This Monday’s FACT podcast was the work of Matt Ingram, one of the last decade’s seminal music writers, blogging and contributing to FACT, Stylus, The Wire and more under the name Woebot.
Following a short-lived but excellent internet TV series, Ingram – who also runs Dissensus, a ‘net forum where you can regularly find discussions between contemporary music writers like Philip Sherburne, Martin Clark and John Eden – retired his blog to focus on making music. He’s put out three records to date on his own Hollow Earth imprint: a pair of 3” CD EPs in late 2008 (Automat and East Central One) and a self-titled debut album this year.
After press-ganging Ingram to put his well-documented love of ambient jungle in mix form for us, we caught up with him to talk in depth about his shift from writer to musician, how he thinks the two relate, and of course, jungle.
Tell us a little bit about the genesis of your album and, more broadly speaking, your decision to enter into the world of music-making. What prompted your decision to do so, and what have been the pleasures and pitfalls of your undertaking?
“I’d been wanting to make my own music for twenty years. Looking back through my notebooks there are lots of ideas for tracks that I wrote down, little snatches of audio I thought would work as samples that I noted, even combinations of samples that I thought would work together in some instances. Many of the projects that I undertook in the past would have actually been musical scenarios were I not so strict with myself that I wasn’t to actually make music. So for instance my 1993 trip round West Africa throwing raves or making videos for Position Normal and The Black Dog were, I think, ways of making music without actually making music. And of course the blog was another of these sublimations/depositions. I’ve never thought of myself of a writer, and I’ve been comfortable watching a bunch of people from the scene leapfrog me and become established journalists and authors. Actually I’ve come to the realisation that I’m better suited to making music than I am to writing or design or animation (which is my métier), so maybe I wasted a whole lot of time? Maybe not.
“I think my antithesis to making music was do with not really feeling entitled to make music. Part of this was discomfort with my own posh background (my family established the Illustrated London News and have been old money for a few generations now), part of it a more unspecific sensation of not being worthy. I suppose I hold the musicians I admire in unfeasibly high esteem and even when I’ve met them and in some instances become friends with them, I’ve not been able to shake off a deep-seated admiration for what they do. It’s sort of embarrassing.
“Music is holy to me, and the unblanched truths of the greatest music communicate to me at a level that is completely non-trivial, and the conduits of this force – well, they’re not so much like shamen or monks than actual saints or incarnated deities. I wasn’t about to claim that for myself, and even now I’m making music I still do it essentially as a non-musician. In fact being a “non-musician” kind of musician is probably quite healthy because it then all boils to choice (Is this the right sound?) rather than technique (Is this an “impressive” approach?) or some reinforcement of one’s profession (Is this going to reflect well on my career?) One has a certain objectivity.
“Eventually in the course of writing the blog I suppose I wore away all the vestigial defenses I had which were holding me back. Writing about music as a by-proxy method of actually making music and I suppose that was inevitable. More and more I felt I had less and less to say. Someone like Simon Reynolds (who I’ve stalked since I started reading him in my late teens) always wanted to be a writer, and even though he has as privileged relationship to sound as any musician alive, he’s always expressed that in the written word. I suppose that was never really true of myself, and even though I’ve dabbled in all sorts of media, it’s transparent to me now that I’m only now doing what I ought to be.
“Making music has been nothing but an unbridled pleasure. I’m really not so bothered by the critical reception, though people have been very generous. I’ve just been approaching each release as though I’m plotting the perpetration of some kind of crime – this is why I suppose it does need to be a public activity and the reason I’ve set up the Hollow Earth label. I’ve found that in the three or four days in which I make a piece I will enter an enchanted space. I feel unspeakably elated and the world melts away.”
You’re of course renowned for being a percipient blogger and music critic. Do you think that comes across in your music? Would it be in any way true to call your album an act of criticism? More generally, did you feel any trepidation shifting from the role of critic/writer to that of artist/producer?
“If I could answer this in a round-about way. What has surprised me is how little what I’m doing sounds like what someone else would do. I suppose one might expect a music critic’s music to be an indexification of their taste and that in a kind derogatory or “rote” way. Also I suppose there’s a danger that a critic’s music might be not visceral enough either by being indirect (when making music it’s easy to not go for the jugular, to pussyfoot around) or by making decisions based on ideas rather than what sounds right (the entire field of musical collisions I guess). Anyway I’ve been surprised that I have a clear “voice”, that I really latch on to sounds more than anything else, and I suppose that is a function of criticism as well, but criticism at its most pure and proper (practiced routinely at FACT).
“The best music journalists aren’t necessarily writing good prose but are responding intuitively to great sounds in a way that is more unmediated than the average person. That’s why, on the most crass level, they’re taste-makers. They’re just simply attuned to the divine; in the Priesthood they’re like Archbishops. The second thing a great music journalist does is communicate those vibrations, to actually be able to “hype”. To be honest, and I’m aware this goes against the quasi-literate, pseudo-philosophical cant that we are accustomed to being berated with, every other function of musical journalism (the whole socio-historical-theoretical shtick) is a total distraction.
“I think my main trepidation about shifting from being a seen as a writer to a producer stemmed from the uncomfortable fact that it seemed like a really predictable move. Many writers have trodden a very similar path in the past, David Toop and Kevin Martin immediately spring to mind. However there is also a sense that the reason why it is in some ways predictable is because that’s the way the world runs. If you’re not a writer “proper” and you fall deeper into the music then it makes perfect sense. The metaphor I’ve used to describe the process to people is one of crossing over into the mirror. Once you are a “performer” or “musician” people who are your colleagues suddenly talk to you in a different manner. So for instance while I would field – literally – thousands of emails when I was blogging, even though I’ve nearly sold out the album hardly a single soul has written to me about the record.
“Phil Sherburne (another cross-over case) and I were talking about people who have done the same thing, he came up with some good examples. But, on top of the aforementioned, here’s a list anyway. Drew Daniel, Morrissey, Neil Tennant, Chrissie Hynde, Paul Morley and Patti Smith.”
