Lost And Sound
Lost and Sound is a podcast exploring the most exciting and innovative voices in underground, electronic, and leftfield music worldwide. Hosted by Berlin-based writer Paul Hanford, each episode features in-depth, free-flowing conversations with artists, producers, and pioneers who push music forward in their own unique way.
From legendary innovators to emerging mavericks, Paul dives into the intersection of music, creativity, and life, uncovering deep insights into the artistic process. His relaxed, open-ended approach allows guests to express themselves fully, offering an intimate perspective on the minds shaping contemporary sound.
Originally launched with support from Arts Council England, Lost and Sound has featured groundbreaking artists including Suzanne Ciani, Peaches, Laurent Garnier, Chilly Gonzales, Sleaford Mods, Nightmares On Wax, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, Ellen Allien, A Guy Called Gerald, Jean Michel Jarre, Liars, Blixa Bargeld, Hania Rani, Roman Flügel, Róisín Murphy, Jim O’Rourke, Yann Tiersen, Thurston Moore, Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), Caterina Barbieri, Rudy Tambala (A.R. Kane), more eaze, Tesfa Williams, Slikback, NikNak, and Alva Noto.
Paul Hanford is a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller whose work bridges music, culture, and human connection. His debut book, Coming to Berlin, is available in all good bookshops.
Lost and Sound is for listeners passionate about electronic music, experimental sound, and the people redefining what music can be.
Lost And Sound
Lias Saoudi
What happens when a rock and roller decides to venture into clubland? Singer, songwriter and author Lias Saoudi, the charismatic frontman of the Fat White Family, joined me initially to explore this question. Lending his seductive, slinky and sleezy tonsils to techno supergroup, Decius: their second album "Decius Volume 2: Splendor and Obedience,” absolutely pumps and you can see why they were picked to play at Berghain’s 19th Birthday.
The Fat White Family have a rep. As Lias says in our conversation, they were a band made up of some of the five worst people in England, yet I found him to be a charming, erudite gent. From the psychological chaos of band dynamics to the romanticized notion of the tortured artist, our conversation touches on the existential struggles of maintaining artistic integrity. Lias offers a raw and honest perspective on balancing creative freedom with the pressures of performance, sharing humorous anecdotes about societal expectations and generational quirks along the way.
If you like the show and you havn‘t already, please give it a subscribe and consider leaving a rating and a review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon or wherever you listen. It all really helps build the show.
Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), released 31st January 2025 on The Leaf Label
The Moonlandingz — The Sign Of A Man, listen here.
Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford
Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.
My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
The world is falling apart. We all woke up this morning to see Elon Musk doing a Nazi salute at the Trump inauguration. We need artists that are prepared to go into the void, stare and just be honest about their truth. We need Leos Saudi. You may know him by the Trail of Carnage his band, the fat white family, left in their wake. You may have read his book too. He's also just made the most rock and roll techno album of the last 12 months and, as you're about to hear, there is way, way more to leas saudi than you may have thought.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to lost and sound, the podcast that ventures into the minds of artists that work outside the box, but first, lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica, a global but family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, 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. Wherever in the world you are, wherever in the world I am, it's minus two degrees. I'm sat on a bench in neukölln in berlin, and I'm speaking to you and you're about to listen to lost and sound. We'll be right back. Thank you, hello and welcome to episode 155 of Lost in Sound. I'm Paul Hanford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the weekly podcast where I chat with an artist who works outside the box, from global icons to trailblazing outsiders and emerging innovators. We talk about music, creativity and perhaps that most daunting part of being an artist the praxis of life. Previous guests on the show have included Peaches, suzanneanne chiani, jim o'rourke, cozy funny tootie, mickey blanco and first and more.
Speaker 1:And today leah saudi is here. You probably know him as the charismatic, unpredictable front man of fat white family, a band that feels less like a group in the conventional sense and more like a series of unruly atoms, or as he puts it. More than once during the conversation we had some of the worst people in england together in a band. Yet our reason for talking today is that he's got a new album coming out as part of the group dcs, a sort of techno super group made of some of london's most crusty urchin indie stalwarts. The band, or the album rather, dcs Volume 2, splendor and Obedience, is a bacchanalian stew of acid house techno and disco, and it seriously pumps.
Speaker 1:A lot of people have talked about the chaos of the Fat White family, a band that first came at a time right towards the end of what now feels like a very different era, an era that has been kind of instagramerized as indie sleaze, I guess. Now I'm not even sure how it's even possible to eat food and pay rent from being in a band full-time, unless you're absolutely massive. Plus, on top of that, you have to live with daniel ecker gaslighting you whilst he steals all your money. But beyond the chaos and spectacle, lias is a deeply thoughtful and poetic soul, the author of the memoir 10,000 Apologies that he co-wrote with Adele Stripe. I think it's fairly obvious to say he's someone that isn't afraid to push boundaries, both sonically and lyrically, and who's unflinchingly honest about the world and his place in it, and that comes across throughout the interview. I also think uh, when we spoke it was yesterday, the 20th of january if you're listening to this podcast anyway, the day that comes out that I think we caught each other a very reflective point. Maybe it's a january thing as well, that that point in january where it's just cold. Also, this morning I heard the premiere of the new moon landing single, which leah sings on is called this sign of a man, and it's amazing how his voice, like with the dcs stuff, lends itself to electronic music, even though I think he's primarily known as a rock and roll singer, particularly when it comes to sleazy, slinky, slightly tongue-in-cheek Disco-influenced cuts like the Moon Landing single and, in a way, like the Decius album.
Speaker 1:But before we get going, if you haven't already and you like what I do, please give the show a subscribe. It is my aim to put out an episode every week this year and it takes a lot of work and love to do this and it would really mean a lot to me if, if you haven't already and you subscribe, um, it also means super amount to me if you could give the show a rating and a review on Spotify or Amazon or Apple or wherever you're listening to this. It would really mean a lot. Thank you so much. Um, before we get going, I should give a little trigger warning.
Speaker 1:The conversation does go into realms of discussion about drugs, depression, male circumcision and we also do roast Nick Cave quite heavily. Um, a little bit of uh me, when I sort of talk sometimes, I do sometimes get words wrong. I get really excited and I do say the wrong words sometimes and at one point I called Decius Deus I. Also, there was a little bit of technical issue right at the beginning of the conversation and I missed recording the first minute or so. So what's going to happen right now is I'm going to just like talk you right into where we're at with the conversation as it comes in. We both said hello to each other and we started talking about visiting Berlin, and Lius, as you're about to hear, is explaining what happened the last time he came to Berlin is explaining what happened.
Speaker 2:The last time he came to Berlin this year I went back. I ended up in like a squat, like a kind of cooperative housing thing. You know quite hip-hop-wide. Where was that? That was in Wedding. It was a huge, huge big complex and they were all gone on their travels. So it was just these giant cavernous big spaces and they all had like lovely kind of like gardens. They'd kind of like put together on the balconies and it was like I think it was like 250 euros for the whole month wow, you know, that's amazing oh yeah, it was and it was like it had just.
Speaker 2:You know, you know you can you, you find a room, you go, you're like you go to Berlin. So I'm going to go to Berlin for the summer and go clubbing and stuff. The room had such a great fucking vibe. The room itself had just this real kind of just. I just wanted to sit in this and that's what I and it was just. I don't really want to go out actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, the way you're talking about that kind of reminds me, if I think, of a London comparison. It reminds me a bit of like Manor House. Would you say that was like a fair comparison.
Speaker 2:I think ish, but I think because it's so much smaller Berlin, there's never anything that's quite so desolate as Manor House Like it's never. Like you're never that far away from where the kind of like. You know you can get a bit of decent, like thai food or whatever. You know what I mean. Like london it's like it has outer rings.
Speaker 1:You know, like that most cities, big cities, don't yeah, I remember me and my partner stayed for New Year. We stayed at someone's house or some sort of like I don't know like place in Manor House and walking around there the next day and I know it was New Year's Day anyway but just the desolation of it, just trying to find a coffee in the morning. You know I sound so bougie, don't I? Just trying to find a flat white in the morning.
Speaker 2:I just need an oat milk matcha latte. You know what I mean? It's torture. It gets like that, though you know, I think it's like you know what, like most people, like I can't fucking afford to buy a house ever or anything like that. I don't have a car. You know. It's just like you know if I want a fucking, if I want an oat milk, matcha latte, you know that's what you do get. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that's such a good point. That's such a good point.
Speaker 2:That whole thing a while back was that, oh, they're eating so much avocado on sourbreads. It's like no fuck off. That's the pittance that you've offered us. It's like you've soaked up all of the goods. You know what.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:You've soaked up all of the goods. You know what I mean. You've sold on all of the property. You bought it for nothing back in the day. We're all fucked forever and we get a fucking bit of sourdough, you know. And then you're going to pour scorn on us but I'll say, oh no, yeah, we'll have the more processed bread.
Speaker 1:Actually, while we're at it, We'll have some fucking stomach cancer to go with our semi-homelessness. You know what I mean. You know I mean some juice that isn't actually fucking juice, you know like uh.
Speaker 2:So yeah, all of these little, tiny little things that we can have. It's just just please let us have them, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's like it's an insult that that's all we've been offered, but it's an insult upon a you know upon an insult to then be, like you know, to be castigated publicly. Yeah, in these like slight fineries, you know definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1:I mean so weird today to talk about that. Uh well, because the dcs volume two is is coming out and I fucking love it and I think most people probably still know you more prominently for the Fat White family. But what I wanted to know, I mean to me there's a lot of similarities between both projects in a lot of different ways. But is there a different Lias that is in Deus to the Lias that is the Fat White family?
Speaker 2:I think slowly, the things kind of like feed into each other as time goes on. But I think with the it's just always easier to be working on a project that's not like your main project. Do you know what I mean? You get that with with. You know, like I find like I'm writing at the moment and I have a few different writing projects on the go, you know, and one of them is like my main project. You know what I mean? I'm working on this, this book, and then I've got another project which is sort of for fun and for shits and giggles, you know, and with the one that's for shits and giggles, you'll just have like piles and piles and piles and piles of work, you know.
Speaker 2:But the minute you like turn your focus to that one and be like right now I'm gonna do this for real this time, you know, you get the fucking like red light fever and it's suddenly it's all just claustrophobic and weird and stiff and it's like having to commit. You have to try and fool yourself into thinking that it's like playtime, that it's, you know. But like also you need to, you need to apply rigor because it's kind of like what you're doing, sort of for a job, you know it's fine. You know, but, like also you need to apply rigor because it's kind of like what you're doing sort of for a job, you know it's kind of how you're getting by. So that's a pickle, you know.
Speaker 2:But with DCS it's kind of like that was always very much just like for shits and giggles. That was playtime. You know, I found it personally just like a kind of quite therapeutic. You know. Yeah, the fact White like a kind of quite therapeutic. You know. Yeah, the fat whites was always. It was always like a clusterfuck psychologically. You know what I mean. It was. You know, some of the worst people in england together in a band. You know it's like let's, let's. You know it's cherry pick like the five worst men in england and fusion like, really like the a team gone dark like a really, really shit transformer or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like shitty power rangers, you know what I mean. Like a kind of like junkie rangers. You know, everybody gets out their power ring if that was the case.
Speaker 1:Like what was your dark superpower during, during?
Speaker 2:like the, the height of the debauchery mine was like chronic, like world absorbing depression, like like black, a blackness of mood so black that you know light itself cannot like escape. You know that was my.
Speaker 1:That's what I brought to the by that's interesting because there is this sort of romantic illusion of like writing and songwriting and poets having depression and tapping into the dark side, and I always felt that there was something a little bit like unfair about the way that was romanticized, um, in terms of like, yeah, okay, you go and suffer, but it's worth it because you do art, you know, and your expectations to do that, you know. What's your sort of take on that, like now, uh, you know, say maybe 12 years into Fat White Family's existence?
Speaker 2:really, I think the thing with being any kind of artist is that it kind of obliges a level of self-interest, self-scrutiny, you know, self-glorification, self-fucking-immiseration, like you're kind of in this relationship with your own thoughts, that's uh, and with your own identity, which is intensified beyond, let's say, like a reasonable kind of like limit.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's par for the course. So I think, given that situation, it's very easy to kind of like collapse kind of under the weight of your own sort of like sovereignty. Do you know what I mean? It's like I will stand alone and here I stand alone and I'm gonna make literally a song and dance about that. You know what I mean. And when that whole kind of project of like selfhood, you know, kind of prolapses, it's incredibly kind of painful, you know, and it's almost like you can hear everyone laughing at you, you know, even if they're not, and which is worse, you know that you imagine that everybody's laughing at you or that maybe they actually are all laughing at you, and then you don't know you don't know you don't know, because you've made yourself into the, you know, the center of, of of all being.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. You've had to kind of like raise her in on your own emotional life, to kind of like to harvest something that you can kind of make into a form. You know, and I think obviously this yeah, it's so heavily romanticized, definitely, you know, like it almost seems like glamorous. You know what I mean. There's all these like artists that are dead by their, you know, by the time they're 27 or whatever. You know like it almost seems like glamorous, you know, I mean there's all these like artists that are dead by their, you know, by the time they're 27 or whatever. You know, and it doesn't matter how many of them drop off, like that, it's still somehow kind of sexy, you know, and it's like why is that sexy? Why is that cool? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And it's like it's like mythology is kind of like. You know, yeah, it's contorting and it's perverse, you know what I mean. But it's so alluring, you know, in a world that you feel just instinctively from a young age, just doesn't add up, that doesn't make sense, that is not fair, that is not right. You know that is devoid of like truth and like reality. You know truth and like reality and you know. So I think with that it's like, uh, when you're young I think you can kind of just sort of blast on through, and I I find like the 30s was when me and my pals and many of them are kind of former pals now have had to kind of like pick up the pieces and that's you know, and sort of like you sort of pick up the bill if you like yes, yeah, yeah, the tax, the tax man comes knocking.
Speaker 1:The tax man of the soul yeah, he comes knocking about.
Speaker 2:What's about the age that jesus came off the cross? It's around 33 that he starts rapping on the door and it's like you know what I mean. It's like the hangovers get worse. You know the drugs is no longer the option that it was doesn't really work anymore. You know the fucking. There's a deficit there. You know the hands are too long. You know the depressions. The dips are too serious, too heavy, too existential. You know you've kind of peaked physically and there's that kind of like ability to just sort of dance between the raindrops. It goes.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and the old modes that you kind of erected, kind of, in lieu of those same characters that sort of got it all done and dusted by the time they were 27. You know your icons, you know they checked out five years already by this point yeah, you can't go to them and say, hey, what do I do now?
Speaker 1:because they're like sorry, mate, I've gone, I went yeah yeah, they're no use to you at all.
Speaker 2:No, you know what I mean. It's like small recompense, it's like, well, things didn't quite pan out, but I have been alive, you know, five years longer than amy winehouse had been at this point. I mean that's some kind of success. You know, five years on, amy, they weren't very good years.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Not a lot got done, but but here I am.
Speaker 1:Who do you think? Is there anyone that you can think of that sort of really transitioned really well in in a way that isn't they haven't just like hung on to like a former? Because I think sometimes when people try to hang on to like a former image, it becomes like an image, or it becomes like a contrivance or like a you know um, a replica of what they were and there's sort of like a metamorphosis. Isn't there that can be done? Sometimes I think people do do well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think basically the kind of the icon of icons. I think the one that did it with the most kind of like gravitas was Mark East Smith, I think that's kind of like. At no point did he collapse under the weight of his own sovereignty, you know what I mean. Like that was a man born to rule, you know, yeah, and I think it all just got turned up and fed in and then pushed back out and it was like a man kind of.
Speaker 2:I think if you're going to have like a remarkable kind of success you know where you're top 10 or whatever, you know that's that's kind of dramatic. And if you're going to have like a remarkable failure where it doesn't even register, that's kind of dramatic. And both of those things entail kind of like. You know you're at the limits of something there. You know one of them, you kind of drown in your own mythology and become like basically just a prick and that's like destruction. And the other one, you fall off the edge of the world and you start again and you decide to do something else. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But to sort of go down the middle you know what I mean To middle, to go kind of your own route. That isn't kind of either one of these two extremes. I think you need like a kind of like iron resolve, you know, because it's not that dramatic, you know you have to kind of like invent the kind of thing constantly, perpetually. You know, I think you need like a philosophy at that point, and I think that's somebody that basically had that, you know. You look at these other great artists that have become kind of like caricatures of themselves. You know, like sh, like Shane McGowan, you know he collapsed under the kind of weight of like Shane McGowan, you know it's like it just got to a point where it was just the Shane McGowan kind of cartoon. You know, I think the same thing to a sort of to a patchier kind of extent with Nick Cave, you know.
Speaker 1:I would say that actually and it's not a popular thing to say because he's sort of become saint nick now, hasn't? He's become canonized to a degree, maybe not over some of his kind of current political ideas, but like sort of just generally. You know, I've definitely brought up with some friends about like how I have some issues with nick cave and I've almost lost friendships over it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find that kind of like uh, yeah, the St Nick thing is particularly tedious, you know, and it's kind of like, uh, it just feels sort of like belabored, you know, and like it doesn't feel like, not that, not that he hasn't like made like like good records in his later career. I thought Push the Sky Away was a really good one. So much of the other stuff. To be honest, I didn't really rate a lot of it. You can kind of see it in the Nick Cave industry. He's like a one-man industry. There's Nick Cave children's books and Nick Cave fucking coasters and nick cave. You know what I mean. It's almost like you know he's, he's a he's. It's like, uh, you know he's to indian, to indie music.
Speaker 1:He's kind of like it's almost trumpist, you know I wouldn't be surprised if we get like a nick cave theme park yeah, you know like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like nick cave swimming pool or like nick cave, do they mean? It's almost trumpian. The diversification of product. You know what I? Yeah, like Nick Cave's swimming pool or Nick Cave on-dance. Do you know what I mean? It's almost Trumpian. The diversification of products. You know what I mean. It's like you shouldn't be this on the ball. You know what I mean. It's fair enough. Great, you're off drugs, but maybe you consider getting back on the drugs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I don't know the kind of whole preacher man kind of shtick, I don't know. I don't know I I there's a documentary with nick cave where he's kind of like, uh, I think it's about shane mcgowan, you know, and there's a bit where they're interviewing nick cave. About shane mcgowan he's talking about like the greats and the kind of top, the top shelf, you know, and he's like, you know, neil young, young had it, you know, and Leonard Cohen, he had it, shane had it, you know, and you could, you could almost hit me once. He wants to say you, really, you can feel it, you can hear it and I've got it you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:he doesn't say it but it's like it's there like, you know, like he can't, he doesn't actually, and it's kind of like but you're, but you're not quite. I mean, he's mean, he's an incredible talent, obviously. You know what I mean. He's written some of these great songs. You know what I mean? Fuck, who the fuck am I to talk, you know? But at the same time, you're not on that shelf, nick, you know, yeah, you never will be. You know, it's like there's a shelf, just below that.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, it's below and, and you're up there, which is cool. You know it's a very high shelf and it's a very good shelf to be at and very few people are out of that, but it's not that shelf, it's not the no, yeah and it's because of a certain sort of plasticity about the whole operation it's a little it's.
Speaker 2:I think it's a similar shelf. I mean it's maybe on a shelf just below tom waits, but it's a similar shelf.
Speaker 1:I mean it's maybe on a shelf just below tom waits, but it's a similar shelf to tom waits, where the whole thing is just a little bit too elaborate you know, it's a little bit too kind of like premeditated, you know, like theatrical, you know which is great, but it's not that kind of like gaping wound that gets you like on the fucking top shelf, you know yeah it's like raw humanity, just raw, not like dressed up like it's a kerouac kind of thing or, you know, like stylings too stylized, yeah like I feel, like I mean again, I don't want this to be a total, you know, because I think we both quite like nick cave but like I feel like lately in the last 10 years, it's almost like he climbs into a nick cave mask, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of an episode of the simpsons where they it's like a film premiere and there's like an old they have like this sort of previous sort of teen actor walk past the camera and he smiles and you see all of the lines on his face. But he still has that image when he's not, you know the young guy. When he's not smiling, it feels. It feels like there's, there's like a yeah, I guess you said that the industrial, the nick cave industrial military complex do you think there's a painting of nick cave in his attic and he's completely like dorian grade, like?
Speaker 1:definitely, but then that would become like an album that he'd make anyway yeah, we should put it to him.
Speaker 2:you know what I mean. I tell you the political stuff I didn't think was like I thought that was quite funny, him going to the coronation and everything I thought that made the people that were like, oh you, fucking, Tory, cut. They looked like fools. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:It's like a lot Like so the guy is supposed to like you know, write you your fucking like music and like wave the same flag as you politically Like you know there's an interesting thing about like if, if your whole, if a big part of your life has always been about provocation and you created such a loyal understanding of yourself with people, then does the provocation? How do you keep being provocative? Does it just become performative and just telling people what they want to know or you know? Is then the challenge to just sort of like actually piss some of your fans off a bit?
Speaker 2:I think that's, I think, yeah, the sort of you're gonna, yeah, willingness to be disliked, I think is the core, the core ethic there, right, because there's no real way of doing it without like that's. You know, and once you've kind of become that much of a kind of established figure, you might as well just go full establishment and have, like tea with the king or whatever.
Speaker 1:You know, that bit I actually kind of admire well, I mean also, I feel like it's like the thing like the rolling stones, it's like fair enough, they've got to that point in their life where, you know, they reach that point in their life, maybe about 1979, and where it's just they become rolling stones, tm, and I just sort of feel like, in a way, fair play really. You know, I can still go and listen to like those great you know beggars banquet or or like let it bleed, and I don't have to kind of uh see it as being because I listen to that. But I've also got to consider she's the boss it does.
Speaker 2:It does in the same way that like it does taint it, though a little bit like, I think it's like you know, in the same way when somebody fucking dies when they're 27, or whether they drop off or they hang themselves dramatically or whatever mid-career and they're suddenly fucking gone. You know, but they've written all these songs about the dark side. You know, undeniably it kind of lends a certain caliber to those, to those bits of work. You know, I think if you kind of play the rebel rebel thing and then, like you know, you go the the rolling stones route, which is really quite grotesque, you know the kind of like master card arena, you know, and like everybody's there, like you know, from the shuttle bus, from ascot, you know it does sort of like retroactively taint the whole thing.
Speaker 2:You know which is where I think, like the, the beatles, kind of like trump, trump the stones, because it was all done and dusted by the time the 60s was finished, you know. And well, I mean, obviously, things ended like really tragically. But you know, again, it's kind of that thing. It's kind of like why John Lennon is, I guess, to a certain extent, seen almost like this kind of he's like the Christ of the 60s, isn't he? I mean, it's not just because of the long hair and the white outfits, it's partly because he was kind of sacrificed upon the altar, you know, and it's like there's no, there's no telling what might have been, you know. So you're just left with this really alluring absence, you know, whereas the stones, you know, you've got like let's work, let's work Totally.
Speaker 1:They are, yeah, again, they are the picture from Dorian dorian craper, removed from the attic.
Speaker 1:And just you know, maybe, maybe there's like the young stone still up, locked up in an attic, and it's reversed yeah, that's it subverted the whole thing I mean, one of the things that I I think is really interesting about um, where you're at and what you do perhaps has always been there, is that you know you wrote the book um, you know you've worked on these different projects and you know you have a fine art background, and so I was wondering for you, like you know is, is music just like an extension of art for you in general, you know, is music something that is like something that you tap into for a certain kind of expression, rather than it being like everything? General, you know, is music something that is like something that you tap into for a certain kind of expression, rather than it being like everything? Or, you know, how does it balance between you?
Speaker 2:because I know that some people feel like, particularly, you know, with maybe a rock and roll background, but they're a little bit like oh, I don't know if I want to really want to own the artist tag yeah, yeah, I think I've been thinking about this a lot lately because, like, like I've always, like I started in I wanted to be a film director when I was a teenager because I was just mad about films. That was the first thing. But you can't study like film directing at fucking cookstown high school, you know there's an art class. So you get into art, you know, because that's what, that's what's there, got to london, saw bands or whatever. You know. For the first time it became like a tangible thing. It was like okay, you know, you don't need to buy oil paint for that, you know what I mean and you can do it at the pub. So that makes kind of practical sense. And I just kind of wound up in that by mistake and I I did always sort of perceive it as all kind of one and the same. You know what I mean. You have a kind of creative, kind of like energy that finds expression in these different forms, you know.
Speaker 2:But lately I've started to wonder whether that's true or not, because it's kind of like when the pandemic struck, I very much kind of just like curled up with literature and that's just what I was doing, you know, like I was just completely on my own, cut off from all of my friends in the group, and just really, really, really absorbed in, in. In that, you know, because I was doing the book and because it was all of this just dead time to just catch up on my last reading, it was just fucking great, you know. I mean, I don't know, I got so absorbed in that whole process. I don't know whether I was kind of like, uh, you know like whether I was kind of on the run from music or you know, I mean there's that thing in a not dark yet, by bob dylan, that line where he says I don't remember what I came here, what it was. I came here to get away from, you know, and I feel a little bit like that with with music. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But I'm kind of like, uh, I've wrapped myself up so much over here with books and with writing and all the time, and that's just what I'm doing, and the only time I'm ever fucking involved in music is when I'm either making it or around other people and my curiosity just isn't there.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, that gives me the fucking heebie-jeebies actually, because it's kind of like I know through writing that it's only if I spend enough time, you know, enmeshed in other people's like ideas, that the ability to kind of uh, make a kind of broad weave, you know of, of different voices and different ideas it's. It's only because I've constantly got a flow of other stuff running through my head that the necessary tools are there to make something that might be like of some value to other people, and I think it's. It's pretty much the same with music if you're not like in it, then how do you kind of elaborate some new composite that's going to be kind of worthwhile, you know, and I get that kind of feeling at the moment where I'm almost like how do I get back there?
Speaker 1:you know yeah, I really, really relate to what you're saying. Actually, like I feel, um, like I'm a published author as well and I feel like the last year I probably read about two books, and so that's been something that I've started reading again a lot recently, and I feel like this idea of just you feel so separate from things if you're not around them and not doing them. I think with music there's such an element of it that's about community as well, and if you're not around people that are like actively living those lives, then you're missing out such a sort of tangible part of it. And so, no, so it, no wonder you know when, no wonder the times like I've been like that is like I feel like I can't do it, because a lot of it is just about being around people that can yeah, I became and I realized that kind of like.
Speaker 2:It's like, uh, when my uh old bandmate, saul left the group, you know, and he was like real deep core muso, you know, and I've noticed like my Spotify algorithm, you know, just going into steady decline since he parted ways, you know, and it was real acrimonious, so there's just no contact. You know what I mean. That used to be like one of the places I'd just like I'd just plug in and just get like a whole array of cool shit. You know what I mean. And he would be the one sniffing around. You know, I'd be like great, you know what I mean, I'll be over here with the books or whatever. He'd be sniffing around. And it's just like my algorithm, like because I'm not around it as much anymore.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, which is depressing, but I think I think, especially if you kind of like do something for a living, then that also jades the fuck out of you. You know, like, you become sort of like traumatized by it. You know it becomes work, like you work at the sausage factory. You know what I mean. You don't want to eat sausages. You know, like it's like those chefs that work in gourmet restaurants or whatever, and then they come home and they eat a fucking pot or whatever. You know what I mean yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So how do you, how do you deal with that? How do you find ways to to keep fresh or inspired or interested?
Speaker 2:I try and comfort myself with the fact that I've probably heard enough already. You know, like it's just, like it's all in there somewhere. Do you know what I mean? Like it's just so. I've been exposed to so much music and I don't know. Like just my approach was always kind of a literary approach. That was all. That's how I wound up there in the first place anyway was just like okay, well, if you know musicians, which is one thing they despise, it's having to write lyrics. I'll just write lyrics, you know, because then, like, I'll get in a cool band and it'll be all right. You know what I mean and I can give this music thing a crack. That was my, that was my route in and and it kind of came off. You know, to an extent. You know.
Speaker 1:So my idea is that I will just harvest like masses of language at some point and then, like, meet up with guys that have rips and then just stick them together and maybe do some drugs, you know for me, I mean like my I've in a subjective, my subjective belief, is that the highest point of like the music I've heard you do is today you become a man, which to me is just like the culmination in terms of my listening experience of your work of like.
Speaker 1:You know, the idea of literary ideas, of music and and like, maybe like ideas about sort of um, like roots and memory and childhood, all kind of coming together and fusing together, and you know, to me that is a fucking piece of art. Um, yeah, you know, that's like I would put that in a spaceship. You know one of those spaceships, along with a lot of other music that you know aliens might listen to in 200 years time or two million years time or somewhere else. I mean, but what was, what was the idea behind that like? You know, I mean, how, how truthful to actual events, is what you're, what you're talking about?
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, it's pretty, it's pretty close it's pretty close. I mean, my brother tells that story when he gets fucked up, you know it comes out 5 am the circumcision story, you know, and he tells it all in sundry. So I didn't feel sensitive about stealing his story and putting it in a, in a song or whatever you know you could call it that. But um, I think he, he'll always, he'll always nudge pieces of it around. Certain bits will flare up and certain other bits will calm down.
Speaker 1:You know what I think.
Speaker 2:And there was another bit like I didn't put in there that I just couldn't squeeze in. You know it's already, I've already squeezed quite a lot into three minutes or whatever. But there was a bit that he was telling me about, uh, last year where, um, his little cousin, like our little cousin, had his circumcision done, like a few years after that, you know. And, uh, my brother was at the ceremony and like they put the, they put the foreskin into this like little sack, you know, put it aside, this little ceremonial sack. My brother was telling me that after his he went and snatched this sack and was dancing around the room with it Like I got it, I got it, you know. They around the room with it like I got it, I got it, you know, and they were all going fucking mental, you know so he was like immediately, you know that was it.
Speaker 2:He'd been brought into the to the, to the male tradition suffering and you know ritual humiliation. Yeah, yeah, the sack dance yeah, he was one of the lads now. Yeah, um, yeah, most of it's true. I think most of it's true. It'll be like I can't remember.
Speaker 1:I wrote the thing very quickly and the truth wasn't like the main kind of like, but yeah yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess truth isn't is it's more about like an idea of getting a getting a feeling of truth across than than literally?
Speaker 2:it's more just the energy of my big brother's speech, you know yeah I had access to, having read what's his name david keener I found I don't know this is memorial device. Do you ever read?
Speaker 2:this is memorial I don't know, I don't know I'm gonna, I'm say I'll write it down, but I'll listen back to it when I, when I edit this about like a kind of fictional post-punk scene, you know, but it's all written, not not in a scots dialect, in the way that, like urban welsh writes where you know, if you're not scottish you maybe need like a fucking you know a dictionary. You know it's like, but uh, something about the kind of I don't know the natural kind of style there that he writes in it was immediately after right reading that I was. I was putting together that today you become man thing somehow give me like access to that, my big brother's vernacular, somehow. You know that tone. But, um, yeah, that was, that was, that was a good laugh, but yeah, not like a big seller.
Speaker 1:Is there a part of you that like has ever really wanted to have, like the massive, huge, global big seller?
Speaker 2:you know this changes music culture, pitchfork, 10 out of 10, you know, top of billboards type moment well, I mean I think the pitch, pitchfork of boycott in my last two records, so I think that's off the table. But um, yeah, I think it would be nice to have like like to have like a random hit that pays the bills. You know, just like a freak occurrence hit, and then you're kind like you can just be as fucking weird as you like you know what I mean. You just had this one complete fluke that just you know it gets, happens to get picked up by such and such, and then you can just it's just so hard to get by.
Speaker 2:That's the thing it's just so hard to get back to the thing with, like the depression you know where, like uh, because you're making like, know increasing demands on your ego, you know it becomes like overheated much more easily if you're in five different projects at once as opposed to just one or two. And I think if you don't want to get a job, like doing something else, and you want to live like this, that's kind of how failing some sort of like remarkable success, that's how you do it. Well, that's how I have to do it anyway, and you're kind of like I don't know. You like kind of just the psychic burnout you know of having to fucking get on with so many different things all the time.
Speaker 2:You know you kind of hollow yourself out and then you can get like I think if you had some sort of like freakish mega hit or like a dream sink, you know, like a skittles advert or something. You know I always thought I always thought dfn like, like leather, touch the leather. You know, like for sofas, you know I always thought that was like sofa world sofa world, a setting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:And I mean, that's the kind of thing that could happen at any time, like in 15 years or something like that.
Speaker 2:The you know just the really like some people totally missing the point and netting you a cool few million saying that, saying that I was I did during the during, like you know, when the pandemic finally kind of like came to a halt, people could tour again. I did a random tour with uh, I know the guys locally alabama three. Oh yes, this morning, yeah, the sopranos tune right now.
Speaker 2:If it weren't for the sopranos tune, yeah, you know, the band would have died of natural causes some time ago, you know. But because of the sopranos tune, there's just enough thread left to keep the game going. You know what I mean. So they're in this state of like serious sort of decrepitude. You know what I mean. I remember waking up on the tour bus, you know, and they've all got like vapes now, you know, instead of cigarettes, you know. But it was like being surrounded by these like ancient Darth Vader's you know what I mean. And just these like leathery faces, you know, still rolling around the country on this fucking old bus. You know what I mean. Still living like that. You know I'm 38 now and I'm like, oh man, what? Like another on the bus really, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was like I remember being at the back of one of their gigs and I was playing, I was opening up for them playing acoustic, you know, on my own. I remember I finished my set and it was like I was outside having a joint or whatever, you know, and there were people like their fans out there listening to, woke up this morning on their phone. They've gone there like, wait until they played it and then, after they played it, they were listening to it again on their phones, like outside the gig. You know they didn't give a fuck about any of the songs, yeah, you know. So there's, like you know, maybe the argument against not having some sort of miracle sync, or you know.
Speaker 1:Mars and um, but he, I guess for him the benefit of that was because it was like Mars and it was a different project. It was just this one-off single. You know there wasn't that that kind of thing of people turning up to like I imagine AR cane gigs expecting to hear pop up the volume. You know it's like, if you can do it, maybe like that's in the Apex Twin thing as well, about like Apex Twin isn't supposed to have made some number ones that he's never owned up to. You know, just do it like as something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chance would be a fine thing, if only I had the first clue of how to actually do that, you know. But we are where we are. You know the fall route. That's the yeah the fall.
Speaker 1:Free range, yeah, yeah, yeah. So free range, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, like, I think, like with with the dcs album, I feel like there is a quite a sort of similar feeling to that white family with it. Um, in a lot of in the, and there's a sort of like I don't know, there's a sort of rock and rollness to the DCS album. You know it's, it's, it's I mean, I live in Berlin and it's got that real like techno pulse to it, but there's this sort of sense that I also get from Berghain and from these places, that there's. Maybe it's the hedonism or maybe it's like the sort of the, the sort of satirizing of the hedonism. I don't know, but there is this sort of connection. I was, you know, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how the album came about. You know, because you've, you know, like you've got links with these people for quite a lot of years, haven't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, for like liam and luke. Uh, we've been working together now since the first, first fat whites record, you know that's how we kind of that's how we made the first, the first record. Those guys signed us to their tiny little, you know, independent label. You know there was no money or anything like that.
Speaker 2:It was just a little room in new malden, so we got there in the court, you know, nobody really gave a fuck at all. Um, so that's about 12, 12, 13 years ago now. It's something like that, you, you know. So it was just like a natural thing it started up. It must have been six or seven years ago now just the old track, I think that was their history. They were in like Acid House and Dance back in the 90s or whatever you know. So that was their natural kind of element back in the day and it was really just a bit of fun, a bit of a lark, you know. But, like I was saying, I think sometimes you get the best stuff like that. Yeah, that voice was just a bit of a fucking lark until it wasn't, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you're overthinking it. And then on this, we had a couple of kind of guests from back in the day as well. You know, uh alex, sembly a pre-goblin I don't know if you've if you've heard them, because he's got this great song, combustion, but, um, that was a a co-write with uh alex sembly walking in the heat. And uh, the new one that's just come out, queen of 14, that's a co-write with joe pancucci, who was the original bass player in the fat whites. I think he was one of the first guys to get himself properly sacked.
Speaker 1:Do you remember what for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was like he had a real bad drink problem. I think he's sober now. Last time I checked, I think he's managed to sort himself out quite a bit. Yeah, he's playing everything like half a tone up. He was kind of getting into fights, you know, and then I think we, uh, we played a gig in brussels and uh, the night before we've been in paris, he got himself carted out of a bar by the security and then he didn't show up until the next day and it was like the belgian cops brought him to the tour bus, you know, they'd arrested him, arrested him, tried to bunk trains, you know, and then he just started drinking straight away again, you know, and we fired him that night and then he tried to drive the tour bus off.
Speaker 1:Oh God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, he tried to drive, which didn't work.
Speaker 1:It was too you know, and then he was off like just into the night. You know that was a while ago now. Yeah, fucking hell, because I remember seeing you. Um, I think it was I don't know if it was 2012 or 2013, but it was at macbeth in in hoxton e shoreditch I never know if that's in hoxton or shoreditch and, um, I went with my friend jade at the time and she was like this band, you know, this band are like. You know, this is going to remind you of, like, what rock and roll is supposed to be about and I had a really, really good time and I think the thing that I did feel was that they did have this sense of like a gang yeah it felt like when I've seen other bands try and do that, in my own experiences it's always felt a bit contrived, but I think with you guys it felt sort of actually very real what sort of sticks out for you about that time?
Speaker 2:I think um a kind of concentrated desperation you know, like, like desperation.
Speaker 2:But if you apply just enough pressure from all different angles, you know, suddenly start, it turns into something, something else, you know, just turns into antagonism, we know why, or reason or anything like that or explanation. It's just like, you know, a club of the worst men in england and hey, everything. A healthy response to that era, you know, and I think it would still be a healthy response now and it it sort of saddens me that it's not, I don't know. It's almost like impermissible now, like I just can't imagine a gang of like scrotal deviants like that even being given, like you know, a fucking like kill them before they can grow. You know Well what label would be foolhardy enough now to throw money at a bunch of people like that. You know, it's like fuck knows what they might do when they're shit-faced on drinking drugs, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why? Fuck knows what they might do when they're shit based on drinking drugs.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, why do you think that is? Well, I think it's like it's a combination of different factors. You know, mainly you've got like it's a two-pronged kind of like uh, disaster, on the one hand you've got like, uh, the bottom's falling out, fiscally right, it's just like the money isn't there, you know, and I think, culturally, I just think like rock and roll as a kind of like as a force for sheer antagonisms, kind of like die to death. You know, on account of it being kind of like, I mean, there's a sort of censoriousness now that's kind of crept in, and I think that goes hand in hand with the people that are kind of practicing it. You know, because it's become kind of the reserve of like, you know, generally more middle class kind of white, middle class kind of that's kind of what it is now. You know, I don't know, there is that same kind of like co-mingling between different kind of strata within like major cities that made rock and roll kind of interesting in the first place. You know, I think a lot of practitioners in the day were kind of middle class as well, but they came from cities that were kind of a mixture of different kind of like they were genuinely diverse, not a kind of tokenistic kind of diversity we have now. You know, all we ever hear about is is diversity, diversity, this diversity, that. But like all of the arts have done nothing become more and more and more gentrified. It's great, okay, so there are more, like there are more women in in the music scene now, but they're all middle class women, you know, I mean it's like great, so you know, I mean you've managed to get a few more black people into publishing, but it's, they're all. You know. I mean it's like great, so you know, I mean you've managed to get a few more black people into publishing, but it's, they're all. You know what I mean it's like.
Speaker 2:But actually, at the same time, like every single sphere has become more and more relentlessly gentrified across the board, whether it's in television or whether it's in literature or music. That's kind of like the direction of travel, you know, and there's a kind of contradiction there. I find, you know, just kind of almost insulting. You know, and there's a kind of contradiction there. I find, uh, you know, just kind of almost insulting. You know, it's like this diversity that everybody keeps speaking of is not real. You know, you know, it's one type of diversity that isn't kind of diversity at all, it's just liberal pressure, and I think that's very specific to especially rock and roll. I think maybe in other mediums it's less. You know, within music I think, maybe that's that's less true, you know, but I think where the model is like amplifiers, guitars, rehearsal space, it's actually cost you a few quid to put the thing together. You know, then I think maybe it's a it's prohibitive, you know. Uh, then I think, uh, maybe it's uh, it's prohibitive, you know, prohibitively expensive yeah a place like london.
Speaker 2:You know like when we started it was like squats and dodgy rooms above pubs and it's all landlords with shit, all properties, and you know I mean there was enough. There were enough gray areas. You know in the city that you could kind of just be a kind of like an urchin and get by. You know there were enough spaces that would accommodate you.
Speaker 1:I don't think those spaces exist anymore you know, yeah, like I feel I've listened to and read different types of discourse recently on, like the whole indie sleaze thing as a sort of a sort of instagram fashion, like archive of of like I guess, the era beginning with the strokes and ending kind of around about the time of like fat white family, and it feels again. I feel like it's this sort of sense of sadness now, uh, that this isn't really an achievable thing for a lot of people, and I'm not the first person to have said this, but you know, maybe like younger, like younger generations said people are looking at this and thinking isn't this cool? Look at what people were able to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I, I mean that's, that's the way I I look at it. Now. You know, and I think that lends itself to a homogenization of like.
Speaker 2:You know the form and what's possible, you know, and at the same time you do you have it combined with this kind of like, uh, just all-encompassing like fear, this cultural, cultural climate of just fear, of like if you say the wrong thing, it's going to be kind of like logged eternally on the web you know, and there's no kind of getting out of it, you know, and how dangerous it is to kind of express the wrong opinion about this or that, and it's like that's no kind of a climate for a Marky marquis smithian kind of figure to emerge from you know it, doesn't you know what I mean from that? It will not grow.
Speaker 1:It's the wrong kind of soil yeah, you just could not have a marquis smith these days that'd be done and it'd be done in.
Speaker 2:It'd be done in a heartbeat. He'd attack somebody when he was ship based or something, or yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Or somebody would actually listen to the first lyric on fucking the classical or whatever you know, and they'd be like, all right, well, that's the end of that, you know, and they would crush it. You know what I mean. So there was an ecosystem there that could produce the goods, and I think the art form is kind of rooted in a specific set of socio-economic and technological parameters. You know, it's like you know I've said this before but it's like you don't have. You have a period in, in, in, in, in, in a culture that produces a shakespeare or whatever, and then that moment the specifics of that time, like they disappear and it's no longer like plausible. You know you don't have beethoven and mozart, they all exist around this period of time and they emerge out of that kind of soil for a whole bunch of reasons that don't really have anything to do with the individuals themselves, you know yeah that's kind of like that's, you know, particularly kind of like biting now having just come.
Speaker 2:You know we're the wrong end of this incredible wave. You know that occurred in the middle of the last century. You know, I guess with the 60s or 70s there were kind of like four decades of kind of like just this earth shattering, kind of like development, just this earth shattering kind of like uh, development, and it's kind of like dried up and I think the internet, more than anything else, has just kind of like liquefied that whole process and it just turns everything into everything else. It just makes everything the same, it makes everything digital, you know, it reduces everything to ones and fucking zeros you know, yeah, which I think translates as the word content yeah, it's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it, yeah, reduces art into entertainment. You know, yeah, content, and I think that's what it does. You know, it's like daniel x saying it's a, it's, it's a hobby. You know it's, uh, it's not a hobby, it's not even a. It's not even a job. You know what I mean. It's a fucking like. You know, for for people that are, you know, throw their whole lives into this, they fucking die for it. You know what I mean. It's a fucking spiritual quest. You know it's like something else. It's, you know, trying to attain something Endangered. Sounded a bit Nick Cave here, but you know what I mean. It's like your last stab at the transcendental.
Speaker 2:You're trying to kind of like reach a higher plane. You know what I mean that these people are down this track and it's just not taken that seriously anymore. I guess you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you say, on one hand, you've got Daniel Ek gaslighting anyone whose like identity is connected with art and on the other hand, we're being lambasted for having our flat whites oat flat whites. It's a very, very weird dystopia we live in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Mark Fisher called it well with the boring dystopia, the boring dystopia.
Speaker 1:Actually, I'm just going to do this because this is I'm really excited about this. It's really weird, but I just I've been meaning to read Mark Fisher for ages and yeah.
Speaker 2:This is the grand opening. Yes, hey, is it?
Speaker 1:do you read it from?
Speaker 2:like I'm just you don't need to, you don't need to read that from start to finish. That's, that's. That's one of them. You can just like, just scroll, whatever, whatever. Yeah, yes, you know, I think the stuff about joy division and like depression was, was, was really amazing and his takedown of you know, it's the director that did inception um christopher nolan his takedown of christopher nolan.
Speaker 2:It's phenomenal. I think he really pulls that to pieces. You know, I think he's a little too kind to the sleep of moths, you know, I think his music, his music, his music reviews no, don't get me wrong, I think the moths they were great, you know. But the music reviews sometimes he writes about stuff and he writes about it so brilliantly You're like I cannot wait to fucking check this out, you know. And then you're like it's a bit shit this. But I think with writers I've noticed with writers especially, you know, uh, since fraternizing with them in the last five years, you know, my, my literary quest, you know, make friends with some writers.
Speaker 2:I think they kind of really they fall in love with their own theorizing sometimes. I think I think they can't really be trusted a lot of the time to sort of navigate music on your behalf I don't know when.
Speaker 1:When they invest that much of themselves, you know, critiquing a thing, then they can't admonish their own critique sometimes, you know I think maybe it's again going into the nick cave thing, but after a while, when certain things work, they become like a comfortable uniform that you can put on and and like. I think there's the same with words and and having a really great. You know, it's like oscar wilde. You imagine like he's got, had his amazing great little uh little bon mots and you've got your like armory and your your, your uh larder cupboard full of these like statements and ideas and concepts and and they just after a while I think they just end up sounding so good that they end up becoming like the thing itself. They become like a, they become like the whole aesthetic rather than what the person's actually originally talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, I think, I think definitely Fisher's guilty of that sometimes there I think.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just just finally. I mean, I just wanted to ask, like what would you tell your younger self?
Speaker 2:Hmm, probably, I don't know. It's one of them things. You know what I mean Like everything. You know Like everything Saving some fucking hassle. You know Like because you can't. It just takes so long to eradicate these just like swathes of like doubt and insecurity. You know like I'm nearly 40 now. It just seems cruel to only have kind of gotten over things, certain things like now, ish, you know like it just takes so long. You know, like character building, it just takes fucking ages, you know to, to get that job like even half done.
Speaker 2:You know yeah so I think probably the most important thing is just like, maybe, just maybe, don't do so much cocaine. You know, maybe not, maybe not, maybe that wasn't such a great, such a great shot, great call, you know it was had some good times, you know, and that's unreal, that's unrealistic, that would never have washed, so fuck that um yeah, I don't get an electric toothbrush or something, maybe earlier on I think that, yeah, practical things are probably pretty damn good in that question, like what would you tell your younger self?
Speaker 1:um, I mean, I asked this to all my guests, so I can't think of an answer that isn't informed by what someone else said.
Speaker 1:But someone once said invest in bitcoin yeah, but I mean that's like, oh well, you know I'd go back and I'd put money yeah, that's true yeah, it's not, you know, I mean that's like I don't think that honors the question I, I don't know, probably something really fucking cheesy, if I'm going to be honest, like find a way to believe in myself I think that's kind of, in a roundabout way, what I was getting at.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah I just, I remember, just like being convinced, just absolutely convinced, that I was like hideously unattractive, like completely without any merit or talent or worth, or just so cripplingly like, like radiantly insecure, you know, like same same yeah you were just like to the point where it just it was just so defeating for me and those around me, you know, and just how much of a fucking dead weight that all is, you know, I mean, it's a bit late now but I guess it's something that we realize now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's yeah, just what you still. You're still wrestling with it, though, right, I still wrestle with it all the time. I think that's the thing is again going back to that thing with like depression and like making art and everything is that. That's kind of like uh, okay, you feel like less insecure and all that means is that you're ready to take on a more monumental like like amount of insecurity. You know, it's like 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:If you try to write a book or whatever it'd be like, you know, fuck off, like get out of town. That's not going to be something that's, you know it's not going to. I'm not even going to entertain that. You know which. You kind of worm your way into that position and do enough work. You know what I mean. Then it's like, okay, I'm ready for for that size of insecurity. You know what I mean, and that's the thing I don't. Where ambition comes in, where it's just like right, you know, if I'm gonna feel like nervous all the time about things, then it has to be something of scale. You know something actually hard you know.
Speaker 1:So you're saying, like if you're going to be nervous about something, it's got to be worth it. Like it's going to be something big enough to go.
Speaker 2:Okay, like that's worth the the shit I'm going to feel because, like I would have done this for it I'm saying that I never really feel any like okay, I've gotten over those other hang-ups that were there a lot of them you know, or dealt with them you know to a certain extent, but all you do is kind of replace them with new, bigger hang-ups. You know, and I kind of like propulsive aspects of your character that hungers for things that is ambitious, which leaves you in a permanent state of kind of like crisis, almost like of insecurity, because it's like you do just move on to something else that gives you the fucking fear and you'll just spend your whole day walking between like mad, wild arrogance and like insane fucking, like self critique and insecurity.
Speaker 1:You know, and you're just batting between these two extremes and that's just what you do yeah, I feel like it reminds me a little bit in terms of how I relate to it myself is like you know, when you're watching like a really good, like probably american series that's got like about five different seasons, and you, uh, you go through the whole arc of what's happening with the main characters for a season and they kind of sort of sort some of their issues out, but then right at the end of the last episode of that season, like the main villain from a previous season turns up again and you're like, oh fuck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you're never done with it all. You're never done with it all. You know it doesn't get like. You know what I mean. It just doesn't. It's just completely dependent on the time of the day, and I don't know like I find the mornings are good, you know, and the evenings, that's when the, that's when the heebie-jeebies come out.
Speaker 1:Morning, that's very un-rock and roll of you I said was weird.
Speaker 2:I discovered that, like in the pandemic, like just after fucking decades of, just like you know, drug abuse, basically, and then it was like the smoke cleared. It was like, oh, like I, I'm a morning person, yeah yeah that had never occurred to me.
Speaker 2:Like it's actually my favorite time of the day, you know, like if I'm really like on the straight and narrow, I just get up earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier until I start waking up. Like I love it. This time of year you wake up at like quarter past five in the morning and that I find is the best time for writing, you know, because it's just a lot of writers say that, don't they? Because it was yeah, it was like you know.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of the pandemic like I found the pandemic was just the most fruitful time for for writing. You know, it was just like it was just so in it, you know, and there was no focus or no, no, no distraction, there was no. You know, there's nothing going on anywhere and you knew that, not just like the front of your front of your brain, but on a kind of full bodily, kind of consciousness, you were not missing out on anything. This is, you know, this here is is everything now and you could just be completely comfortable to just meander through different books and different ideas all day long, day after day after day. There was no pinging sense that maybe you should be doing this or should be doing that or whatever. You know, the frozen nature of everything was kind of, and I think that period in time in the morning, if you start getting up at like five, you know when they, when it's still dark out, you know, people aren't gonna wake up for another three or four hours still, you know.
Speaker 2:But it sort of has a little bit of that kind of just frozen timeless kind of energy about it. You know where it's like you're just secretly beavering away there and everything else is just stopped yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then nine o'clock is like the the masks. The masks have come off and shops have opened up again. Literally, it's the, the world opens up again. It's just have that bit of time in the morning before the world opens up and it's yeah, that's like one thing.
Speaker 2:I that's one thing bothers me about do gigging and writing, which is what I'm doing at the moment. I'm trying to write and I'm, you know, I'm going out and doing gigs because I've got albums come out and it's like, you know, that's pays, that pays the rent, you know. So I'm going out doing that and you know it's like a dcs gig is like sometimes it'll be 2 30 am, you know two hours. You know, suddenly it's like I'll have to switch from this routine that I've. You know it takes a while to get to. That, takes a couple of minutes, like right, I'm waking up at 5 am, I'm in the fucking like the author zone, you know, like me and my pipe, and then you go and do like fucking dcs in some club in italy at like fucking three in the morning, you know, and there's all these crazy italians and they're, you know they ain't going to sleep at all, man, you know, and suddenly you're in that world. It's a bit like it fucks your whole rhythm yeah, and you can't join them together.
Speaker 1:You can't just stay up and then go into the writing, because it's a different thing, isn't it? I guess you need to have your brain cleared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just a time of day, it's that thing where your brain is still it hasn't the sort of the prejudices, if you like, of the waking world. You know, the sort of like you're still half in the dreamscape, you know where, like ideas and images are a bit more fluid than they are. Once you know you're plugged into like immediate reality and you're doing the kind of math you know like if it's right, when your brain is still half in the subcontinent, still murky, that that lends itself really well to, to just like that weird kind of tangential thinking that you it's just essential for getting some kind of like color down on the page. You know, I think, once you're, once you've taken the boxes, then you lose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're an admin and basically yeah, you're in that, yeah, you're in that. And then it's like it's it's, it's hard, it's hard to to to think outside the box, you know, which is pretty much the whole thing, you know totally.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, leo.
Speaker 1:That's fucking brilliant, thank you yeah, lovely to chat okay, so that was me, paul hamford, talking with with Lias Saudi for the Lost and Sound podcast, and we had that conversation on the 20th of January 2024. Thank you so much, lias, for sharing your thoughts and time with me there. I really, really enjoyed having that chat. Dcs Volume 2, splendor and Obedience is released on the 31st of January on the Leaf label. I fucking love the leaf label I used to have 20 years ago like they were, like the label that I would always the new leaf release comes out, I'd always go and get it. Like I think at the time there was a lot of really like delicate, interesting electronica that they were doing, so loving this album. If you like the show and you haven't already, please give it a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on your platform of choice. As I mentioned earlier on, I'm going to try and put out an episode every week this year, so your support and your appreciation really, really really does make a difference. It makes a difference for ratings. It also makes a difference for, like my soul, you can listen to my radio documentary the man who Smuggled Punk Rock Across the Berlin Wall by heading on over to the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC World Service homepage, and my book Coming to Berlin is still available in all good bookshops or via the publisher's website, velocity Press.
Speaker 1:Audio-technica sponsor Lost Sound, the global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, 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. Yeah, so the music you hear at the beginning and the end of every episode of Lost in Sound is by Thomas Giddens. So, yeah, I think that's it. I think that's the housekeeping. I hope you're keeping well. Um, yeah, it's. If you're listening to the show on the day, it's. I've put it out. Yeah, you've also woken up into a world where donald trump is back in presidency and is is yeah, fucking hell. Um, I hope you're doing good and take care, and I'll chat to you soon, thank you.