Music
The former Black Seed’s solo career is blooming, after a studio stint in the unlikeliest of places.
James Belfield interviews Mike Fabulous (aka Lord Echo), and reviews his latest release and albums by Aimee Mann and indie supergroup BNQT.
When ex-Black Seed, producer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Fabulous set about creating his third solo album, he decided the only way he could develop his own sound was by building his own studio.
So Fabulous (aka Lord Echo to his fans and Michael August to his nearest and dearest) found a space among the gang members and brothels of the lessthan-salubrious Lower Hutt suburb of Gracefield and rolled up his sleeves.
“The only place I could sleep was the kitchen floor, because there was a plastics factory upstairs and they turned up to work at 5am. The kitchen was where there was the least amount of noise, and there was only enough room for a single mattress.
“I was really roughing it for a couple of years. I didn’t necessarily want the studio there, but it was the cheapest option and it’s very difficult for musicians to make a noise at all hours, so we often get driven to places we wouldn’t usually go.”
Fabulous’ music – and particularly this third album, Harmonies – is built around traditional dub reggae and rocksteady foundations embellished with flourishes of African soul, disco and techno. He’s a carefully considered mix of experimentalist and pedant, willing to layer peculiar riffs and beats while maintaining a superstylistic production sheen on the overall, thoroughly danceable mix.
“I wanted to build my own studio because it’s about having the right tools to do your own job,” he says. “I realised for the kind of music I make, the room is one of the biggest variables in that chain. That drove me to reading The Master Handbook of Acoustics and trying to understand the physics of what I was doing.”
Surrounded by his recording gear, selfmade polycylindrical diffusers and moveable walls, though, Fabulous discovered his mood and music-making didn’t always go hand in hand.
“I was pretty unhappy when I was there, but I’m glad I got the chance to do it. I like being alone and I am interested in paying close attention to my own experience,” he says. “I had times when I was deliriously happy in my own little world, to a degree you wouldn’t find in a normal life, but those were often the times when I stopped trying so hard to make music.
“So while a lot of Harmonies might feel like happy club music, for me psychologically it’s not what it feels like. There are a couple of tunes – In Your Life and Life on Earth – that do feel very vulnerable and painful, just because it takes me right back to these feelings of being introspective and deeply sensitive to suffering, to the point where you just feel it’s crushing you.”
As Lord Echo, Fabulous has found particular success in Japan (“I always imagined there would be someone somewhere for whom my music would all make sense”), and there are plans to take Harmonies on the road there and in Australia, Europe and the US. But when it comes to being a musician, Fabulous – who’s 36 now and has two children (16 and 12) – is happier putting the touring behind him.
“Since I quit the Black Seeds two years ago, I haven’t been doing so many gigs for the first time in my life and I haven’t missed it,” he says. “I’m a person who quite likes routine and the domestic life, but I don’t think I’ve had the chance to realise that, because I’ve been a touring musician my whole life.
“I feel free now to try my hand at making some quieter music that’s just for me and not designed for clubs and DJ culture. This is going to be more stay-at-home-sweeping-the-floor music – domestic music that’s designed to help calm the mind.”
“I wanted to build my own studio because it’s about having the right tools to do your own job.
Harmonies is out now. See review next page.