Mumdance talks

 
Music

Its been a while since we last heard from Mumdance. The purveyor of wonky, genre baiting bass bombs has been on hiatus for a year or two, unwilling to fob off his fans with substandard filler. Now hes returned with a whole new albums worth of material, and it sounds mental. We havent got a clue what to call this style of weird, jittering electronics, and I spose you might say it was techno, if techno was made by a raging computer with only viral madness and the hand claps of Pulse X to work with. Whats the deal Jack?? That was what we wanted to know. So we asked him. 

It’s been a long time since we heard from you – any reason for the hiatus?

I guess I just got a bit burnt out, I did a lot of touring in quite a short space of time & put out a lot of music in quite a short space of time, I think I just needed a bit of a break to figure out where I was going to go next. I wanted to spend a bit of time experimenting & trying grow as a producer. If something stops being fun & you fall out of love with it for a little while, the last thing you should do is try to force it. I was just waiting for the next breeze to fill my sails.

What’s changed for you since the last Mumdance releases?

I guess I feel a lot more confident with my music now, Ive just been spending these last two years working hard, learning and trying my hand at different things. I feel Ive now got a lot more experience throughout the spectrum now, from working with bands, producing club music, writing grime in Jammers basement, to working in big pop studios with top liners and songwriters with platinum hits under their belt. I feel Im in a good place right now musically so expect to see a lot more music emerging soon

It’s usual to come back with a single, or a couple of tracks – Any reason why you decided to go with the full length?

Well I think I just felt I had been away for a long time so had to have something to show for it! I think this album documents a transitional period in my career, while I was making it I changed literally my entire music making process, examining every element and working out how I could refine and progress it. This album is a result of that, Im just enjoying myself, trying to push my boundaries & get as many different ideas out of my head and down on to the record as possible.

The new tracks are pretty wild, are there any other producers or scenes who fit in with what your doing, or are you out there on your own? What do we even call the new sound?

For the majority of the time I was writing this I made a point of not listening to any other music, solely because I didnt want to draw influence from any of my contemporaries, I just wanted to do something that was quite introspective and stood out on its own as a body of work, Im not even really sure myself how you would classify it. In terms of scene,  some of it is quite experimental and I think it will definitely divide opinon, but Im ready for that. In terms of scene, I dont think there is one that I fit into entirely, but maybe more exist in the vacuums between them? I have no idea I just try to make stuff that I enjoy making & which challenges me as a producer. I think its the listeners job to decide where to place me in his or her own framework of ideas.

You’ve had a few great collaborations in the past, any more in the pipeline?

I work a lot with a producer called Logos at the moment, I feel like our creative visions compliment each other really well & we write stuff quite quickly when we work together which is always a bonus. We have a lot more planned in the pipeline so keep an ear out and also check his solo stuff, its really interesting & well put together music. In terms of forthcoming collaborations, this whole album was instrumental, so Im feeling like now I want to start working with some vocalists again, so I think thats what is next for me. Id really like to produce a full album for someone, just get in the studio and build something together from scratch. 

As someone who’s always made very futuristic sounds, do you feel a pressure, self imposed or otherwise, to constantly innovate with your music? And is that even possible?

Yes there is definitely pressure to innovate, I think thats something that was a big contributor to me getting burnt out in the first place. Something I learnt in that time is that you cant force it, you just have to  have fun with music, do your own thing and not worry about following fashion or trend. If you do that you creativity will come easy and you will do a good job. If you do a good job you dont have to worry about anything else as good music always finds its way.

Finally, did you write ‘In Reverse’ the normal way round, then reverse it? 

We actually wrote in Reverse forwards, but with all the separate sounds reversed, so we got all the separate drum hits reversed each one, then put them in the MPC backwards and built it that way. It was quite a confusing way to work but very rewarding. Then after the track was build I recorded a secret message, which you can only hear if you reverse the track..It was a really interesting project to work one and Id actually like to make a whole ton of backwards stuff, not sure how much a listener could tolerate in one sitting but it would be fun to make!

Mumdance ‘Twists and Turns’ drops June 4 via mumdance.com 

Ian Mcquaid