SHAUN RYDER
He last released a solo LP in 2003. Now he’s finally readying the follow-up. Speaking from the garden shed, X tells us why. Plus, about that new Happy Mondays record…
“I’m still 21 in my head. I’ve still got a comic strip brain.” SHAUN RYDER
“I’VE REALLY liked my lockdown,” says Shaun Ryder from home in Greater Manchester. “I’ve got a little studio at the bottom of the garden. I don’t have to go anywhere and get myself in trouble.” He spent Covid seclusion finishing Visits
From Future Technology, his first solo album since 2003. It was, remarkably, begun in the late noughties. Recorded in Manchester and Venice Beach with producer Sunny Levine – grandson of Quincy Jones and son of producer Stewart Levine – it was put on hold when Ryder went on jungle reality TV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in late 2010. Impressing the public with his steady humours and willingness to eat cockroaches and crocodile penis, he came second, emerged with profile enhanced, and busied himself with telly, as well as Happy Mondays and Black Grape reunions.
But he was always keen to make new music. “It’s what I do, so I was always up for it,” he says. “But the management I had weren’t interested, and no one would put it out, so it just got left. Then, during this Covid madness, it got rediscovered. I remembered what a great time we had making it and how good it was. You’d be amazed if you knew who was playing the saxophone, the drums and guitars, they’re that famous we’re not saying. So we played with it, touched it up and tickled it, brought a few things out, and did some new vocals.”
Work on the album, which combines rock, hip-hop, indie pop and grooves with Ryder’s cracked narrations, was finally done in March 2021. He says sobriety and his late ADHD diagnosis haven’t much affected his creative process: “I’m a lot more sober, but it’s still the same stuff I always wrote about – nonsense and mumbo jumbo. Being ADHD, I’m still 21 in my head. I’ve still got a comic strip brain. Apart from not being full of heroin and cocaine, it’s not made that much difference to my personality. When I’ve got the music going and I can hear the beats, I can write. The song Mumbo Jumbo – ‘I’ve got 75 per cent jellyfish textses’ – what the fuck is that? It starts with the rise and fall of Top Of The Pops and you build the words around that. So it’s still me.”
Since hitting 50, he says he’s suffered panic attacks, an underactive thyroid and a hip replacement, but he sounds swearily hearty and is keen to do live shows. He’s also been busy guesting on other peoples’ records. “The amount of stuff I’ve fucking done from our house during the fucking Covid,” he says. “Tricky, one with Noel [Gallagher], Robbie Williams, Lee Perry, they’re all waiting to come out. I’m about to start doing a new Black Grape album too. But I won’t do another Happy Mondays album the way Paul Ryder [bass] or Gaz Whelan [drums] want to work, unless it gets done the way I wanna do it. Mark [Day, guitar] is a dream, though.”
He adds that 2003 Ryder album Amateur
Night In The Big Top, recorded in Australia, should be treated with scepticism.
“I’d arrived heavily sedated on heroin, valium, methadone, you fucking name it,” he says. “It was just something that I did ’cos I was turkeying my tits off and I was trying to stay focused. To me, this is my first solo album.”
Mumbo Jumbo is released as a single on June 25, followed by Popstar’s Daughters on July 23. Album re-order: /shaunryder.tmstor.es/