This coming month, Ikonika‘s debut album Contact, Love, Want, Have will be released on Hyperdub.
A brave, deeply individual record, it’s completely instrumental, and finds Ikonika applying her trademark sound palette of sub-bass and deep red bleeps to electro (‘They Are All Losing the War’), swelling synthesizer epics (‘Fish’) and serpentine dubstep (‘Psoriasis’; ‘Idiot’). Closing on the fragile ‘Red Marker Pens’, it’s an album that thrives on its tense balance between vulnerability and toughness, and travels through moments of despair, anguish, bliss and exaltation. It’s one of the best albums of this young year, by an artist who’s come a long way since ‘Please’, her breakthrough debut single in early 2008.
FACT and Ikonika met for sushi (complete with the world’s strongest wasabi), and talked about fat kids, identity crises and the colour red.
I was reading some old interviews, where you described Ikonika as being like a teenager trying to discover her identity, but secretly hoping she’ll never find it. I was wondering, now you’ve been through the process of making an album, how that has changed?
“I think the confusion with my identity is probably my identity now. With the album, it’s kind of like a hello, an introduction to this confused identity. I’d say I feel a lot more grounded now – I have my own sound, my own formula. I’m just more comfortable with my sound, and Ikonika’s more comfortable with herself. I guess with [early singles] ‘Please’ and ‘Millie’, I was figuring out a lot of things, still experimenting with certain things, and seeing how far I could push those things. I definitely think the album’s a continuation of that development.”
With the past singles, was there a reason ‘Fish’, ‘Sahara Michael’ and ‘Millie’ made the album but ‘Please’ didn’t?
“Just because it’s probably already been rinsed too much – it was on that Soul Jazz compilation [Steppas' Delight] and also the Hyperdub one [5], I don’t want to scar anyone with that song again. That’s the only reason – I was gonna do to a beatless version, which was kind of a ‘Sine of the Dub’ tribute to Kode9, and leave it really open, so people can edit it and do what they want to do with it. And that was going to be the bonus stage, on the album.
Kind of like a Devil Mix [Wiley's name for his beatless mixes] thing?
“Yeah, exactly. But I just didn’t want to annoy people too much with that song I guess.” [laughs]
When you say there’s an Ikonika sound, I was wondering, is that to do with colour? This isn’t in a genuine synthesia way, but I do always associate different music with different colours, and even when you’re recording in different styles, there’s always a red tone that binds your music…
“Well red is my favourite colour. I love the colour red – contrast is really important to me, and the colour red, at its simplest form, it can be love, it can be blood… It’s something I’m really drawn to, and I’m glad you picked up on that.”
I’m guessing when ‘Please’ and ‘Millie’ came out you were still focused on making singles. When did your focus change to the album; like when did the process of making a full-length start?
“I think when Kode9 heard ‘Millie’ for the first time. I sent it to him first, and he was like “this is a banger, but it’s like a different kind of banger, it’s a banger for me. I love it, I want to release it, but I’m also kind of curious as to what an Ikonika album would sound like.” So from there, that’s when we started talking about it. I was in my last year of uni, and when I graduated, he was like “have you got a job yet?”
Thanks dad.
[laughs] And then he was like “do you want a job?”. I was just after a quiet job; I thought I’d take some crappy temping work and continue to make some singles, and Kode was like “well you can’t have a quiet job, but you can have a really loud job – do you want to do an album?”
So I guess you started approaching music in a different way from that point.
“Well I was scared. Just because I felt – well, I still feel – that I’m not technical enough; I didn’t feel like a proper artist. Recently I do, like it’s my full time job and stuff. But it was daunting as well, like I’m a big fan of Kode9 and Burial, and I didn’t want to disappoint Hyperdub; you’ve really got to do something amazing, or at least work your heart out, and that’s what I tried to do, I really wanted to imprint my personality on the album.
“I completely changed my setup as well, I had to learn Logic proper quick [after changing to an Apple Mac; Ikonika had previously been using Fruity Loops on PC]. Malcolm [fellow producer Optimum] helped a lot in me translating my Fruity Loop skills to Logic. That helped a lot. There was also a bit of a race between me and Darkstar as to who would finish the album first. Or as Steve [Kode9] put it, there was a prize for whoever finished the album last.
“I was working at HMV at the time, like doing stupid shifts, six days a week, and then I’d get home and try to work on the album and I was really getting nowhere with it. And then I quit. But as soon as I quit, I went on holiday for two weeks, and then started writing ‘Yoshimitsu’, ‘They Are All Losing the War’, ‘Video Delays’, those tunes – I was feeling really refreshed, and had a better idea of what my vision was, basically. I wasn’t scared anymore. I think that was the problem; I was really scared at the beginning. But then I figured you’ve got to just suck it up. You don’t know if you’re ready until you just do it.”
