Making tracks
Hussein Chalayan’s musical foray
According to intrepid polymath Hussein Chalayan, we’re living in an era driven by a homespun sense of gumption, of amateur energy, where ‘everyone feels like it’s their right to do anything they want, without worrying about not having the skills’. He channelled this can-do spirit back in February at his A/W20 women’s show, standing at the side of the bare stage, performing tracks live from a synthy EP entitled Dreamtracks, which he produced with S’express’ Mark Moore and Big Audio Dynamite’s Dan Donovan. ‘I wasn’t nervous, I was excited. The actuality of an event is like a curtain hanging in front of you and the audience, so you’re protected,’ Chalayan says.
The collection was influenced by the animist beliefs of Aboriginal Australians, notably the idea of ‘songlines’ – routes across the land created by ancestors that are translated into music and stories. Chalayan had the idea to create melodies that express his own movements to and from his London studio.
He was then introduced to Moore and Donovan by a mutual friend; neither had worked with a designer in this way before, but they were impressed by Chalayan’s sincerity of intent. Ahead of meeting them, Chalayan borrowed a neighbour’s keyboard and recorded melodies on Garageband to accompany his lyrics. ‘He was very embarrassed to play them to us at first,’ Moore says, ‘but what was refreshing is that it reminded me of making my first record, back when I didn’t know the rules. It brought me back to a space I never want to stray too far away from, ripping up the rulebook rather than getting too caught in certain traps of professionalism.’
That sense of unknowing was edifying for all. ‘It’s a very bold and interesting thing to do,’ Donovan says. ‘There’s a language to making music. As a professional musician, I’m constrained by the rules, but he wasn’t – it was an amazing collaboration because one of us would pull it one way and someone else would pull it another. Hussein was always asking questions about the emotional content of the music, the lyrics. What are they saying? What is the emotion here? That was a really good thing.’ In the track ‘Apathy’, Chalayan speaks about being in a disembodied state and the psychology of feeling isolated, while ‘It Is What It Is’ explores rootlessness and how we may project our own mood onto the faces of strangers in a crowd. Part protest, part trance, the lyrics take on a new pathos in a world now stirring after months under lockdown.
Readings of Chalayan’s clothes are often informed by their presentation – his cerebral excursions into performance and pageantry. A/W20 is not the first time the designer has participated in one of his shows. During his S/S03 show, he played in a band that included choreographer Michael Clark and artists Cerith Wyn Evans and Susan Stenger. For S/S10, he compered in French, and for S/S12, he appeared as a waiter serving glasses of champagne. Also for 2012, Chalayan was commissioned by Britain Creates to work on a project with the artist Gavin Turk. The result was ‘4 Minute Mile’ – a limited-edition vinyl record on which he recites quotes from an interview with Turk, laid over the pounding of running feet and the sound of breathing.
The immediacy of sound is what appeals to Chalayan. ‘Making Dreamtracks was so satisfying because it wasn’t about having a good voice or a bad voice. I didn’t see it like “music”. I thought of it as an idea – it was what it was. I’m excited by music because it’s the most visceral medium, much more than anything visual. It goes right in.’ *