On letting the work reveal itself to you

How did you first start making music?

I started making music in my bedroom when I was around 13 or 14. I taught myself garage band and had this little $20 mic, and I would record my little songs in secret up there. It was very much just for me. I feel like that came from a love of poetry and storytelling, which is something I had done for a long time before that. But it started off as this really private practice that I kind of did just for me as this place to put things.

What kind of poetry and storytelling were you reading or writing before that?

I was reading a lot of June Jordan and Audrey Lorde. I was very inspired by The Beat Generation in New York, and reading Patti Smith and William Burroughs and Alan Ginsburg. I was just really inspired by poetry that sat outside traditional forms. There was something to me about disruptive poetry that I always gravitated to.

My own poetry took a lot of different forms. Sometimes it felt like almost a letter to somebody, or it felt like fragments, but it was always this more loose, expressive form of poetry rather than anything that rhymed or sat in more traditional structures.

When you’re writing a song, do you feel like the poetry of it typically comes first or does the music come first?

I feel like the poetry comes first simply because before I even start making a record, I spend a few months beforehand just collecting fragments of conversation and journaling and thinking about what I want the songs to really be about, and almost documenting the life that I’m living as I’m living it. And then when I go to the studio, I’m often applying things that I’ve collected and words to the music. But with this latest record, I think I was very focused on the song as a whole rather than the song being poetry on top of music. It felt a lot more intertwined.

Why do you think that is?

Because I’m inspired by a lot of music that was in nocturnal spaces and dance spaces. And I feel like with some of my favorite songs in that genre, it feels very symbiotic. Everything feels like it’s working together. Often some of those lyrics are very poetic, but they feel embedded in the music and there’s this sense of momentum that I was really inspired by.

Could you talk a little bit about the inspiration behind your most recent album?

Sonically, I was really inspired by Bristol trip-hop specifically, Massive Attack and Portishead. With Massive Attack, I loved the way that they were blending American hip-hop with Caribbean sound system culture and really creating the super influences. And I was also listening to a lot of ambient music, a lot of EDM, listening to Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin and a lot of listening to Post by Bjork, listening to a lot of Radiohead, and then also listening to D’Angelo and De La Soul and Erykah Badu because the way that they flow in their music was really inspiring to me.

When it came to literature or books in general, I had a lot of photography books that I was exploring, people like Carrie Mae Weems and Tyler Mitchell and Cindy Sherman and reading some books around certain exhibitions like the Mike Kelly Retrospective. I also read a lot of books around club architecture. There’s this one called Temporary Pleasure that I love. And a lot of memoirs as well, because I was really inspired by people’s lives and people’s inner workings. And so I was reading a lot of those too. There’s this one called Raving by McKenzie Wark.

I’m curious about how long that process takes–collecting all of your inspirations–and also what your day-to-day looks like when you’re making the record.

I mean, it’s kind of constant. I listen to music 99 percent of my days every day, and I always have. So [collecting inspirations] is kind of happening in tandem with the creative process. It’s not like I store it up beforehand and then apply it to the music.

In terms of my daily routine when I was making a record, it was very simple to be honest. I would get up, I would go to the gym, and I would go to the studio, bringing whatever book I had been reading at the time. Baird and I would work out of the studio in downtown L.A. that he shares with his brother. This wonderful, chaotic living room space of sewing machines, and surfboards on the wall and 10 pianos. And it just felt like this creative hub.

We would just sit and work. We would file through different ideas that we had made and piece things together. We would sit and just freestyle over beats and loops. Honestly, we would just do that pretty much all day. And then I would go home and have dinner and go to sleep. And it was that for many years. We got into this flow state that I’m really grateful for, because it felt like we could really build a world around ourselves and make a record that felt like it was only for us. And in a way that is, I think, the record that a lot of people will connect to because it does feel kind of unobserved, I hope.

I once saw a video of someone interviewing you about your favorite books and I was really in awe because you had such a cool range of books that you were talking about. As a writer, I feel like when I listen to a record, I’m really drawn to musicians who are storytellers and who are writers. I’m really drawn to lyricism above everything else, which is why I really like your music. You’ve talked about it a bit, but I’m curious if you also see yourself as a writer in addition to being a musician and if you have any kind of separate writing practice, or if you ever thought about writing things other than poetry.

I feel like I’m a writer above all else to be honest. Not that I’m not a musician, but if I had to forsake anything, I could never give up writing. That feels like such a big part of me. I’m not sure about the timing or anything, but I would love to write a novel. I would love to do a collection of essays. I’d love to write a screenplay. I think that’s very much my daily practice, writing. It just feels like a big part of the way that I understand myself and understand the world.

Do you have specific thoughts about what you would want the novel or the essay collection to look like? Are you working on anything right now?

I’m thinking more about film right now; more about a screenplay or something like that. I think it’s also a challenge to myself because a lot of lyricism or even some of the fiction that I love or the memoirs, it’s about saying it exactly how it was, and remembering every fragment and bringing that to life. But so much of the script is the unsaid and the body language and what’s in between, what’s inferred. It definitely is a challenge for me to write in that way, but also as somebody who’s mostly inspired by people and their dynamics, and the things that we hide, and the things that we reveal, it feels really in line with what I’m curious about at the same time. So yeah, it’s been an interesting challenge for sure. And I would love to do that with friends, or even the other way around to soundtrack a budding director, or budding filmmaker’s film, and have a longstanding relationship with them.

Was there anything that felt different about the creative process for this record than your past albums?

I think time. I think I had a lot more time, and I think I was a lot more patient with allowing the record to reveal itself. And I also was able to create something that felt maybe the most cohesive that it’s ever felt because of that time. I spent a lot of time trying to weave it together into the story that felt like one whole, that’s the main thing that I can think of. I think having more time changes a lot of things about the process, and how you’re able to problem-solve in a way that feels like you’re allowing the muse to come. You’re allowing the solutions to present themselves rather than chasing after it so hard. There’s more of a sense of ease and acceptance.

Do you think that there was a particular reason you had more time?

I just gave myself more time. I just felt like I needed it. I’ve always known that I wanted to be a career artist, and that I wanted there to be this sense of it being a long arc journey for me creatively. So there wasn’t any need for me to rush into a third record. It just felt like it made sense.

I’m really curious about that, and I imagine it blends into what we were just talking about in terms of you wanting to make art in lots of different ways and not necessarily just albums. Do you feel like you’re making any particular decisions right now, aside from allowing yourself time, to make sure that you can sustain yourself over the arc of your career, and sustain yourself emotionally as well?

I think making sure that I’m maintaining doing things just for myself, and that not everything is put out into the world. The fact that I have little projects that I’m keeping alive just for myself. I think also acknowledging the fact that acclaim will ebb and flow and change, and that I need to be open to that change and that growth over time. Being surrounded by like-minded people who also have a pure approach to what they do. I think it makes you feel more free when you’re surrounded by people who are free and going down their own path. So I think being surrounded by good people is definitely a fixture in my life that I think will help ensure longevity for sure.

Thinking back to when you were 13 and you were starting to write songs, what would you have told yourself then before you started this professional music making journey?

Write down a little manifesto of why you’re doing this, and write it down on paper, and keep it with you at all times so you’ll never forget why you started doing this. Because it’s important to hold onto that as a child, and it’s important to not be clouded by how you’re seen by the world, or how your art is interpreted, and keep that piece of paper with you and stay true.