Crack

Luke Abbott is sitting on Crack’s chaise lounge with a cup of tea discussing social ills. After Crack bemoans Britain’s obsession with turning all inner-city space into a leisure area, or another pile of plastic looking Barrett homes with road names like Palm View Lane, Luke steps up.

“Housing aside, arts funding for less-privileged areas is probably the best way to cure most social problems.”

After a period of contemplative thinking, Crack can’t help concluding it’s the kids with a wholesome passion that end up on the right path. Artistic endeavour is usually a pretty universal expression of positivity and Luke’s statement government funding cuts will take this outlet away from many of those who need it rings true. It leaves us wondering how many of those we have featured would have initially got by in today’s climate? It’s certainly something that helped Abbott progress into becoming one of Britain’s freshest electronica talents.

Having cut his teeth in the Norfolk heartland of Norwich, Abbott has allowed artistic pursuit to inform every strand of his being since university. Polite, considered and the total antithesis of the techno pin-up, he has clearly found a kindred spirit in the intelligent and experimental ethos employed by James Holden and his Border Community label.

A perfect home for Abbott’s soaring, rurally inspired sound, he is sonically a million miles away from Norfolk, yet you feel he has clearly been inspired by the beautiful countryside and the detachment of a county that stands out as one of the most remote in the UK.

Both Abbott and Holden endear themselves to the electronica fan who has tired of repetitive formulae, chart-house and old techno. Both clearly look like they might need a good night’s sleep and both are also shamelessly retiring characters. The swathe of British producers in this mould, from Four Tet, to Ramadanman, have been a wholly necessary antidote to the superstar DJ staple that engulfed electronic music for a period of time not too long ago. There are clearly not enough hours in the day for these type of characters to make their music. They are all night owls.

There is no glitzy pretence to Abbott’s work. When he played for Havana Club and Crack’s monthly residency at Start The Bus, it was in a vintage jumper and through thickset glasses. Abbott is a techy going about his work, methodically using his controller.

Debut album Holkham Drones encapsulates all the aspects of Abbott’s character. Slightly nerdy sounding and not totally polished, yet fiercely intelligent and, like many of the other releases on Border Community, optimistic, soaring and perception bending.

How long have you been creating music?

Quite a long time actually. I got into it very gradually. The whole time I was in school I was playing in rock bands and I’ve always been into music, but I got more productive when I was studying fine art in Norwich. In fact I only studied fine art because I knew it would give me more time to make music. The whole benefit of studying art is you indulge yourself in other artistic ways whilst protected by this mirage of academia that doesn’t exist, so you’re able to express yourself in other mediums.

Any kind of educational establishment which is there to indulge people in past times which they could very easily do without, is somewhat encouraging people’s development in time and space. So through indulging my artistic tastes and being in these bands in my spare time, I basically discovered I was fed up with working with other people and really got into electronica.

So I take it this process continued after you finished your degree?

After I finished my degree I got a job at the arts school, so I didn’t actually manage to leave. The routine I got myself into meant for a relatively pleasant working environment. I stayed there until very recently and only really left because I needed more time to devote to making music.

So did art and music combine in any way for you?

At the moment, Norwich has got a very healthy arts community and just as I was leaving university there were lots of very exciting artist initiated projects. So I got involved with those for a little bit. I had a show in a gallery, but then got really into doing gallery music and organising electro-acoustic, gallery-based improvisation. I then decided to do a masters degree at the UEA. Fortunately for me there is a brilliant electroacoustic department on my doorstep, so I did it there. As soon as that finished, I got involved with Border Community and stopped making weird, inaccessible, purposefully obtuse, noise-art and started making my own slightly wonky version of techno.

It’s definitely true of the artists on the Border Community label that their take on techno is very left of centre? It’s hardly traditional Berlin techno is it?

I almost think Border Community mimics techno. It isn’t really techno, but it’s the closest reference point between lots of the stuff on
the label.

Well the label is ridiculously consistent compared to many other dance music labels?

They don’t release enough to be inconsistent. The way the label operates is they will work on one release ‘til that release is ready and then they’ll do the next one. They concentrate on one thing at a time. Which does sometimes mean you can have a record finished and ready, but there is one that has to come out first. Then your record ends up waiting six or eight months.

Did this happen with your record?

I’m not complaining laughs. When my second EP on Border Community was ready and finished, the artwork for the record above me on the list ended up taking a lot longer than planned because it took them so long to get something they were happy with. So by the time my EP came out it was almost a year since I‘d finished it. I suppose that was quite frustrating because naturally I’m quite an impatient person. At the same time, I think it adds some value to things to allow them to exist for a while. I have now come round to the idea that this might be the best way of doing things. It encourages me to be patient. As long as you are still happy with the product, doing it this way allows you chance to revisit it.

So as far as the album is concerned, what was the idea behind the title Holkham Drones?

Most of the time when I give titles, I stick with working title no matter how bad it is. But the track Holkham Drones was something like ‘Bad Drum for James’, so that wasn’t going to stay. On the album, Holkham Drones is the only track that is just a live take in the studio with no editing, because I’d just bought a drum machine and James wanted to know what it was like. So I made him that track and every time he came down and we were compiling the tracklist for the album it was one that kept reappearing. So eventually I had to give it a new title. So…the Holkham beach, which is in north Norfolk, is where I used to go on holiday and the track itself has these droning notes, which is kind of a theme throughout the record.

Have you always had an interest in that droning sound that you employ on much of the record?

I was much more into that before I got into techno. I listened to noise music, drone-core and all kinds of weird music. Before I got into the idea of making music that works in a club, I was into free improv, electroacoustic and circuit bending stuff. I had actually been to a circuit bending festival with my friend Phil called Bent Festival.

A circuit bending festival. Nice!

Well we managed to blag some arts funding to go and do a performance and find out about a lot of really alternative music that was happening in connection with the lo-fi, hand-made music world. It’s still exploding across the internet, but this kind of thing
has its roots in the academic tradition of electroacoustic music that existed long before the whole circuit bending thing. The world of commercially obtuse music was my primary interest at that point. The aesthetics of that are employed in the drone noises you may hear on my album.

Weren’t you going to do a drone themed room two at the Border Community night at Corsica Studios in London late last year?

I was really looking forward to it, but I stupidly double booked myself so I didn’t end up playing it. I played this festival in Barcelona instead. I just got the dates wrong. I turned up really pissed off I wasn’t at the Border Community party because they are always really good. But I ended up playing in front of this crowd of 4,000 people at this big outdoor festival. Goldfrapp were playing on this other stage and then it closed, so the whole crowd came over to watch me. I was like -“ah!” Typically, at things like a big festival, it’s a case of getting driven in, you play, and then you get taken back to your hotel. So even though I played in front of all these people I’d only spoken to about three!

Was James Holden an ever-present while you were making the album or did he just let you get on with it?

We are in constant contact. Me, James (Holden), Nathan (Fake), and a couple of other people connected with the label. Because we are all in isolation, each in our own studios, to be able to talk to people doing the same thing is really constructive. You end up sending each other tracks.The whole idea of doing an album came out really naturally through this process. It wasn’t written intentionally, it’s mostly just stuff I made that was sitting there or I might throw away. Brazil, for example, was probably the track on the album for which I get the most positive feedback. I gave that to my mate John to tuck away on a little DIY CD he was doing, but James liked it so much it ended up getting put on the list.



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Tune: Trans Forest Alignment

[www.myspace.com/lukeabbottmusic]

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