just thanks for it being... It seems like you actually listen to the music, which is not necessarily a given in the music reviewer game, which is a sad truth of this cartoon world.

AF: I do try to listen to the music. I feel like there is at least a slight obligation to do that. If I didn't, I feel like I would, I don't know, I'd feel guilty on some level if I didn't try to listen to the music.

GG: Yeah, I'd say that would be a just feeling.

AF: Yeah, for whatever reason, that guilt trip doesn't kick in with some people, I suppose.

GG: It's how it goes, bro. That's the world.

AF: All right. Well, I'm glad you feel like I've listened to the music. I'm doing something right, I suppose. I want to thank you for coming out with a record that's worth listening to. There's some albums you listen to one or two times, and you mostly get the gist of pretty quickly, or there's not any layers there to it to dig into. And I feel like there's a lot going on with the new sound on multiple levels. And I'm hoping to get into some of that with you and bring some context to this record that is creative, but also I think leaves a lot of questions as well because the album is such an insane experience, falling down like a forever spiral staircase in a way.

Before we dig into the content itself, for a lot of people, and I'll be honest, when we were listening to this album, especially on stream, there were some people who were shocked about the quickness with which this album came out. I feel like there are some fans and listeners who haven't even had time to adjust and process and even learn that you have transitioned out of Black Midi into doing solo material.

There were some people reacting and were like, 'Oh, what's going on? This sounds like Black Midi, or this sounds like something Black Midi would do.' This is actually a member of the band or somebody who you're already familiar with his music of. He's just going solo. If you could educate people who are watching right now, how did you make this really quick transition from being a part of this beloved experimental rock trio into dropping a solo record with such efficiency in such a short amount of time and with it being such an extravagant and very detailed, as detailed an album as it is?

GG: Well, I was already thinking about doing a solo album for a few years, even one or two years into the band, it was something that I was thinking in the abstract of, 'One day I'd like to do a solo album'. But then a few albums into I thought, 'Well, what's the point of having this thing that I'm going to do one day? If I want to do it, may as well just try sooner rather than later.' I was coming up with these songs along the way and coming up with songs that felt like they would lend themselves what had been done in a solo artist way of taking advantage of different musicians rather than being in this band format where it's a band and it's got to represent the sound of the band and the sound of each musician and everyone, if they even don't contribute to the songwriting, they will contribute to the sound of the song with how they play their instrument and stuff. I felt like the songs I was coming up with, for me, I was one and more of a studio musician sound for them. At some point, it just seemed like a necessity and something I really wanted to try.

The recording for the album was in spurts of two or three days from last September, even, to this April or May. So it was already going along, doing a bit here and there. And it was a fairly, not to say overwrought, it was a huge process, but it wasn't just a short thing that just came together really quickly. It was something I've been thinking about for a long time, and even when it came to executing it, took place over quite a few months.

AF: Okay. So you're talking about the music on this record coming together in various studio sessions or recording sessions within different periods of time, is what you're saying?

GG: Pretty much. With each session, then going away from that experience and re-evolving evaluating what this album is going to be. For example, when we actually... One of the big lines in the promotion of this album is that we recorded some of it in Brazil. That was maybe the third session that we had done for it. So once we had done that, it was, 'Ah, okay, this has kind of changed the complete thing'. We know this is going to work, working with these musicians who are hearing the song for the first time on a day that they're recording the take, which is the take on the album, and recording a final take for the song 30 minutes after they played it for the first time. That was a completely new experience for me. It's like a classic experience in the world of recording music, but it was a new experience for me. So to know that that worked, and in fact, that really benefited the songs for me, for what I wanted out of them, that was great like, 'Okay, cool. So now we're going to approach the rest of the album like that.' And it really changed how we were looking at it. This is me and Seth, the producer.

AF: Right. And I did want to quickly ask you how Seth came into the fold, but we can get into that a little later. I want to ask you just because you just mentioned it. Introducing these new musicians that you're working with to some of these songs, as opposed to, fellow members of a band who you've been working with for years and maybe have a certain level of familiarity with. These musicians that you're working with, in terms of the song itself that you're introducing them to, what are you introducing them to at this point? Is it a demo of the track? And how close was that version of the song to what it ended up being when you guys finally laid down the final tracks and details of the song? Was there a lot of changes in evolution stylistically and sonically from point A to point B? Because what's clear is that there's definitely a Brazilian or Bossa Nova spin on some of the instrumentals of these tracks that you have to presume on some level is being brought to the table by the guests who you're bringing onto the album on some level?

GG: I mean, for every song, I did a very comprehensive demo. I play keys as well, and I hate music software. I find it really tedious, but you have to use that stuff. I would make these demos with drum machines and even on Logic, there's the algorithmic drummer who can play in any style you want and at any tempo or time signature you want. He was my friend. Then I would play the guitar and bass and keyboards and really build up to almost just like our friend Jacob Collier, these Logic projects with 200 tracks and stuff.

AF: Shout out to Jacob.

GG: He's doing his thing.

So, I'd make these demos, and then it wouldn't I think, very produced, but they would basically be very close to what the songs ended up being. I don't like mixing. I find it really boring, so I would never mix them properly. But in the actual musical content and the structure and delivery song, it'll pretty much be the same. The stuff that changed was little things. For example, when we went to Brazil, we did that song, "Terra". And that song, when I originally was doing it on a demo, it was much more salsa that I was trying to do like a fan here, '70s salsa type song that Héctor Lavoe would sing or something. So it was much more like the timbales and this thing. But obviously, when we went to Brazil, they were hearing it more like a samba, so they played a very different groove and different rhythms on that song. But the structure and chord sequences and musical form of basically all of the tracks was the same as a demo. And that was the same way I did it in Black Midi, too. It was like for the songs that I did, which on the last two albums was 80% or so, it was this same approach.

AF: Okay. So thank you for shedding light on that. I wanted to ask you also, with the sort of spotty coming and going process that you had with these studio sessions, at what point over the course of the evolution of this project did you start to come together with what is the narrative and the character portrait of the record? I mean, the vast majority of the tracks on the album, if you're paying attention, seem to paint a very clear picture of an individual or a personality type. At what point did you decide to hone in on that? And in what fashion was that coming together?

GG: Well, in a similar way to some of the songs, musically, sometimes I would finish one song's lyrics and then at the very end have one more line which seemed to go in a different direction, and then that would become another set of lyrics. So the same thing happened with... A musical example is if anyone listens close, at the very end of "Terra", it ends on this chord, which is the first chord of the instrumental, "The New Sound". So that was like, I would play the outro of this "Terra" song and then start this other thing and then said, 'Oh, wait, this is a whole other song.' So the same thing with some of the lyrics where I would finish once I have lyrics and then think, 'Okay, what about another angle on this same thing?' And before I knew it, there was a few songs going down the same road, and the same character, and the same atmosphere, and the same subject matter. And I thought, 'Why not?' If I've already got two or three, we may as well commit this as a kind of interesting thing, not much discussed in rock music or whatever. And I also thought it's been a pertinent issue in the last 10 years, this extreme braggadocio masculine craziness.

We've seen it with all these people on the internet that 30 years ago would be characters in the Simpsons, and now are just people that are on Twitter or whatever. So this is pretty nuts. I just thought also a lot of people have been talking about this stuff in music in the last 10 years, but maybe it's more this phrase of show, don't tell. And a lot of people were saying, 'Oh, this is bad.' Well, obviously it's bad. But I thought maybe it's effective to show that this is bad and you don't have to necessarily preach and say this is bad. It just is obvious. I just thought it was a funny subject matter.

AF: At the very start of the album, and maybe not to tell too much and go against what you just said there, but I find the beginning of the record particularly interesting because in that moment, I'm curious as to how we make the transition into the rest of the record, because for "Blues", would you say this is the character narrating, and then they're inventing themselves out of this sense of boredom and restlessness and contending with how mundane life feels? Or is this you inventing the fantasy or inventing the character just out of a need to break things up and escape from again? How boring and mundane that first slice-of-life image is at the start of the album?

GG: I don't know. With this album, it was less a thing of having one character and one through-line story and more like an atmosphere and a, what is the word? Cumulative thing that builds on with each song. One of my favorite albums is The Blue Niles' Hats. And this is an album that's not necessarily a concept album, but it's like each song builds on this atmosphere and builds on this sense of character and sense of time, place, whatever, scenarios on this stuff.

Anyway, with this first song, "Blues", I wanted to be basically like an overture. And this was a song structure that I tried to do a few times in Black Midi, which is something kind of simple that slowly, slowly builds into insanity. You start with a simple premise and then you go and go and go and have this crazy music and crazy vocals on the top. Even going back to "Boom, Boom, Boom", the first song we put out, and then something like "The Race Is About to Begin" from the third album, it's this idea of something slowly, slowly unraveling, something that's going crazy and crazier. With the song "Blues", it was the same thing.

It was when initially got the take and stuff, I thought, 'Wow, this is the best time we've got.' It's basically the same idea song-wise, but this is really the head, the hammer on the nail or whatever it is of this song structure. So I thought it was only fair that that's the beginning of the album. A little bit like on Peter Gabriel's first solo album, he has a song called "Moribund The Burgermeister" or something, which is basically like a Genesis song. So it encapsulates his time in Genesis and then does that to the furthest extent that he thinks it can. And then he has his first solo after that. So I want to sum up what I was trying to do with Black Midi, like what we were maybe trying to do as a band with this song. And then after that, get into this new territory.

But thematically, yeah, I don't know necessarily the exact... It's more like an overture, and it's meant to be blues which starts off in a mundane way, just talking about this character who's maybe 18 or so and things there went shit, and gets further and further into talking about the boundless depths of the universe and all this inevitable rhetoric writing of losing your hands and limbs and all this stuff and bloody staging a civil war and all this outlandish surreal imagery. I don't know.

AF: No, thank you for diving into that and explaining it. I did also want to get deeper into this idea of telling now that you mention it. Obviously, as you just said, there's not a point on the album where you explicitly tell the audience, 'Oh, this character is bad, and this is what you should think about the character.' But I feel like, in a way, toward the very end of the album with "The Magician", you do in your own way, give us some tells or explain or get very meta with your own creative process. Do you feel like you broke the fourth wall a little bit on that record or that track, playing with the of, 'Am I joking around? Am I in a fantasy? Am I in a reality?' It's like you're almost talking about your own abilities as an artist to create a world and present it to the audience in a certain fashion.

GG: For sure. I mean, I thought this album, I was thinking, it seems like today the prime way people listen to music and the reason a lot of music is made is to listen to it on the train on the way to work or to listen to it while you're cooking, to listen to it while you're doing other things. And it's to be almost a pleasant thing that just goes on. And so my thing with this album was to make the music maybe pleasant enough that that is possible, but jarring enough sometimes that you're forced to listen to it. So you're on a train, listen to this, and then it says some or other perverse thing and you think, 'What the hell is this guy talking about, man?'

But yeah, maybe so with this track, "The Magician", it's all this stuff of this meta stuff of it's a performance that you're listening to on record, but it's speaking directly to you, but it's also existing in this fictional way and all this thing of having dreams and this fantasy and this yearning feeling is the same reason I had "If You Are But A Dream" as the last song, this yearning feeling of something that you want, but you can't have or something that exists only in retrospect or whatever.

I don't know for sure. I think the reason this "Magician" song, a lot of people latched onto it even before the song, the album even came come out is it's got this slightly abstract thing of you can have a lot of… Ascribe lots of different things to it, which is not necessarily the case for a lot of the other songs. A lot of the other songs are very clearly about some warlord or some heinous activity, whereas this song is more rhetorical, more like, let's see, let's explore.

AF: Do you feel like… This is an interesting creative, I guess, angle to discuss or contemplate – because as you're saying, there is a lot of music out there that just seems like it exists to happen while something else is going on – which I mean, I guess to a degree has always been the case for music on some level. There's always been music that's been composed for dance contexts and so on and so forth. But I guess in your case – do you feel like you angle at least some of the music on this record, or some of the music that you make in general, purposefully with that intention, just out of a desire to communicate directly with the audience, or do you personally feel like it's out of perceiving there being maybe a lack of effort on artists' part these days, generally, with trying to break that wall and actually say something directly to the audience? Do you feel like there's a void out there these days in the musical sphere in terms of artists who actually want to say something to the audience in a direct and maybe even intimate fashion?

AF: Well, it's the same with movies, but if you listen to very old fashioned records, they're trying to capture a performance. They're trying to make it seem as if the album that you're listening to, Frank Sinatra, that you're listening to or Nat King Cole on the radio, whatever, they could be in your living room. They're trying to do this performance as three-dimensional as possible. And they always come up, use the proximity effect, come up right up to your ear and then go away. There's so much dynamics, right?

The same with these classics, the first films ever made, they would actually shoot the film from as if they were in the first seats of the auditorium in a theater. So it's just like you were at a play or something. And I think it's easy to do with all sorts of things, technology and changing tastes and everything. But basically, a lot of my favorite music has this intimacy and has this thing where it's a performance, is that there's a theatrical element to it. And I think in the name of sonic consonance, a lot of that has been lost, where music, a lot of music almost is mixed in the same way that adverts on billboards are mixed in terms of blending in. You listen to it and it's like, 'Okay, this is great and this is cool.' But it's so compressed and so smoothed over that you miss a lot of it actually being a performance on some level.

And also on the inverse, music that's more imaginative or more experimental, more crazy. It's almost like everyone says this where, 'Oh, this album is great, but you have to listen to it 10 times to get into it.' And that's brilliant, but there's a slight contradiction there where it's music that has to be listened to quite a lot, but is often not at times, a lot of times, not even that nice to listen to. So it's like you have to listen to this stuff that's not nice to listen to so many times before it does become nice to listen to.

So, I don't know, I was trying to find somewhere in the middle where it's music that's on first listen, there's still something to latch onto and there's still something nice about it, but it does have this thing of the more you listen to it, you still can get different things and everything.

AF: Just to dig further into that, was there a balancing act during the recordings of these tracks? Because I don't know how many takes or how many times you had to go over these songs to get them together and make them work. But was there a bouncing act between coming through with recordings and compositions that, frankly, are so detailed and multifaceted and multi-phased and complex, but still making it sound very live and in the moment? Was there a lot of changes and editing involved with getting these songs together, or were you able to nail these tracks down in a way where you were able to keep the actual performances they're based off of, for the most part, intact?

GG: Well, it's that whole thing of... I did these really detailed demos, and I would do sometimes drafts on the demos, I would do a song and then say, 'It doesn't work. We need to do this again.' Make sure the songs were tested before I even thought about recording them. But as soon as we had the recording date set, partly due to this conscious restriction of time and setting this restriction, you had to work quick, so it would often be getting the songs in two or three takes.

So for example, when we did these songs in Brazil, like "Holy, Holy", "Terra", all this, we'd play those songs three times and then that would be the take. And I think that goes a long way toward getting something good. It's often the first time someone plays something right that is in some ways the best time, the best they're ever going to play it. Because there's a slight... You're trying so hard not to mess the song up, just to play the right stuff that there's a tension and you're concentrating on a very high level.

Oftentimes when you're on tour and stuff, you end up playing the song 50, 100 times. By that point, the level of autopilot has set in to such a degree that you're not even thinking anymore. You're hardly switched on at all. So sure, you might get all the notes right, but it's just something missing in the intensity. Whereas great musicians playing the songs for the third or fourth time, it always sounds amazing. That's basically what I'm getting at. You should try and maximize that as much as possible.

It was a combination of that and also the fact that every song would be guitar, bass, drums, at least at the same time, sometimes even a keyboard and percussion as well. Half the album, yeah, it's bass, piano, keyboard, guitar, and percussion all at the same time. Then we do overdubs on top of that. But the overdubs can never ruin a great live take. Even if you go over the board with the overdubs or get the wrong things overblow it, you can never fuck up a good live take.

AF: Considering how a lot of these musicians on the record you were working with for the first time and introducing to the songs for the first time, was the process of finding all the right people to bring these songs together difficult or very long? Was it a very involved search?

GG: I'm very lucky, but over the 10 years of doing music, playing around London, and then doing this band and playing around the world, we met loads of people. And there's loads of people that for a long time I wanted to try and do music with, but it hadn't been the reason to or the opportunity or whatever.

AF: So you're keeping a mental rolodex of all these people who you've met and it's like, I'd really like to work with this person, this person.

GG: Pretty much, yeah. And also like a thing of, you're in a band and it's great, but there's always a thing of like, 'Oh, hypothetically, that would be interesting, but there's no reason to.' Whereas this was a chance where it was like, 'Okay, let's try this, and let's try that.' But then again, there were a lot of things. A lot of the musicians I played within this album were pretty circumstantial.

I keep mentioning the Brazil thing. The story there is that we had touring dates in Brazil with Black Midi and three or four days off. Me and Seth, we've been trying to sort out our recording session in London, and the song we wanted to do was "Holy, Holy" and "Terra" and "Through a War", and stuff like that. We wanted to get top session, guys. We wanted to make it sound like "Billie Jean", basically. We wanted to get guys that could really just play one groove for the whole song and it sounds good. But also guys that had experience playing this Latin music because this was a lot of the influence of the album with stuff like Milton Nascimento.

Then I remembered that I was in Brazil with Black Midi, so I just thought, 'Why not? Let's just record it over there.' I called up the one guy I know in Brazil, a guy called Fernando Dotta, a guy who runs a thing called Balaclava Records. He just said, 'Yeah, of course, that's fine. I know musicians and I know studios, so I'll just call up these guys.' And so they weren't familiar with Black Midi, they weren't any guys I'd met before, we just got into the studio and just bashed it out. And they liked the songs and they were into it and they were amazing musicians. So it was very chill.

Sorry for the long-winded answer, but basically, it's a combination of people that I've known for a long time and wanted to work with and just on a whim, or not necessarily whim, but on an impulse, deciding, 'Yeah, let's go for it. Let's record a song with these people that I barely know, and I've just met. And with some, I don't even speak the same language.' So it's a great vibe.

AF: Right, exactly. So it's like you're literally relying on music to be the language to make things make sense between all you guys.

GG: It's just as much a risk doing it in a far-flung place than it is doing it in London to some degree because the risk is on the material, if it's strong enough. I just thought, 'What have we got to lose, really?' If the song is crap, it's going to sound crap with the best musicians in the world and with the worst musicians in the world. It doesn't matter, really. It's more about if we can just get something to feel good and have a good atmosphere and positive vibe. Also, going on tour to places like Brazil, it was always a thing of the standard of musicianship is insanely high. Always as a musician, regardless of what music you're playing or who you're going on a tour with, there's a desire to play with these people. So, I just thought, 'Why not?'

AF: It sounds like pretty early on in some of these recordings and these sessions and conceptualizing and producing these tracks, Seth has been involved on some level. Obviously, this is a solo album of yours. But at what point did it seem important to you to have a second mind in there, production-wise, to sort of bring things together and just make sure it's all making sense, going well, all coming together cohesively? What does Seth bring to the table that just felt like a need for you in the midst of this project?

GG: Well, me and him are good bros. He played in Black Midi for a few years, first on keyboard, then on bass, in a session musician capacity, basically, when we were touring. Over that time, we really became brothers. We really became good friends. We were always talking about music and had a lot of... The Venn diagram was crossing over a fair bit in terms of what we appreciated, and not even necessarily on all the music we liked, but definitely on the reasons why we liked it and the reasons why we wanted to make music and the music we wanted to make ultimately. It was this whole thing of so many other things behind the decisions on this album. We just really got along and it was a nice atmosphere, positive, good vibe, good energy. We just thought, 'Why not work with those people?'

I think there's a tendency sometimes to think, 'Oh, we're getting a big name producer. They're going to help shape it and stuff, or they're going to help us.' Originally, when we were doing some sessions early on, we were thinking, 'Oh, we could go to this guy, we could go to that guy.' But in the same logic of doing this solo album in the first place, thinking like, 'Why wait till I'm 40 to do something that I always want to do instead of just doing it now? If I want to do it ultimately, let's just do it now.' Thinking, 'Well, if we want to produce records, ultimately, who's stopping us? Let's just do it now.' It's not like you ascend the ranks and then one day someone says, 'Oh, you're a producer now.'

People just decide one day that they're a producer. Maybe you have a lot of experience in a studio or whatever, but I think it's fair enough to say that if you want to be a producer, just have a go. And he's got a great understanding of the studio. That's the main thing. He knows how sound works and how to chat with the engineers to get the sound we want and to make it work.

And also, originally, this album was going to be a duo album with the two of us, and that was the goal. But as it was going on, it was more practical to do it as my album first because I had more tunes, basically. It felt like, we'll do a duo album at some point and we'll do his album. It's more about just doing what seems like it can get done rather than it all having to be perfect. Sorry, this is another ramble, but that's a big tendency nowadays is that people seem to work on albums for years and years until it's perfect and try and get every little thing right. All my favorite musicians, they just had this thing of constantly trying to do an album a year and just keep improving gradually. It's better to do four albums and then between the first and the fourth, it's amazing. Like such a big jump, then wait four years and do something that's marginally better. I don't know.

AF: Frankly, it's insane to hear you say that because I feel like albums that have the level of detail musically and narratively that the new sound brings to the table. I mean, it sounds like an album that you've worked on for five years, frankly.

GG: Thank you, man. Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, maybe in some way, there's little riffs on this album that I've gone back a long time thinking like, 'Oh, I've always wanted to use this, or sets and lines and stuff.' But recording-wise, it was all in the last half year, two years or so. It's been free.

AF: Yeah. I mean, it speaks to the idea. I mean, even the magician has been performed in a Black Midi context before. It speaks to the idea that as you continue doing what you do, you're picking and conceptualizing these ideas here and there a little bit, and then it's all coming together after it's snowballing over time, gradually.

GG: Yeah. Sometimes it's like you have a few things that are slowly picking up steam, and then all of a sudden, you just need one kick to do the rest really quickly. You know?

AF: Right. I also wanted to ask you – you're making a lot of, as you were saying earlier, statements through this character portrait and the lyrics on the record and these different individuals or individual that you're displaying the personality of. But what do you feel like is the statement that you're making sonically and musically on this record? Because for anything that has the experimental and prog leanings that your music most definitely does, it's ballsy to name your new record, The New Sound. You know what I mean? I feel like as a musician, you're really putting a line in the sand, you're planting a flag down, and just being like, 'Bitch, this shit is new.' So it's like, for you, what exactly does the idea of the new sound really mean, especially given that the title track of the record, the song with that title is an instrumental. Is it literally the very unique mix of influences that we hear on that particular track, or is it something beyond that?

GG: Well, it's just bombastic, really. I had the idea for the name of this album being The New Sound before I had half the songs done. So it was more of a goal and yeah, probably pretty dumb to call the album that, but I thought, music is dumb in a lot of ways, and it's good to just have this goal and say, 'Who cares? Let's go for it.' This is going to be the new sound, at least for me. Also, I love this kitschy thing of naming your album stuff like the new sound. I mean, very 1950s. It's very like the genius of Bud Powell or the magnificent Charlie Christian, whatever. A lot of these old jazz albums, they have these funny names, and I just like that.

AF: Or, The Shape of Jazz to Come.

GG: For sure. Exactly. Yeah, brilliant. Yeah. Who cares? But in terms of the actual definition of the new sound or whatever, if there is one, it's just this thing of, I think, taking the best of experimental music of crazy, out there music of crazy music that I'm really into that's really heady and you have to put your thinking cap on and subscribe to Wire magazine or whatever it is, but also stupid music or music that's just for fun. Because essentially, music is just for fun, really. I think it's like a purely... What is even the word? It's not a pastime, but it's the best thing in the world. But it's also maybe it's the best thing in the world because it doesn't really have a quantifiable meaning, really, except other than to be, to make you feel so good. You know?

AF: No, okay. I get that. I get what you're saying there. I feel like there is, though, for you as an artist and as a musician, though, maybe it's just meant to be fun for the audience on some level or for the most part. But I wanted to ask you about some of the statements and some of the intentions that are stated within these tracks. We've established that, again, you're existing in or playing out a fantasy of sorts on this song. You're displaying a character or an archetype or a trope. And I feel like naturally, there are going be some people wondering, even with what you say on "The Magician", how much crossover is there between the role player and the role?

In that specific regard, the one thing that I am curious about that comes up as a theme throughout a lot of these tracks is this idea of being considered, being remembered, being thought of, being bigger, important enough to matter to other people. Obviously, this is something that is a concern of the character. But do you, as an individual on a personal level, and especially as an artist and a musician who's in the limelight to the degree, do you struggle with this idea of, am I doing something or am I making something that people are actually going to think of a year from now, two years from now, three years from now? Or does that, on a personal level, not even really matter to you ultimately?

GG: Well, I mean, I think it's healthy. And I think I do struggle with this idea of, is this music worth being made? Because there's no point doing music that doesn't need to exist. You can really boil down a lot of the difference between good music and bad music, is a lot of music doesn't really sound like it needs to exist, whereas you put on...

AF: That's so fucking harsh, but it's also true.

GG: I think so, yeah.

AF: There's a lot of music out there that you're just like, I feel like I've heard this 10 times already.

GG: Yeah. I just think, and in the inverse as well, listen to, even if it's not your favorite album, some of these albums, but whatever, Wish You Were Here, Kind of Blue, Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues Singers or whatever, or Prince, Purple Rain, whatever. You listen to one of these albums and within 10 seconds, it sounds like something that should exist. It really sounds urgent, vital. It sounds like you've already heard it before a lot of the time. I feel like that's the best music where it does have this thing where it's like, 'Oh, yeah, of course.'

I love thinking about this thing with great books, with great movies, with great albums. Ten seconds in, a minute in, you feel like you're in safe hands. You really trust this person because straight away, it feels like an assured thing. Like, 'Oh, yeah, of course. That makes this is good.' Of course, there's some albums where you need to go on a journey and get into it and stuff. But I feel like even with albums that are uncompromising, that are crazy, there's a reason you want to listen to it again. There's a thing which seems like not just messing around. It seems like it's by design where it's It's craziness. I'm compromising. But you do want to listen to it again. You do want to at least try. I don't know. And so much crap music, you just listen to it and think like, 'Why?'

AF: If, hypothetically, 10 years from now, people aren't even considering this album anymore, for you personally, would that mean to you on some level that this was all for nothing? Or would you still personally feel like you got something out of the process and it was important for you to do, though?

GG: Well, that's the thing, it's kind of neither here nor there. It's quite funny because people, as Black Midi went on, it was funny because when the first album came out, there was lots of negative response to it. And especially on comments and stuff, it was often stuff like, 'If these guys are good. If only they were all playing the same song. The drum are good, but the rest of them are crap. What's this guy talking about? This is just nonsense. These guys, they don't know what they're doing. This is all over the place.'

Then the second album came out and there was a better response and the third album came out and there was a generally better response. But people then at that point said, 'This is okay, but it doesn't compare to how good the first album was' or something like that. It's like, 'Seriously, dude?' People change what they're saying all the time, so you can't really care about it. You just have to do what you were going to do anyway and just have a go and just make sure you're happy with it and make music that you would want to listen to. It's not about making music music only for yourself. It's making music that's only for yourself as a listener. You know?

AF: Upon initial impact with this record, have there been any similar reactions or comments that you've seen that to you have felt confusing, or this feels like just a repeat of what I've already dealt with with Black Midi?

GG: To be honest, the response to this album has been really good. A lot better than I thought it would be, to be honest. People seem to be genuinely enjoying it. It's not for everybody, and that's great. It's for whoever wants to listen to it, whoever doesn't want to listen to it, also great. But it surprised me that people are enjoying it, basically. And it seems one reaction that was fairly common with Black Midi was people would say, 'I love this, this is great, but I want to like it more.' They would say, 'I love the idea of this music, but it's not necessarily resonating on a visceral level.' But people I've seen with this one to be enjoying it just in a way that you like Mariah Carey or whatever, maybe. Just more something you can just listen to. So that's cool. Who cares? But either way, it's like whatever.

AF: You were talking earlier about your artistic whims and just allowing them to bring you to wherever they're going to bring you. Like, 'If I'm going to do a solo album, why wait till I'm 40 to do it? Why not do it now? We could do another solo record. We could do a collab album with Seth. We could just do a Seth record.' At this point right now, with as much as you can tell the future, I know you're not Nostradamus, but immediately after this album cycle and after the performances behind this record or over and done with, what do you feel like the next thing is for you personally and creatively?

GG: I mean, ultimately, I just want to keep doing albums. I want to have this even self-enforced pressure of just finishing things and getting things done. I have a fair amount of songs either half done or in a good place. So just whenever it's convenient after some touring and stuff, I just want to get back to it and try and finish another thing, whether that's an album or anything, preferably an album. But we'll see. It should be good.

AF: It seems like for you personally, there's this really big emphasis on the idea of getting things done, and efficiency, and completing things, and finishing things. And now that you have that contrast here between Black Midi, between this new record and other things that you've done, what process creatively do you feel like is bringing you those results that you want? Do you feel like you work faster in a context where it's like, 'Oh, I'm doing a solo album, and we're finding guests or studio musicians. I have a producer at my who I trust and I'm working with very closely.' Or do you feel like you get more done in a band where maybe you have other people contributing and maybe certain things happen faster because there are other hands at play to do certain things or come together with certain ideas? In which context do you feel like you work faster and do things more efficiently?

GG: Well, this first album, The New Sound, has been a unique process. It's something where half of the process was just psyching myself up to even do it. When you're working with session musicians, when you're renting out the studio, you're committing to pay these people who have never played the song before, and you don't know that it's going to work. So the first time doing it after working with the band where you can just book a rehearsal or whatever, or go through things, or you know the musical styles of each person, it was a really uncertain thing. And it was like, 'Well, is this going to work? Is this not?' So a lot of the time in the recording process was just kind of figuring out if that would even work. Trying to psych myself up to even commit to doing it. But once we got in the studio and once we were actually in the swing of it, it was always incredibly quick. So I don't see any reason why from now on, it's an even quicker process than working with a band.

AF: Yeah. Now the seal is broken and you've gone over the hump.

GG: Exactly. It's not going to get harder than this. So let's see.

AF: Okay. All right.

GG: I think just in terms of the pressure of it, the like, 'Oh, it's the first time. Who knows how it's going to work?' So now this album has come out, and to some degree, and t's done okay, people like it. I think from here on out, hopefully, it's just even smoother.

AF: Are there any things, be it in a band context or a Seth collab context or a solo context that you could see yourself wanting to do down the road on a future record or maybe that you wanted to do on this album, but maybe it didn't feel like the right time because there was so much pressure to make sure it all went well because it was the first time, and you're dealing with the fear and difficulty of like, 'Oh, this is my first outing in this way, and I really wanted to go right, and maybe doing this or that, I could end up overextending myself or something.'

GG: Well, because this was the first time, there was a slight effort to accurately portray each of the musical things that I'm really into. So there was a lot on this album where it's like, 'Let's try to have this song and this song.' I think there's a wide musical and sonic palate and different influences coming in and stuff – and part of that is just how it happened – but there was also definitely a thing of like, 'This might be the only solo I might make.' So I want to make sure that it's like...

AF: You want to make it encompass everything.

GG: Yeah, or at least try a few different things. So maybe with the next thing, it will be more like, let's pick one of these musical strands and explore it more thoroughly. It might be the fusion thing. So do an album which has a few more instrumental songs, maybe has a few more of an emphasis on blistering fusion. Or it might be the song-type thing. It might be the valid thing or it might be whatever. I don't know. Maybe part of why this album, people like it is this contrast between all these different things. But maybe exploring one more thoroughly could result in better songs. Who knows? But it's interesting. Basically, I feel less pressure for the next thing to go completely wrong because I've done this one now and it's been okay. So we can try something different with this one. But let's see. I don't know.

AF: Okay. One more question about the progression of the album, specifically how you finish it off. You mentioned Sinatra earlier, you finish the album off with a track that is famously performed by Sinatra. For the album itself, for this solo outing, for what we could perceive as the narrative of the album, what do you feel like this track contributes to the tracklist of the record? Why was this important to finish the album off in this way?

GG: Well, I heard this song many years ago, and I really liked it. I thought, it's not the most well-known song that Sinatra did, and he did it early on in his career in the '40s, so his voice sounds pretty different. It's got this youthful slight hint of uncertainty to it. I just love the song. I think it's a brilliant song. Unique for jazz standard or whatever. I like the lyrics. Most jazz standard songs have really terrible lyrics. They're brilliant, perfect songs, but so cheesy lyrics about the smile of the moon or something.

With this song, I just love the lyrics. I love how it works with the melody and love how it works with the form of the song. It's talking about if you are about a dream, it's this yearning thing, and the melody has this same yearning structure to it where it's never quite resolving and going on and going on. It's a brilliant song. I was just listening to that song again while I was making this album. A similar thing happened with the album cover, where I was listening to this song as we were doing the album and thought, 'Wow, this kind of ties in quite well with a lot of the songs we're doing here.' I had this idea of doing it with a more brass band, Salvation Army-type arrangement, something like from maybe one of the slow songs on Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones, like with this New Orleans thing.

What's that one? "In the Neighbourhood", or maybe something like from Lester Bowie's brass ensemble in the '80s, like Art Ensemble of Chicago, and all of that stuff. But anyway, this sound, I thought would lend itself to the song, this funerial somber arrangement. So I contacted some people to try and do an arrangement, and this guy called Harvey came up with a brilliant arrangement, and we just recorded it, and I sang it. And after the context of all the songs on this album, it has quite a different feel. But I just love that song. It's a brilliant song, and I think, boy, it should be, at least in some new context, performed again.

AF: No, it does really add to the record so much, especially given all the fantastical themes of the lyrics. I was taken aback to – because I wasn't really familiar with the song prior to the record – I was taken aback to find that it was not an original. I mean, there was something about it that felt a little different from every other track on the record, and I thought it was mostly coming from a place of like, 'Oh, I'm just going to copy a certain vibe or an idea.' I was glad I intuitively presumed that this might be a take on something. Part of what does make it feel like an original is that, yeah, the lyrics don't necessarily feel reflective of the era that they come from. That's partially why I feel like a lot of Chet Baker's vocal jazz stuff stands out for the era that it came out of, because a lot of the songs that he would sing were actually quite depressing, in a fatalistic way. It's not your usual grade of blues or vocal jazz sadness. It's like you're really coming from a super dark place. The fact that that song is playing with the idea of living in a sad, made up dream-like reality, it just makes it so interesting. Again, it really just puts the cap on the record in a really great way.

Thank you very much for coming through and bringing so much insight to this very dense, very interesting, very creative record. Again, I love that you took the time, and were just an open book in the convo.

GG: Brilliant, man. Thanks for having me. It's always a good vibe, and I'll see you next time, man.

AF: All right. We'll all be looking forward to the next thing that you do, the next thing you're working on, and I hope you have a good rest of your day.

GG: Yeah, you too, man. Have a good one.

AF: All right. Bye.

GG: See you. Bye.

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