Lee Gamble

Imagine a world where club beats meet experimental sounds, where ancient echoes mingle with modern AI voices. That's the universe inhabited by our guest, Lee Gamble. Paul sits down with Lee to discuss his latest album, Models, released on the hugely influential Hyperdub Records.  Not only do we delve into the influences that shaped this remarkable piece of work, but we also unpack how personal loss and the global pandemic have left indelible marks on Lee's creative process.

Lee's unique narrative is punctuated by the influence of Birmingham's drum and bass and techno history, and his journey as a DJ navigating the complexities of self-identity. We reflect on the intersections of technology, art, and emotion, examining how cutting-edge AI can both enhance and evoke a sense of longing within music. Lee also shares his insightful perspective on the powerful impact personal experiences and social class have on an artist's self-perception and creativity.

Presented and produced by Paul Hanford 

Paul Hanford on Instagram

Models by Lee Gamble is available here.

Lost and Sound is proudly sponsored by Audio-Technica

Paul’s debut book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culture Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

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Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Transcript

Paul: 0:03

Lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. Audio Technica are a global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, that make studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to AudioTechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Hello and welcome to Lost in Sound. I'm Paul Hamford, I'm your host, I'm a writer and author and a university lecturer based in Berlin, where I'm speaking to you now from, and this is the show where each episode, I have conversations with the musical innovators, the outsiders, the mavericks, the artists that do their own unique thing, and we talk about music, creativity, life, the stuff that makes us do the things that we do. Previous guests have included peaches, suzanne Cianni, Gimo Rourke, jilly Gonzalez, hania Rani, jean Michel Jarre, sleaford Mods, mickey Blanco and First and More. And today on the show, you're going to hear a conversation I had with Lee Gamble. My book Coming to Berlin is available in all good bookshops and via the publisher, velocity Press's website.

Paul: 2:07

Okay, so I'm talking to you today from a very, very cold miter in Berlin, where the temperature in the last couple of days has dropped immensely. It's proper winter now. My ears have been blocked for a week. It's been quite weird. I had to go to get them unblocked. This morning, suddenly I can hear again in 3D. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it's almost worth it. The sensation of suddenly without realizing how much I couldn't hear for a week suddenly hearing a full spectrum. It's like wow, got his headphones on, I'm in stereo.

Paul: 2:43

Anyway, lee Gamble is my guest on the show today. Producer, composer, dj. He's got one foot in club sounds, one foot in experimental music and merges them both together. His new record, which is just out, called Models, feels like a very personal record and it's the latest step in an evolution of an artist that came through jungle and through techno out of his hometown of Birmingham in the 90s and he have moved into the 2000s, going more into the realms of compositional, avant-garde experimental music, before moving back again, merging them both over the last decades. But be merging both experimental and club sounds into something that is uniquely Lee Gamble-esque, if that makes sense. In 2017, he signed to the hugely influential hyperdub label and released a series of forward facing albums, which brings us to the latest models.

Paul: 3:51

I think this is a fucking incredible record. It uses processed AI voices to create something that sounds both modern and ancient and blends this new technology with a variety of instrumentation and variety of texture and a lot of space. We start talking about talk, talk in the conversation and Mark Hollis and you can hear the influence of that in a really unusual way in models, and it's a very emotional record. It's very rare to find something that uses something like AI and manages to get such depths of emotion out of it. I love this record and we spoke on a Monday morning it was the 13th of November and he had just got back from a weekend of DJing and we had a very fluid conversation. We got into a lot of subjects. I really enjoyed this chat. He's a very lovely man. This is what happened when I met Lee Gamble.

Lee: 4:56

You can maybe hear me now.

Paul: 4:57

Yes, that's it. Can hear you now, brilliant.

Lee: 5:00

You all know my bad. I'm a yeah, I'm a bit deprived, to say the least, so bear with me.

Paul: 5:07

No worries, that's always a good state to have a chat, so yeah, yeah, I get a bit zoned out.

Lee: 5:12

I mean, I've just come back from a weekend of gigs on Monday morning. Well, Monday lunchtime morning, whatever time it is, yeah, it's like that's for sure.

Paul: 5:25

Yeah, definitely. I think that's quite often a thing with DJing as well, isn't it? It's having quite a different week structure to everyone else Is that something that you just always feel quite natural with.

Lee: 5:38

I've always done it. I've never worked really night nine to five, even when I before my before I did music and stuff like as a job, if you like, as an income. I worked like shift work and things like that. So I've a lot of my family did as well. So I'm kind of yeah, I'm not really that like yeah, I used to. I remember I worked years ago in for Discovery Channel. You know the Discovery Channel, I work for them, like in their Chiswick like. So basically where they output all the channels, whatever you call it Center, discovery Europe Center, I don't know the hell, that's some kind of name. You know one of the universe, discovery universe in Chiswick or whatever the hell it was.

Lee: 6:17

And I remember I've moved into this new house in Holloway, just off Holloway Road. It was a cul-de-sac and I used to get home on a Monday morning after like six night shifts. So like my Monday morning in the summer was like that Monday morning when I then got a week off or whatever was like really my like Friday night, right. So I'd in my back and I was in this cul-de-sac and I just moved in and I'd sit in the kind of I didn't have a garden, like just a flat. So I'd sit in the window of the flat and, like you know, I don't know, have a zoo or something and a beer on Monday morning, like in my pants. See all the neighbors like, oh, who's moving? Yeah, and I'm, like you know, just finished eight nights straight, like when you've been out partying. And now I'm here Monday morning and they're like he's got a kind of Heineken of the slip and he's like you know what I mean Like it was always.

Paul: 7:11

oh my God, who's this? Yeah?

Lee: 7:13

Like oh, you know not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, do your thing. It was always just like yeah, that kind of like mixture of like people thinking like he's really Monday morning at like eight in the morning, really Monday morning. In my head it's Friday night right now.

Paul: 7:32

That's brilliant, I mean, I live in Berlin, so it's quite good to sort of have that kind of thing where Monday is just a change over day really for quite a lot of people I lived in pretty like kind of like you know, pretty like you know, just like a working class street, like you know, in London, like you know.

Lee: 7:49

So people would go about, you know, getting their cars and going to work and I'm like morning, they're like morning, I'm kind of used to it actually. I mean, it doesn't get easier as you get older. I have to say yeah, yeah.

Lee: 8:03

I remember. But yeah, I kind of like the kind of chaos of it. If I'm, if I'm being, if I'm really true to be honest, I kind of like it. It suits me to be like all right, where am I going? Am I Wednesday? I travel the next Tuesday, or kind of randomness of it is kind of like it does suit my, it does suit me in a lot of ways, but yeah, it's obvious. But you know, it is what it is no complaints, no complaints.

Paul: 8:27

Do you think as, like an artist as well, that kind of chaotic weekly structure or life structure, does that sort of help your process? Do you think?

Lee: 8:37

Not really I'd say. I'd say it's kind of, yeah, my kind of DJ stuff and like I mean obviously like a DJ, kind of like throughout. You know, kind of DJ is kind of like you know, in a sense like a job for me in a way. You know, I don't mean that in like any try. Well, I just mean, like you know it's kind of like a steady income source, right, like it's like you do shows. You have an album cycle that could be a couple of years.

Lee: 8:58

So you know it's like to have to wait all that time to then just work and then not work for you know so, like the DJ is kind of the regular thing when I'm kind of sitting down and starting to write a like I've got two weeks now home and I'm just already like can't wait to just get in the studio. I'm going to give myself today off after this, because I'm sure, but after that, I'm right, I've been on the, you know, on flights, kind of like just sketching some notes down for things I want to do with the arrangements in some songs and writing etc. Etc. So like I can't wait to get in there and just start writing, you know so, and then just switch off from the DJ. But it's very kind of like, yeah, kind of yin yang or something black and white, whatever, like like I'm kind of like, okay, there's my DJ and then that's what I do, and I want to like play the club and you know, and do that thing, and then I'm coming back and could be writing something, not even dance music related.

Lee: 9:47

So it's kind of like, but yeah, I kind of like that too. It's kind of good because I can just put 100% into something for these books and then put 100% into something in another bus. So it sort of suits my personality, I guess. I mean, I ended up doing it, so it must do some. So it must be some. It must be in there somewhere in a square, pick and a square hall kind of thing.

Paul: 10:11

Yeah, definitely Something's going right there in that combination.

Lee: 10:14

Okay, I'm not. I'm not looking back to the day job, so it must be okay, yeah.

Paul: 10:20

Like. So I mean models came out really recently. To me it's a really emotional sounding piece of music, you know, but you're using kind of very modern kinds of ideas, iterations of technology involved in it. Was it very important for you to to find the emotion within things like AI when you were 100%?

Lee: 10:42

Yeah, 100%. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like I mean I wouldn't, I would have no interest in using it otherwise, like if it just to me as this kind of cold, technologized, abstract thing I didn't really have. I did used to work in that way with sort of technology, like back in the mid 2000s when I was doing a lot more experimental computer music, noise music. Then I actually had a real super interest in this kind of like sort of plasticity of sound and the sculptural aspect of sound and the fact that it can be kind of non music or and where that, where that border is where something sounds like a piece of music and where something just sounds like some super alien kind of sound, and I was super interested in that. However, like that that's still kind of with me as a kind of, as a kind of idea, as a kind of if you know what I mean but not like it's not like. So then the emotions are in the background. That was in the foreground. Now it's the flip way. I'm still interested in these like future facing, kind of leek, cutting edge, if you like, one of the better words, technologies or new things like that happening that you can use as an artist. But yeah, over the last bunch of years, like I'm just opening up a lot more, I think as a, as a, as a writer, in a way, like as somebody who wants to write a chord or you know, not a, hopefully I'll write more than one, but you know, yeah, let's sit down and hit something. It's kind of like I'm just allowing a musicality out more and more, which has always been there. It's just that I had my eye, I had a different way of I guess I had a different way of expressing my interest in those technologies. Now, it's not technology as much first, it's much, much, much more second, way back. I mean, I couldn't have really made models without that, but I didn't want it to be in the, in the. I didn't want that to be the thing that dominates the record. I wanted the thing that dominates records about.

Lee: 12:34

You know this idea that as a kind of emptiness sort of in these voices they don't have any, they don't have any people behind. Well, I mean obviously the data sets and all our people behind it. I'm obviously aware of that. But I mean in terms of, like, you know a pop's, you know the pop voice, if you like, or the singing voice is always mentally, imaginatively or visually attached to a body, like it's very human, like the, even if it's a robot or something. And these things are like they were just struck me as I started to play with this technology through three or four years ago was that like? They don't have that right. They're very or very kind of like ghost-like, if you like, or vapor-like. They don't really have any of this and I thought this was a beautiful kind of hole that they sort of create and that was attached to also my own kind of, you know, like a loss of a few people in my life at that time, things like that. So it all just sort of like sat there really nicely together and I thought I can really express this yeah, so I think it's a lot of longing in the record. For me.

Lee: 13:36

It feels like a kind of a record that feels very like yeah, there's a certain lot. It's something about being kind of lost in an empty space. It's also quite beautiful and also something about, you know, that kind of idea of when you do, when something does go in your life or whatever. There is always, like you know, everyone has had that mostly and there's a grieving process where there's the pain, the sadness, but then there's this idea of there's a new chapter in your life somehow. I don't want to be dismissive of someone going, but like, I think of it like that I've lost quite a lot of people in my life for one reason or another. You know, like, and it's like, I think it's something I've had to learn how to work with, in a way, like, rather than just leave a hole in you or they're gone and that's it. It's like well, what can we feel? What does that get filled with? So yeah, so it feels very much attached to those kind of emotions which are, of course, as deep and as kind of emotional as you can kind of expect. However, yet the technology can kind of feel like it it places the record in a place which is not that, but that's just not true. Like, it's just like.

Lee: 14:37

It's probably by far my most kind of personal, if you like. Hmm, I don't know I think they're all personal in a very close way that I'm quite closed off personally with that sort of stuff. Normally in my life I don't talk. You know, I didn't kind of, I wasn't kind of grow up kind of talking about those things. You know, it was like mine and then I've got my musical stuff that I do. So I could say about an idea or a time period, like diversions or ideas like not sure Tresha, but this was very personal about not just like it was my dad that I lost during making it, but it was more like a few other people that have been there and all people that help you.

Lee: 15:13

Like, the last song on it is not AI at all, it's just written. I've written it, like the lyrics and it's sung by a vocal synthesizer and called your way on my arms and it was kind of like me just really kind of thinking about how people kind of help you in those moments. They take the weight off you and there's this weightlessness to these voices. So I was thinking about that a lot, sort of looking through my notes and just this idea of weight, someone taking a weight off you or you doing it for them when they need you. And obviously that happens when you go through tough times. If you've got good people around you, they can do that for you. That's like I think that's kind of as emotional and as personal as you can get, and then people can't read that. Then I guess it's just not my. I can't do much more.

Lee: 15:56

Like I'm a huge fan of like kind of songwriting and I always have been, like when I was making models, I was listening a lot about to like Mark Hollis records and stuff like that. You know, I'm really hearing this like this kind of like I don't know who I think got this, but this kind of like working class guy which I am, and there's a baggage that comes with that in terms of your emotional repertoire that you're allowed to develop outwardly generally and you get people like that who are able to do it so brilliantly and so like eloquently and elegantly and musically. And I'm not for a second putting myself in the same shoes as Mark Hollis. But you know, that was the kind of things I was listening to really because it's just like it was really about this voice and he was quite anti-image in a lot of ways in the end of his career, certainly in the beginning.

Lee: 16:46

I know he went through the talk, talk stuff, but I think he was just like I don't think he ever really wanted that. I think he had to do that because he was a pop artist and big and making it. So, yeah, there was lots of things like that that were very. Yeah, anyone listened to Mark Hollis' self-titled album. You know you can. Yeah, that's the kind of headspace I was in, more than anything else actually, in a sense Like yeah so I hope that answers the question a bit.

Paul: 17:09

That's fantastic, yeah, and it's actually interesting that you mentioned because I hadn't picked up on the Mark Hollis thing listening to but thinking about it now one of the things that I really get out of like I think particularly like those couple of talk talk albums, is the amount of space and dynamic and like silence in the In the.

Lee: 17:28

I mean I always like, even when I was I mean I was I'm not like that old to like I bought the records or anything like, but they were kind of thinking that only my dad would play or whatever like or be out in my house. So especially the talk talk Mark Hollis' album is later, right, but the talk talk, you know the big hits I like I always loved those songs, like I remembered them. And when I was a kid they were, they took it out to me out of all the charts, out of a lot of charts. I mean other stuff too. But and then when I kind of I've just bought his biography actually there's someone's just written a biography about him because, yeah, I kind of want to know a bit more.

Lee: 17:59

And when you listen to like the Mark Hollis Mark Hollis record I was listening to an interview with him and he's talking about how they recorded it. You know he's an extremely knowledgeable person about music and composition and stuff Like he's. I mean he's obviously a great pop writer as well, but that wouldn't be to undermine like his understanding of the use of, like silence in between notes and the delicacy of a piano and his voice. I mean he was a kind of ASMR record before that was invented like hmm, how close he is to the mic. He basically set up a situation in the studio where he'd have like microphones in the studio with an engineer and then have the instrumentalist play, but not all at the same time. So someone would come in and play the violin or whatever's on the record or the drums, and then he was over.

Lee: 18:51

They'll be put live, but with them positioned in this kind of 3D space, so extremely like forward thinking record and but also just really approachable too. And I really that's what I kind of like immediately when they have these, like they can have these like super, like crazy ideas or whatever, but they're just also just records and that's just that's when I think, that's when they're really magic to me, and I think he's someone that does that or was able to do that, was able to make an absolute smash hit that everyone would, that Yinan would sing at the birthday party or something I was evidently like very aware of, like perhaps composers like Morton Feldman or minimalist or jazz or like things like you know, things that were much more kind of out there genres or ideas and yeah, and just to put them together and make this thing. That just feels very natural. He's a real. I think it's quite a skill actually.

Paul: 19:49

Yeah, and I think I kind of I picked up with models as well is because I love all of your work, but it feels like on models, it does feel like a point where the emotion does join together with the experimentation and the club elements as well. Like that Like, do you feel, like do you listen back to it? Or do you, when you finish something, you just like, okay, that's it, I've done, I've moved.

Lee: 20:10

Yeah, both. Actually I like I really actually enjoyed making this record. Weirdly, it wasn't really tough time for me at that time, you know, but I actually really enjoyed making it because it was very freeing to me. It was this sort of new space for me. Tempos weren't like I wasn't really. I was really not, I was just sort of like letting stuff through. In a sense I wasn't like sitting there going I'm making a record in a certain tempo or with a certain set.

Lee: 20:35

I had a very clear idea of the instrumentations I wanted to use on it, like I wanted live instrumentations, I mean, and also some of it. You know. Again I don't want to just focus on Mark Hollis record but the kind of way it's recorded, how closely recorded is. You get all this fret noise, this kind of really beautiful, and there's a few bits of not all of it, but there's some tracks in models where I really like leaned into that right in the parts myself and let all that work with my engineer to kind of pull that out a little bit and give it this very intimate or a sort of human feeling, rather so it feels.

Lee: 21:07

You know very a lot of the parts myself, so I really had fun writing it, like I really enjoyed writing like that. So I think that when that happens, I'm more likely to kind of enjoy listening to it. If you know, it's not like I didn't enjoy writing over records, it's just that they're I don't know. Yeah, I think it, because it was a bit different. It felt like I was kind of listening to listening to something new myself, if you know what I'm saying.

Paul: 21:29

Yeah, yeah, because sometimes there's that idea that we make the things that we wanna hear as well.

Lee: 21:34

Yeah, I mean, I definitely had that with models. I definitely felt there was like a space to use. Not I'm not saying that it's like reinventing the world musically, because it's absolutely not, but like I thought just this idea of using AI was a big topic and it's, and how artists will use it and how damaging, how problematic it is you know, it's all, it's a many things but also how like kind of magical it is and kind of interesting. So I definitely felt that like I had a place. I felt like I wanted to think about how I would use that as an artist. And it took me like a good year or two just playing around with the person that was programming these, the voice modeling systems with me, just to kind of get an idea of how I could actually write with these things, rather than just do it, as I said before, just because it's new technology. But actually like I wanted to think about how, how maybe we'd be using this in a few years time, when everyone doesn't care that it's AI anymore, just using it as an instrument or as another part of a song, or like you would have synthesized that before synthesizers. And then everyone was like oh my God, they're using electronic synthesizer. Oh, hairs, you know. So I think that's that thing too.

Lee: 22:42

Yeah, and I've also been working on a live project with the choreography, so with a performance piece. So I've been having to kind of go through and listen to it back and kind of really think of it for a live show. So but yeah, no, some of them I just, I just don't listen to it. For years I haven't. I don't go back. I look I'll have the odd moment when I've come back and I've had a couple of beers and I'll just click on YouTube. Come on, we all do.

Paul: 23:04

We do, yeah, of course.

Lee: 23:05

We don't say that they're lying, but you know what I mean I'm not really I don't know. I sometimes I'll go back and check a track if I'm like trying to write something, kind of thinking I've kind of written something a little bit like this before a drum pattern or something, and think, oh, I've written a track on Nestic Pressure a bit like this oh, what did that? How did that? Let me listen to that. Or I'll open a project file if I have them anymore, but I'll kind of go listen to them back. But no, I'll be perfectly frank, yeah, models, I listened to a lot. I was.

Lee: 23:34

We took weeks in the mixing stage with my, with engineer, with Paul. Oh, I was really keen on getting it sounding like I wanted it to sound, and then also Hebacadre was just like a dream of a mastering engineer for me to do this. So we had a lot of back and forth to get this really sounding right, cause I wanted it to kind of sit there sonically, you know, up against pop records, because that's how it felt to me. That's not saying again that it is. It's that was my, that was my kind of like, fit for it.

Lee: 24:04

It's both like with the way I was writing, the way I was thinking, what I was listening to and also the way it wanted to sit in the DSPs or whatever. If you play a track, does it sit up there with does it sound like that? Is it mixed and engineered that way? So there was a lot of post work on it. So in that sense I did. Yeah, I'm kind of at the point now where I can't listen to it now. Now I'm like, oh no, but I'll listen to now it's out.

Paul: 24:27

So yeah, that's really interesting to say, mixing it sort of like so it could be listened to like in the context of a pop record or something and like cause. It's quite interesting that I mean, your music does generally fall into the two camps of club sounds and more kind of like compositional kind of works. But it also feels like in the last few years maybe the last couple of decades as well that the whole kind of idea of continuum of music has kind of fractured up quite a lot as well. I agree, I really agree with that. So do you feel like you know, this has had a sort of impact on the way you make music as well, that there isn't so much like a straightforward lineage to sound anymore?

Lee: 25:11

Yeah, I really agree with that. I think that's a really good point. I honestly think that I think also, like again, I don't want to like just use these as, like you know, like lazy handles for like markers, but when the pandemic happened, obviously that was a kind of you know, it was a huge kind of pause in a way. Look, I know it was many other things, it was horrific and it was low, but just to simplify it here, like it was a kind of pause as well and having that time just to kind of like think and you know, there was a lot of reflection time, a lot of like.

Lee: 25:41

You know there's a lot of emotion in the world. You know there's a lot of death, and when that happens, I think that people can kind of like reflect a little. Maybe our lives are, you know, certainly in like places like London, where I live, and that can be a very much like a you know, next, next, next. You're kind of on this like conveyer belt, of kind of like the way those cities work and now you have to work in them if you need to keep making money every month to pay the rent and you have on that treadmill and I think when that stopped you know again, I'm not like putting a rose tinted glass, I'd rather not happen, but he did Stopped. I think that that was, and I think that's definitely a kind of fracture, I think, in. I've seen that in the kind of scene. In a sense, it sort of opened up, other conversations were allowed to come to the surface, conversations about inclusivity and what lineups look like and all these things and all that happened. And I think, yeah, I mean these are positive fractures for sure, by the way, I'm not saying anything else, but they are that, yeah, and I do agree with that. I think that was part of it. I think for me also just yeah, I just I just felt, as I say, there was some personal stuff and also I just kind of like I had that time alone a little more and just sort of started to just I don't know, just to really like go back to listen to stuff that I really felt. I started painting. I used to draw younger than I paint. I started doing it again, and that was a really weird thing for me because it was like one of those things where it's literally I mean it literally, not even metaphorically he's a blank canvas. You start with right and you just got all these choices, but then you've also got your aesthetics all right. It's like do you like yellow or do you like red? More Like a simple questions, right, you have to ask yourself as a you're going to make something and put it into the world. It helped me kind of refocus my aesthetics, if you like, I think with my last album I did for Hyperdub this flush rule, pharynx.

Lee: 27:35

It was a long thing. I did it over a long time. It was a lot of ideas in there and it really kind of burnt me out. Actually. I mean, I'm happy with a lot of the music on there almost all of it but like it was a really weird fit way of doing it and stuff. And I got a bit like wow, I'm thinking in a million directions, I need to just focus it down and just sort of like make it. I said to Steve at Hyperdub after I was like the next one is going to be so simple and the way models isn't that, but it is that as well, if you know what I mean. Like yes, we took us a long time to build these models, these voices.

Lee: 28:07

But then I was like I'm just writing what I feel. I'm just hit the chords that feel good to me. And yeah, it gets kind of saccharine at moments and I'm like, is that okay? Yeah, it's okay, Because it feels like so it's just sort of like that. You know that kind of interaction. It's canvas. You're like, does that, is that mark what you want? No, well, okay, cover it. Then. And I started to paint like that too, there's these layers and layers and just kind of layering marks on a canvas was like a really kind of like interesting. Yeah, I don't know how to, but it just it sort of informed your aesthetics. That's the best, that's the clue. So I kind of allowed me back to say what do I like? So I'd go into the studio and be like do I like this? Do I like, is that drum right? Is the tempo? Yes, no other questions.

Lee: 28:53

Sometimes you can get there's so many choices that fractures, there's so many directions that sometimes it's good just to kind of like forget about them almost. Yeah, just not actually care about anything else other than what you're doing, which sounds kind of both egotistical, a bit mean, but also it's not that easy to do actually, like it's kind of quite for me anyway, like it's quite hard to just switch everything off and just really focus. And I managed to do it and I think it was. I enjoyed it a lot more for that. So so yeah, I kind of like I dealt with that kind of fracturing in that I think in a way of just like just narrowing back to me in a sense, just kind of like centering my own aesthetic judgment and just backing myself in a way, if you know what I mean. Not that I didn't before, but I think I hope I'm making that point right.

Paul: 29:38

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm definitely picking up on it, or at least interpreting it, and I'm loving the words and but, like, through these processes, do you know, and you sort of saying you're dealing with personal loss as well, and was it were you deliberately drawing on your emotion at the time, or was that like more like a kind of a thing that you realized had kind of come through the processes?

Lee: 30:00

that you were. I think I was just allowing it to happen a bit more. I was like like you know, I mean there's ways that you can react to kind of like traumas and stuff and you can, you can react in a kind of angry way, and I don't mean like physically, I mean, but you can put that into your music. Like I know you could, I could have made a fucking thrash metal record or something, or a punk record or a noise record. Not saying I could, I'm just saying I could have in a sense in this right, I'm not able to just go in there and make a thrash metal record. That happens later, that's in five years. That's the next one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me, my napalm death mode. Go back to it. But like, yeah, I, yeah, I definitely just let it out a little more.

Lee: 30:41

I think I just kind of like grew a little bit as a person into enabling that to happen, and even that's common in my four years. It's okay, it's fine, like it's no problem, like I don't have an issue, it's like I can. I feel like someone you know you can still learn a lot about yourself and the world at any point, about yourself, I can. So I thought, yeah, I just kind of like pushed a lot of, I did a lot of thinking out the way and just lent more into that kind of yeah, just the core, your core response to music. Like who doesn't love like a beautiful pop song? That's like maybe a bit coy, maybe a bit sweet, but like I mean, really, if you I mean I think most people kind of just don't mind that right, really like, and I just kind of grew up into jungle going out, you know like I'm kind of like gotta be seen to be like.

Lee: 31:30

You know, like when you're younger you know it's like I don't like all that's just naff, this is the real stuff and yeah, yeah, I'm kind of yawn about that now, like whatever, I don't get me wrong, but to actually get it back and put it into your I mean I think funny. When I was talking about this to, a friend of mine mentioned this to me recently, I had a very old friend of mine who's in school and he was like there's loads of your tracks Like really kind of like quite heavy emotional tracks on lots of records, but maybe not as focused as models, but there's lots of tracks throughout the records I've made that I really I was like, yeah, that's true, so it's not like I've been there before, yeah, I've just allowed it to happen. Like maybe I was allowing it to happen, they just didn't know. Yeah.

Paul: 32:13

I realized I was like no, it's tricky.

Lee: 32:15

It's tricky, it's very, very egocentric kind of a way of thinking and I'm not that way often. But yeah, I think it was just that I just allowed a bit more. Yeah, just I allowed myself to hit a few of the keys that maybe I would be like, well, that's a bit too cloy, maybe go down here, this is cooler. And now I didn't go there, I allowed that. So, yeah, something like that.

Paul: 32:36

That's brilliant. So stepping a little bit out of the comfort zone for, I mean, was it, like Bowie used to say, like you have to always go just that tiny little bit out of the comfort zone, maybe not massively, but just like everything you do should be a few more steps.

Lee: 32:51

I think so. I honestly, honestly, paul, I really can't do it any of them. You'll make mistakes doing that and you won't get everything right 100% but like. I know it's kind of cliche, but you do have. I cannot just sit in like I know how to do this now. I'm gonna do this forever. I just doesn't work for me as a human being. I just can't do that. I have to be like thinking like okay, how can I just flip it? But with this one, I must say I didn't kind of want to run off and go into like some crazy, I just wanted to like.

Lee: 33:20

I think a lot of the sounding models sonically like really leans back into like some of the earlier stuff, like like diversions or coach like. There's a kind of like history in the sound which I kind of wanted to add. You know, by processing, by like using degradation tools, by like using kind of like tape compressions and all these kind of techniques, you can add this kind of aged sound without having to sample something that's old, which is on the record. It's not. There's no samples, it's all written from sound libraries. So it's like, but I wanted it sort of it to sound like it probably was a sample. I've done that, Like on the last record I made for Flush, royal Farencs, which called a million pieces of you. I think when you listen to that you can really hear models. I can hear that last EP and think I can hear models coming after that. Now I could hear there was tracks on there that like like there's one with that like sort of piano and kind of like old hip hop breaks and stuff and all that kind of thing and like that could be on models. Really, when I listen to it now, so it's like I didn't know, but I was already kind of moving in a in a some way. So yeah, it's interesting, you know, like I don't know, I don't know how other artists are, but like sometimes you have to kind of like you can only answer these questions.

Lee: 34:35

Once you've done these things, you can look back on your career a bit and then you go, oh, I did this right, I didn't know. Oh, I'm into this. I didn't know. If I've done it for 10 years, I must be into this kind of sound, right, because the evidence is there. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it Like. Yeah, I think it's.

Lee: 34:50

Yeah, it was more like about like a bit more in a sense of a record where I could pull in some of those you know. Okay, I can use some of the skills I've got from you know, working with like kind of synthesis systems and voice synthesis systems and kind of like cutting edge kind of technology. I can use those skills. But also use these skills which are which are kind of sound design skills, if you like, which I've used to make diversions or coach or Tfasha or so yeah, I kind of felt like I was able to kind of like layer a few years of practice onto it and yeah, if that makes sense, yeah, yeah, no, definitely, and it's a talk about all of those years as well and stuff.

Paul: 35:28

And I wanted to kind of go back to the beginning, if that's okay, because you grew up in Birmingham, yeah yeah, and like what was the music? What was your kind of introduction to music culture? Like what was the sort of first sort of experiences back then of music?

Lee: 35:46

So I grew up with, like like Irish, birmingham, irish family, my dad's English mom's background, so like there was a lot of music on my mom's side, which was traditional. There was a lot of people that play music, pianos. It's very much like in that kind of culture, like you know, there'd be a, you know, a pub as a family, you know as a big family, and people would play you know, seeing along.

Lee: 36:06

It was very musicalized, very verbalized, very language, like culture, and my dad was a huge music fan, had a huge record collection, huge like Bowie fan, kate Bush. They had some talk, talk records, pink Floyd, that kind of stuff that a guy from England has had into like vinyl records, being to write that kind of stuff. When I was growing up I had a lot of music around me like my dad would play music in the car all the time. When we drive anywhere we'd put an album on like and he was always into the next. You know he was always there listening to, quite least trying to keep up with what was happening.

Lee: 36:44

I remember like he asked me for a CD once like I don't know, and it was like a trance here. It was like a trance compilation that was in like well, like the, you know, hmv or whatever. It wasn't anything like underground, but he'd heard and he picks me up from school playing this like trance, you know, and he was like he wasn't really surprised, you know, it wasn't like he was like 30 years old, he was old, he was too old for trance then innocent he'd fill up a list and like banging it out.

Lee: 37:09

So he was quite like progressive I suppose in some ways. But yeah, so I grew up around a lot of that and he was a and obviously everything he was listening to was really pop music. So like that was there and then but for me personally I think it was like my earliest memories was really kind of like very early hip hop, like that was the thing I heard it around, but you're talking like in the early 80s, so it's like you know it's hard to think but there's no internet then there's no TV, there's top of the pops and there's some commercial radio is about it. Like otherwise you had to really wait to be old enough to go to a shop or go to a record shop or something. So the main thing for me, I'd say, was jungle for sure, and techno. Like Birmingham had like two big clubs there or two kind of clubs that I was going to at the time which was like the House of God at the Q Club, which was like you know that kind of Birmingham techno sound and all of the you know Claude Jong, jeff Mills, you know all the Regis, all these people playing there every week, so you could go to that. And then you could also go to the Institute which was on the Digbeth High Street, which was jungle, which again had everyone there. The names you'd all know at that time Kenny, Ken, fabio, you know everyone. I'd go to both.

Lee: 38:18

But I definitely felt like the jungle thing for me was just something. There was something in it that was kind of really exhilarating and exciting as a young person. So I used to go. I had some older cousins, so like they used to kind of sneak in with them or go in. So I was going to them way too young, so I was going to get past the bounces, but my heart was as tall as I am now when I was about 15. I was one of them. I shot up just like I thought I remember that level off. Then I was going to be about seven foot tall at one time. But no, just carry it, I'm just like average height, so yeah, so I used to go to them really early and yeah, and then that was just a matter of then your mates would have to take.

Lee: 38:55

You'd pass them around, go around. You'd find someone with some, with someone that had a turntable or someone that had two would be like unbelievable. And then you buy some records and yeah, so I started DJing, like with that stuff. So my first sort of interaction with music wasn't with like an instrument although my nan had a little piano in her back room. She tried to play that a bit but nothing formal.

Lee: 39:15

But DJing was the thing that I first started interacting with music with and that was all jungle. That was like mid early mid 90s jungle and I was just buying them records working and I kind of yeah, I was about 16, 15, 14, 15, 16. When I was started, when I was mixing, yeah, and I played on some radio and played in some clubs there as well and yeah, so like that was definitely the first, that was the first music that really got me. I felt like I was, I'd found it right, hadn't come from top of the pops or my dad or my mom, or it was like something that I found as a young teenager. You know it's like, you know you get that kind of feel like it's yours, you've found some goals.

Paul: 39:56

Yeah, and that is so important as well, isn't it? And it's it's. It's interesting to reflect like now, like how people find something is very different to how we would have found it in our age, like you know. I mean, obviously people still can go club, you know, people still do go clubbing and discover music that way, but I think you know, as you were saying, it's like that was the only ways that you could find stuff. A lot of the time is by kind of going out Absolutely.

Lee: 40:20

I mean the charts were incredible. Then I mean, you see, like eight to eight state on the chart like at what? The time where there was definitely like this, like late eight, he's actually very like hold on, I'll just put my cat in the other room.

Lee: 40:35

No worries, yeah. Yeah, I remember like that kind of, yeah, the time I would watch top of the pops and or there was a couple of others, the charts, there was a couple of other ones I can't remember, and then, yeah, they would, you know, you'd hear like cubic by eight state like on a you know if you're in your house and on the TV and it's like it's a straight up like rave record but it was charting quite high and stuff, because they're kind of like weird accessibility to this, this stuff. I remember hearing inner city, like the album by inner city, like I was really young and my cousin had it and he was just playing it off this cassette and we were on holiday and I was just I really honestly just had that future shock moment. I'm like what is this Like? What's this Like? What even is this Like?

Lee: 41:21

It's kind of hard. It sounds so like crazy. Now it's kind of harder to have that moment now because it's so there and there's and that's great in a lot of ways. But I don't know if I'd have had that same shock, because I would have just grown up with it everywhere, like it's. Even then it was like you know, it was like a like a kind of revolutionary music. It sounded like to me.

Paul: 41:40

I mean it kind of is anyway, but like really to me.

Lee: 41:43

It was, like you know, I've gone from the steam engine to the electric, like or something in a minute, but what are them sounds Like? What's them sounds? And yeah, no doubt that really inflects my interest in, like you know, for a lot of years in the early two fuzzers, really looking at trying to find these kind of really unique sounds. Not I'm not saying now my records now, but like when I was working in more experimental times and like computer music stuff, I was always searching for those like is there a sound out there that you could? That really sounds like nothing else? And that record did sound like nothing else to me at the time. I really did Like it was. I think you know it wasn't guitars, it wasn't drummers, it was a singer, but it was all this electronic. It was truly, truly amazing. Yeah, I'm really really stuck out to me and it was really soulful as well, wasn't it?

Paul: 42:29

It wasn't just like upon the sound, you know. It wasn't like sounds you just haven't heard before.

Lee: 42:34

It was like no, no for sure, 100% Beautiful record. I go back to that sometimes now and put it on and it's still amazingly written, beautiful strings, beautiful arrangements, like totally song. I mean it's like considering like no one even really like Detroit techno, had kind of not even got into into the club, not really embedded itself into club culture at that point, right Like properly lucky, and he was already writing the pop version, the kind of live version of it for jungle. Who did that? Like straight away off the bat. Pretty incredible, yeah, really really beautiful, still amazing. I love it.

Paul: 43:13

I still, it is fantastic I might have to go and dig that out this afternoon and actually, write seems to last.

Lee: 43:19

You know you put it on. You know this still sounds so good, so nice, like yeah, yeah, it does, it really does like it. It does because I think it's just, it's fundamentally like I think you point out correct, it's a pure piece of music, it's a piece of pop, it's a pop record really. It's interesting with these bottles because that's a kind of good example of, I think, of something that like does the both of those things like so well, it's a pop record, but it's also a Detroit techno record at the same time, and it's interesting actually, because there's also as well like the whole Detroit thing as well, like and I do, I definitely feel like there's certain music that can only come out of certain cities as well.

Paul: 43:55

Yeah, maybe initially, maybe like off the thing spread. You know it changes, but do you feel that there was something about Birmingham that kind of really infused the sound that you kind of maybe still have?

Lee: 44:09

with you, I think so. Yeah, it's always hard to like absolutely know these things, but I agree with the idea. I think definitely you hear stuff coming out of Detroit and you know it's come from kind of Motown and Soul, and then this kind of technologized interest and the technology that was being imported into that city to run of car factory and everything that. That doesn't seem like a stretch to think that those things are going to be connected somehow. I think that seems like a fair, doesn't seem like a kind of conspiratorial old. Just add things together. It seems like, yeah, that probably makes sense.

Lee: 44:46

Birmingham, for sure, birmingham, so Birmingham growing up for sure, has had this. Obviously it's got this history of like metal you know from napalm and does obviously you know black Sabbath and things like that. So you've got this kind of that aspect to it. And then, but for me, when I, when I was kind of like in them formative years, it was that plus jungle techno that's what I heard. It was those were the three overarching things. And it's funny because over the years I've been lucky to meet, like some of the guys from napalm, kind of know them a bit now and we can chat and all of them are really also into jungle, all of them. I mean, I don't speak for them yet the ones like Justin, nick, nick, they're all like they know they're basically like hip hop, jungle, fresh metal and punk and they also just don't seem to have any like it's just the same, not the same, but they don't sit together awkwardly in a sense to them either in their brains.

Lee: 45:47

And I've tried to just I'm talking about this. We had a chat about it once. We played and I showed together and we were having a beer and talking about this and he was like yeah, some of that really dark, like thrashy jungle stuff of the kind of like source direct kind of crane tracks and things like and you hear this kind of thrashy mouth, it's like it's not that far away, in some ways, like there's a certain energy in those music that you could say was similar. So where? Yeah, I don't know if that. I think that definitely sets into you as a person. I think it does. You're around and you're just growing up and it's there, it's in the kind of DNA of the city. I think that definitely does. Yeah, I think I'd be a different artist if I grew up in a rural village somewhere or something. I think so.

Paul: 46:33

Yeah, yeah.

Lee: 46:34

I think so. Anyway, I think it's not to have that. It's very different now, though. I think you mentioned, like you know, if you grow up now you're sort of the world's kind of much closer. Now. You know, like being abroad like I never even went abroad until, like I started doing this really like, even though you're in a big city and it's got, there's a lot of access to stuff, the access is less for internet, the access to go into different places and experience in different cities is less, or certainly wasn't. I think you know the most people I wasn't, you know, wasn't traveling the world and listening to music. I think it just wasn't. So it was much more insular. So I guess that helps to build a kind of sound in a city, I think. So yeah, that was my experience abroad.

Lee: 47:18

It was that kind of like thrashy, noisy, but also really progressive, like napalm. You might hear it and think, oh, it's just really like thrashy, but it's also really future-facing too. At the time, like you know, it's a new music. It was like a new way of singing. It was a saying a lot politically, yeah, and I think jungle was the same, like in a way, you know, it was out like a positive kind of politics inside an inclusive one. You know, different areas of Birmingham would be in the same venue and generally getting on, and so, yeah, there's lots of analogies. Yeah, without trying to reach too hard. Yeah.

Paul: 47:54

No, I know what you mean. Just like naturally, just like seem to sort of naturally sit there with it.

Lee: 47:58

Yeah, no one's like tweaking the tweaking, you know, no one's like tweaking from a distance from that. No, it just that's the makeup of a city, right, yeah, I think so. I mean, you look at like jungle then, like so many of those DJs came from like Hackney, literally like a few boxes, like 10 of them, it's like tiny really the area that had such a weight on that. Like you know, like like DJ Ron he does a podcast and he's a lot bigger than this. Like, oh yeah, you were from like this road and they're from that road and they went to school together. It's like you know. And then when you're watching it from a distance as a kid, you think it's this huge thing and they're like from a, from a, from an area like in Hackney. Almost right, not exactly, I know it was broader than that, but just as an example of that kind of insularity, like yeah, it's not. Yeah, then you kind of feedback off these ideas back and forth off each other. So yeah, and that's also that. Also that, I think.

Lee: 48:50

The other thing I just quickly say about that, because it's always struck me that like this kind of idea of Birmingham Techno and you hear this kind of kick drum pattern in Birmingham, techno, which is kind of like ragged, and obviously Birmingham had, like you know, a big West Indian community and you know that I remember going into the ball ring on a weekend and you'd have like steel band playing every Saturday. Just that's the sound of that city centre. So you know, these, these things don't happen on their own, these things don't just exclusive of one. Another scar comes from that area and so these kind of meldings of these kind of like energies or cultures or whatever you want to call them, like both beautiful and real, they really happen, like it's real, like it's not, it's not forced.

Paul: 49:34

Yeah, nothing happens in a vacuum, does it? There's always like the set of circumstances and stuff around.

Lee: 49:42

It's a conversation. It's a conversation that's been had between people. I think I like to think of it like that, but I don't mean that in a tricky, like overly poetic or philosophical way, it's just easy. It's a kind of conversation that you're having with, with other people, like who may, who may talk about your sort of music interests, and not you hear something like you know, like the kind of hardcore stuff of the you know, in that kind of jungle breaks were there, but you had all these kind of like different kind of voices, high pitch voices, and then these ragged voices and like this just sounds what Birmingham looks like in a sense, in some sense right, like it makes sense to and not just Birmingham, but for other kind of multicultural big cities as well. So so, yeah, I definitely think that that's that, that that is in me, and I don't want it to go anywhere. I'm very, very happy to be really lucky, in fact, to have to have grown up in that environment.

Paul: 50:34

Yeah, and then kind of moving seems sort of. From reading stuff about you, it kind of seems like there was a period where, like at least in interviews, you sort of said you started to get kind of a little bit bored with club culture and at the same time, like a kind of composition was kind of coming in and what was the kind of process for that for you? You know how was it? The moments.

Lee: 50:58

I basically I think it's probably like you know I was like like I'm still like it now a bit when I was like I was really voraciously looking for like the edge or the next thing, that like what's what, whether he's what drum break on that record, what's that bass sound, or so when and I felt that like for me anyway, again, just personally, like if I like I don't know like maybe that towards the late 90s, like jungle just sort of started to get stuck and it sort of didn't have all these kind of influences in and these sounds and these kind of cross pollinations of things and these clashes and all these things that I just felt like were really like progressive and beautiful and sounded amazing and worked really well. And it sort of got a bit formulaic and a bit like techy and like energy, became quite, quite hard and kind of. I mean I just, yeah, I guess I just fell out of love with it a little bit, but simultaneously just like also being exposed to. I've always like kind of been, I've always like followed like painting and the arts generally and stuff. And then there was also this, all this whole music that was in there like from from you know, music, concrete electronic music and all this and it's all that, and I was just like I just need, I just kind of yeah, as I guess I would just dive into that really, and and then maybe just left that behind because I just don't know, maybe it just felt like I just needed to focus on that.

Lee: 52:22

And then I moved to London then also and studied at the Landstown Centre for Electronic Arts in Middlesex, so in Middlesex, in North London. So I just I just really delved into that and studied and I'd just been in shitty jobs up till then and I kind of saved up to go to uni and that was like for me like a big thing to get out. So for me it was a very it was very much like a personal thing where I just needed to like change my life and see if I could make something. And so I, so I ended up kind of like yeah, not doing that so much, and until until kind of like grime and kind of dubstep, when that happened around the mid 2000s, and then I was like, wow, what's this again? That kind of got my ear again.

Lee: 53:05

But there was a bunch of years, maybe 10 years, where I just really kind of I mean I was still listening. Sometimes it wasn't like I was, but I just wasn't really thinking much about. I wasn't like following it I was. I was really reading you know a lot about, about much more experimental music and the history of that and and making it, and then just more kind of gallery facing stuff and more like that kind of stuff. So, yeah, which was, which was great, and I probably spent 10 years doing that. And then when then divergence happens and I go back again, so yeah, I don't know, it's these 10 year cycles, I think I don't know.

Paul: 53:39

But again, I think a lot of these things are easier to kind of process afterwards, aren't they? When you kind of go back, oh yeah, yeah, I can see that was like that was going on in my life at that time, you know, rather than the time you're just kind of.

Lee: 53:52

Absolutely, hindsight is like the kind of like much more true, in a way, like it's an unopened history, right, you can look at. As I said, you can look and go. Well, that's what I did. I can't I can't say that I did it in that year or that it happened because there it, there, it is down on time. So, yeah, I don't necessarily think I was like, oh fuck, all that music it's shit. I definitely wasn't that. I'm not that. But I would never have thought that I have a huge respect as I'm, how you can tell for that culture and music and I always have. I just think for me it was like I moved out of Birmingham and I moved to London and I was studying, and I was older as well.

Lee: 54:26

Like I wasn't studying, I didn't go to uni after school or anything, I just worked in you know pretty dead end jobs, to be honest, and I just knew that wasn't going to be enough for me. It was going to make me ill if I carried on doing them. So I had to make a shift and I found this course and went there for an interview, actually, and then they said I didn't have A level or anything like that, so, but they asked me to go away and I had to save up for the deposit to go on the course. So I went away, worked another year, got a portfolio together, went back and they got me on the course somehow, really like actually like bless them for that, because the guy ran the course, said that you don't have the qualifications, but you do, you should be on this. Basically is that you should be on this course.

Lee: 55:07

He went away and spoke to whoever these superiors and they can sometimes get people on without A levels and they did that for me, which was like really a nice gesture, really a life changing gesture. Actually, they may not know that, but it was yeah, yeah. So they did that. I just, I was just like fully focused on that. I was like total class nerd 10 minutes early for every lesson, no drinking, no smoking, no, like nights doing my homework, like 100%. I loved it, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I wasn't going to mess it up.

Paul: 55:37

No, I had a similar. I went back to university. I had like one aborted attempt at university in the 90s but I just partied and then I went back in the mid 2000s and I'd done lots of muck jobs. I just done lots of factory jobs bar jobs things like that. And then it was the same sort of thing of thinking like I'm just going to take this opportunity, this is just. I'm going to this, is it?

Lee: 56:00

This is it. Like you don't have, like there's not any other choice. It's a bit like my career, like, again, words are just on a better one Now. Like it's like that. It's like I you know I'm not going to compromise my work, but I am like it's it's very clear to me that I don't have somewhere to just go back. Like this is it, this is what I have to do, so I have to work in, like I'm fully focused on it. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be. If I had a million pound in the bank, I would. Maybe I would be as well. I don't know. But I know that I have to be because there is there are sometimes in in, where you have that choice.

Lee: 56:33

It's like I knew when I went and got on that course and I was like that. I was like mid 20s and I'd worked for 10 years in jobs that were just making me ill. I was just like I this is an absolute opportunity that I've gone and found this thing, this advert for this thing, and I've found I've gone to the course of travel on the train. I've gone and spoke to them. They're interested. I've gone away. When you do that and you turn up on that first Monday morning. You're not, you're not pissing around like you can't, like it's costing a lot of money.

Lee: 57:00

I had a relationship that I had to cut, that broke down from that because I was. I was moving away, you know, moving away from everyone. It was a big thing for me. So, yeah, I fully focused on that and that's a reason I guess why I ended up going down this sort of more studious academic path, which I really enjoyed, don't get me wrong, and I still enjoyed now. But but I definitely, you know, school I wasn't really that engaged with. So it was like for me, it was like, okay, I definitely, I definitely have some brain in there and I'm going to use it now. So, yeah, it was and I loved it. I really, I really loved it. Yeah, I loved it. I loved the study. I really really did have a great three years there. It was incredible. So, not, it's not even there anymore, the course. Unfortunately, it's completely gone now, but it was an incredible course. Yeah, incredible time, yeah, amazing.

Paul: 57:49

Yeah, and it's this I mean again, it's like this idea of the word artist as well, like I mean, is that something? Because I think, like being English, we do feel a bit uncomfortable about kind of things like calling ourselves artists and stuff.

Paul: 58:02

And I think particularly, you know, like working class backgrounds as well. It's not something that naturally always sits, but how do you, how do you feel about that term now? Do you, when someone calls you an artist, do you feel like, yeah, I am, or is there like a bit of hang on a minute?

Lee: 58:19

You know, I don't know, still I don't know like it's really one of those um, it is one of those class I think he's definitely down to a lot of like class stuff that you kind of feel as though people are Be like, oh, you think you're an artist or so. It's like I don't know, I mean fundamentally poor at the bottom line. I don't care, I just do my thing like I don't actually care what. What people like think one type the title of what I do should be I would call myself an artist. But if someone, if someone just asked me, like it depends who's asking me. To be honest, right, yeah, it really does.

Lee: 58:50

I'll kind of like shift the response around accordingly to who's asking. Yeah, try not to say to do that, but it's. It's an interesting question because it actually it's really loaded, even though it seems really insignificant, but it's loaded as hell. Like those times, if I, if I say I DJ, no one bats an alley, no one anywhere, if I say I'm an artist, then but like what, what's the deal? I don't know. Like, I mean, I, I, I have a creative Output and that's what I do for a living, and that kind of sounds like an ice, like you know, if you look at the dictionary definition and I mean regardless of whether you think it's any good or not, but if you somehow making forging a career out of my creative energies, then Kind of sounds like the job title should be.

Lee: 59:42

I don't know maybe I'm, maybe I'm under thinking it, I don't know. It just seems like that would be a fair Title, but but yeah, it's a tricky one, it's a. It's just you could do a whole podcast on on that kind of stuff. I mean I'm not good, hey, but you really good, funny. I've just actually started reading this book.

Paul: 1:00:01

What's good? The melancholia of class. Okay, who's that boy?

Lee: 1:00:06

It's by a, an America, mexican American right called Cynthia Cruz, and yeah, it's kind of like something in a sense about these things where you, where she's a writer and she's kind of crossed over from like a poor background into a more middle-class background, as kind of my life is now and and what that means and how that works, and the kind of details and the nuances of that, and things like what you're asking about, like how you turn, what time the terminology use Sometimes I you know in the media they'll be like oh, please read something saying oh, like you need a PhD to understand these music. I'm like, I don't have a fucking PhD, so how would you get that? Most people that are journalists are way more educated, in a sense, than I am. I've come from way more educated backgrounds and then I'm then Not from that background. I've educated myself and now I'm too. I'm saying too much, I'm too, it's too, it's not. I understand.

Lee: 1:01:01

It's like, what do you want? Like, like I made a supposed to be, like you know, over there, just like bouncing up and down behind the turntables and being that person for you, or if I go here and start talking about you know the kind of ideas that I've thought about in my music or you know God forbid philosophy or something like that. Then I know that I'm stepping outside of my kind of class boundaries, right, like I don't know that I totally understand that that's not gonna stop me. It's actually like that's you should do. But you and I'm not talking about I'm not talking about people who are from like middle or upper class, that and other working class people who say, oh, you get above your station. It's like why do you have a station? Like what do you mean? You can't read a certain book because you was born in a counselor state. Well, that just to me reinforces like class problems, like not, yeah, but these are things.

Lee: 1:01:55

These are really tricky, tricky areas. They're very ephemeral, they're very you can't pinpoint them, no one really knows where they sit. Structures, you know I have a middle-class lifestyle now, but I family don't and I'm not from it. So am I working class anymore? I mean, I don't like again, I don't really care for these terms, I'm not walking around with my t-shirt, but like they meet there, they're emotional things. They have, they have an impact on you for death, for death for now, and that's a good. So just a question as simple as that. Like are you an artist? Is like there's a fucking book on these. You know, like I'm like you know by a really intelligent writer who's, who's moved through those kind of See glass ceilings or whatever you know, and it's very tricky to answer that. Yeah, really tricky.

Paul: 1:02:42

Yeah, so fascinating isn't it? And I think it's one just like this whole, yeah. But I mean, and like, what do you feel like over your life? That you, what would you sort of tell your younger self? You know, if you, if you were kind of like, sat now and you had the opportunity like I bet, like Tom Hanks and big like, but you could see, your younger self.

Lee: 1:03:05

Wow, what would I say I would? There's a lot of things I think now that I would kind of think I thought then I think I thought I think I was sort of the same person. I think what I've learned that I have now is how to say what I think, like, how to, like you know, through, educate, through reading a lot, through reading much, much, much smarter people than me talking about things that I feel they give you a voice, right, they give you a vocabulary to be able to talk about certain things or Say I don't know the answer to whether or not it's just, it's fine, no, so I think I think I wouldn't really change him. Actually I'd say you do, do, do, just go, just do the thing, just do it. Because I think I've always I definitely would I mean ideal, idealistically, I tweak a lot of his journey, but like, of course, I would just be like you know I'm.

Lee: 1:03:56

I definitely feel as though I'm not sure I'd want to be a different person. In a way, if that makes sense, I'm just what it is right, like. There is lots of things that affected me that I've had no control over, and there are some things that I could have controlled a lot better. But you know what, like it is what it is right at the end. Yeah, like if you change something you don't realize you probably change something else that you.

Lee: 1:04:19

Right, like it's the kind of thing that you just like it's just. It's taken me probably longer than I would have liked to have become kind of doing this as a job. I feel like I lost a lot of years because of those. A lot going on in my life, like not for me, part of my life, for me, part of the on to me, like there was just a lot of stuff in my life which I had no control of that definitely stopped me from you know. You know, just exploring my own art. Yeah, I said the word there, did you see?

Paul: 1:04:46

it when it went. It's down.

Lee: 1:04:49

Yeah, so, yeah. So I think that I that those sort of years that I feel like I lost. I feel a bit sad for them, but then you know that there's a lot of stuff in there that you pull through into your world now and in your work and Focus on. Maybe I'd have gone to uni early, but I started. I mean, I did DJ when I was very young, but too young to be kind of going out, drinking or doing whatever. If I was doing that in my 20s when I wasn't really able to do a lot, I probably would have screwed up. I might have screwed up on, like, like you said, you went to uni and just kind of like you know, didn't really. So maybe that kind of those years actually in a sense, when I was a bit older, when I started to go to uni and then start DJing again and painting later, maybe maybe that's okay, you know like maybe that's okay, maybe I just kind of like worked out okay. Yeah, I definitely would like for any anyone like that as well.

Lee: 1:05:38

Like there was also like mental health stuff that was just not apparent, was young, it was just not even a conversation, and so that's changed. Now that's a societal thing. That's not me talking to myself, but it like have speaking to people, like I had a bit of therapy once, like a couple years ago, which is like really, really, really amazing, like to do that. You know, I think that would have been good if a lot of people I knew, a lot of my friends and people, would have done, you know, opened up about things and get diagnoses or whatever, or just think about that stuff. That would have helped a lot of people, I think when I was growing up probably me included, I don't know but but yeah, I'm, yeah, those things I think, yeah, but not too much. I just let him get on with it.

Paul: 1:06:18

I mean it's yeah, like you saying that as well, because I grew up in the 90s and and I definitely feel that you know there was a lot of good things about the 90s like culturally it was some stuff but but at the same time as that, when you talk about things like mental health and things that people talk about now, I do remember how horrible everyone was to each other. Like me, I was horrible to people, people to me, and it was just almost like that was. It was just an accepted form of communication is to belittle people, or you, are you certain words that you wouldn't?

Lee: 1:06:51

use now. So it's so inspiring to see like a younger generation of people now like absolutely okay with talking about these things and allowing terms to emerge for them, and absolutely I think it's like an incredibly positive cultural shift that I agree we may look back with these rose titty glasses, to these like acid house smiley face, but on the flip side, there was definitely, you know a lot of a lot of people that could have benefited from that kind of conversations that we can have now. So, yeah, definitely feel as though I agree with you. I think that's definitely a big positive shift that we have now that we didn't have them, this, this other stuff but that for sure is a really positive one. I think, yes, really good really a good thing.

Paul: 1:07:39

Yeah, lee, thank you so much.

Lee: 1:07:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe got a bit deep, but hey, yeah no, I like it that's. I love a good deep one morning after some gigs I'm just a bit like yeah no, totally, I know what you mean.

Paul: 1:07:57

Okay, so that was me, paul Hanford, talking with Lee Gamble for Lost In Sound podcast, and we had that conversation on the 13th of November 2023 models. The album is out now on Hyperdub and Lost In Sound is proudly presented by Audio Technica, a global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones stuff that I use. I use the AT2020 USB microphone to do the conversation that you heard of Lee Gamble. I love it because I'm I'm bit rubbish at tech, but all I need to do with that is just plug it into my laptop and you get studio quality sound fantastic. Anyway, check out all of their stuff on AudioTechnicacom. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of Lost In Sound is done by Thomas Giddens, and there's great, great stuff from him coming soon which I'd love to share. Put a link with very soon in the show and, yeah, all that remains to be said is I hope you're taking care of yourself, I hope you're having a really, really amazing one, and I'll chat to you soon. Thank you.