Hudson Mohawke: Can you have fun making busy club music?

Hudson Mohawke is not like any other makerspace. In less than forty years they have released only three albums (all for Warp, Aphex Twin’s English label, Billboards of Canada, Autecre), taking them about six years apart. Despite this his career was already on the launch pad in 2012 when his side project TNGHT, split in half with Canadian producer Lunacy, exploded with a self-titled EP and one track (high ground) that invents an unexpected sonic relationship between trap and avant-garde, leading the duo to play at the world’s main EDM festivals while keeping critics in their favor.

But as soon as the duo begins to smell success – and the first insistent requests from the mainstream to repeat the winning formula – they drop the case to devote themselves again to solo careers (the hiatus will continue until 2019 Second, Meanwhile Virgil Abloh, the creative visionary behind Off-White, tracks down Mohawke and introduces her to Kanye West who falls in love with her and immediately signs her as a producer for his label Good Music, leading to He gets complete creative freedom. We’re still in 2012 and Mohawke – at just 26 years old – finds himself catapulted from Glasgow into the world of American rap, opening for John Legend, Drake, Pusha T, Lil Wayne, Asap Rocky and – naturally – Kanye West’s Produces songs for. In one of the most important albums of the decade, Yeezusthat it produces blood on the leaves With Arca and Lunice and above all, i am god With Daft Punk and Mike Dean.

In the last ten years he has participated in the production of four songs by T.that life of pablo by Kanye West (Famous, freestyle 4, Wave’s, mlf extension) produced artists such as Christina Aguilera, Anohni, Kesha, composed soundtracks for video games Dead Sec – Watch Dogs 2Board of Canada released three mixtapes of archive material and two solo discs, featuring remixed tracks by Faut Tate and DJ Shadow. lantern

And rysugar – Capable of hitting pop and avant-garde, always pushing the limits. The reason for all this? Boredom, fear of repeating oneself and an obsessive and impossible desire to keep inventing and playing with sound.

Hudson Mohawke will return to Italy next week, on June 9 at Terraforma, a festival to be held at the Villa Arconati in Milan from June 9 to 11 (if you want to know more, we just met its creator Ruggero Pietromarchi), Perfect Theater For a mix of avant-garde and melody.

The first appointment we made for the interview, you stood up because you didn’t know the time at the studio. Your last album came out last year, so it’s good to know you’re working on something a little different. Can you tell us something?
I’ve got my hands on a few projects that I can’t comment on yet, sorry. Although I have just completed a collaborative EP with Nikki Nair which will be out soon (Set the Roof, released last Friday for Warp Records, NDA),

Are you always working on several different projects at the same time?
Yes, and I like it. You know, I get bored easily. Only when I make my solo record do I drop everything else, that’s where I need to focus properly.

In fifteen years you have produced a lot of music, but only three of your solo records have come out. When do you know it’s time to get involved?
I don’t often release solo records because they take me a long time to make, a year or more, and I don’t seem to have any other projects at hand in those moments. I work pretty fast, but it takes time for the disc to build up the entire universe. For the 20 songs that I put on record, I create another 200 that don’t see the light of day.

These days it seems you are going against the flow of publications.
Today everyone expects one record after another, but it doesn’t work with the idea of ​​my album. I don’t want my records to be compilations, but a sound body with common sense.

And how do you research this trivia? Do you give yourself one concept or another guideline to follow?
When many people find their own sound formula, they repeat it. And as hard as it is for me to admit, I know it works. But it’s not for me, it won’t be stimulating. I like to find transport and excitement in my music; Repeating myself won’t make me feel good.

What makes a song or production exciting in your opinion?
When you take something familiar and interpret it in a way that’s never been heard before. So I can’t do the same thing all the time, I get too bored. Music should be in constant motion, never stopping.

Is this why you and Lunis took a break from the TNGHT project at the height of its success?

Yes, when something doesn’t excite me and becomes just a way to make money, I lose interest. I feel like I am fooling my fans.

As a 15-year-old boy, you broke into the world of DJ championships after being the youngest ever finalist at the DMC World DJ Championships in England. It seems to me that there is a Phil Rouge that you always try to remove yourself from potentially favorable situations. Is it fair to say that you love music but hate the music business?
I can’t say I hate the music business, I’ve never had a negative experience that can characterize me. But doing something you love enters dangerous territory when it comes to the business concept. The concept of business is related to the concept of success. So if something works it is only logical that you keep doing it. But if you apply that logic to music, sure, it works for a while, but artistically it tires you out.

A founding characteristic of your production is that it is ironic, funny, intentionally parodic while remaining sublime, innovative, futuristic. You’ve also said in the past that club music is too intellectual.
In the experimental music scene (in the broadest sense) there is an extreme tendency to intellectualize, analyze and essay every sound, whereas in more general areas, such as pop or EDM, people are more about enjoying what they hear without questioning too much. think more , To me these two approaches are fun because I want to experiment with both and obviously want to pop. Over-intellectual exposure to the detriment of the entertainment side.

And you, twenty years later, do you still enjoy making music?
Absolutely yes. I gambled away every chance I had of making money, but at least I kept the playful and fun aspect of the job. If I hadn’t maintained it I would have disappeared in a few years.

Don’t you have any regrets?
No, really, I haven’t. Of course, it would have been nice to have three more houses, but I had to keep doing only one thing while losing my independence. You can’t move forward when your audience expects only one thing from you. Done. I would also be very rich, but artistically you are finished.

You’ve worked with one of the most important artists of this century, Kanye West. How do you think you can say what you learned from that?
The person who approached me about working with Kanye was Virgil Abloh. I believe it was 2010-2011. Let’s put away the personal part of Kanye, let’s just talk about the music. Kanye is an example of an artist who has reached the pinnacle of success by continuing to do things that are completely different from what he has done before. It doesn’t exist in mainstream music because nobody wants to risk losing their success. The risk of blowing everything up is part of the fun though and it’s missing in the mainstream. The biggest artists in the world release records that are smaller forms of music. Not surprisingly, this never happens. But as wonderful as it is to put everything into play, make crazy choices and — most of all — make them work, it’s something for some, very few. That’s what I got from Kanye.

Lastly, I wanted to ask you something about an episode that has gone viral and that worries you. a boy sometime does wrote on Reddit that his girlfriend dumped him when he tried to make love to her, basing her pelvic movements on a hyper-syncopated rhythm. CBATOne of the songs from your first album, butter, What was your first thought about it?
What madness!

when did you know
If I tell you, you won’t believe: I was in South Korea working with some of the BTS members. Metaverse stuff.

You just put a good dose of bullshit in this story…
These things can’t be predicted and you can’t control them (even if one thought you had everything set up!) I think at a certain point some people expected that Kind of will, but how can I do it if some of the songs on that record are – well – ironic, almost meant to make you laugh? That record is weird, intentionally ironic. It took 12 years to figure out the ironic part it’s unbelievable! Of course, I might embarrass myself if this was a serious record, but this meme was perfect that way.