How was your summer? It must be nice doing DJ gigs at festivals knowing the album’s in the bag for autumn.
Well, I was still mixing the album during the summer but I knew I had the body of work pretty much done so I was in a kind of liminal space. I went to Australia to do The Warehouse Project over there and it was beautiful getting that energy back from the crowd every night, reminding me why I do it. ‘Love You Got’ was the only track ready from the new album and I’ve never seen a reaction like that when I’ve played an unreleased track before. Everyone was singing it back to me. Then I went to Glastonbury for the first time. I was playing Levels just before Charli XCX’s Partygirl set and then we ended up going all over the festival with Charli leading about 20 of us and getting us in everywhere. We ended up in NYC Downlow which was amazing.
You also threw a free rave in Bethesda, North Wales, with Dan Snaith, AKA Caribou. How did that come about?
Dan’s an amazingly generous person and has been throwing all these free raves for people. Then I just texted him one day and said, ‘Me, you, North Wales rave?’. He just texted back ‘that’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard.’ Then we worked out when we were free and spent two and a half weeks organising it and figuring out who else was free. Myself, Dan and David Wrench, who mixed my album, all took the train down and it was quite surreal to be on the train with Caribou as we passed my village. It was actually the night of the general election and the energy in the room was visceral. People were so pleased that we’d brought something to them and it was free. It’s so important to me to bring something to communities that are forgotten about and show they deserve to have great art on their doorstep. I was obsessed with ‘Swim’ when it came out in 2009 and that was actually mixed by David [Wrench] near Bethesda so it was this amazing full circle moment.
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Tell us about the new album. It feels like there’s been a line in the sand drawn over what’s gone before.
Well, if you look at the album artwork, this one’s in colour and the artwork for my previous albums was all in black and white. There’s intention in everything I do and it’s signifying that I’m exploring my pop roots and popping into technicolour. I grew up in the ’90s and pop was the thing. So many big dance tracks were in the charts back then and that’s how so many of us first got introduced to dance music. I’m really influenced by things like the Madonna records William Orbit was producing at the end of the ’90s. They were big number one records but with some quite abstract and experimental production in there. So I’m exploring different parts of me and my influences unashamedly and bringing all these things together in a way that’s still ultimately me. The track ‘Sunshine’ was actually made in the sessions with Jon Hopkins for ‘Luminous Spaces’ all the way back in 2019. It felt a bit too shiny and bright to be me at the time but I put it aside and it kind of informed the direction I took next.
It definitely feels euphoric and exuberant and the sound’s bigger than your other records. You’ve got some pretty big collaborators too in Ed from The Chemical Brothers and Bicep.
The track I made with Ed, ‘Ballad (In The End)’, was actually meant for the last Chemical Brothers album. He was sending me stems to work on and he sent me one banger and one ballad. It’s funny because that’s what I actually think this album is, bangers and ballads. I worked on the ballad and I recorded the whole track in one take – which I never normally do – then sent it to him as a demo vocal. He was like, ‘this is it, you’ve done it, just add what else you think it needs.’ Eventually, I convinced him to let me use it for my album and added extra production and got an amazing artist called Raven Bush, who’s actually Kate Bush’s nephew, to add strings to it. He’s amazingly talented. I’ve never had live strings on a track before and instead of hiring a whole orchestra, I just hired Raven. He’s a genius.
