Music > Interviews
Interview with Ghostpoet
09/10/13
‘Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam’ was the wonderfully titled debut album that propelled Obaro Ejimiwe straight from a freshly redundant 9-to-5er in insurance, to Ghostpoet, a name chosen for inclusion by the Mercury Prize judges to be on the shortlist for the prize back in 2011. Compared vocally to Roots Manuva, with his distinctively British mega-mumble, his music draws on a decade or so more of possible influences, and it shows. Downtempo and electronic, yet eclectic in its sonic identities, it sat perfectly on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label. Ghostpoet talks about real life, its mundanity, its necessities (money and food feature more than a bit), with real honesty. The record made enough ripples to facilitate the creation of a second, the recently released ‘Some Say I So I Say Light’, with which Obaro continues to communicate so honestly with us, yet kept the man grounded enough to keep looking inside himself, and create some of the most powerfully introverted music of this decade and beyond. Obaro gave us his time ahead of his headline slot at this year’s Norwich Sound & Vision.
Obaro, I obviously want to ask you about music, but before all that, I’ve got to ask you about wireless colour-change lightbulbs because that completely distracted me when I was doing a bit of reading last night. You told the Guardian that your Philips Hues were the most interesting piece of tech you own – they look amazing… They are amazing! Indeed, they are as good as they look because literally, I live in a room in Dalston but the ultimate dream is to have a house with them! [Laughs] One day I will have bulbs everywhere, then it’ll become really fun.
And are you at home in Dalston now? What hue are they at the moment? I want to set the scene… Oh, oh, well I have them all set up in my room and it usually depends really; I can set them so they can wake me up, so they’re kind of my alarm, or you can take a picture of anything and use that colour. I have stuff like sunlight and really bright, keeping me alert bright lights, blues and oranges…
You’ve just come back from Australia - you must be knackered mate… Erm, I’m more knackered from just staying up and making music. I came back about a week ago now and it’s weird, I just got straight back into getting on with stuff really. It was difficult on the way out there with a bit of this jet lag stuff, but it wasn’t too bad and I came back inspired to make music.
You’ve got a distinctive British patter, but it obviously translates all around the world. Do you think that’s to do with the themes of what you’re saying? Or the music? I guess so, I guess so; I love music from around the world myself and stuff that I enjoy, I don’t always understand lyrically. For me it’s a music thing, or a vocal arrangement, or a vocal melody… I couldn’t tell you the exact answer to that one but I’m happy that my music is being listened to outside of the British Isles. This is where I’m from and I’m happy that people like me to a certain extent here, but it’s important to be a world artist, not in a world music sense, but incorporating – or not even incorporating, but keeping one ear and one eye on what’s going on outside of these shores, you know.
Your patter is your calling card, and binds everything to Ghostpoet. Does that mean you can afford to be more creative, more experimental with the production? I would say so, maybe; I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been able to bring out two records, and two records that have been creatively of my doing. No-one’s told me how to make any of my music, it’s very much me just trying to be creative. I don’t know, I just feel I can do anything I want to do. I think we all have that option and it boils down to whether you choose to go down that route.
There’s something you can sympathise with, I think - there’s a killer disease in Norwich, and it’s called Aviva, the graveyard of ambition. You worked in insurance for a stint - for those that still do, how do you stay creative? Hungry? Motivated to get the fuck out of there? Erm, I don’t know, it’s just that music, at the time while I was working in insurance, was a hobby – it was a serious hobby, something I invested time and money into, it’s just that I never thought, ‘oh, this is my ticket out of this 9-to-5 situation.’ I persevered at a hobby and I don’t know, I guess it was almost like subconsciously being prepared for a moment when you may be called upon to show what you’re worth, and I think that’s what’s important. Not in the Hollywood movie style, I was working 9-to-5 and I got a stroke of luck and someone heard me singing out of my bedroom window [laughs]. It’s more important just to be prepared I guess, in some type of way – everyone gets a chance, and it’s just whether you’re ready to take it or not.
I think people forget to even stay hungry though, or create those chances for themselves when they’re stuck in that world – - Needs must, needs must, y’know; when you’ve got bills to pay, I didn’t want to do it, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
So you were working in insurance, possibly thinking of lyrics and ideas. I’m imagining that you probably wrote your lyrics down before you vocalised them – - Not completely, not completely… well, vocally maybe, yeah. Before I made recordings, yeah, I definitely wrote them down.
Is it an awkward process, learning to vocalise your work? Most people that you speak to, finally opening their mouth is a bit exposing – - Yeah, yeah, I guess so, but it was one of the few conscious decisions I made when I started out properly was to be me in everything I do, be it an interview, be it making music, or writing lyrics, or being creative in any shape or form. If I’m putting myself out there, it’s important just to be myself. If I be myself, then it becomes easier over time; people are not weirded out by it when you get to your third or fourth album and start become all confessional or try to record like a normal human being, so I feel it’s simple – it felt right to do that, and that’s what I try to do.
Is there something that’s the death of creativity for you, because you seem to be making music quite prolifically? [Laughs] I don’t think I make music that prolifically! I think I just go through spurts of inspiration and spurts like I am now, where it means no sleep, just making stuff, making stuff because I have that energy - that creative energy is there. I don’t even know what the question is now, I just picked up on that word and went for it!
I was wondering if there was one thing that can distract you, more than anything, from your work? The death of creativity? Well, I don’t know, I think as I mentioned, because I go through spurts it’s not like a job to me in the sense that I’ve got to wake up and I’ve got to make a tune today, or have 3, 4 ideas - I just kind of… when creativity hits me, that’s when I’ll make stuff so it’s never – well, touch wood – a case where I’m like, ‘oh God!’ If I can’t write music, I’ll do something else, like I do radio, so I’ll try and concentrate on that a little bit, or I’ve got projects on the go that involve music, but not me directly making music for me, in terms of Ghostpoet stuff, so I just do that type of thing to keep it fresh. Everything I do will hopefully inspire another thing.
I read an article where you talked about the fact you like using analogue because it slows you down. Is that a difficult discipline, learning patience? And what comes out of it? Erm, it’s become easier as I’ve got older. I’m 30 now and the way I work and the way I look at the world has changed a lot since I was 20 and yeah, analogue equipment is a case of patience and like, I’m using some unusual synths and I know if I change the settings that I’ve put them on now, I’ve lost that particular sound, so I have to take pictures every time I make a tune! I’ve started to accumulate pictures on my phone of different presets for different synths for sounds that I’ve made! It’s something I never knew before, that there’s like 50 sounds on it, so you just have to have the patience to wait for it to happen.
I’d really like to hear about a new project you’re working on – you’re asking everyone on Facebook what lyrics and words moves them – - Oh yeah, it’s a thing I’m doing with Levi and a producer, Koreless and a director called Alex Turvey and it’s just a project that revolves around human emotion and movement, emotional movement. We’ve basically got to produce an audio/visual piece that incorporates that kind of a theme and yeah, we’re gonna create something along those lines and do a one-off performance, visual/audio performance of that particular composition. So yeah, that’s the plan.
Oh, that sounds good – when will that be done then? It’s got to be done for early October, I believe… like first week in October, or last week in September, I can’t remember –
- Because that would fit so well with Sound and Vision, wouldn’t it, which you’re obviously performing at. Indeed it would, and yeah, I’m coming to that!
Am I allowed to ask what lyrics/words move you? Erm, you can, but I couldn’t really tell you! It depends really; even conversations that you pick up a sentence said from somebody to somebody can make me chuckle or make me be like, ‘oh, damn, I’ve got to do something for that person’, because of a particular thing. For me, it’s a bit complicated; I look at music and words in maybe not so much of a conventional way.
So you were nominated for the AIM ‘Best Difficult Second Album’ award – but in reality, how difficult was it, or was it quite a breeze? Erm, it was a combination of the two; it wasn’t easy peasy, but it wasn’t hard as nails either. It was kind of a case of having fun with it and enjoying being creative again, which is how it’s supposed to be. Just trying stuff out really; I don’t look at things in the sense of chart positions, or being A-list on the playlist, I just kind of make music and if people like it, they like it and if they don’t, they don’t. I’ve just got to get it out, that’s the most important thing.
It was a different process for you - you’ve talked about it stepping up in the production – it was in a studio, for starters. You got a producer in, you involved lots more people – to me, I’d think you’d need confidence to do that, because sharing your work is exposing. Did it marginalise your creativity for any time at all? Not really, no, because it was 60% done, or 70% done before I got into the studio, so it wasn’t a case of me going to the studio to write it, it was just a case of unlike the first record, where I’d produced it at home, this time it was in conjunction with a co-producer, Richard Formby, who just helped me shape the demos a bit more than I’d be able to myself, then we went into the studio to experiment a bit more, and finish it off and incorporate the guest vocalists and musicians that I wanted to have on the record. So yeah, it was cool; I want to make another record and it’s almost like I want to go back on myself in the sense that I want to do it mostly at home, but at the same time I like elements of making that second record and working with musicians. At the same time, that was the first time I went down the analogue route fully and that’s influencing my production a lot more than it has done in the past, so that’s an element that may continue on the next record.
You sound really comfortable in your own skin, but did you get nervous at all when you invited Tony Allen in to play drums? Yeah, it was erm… I don’t know if I really get nervous, but it was an honour to meet him and something I’ll never forget. It’s part of my history now that I’ve met him and I’ve recorded music with him, as well as people like Charles Haywood, who’s a legend in his own right and everyone else I’ve met – all legends in their own ways. For me, I was in the process of making that second record when I met Tony and it’s a case of I think people are accepting me for me, musically and knowing that that’s going to happen, I just thought, ‘I’ve got to keep going on this route really, of me being me’, and hope I can gather more people to my corner along the way.
Now to talk quickly about a couple of shared passions we have – your track ‘MSI Musmid’ is obviously ‘Dim Sum-ism’ backwards, and you also have a track called ‘ThymeThymeThyme’ – food fills more than your belly, it seems? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do like food. I like cooking it, but I don’t get as much chance to do it as I would like, in terms of cooking. Yeah, it’s part and parcel of my existence of me as a person and I think lyrically, it’s important to incorporate as many aspects of your life as possible because that’s what’s important. In terms of music, the kind that I gravitate towards is very much about somebody, or a group’s unique view of the world, or insight in some shape or form. That’s what I try to do with my music.
The other shared passion is that I run a tattoo convention in Norwich, so have a passion for tattoos – I’ve noticed your arms, which are looking buff, by the way – [Laughs] Thanks!
But they’re also resplendent in tattoos, I did notice… Yeah, I like tattoos. I haven’t got one for ages; I was going every week for a bit and then I guess I just started to get bored of waiting two weeks for it to heal. I thought ‘oh, I can’t be arsed to go through that process again.’ I really do like tattoos and it’s a kind of ongoing thing for me, like, I’m gonna get loads more when I get more free time and a bit of free money. So yeah, it’s something I like.
Emma R. Garwood
Ghostpoet headlines the proceedings for Norwich Sound & Vision at Norwich Arts Centre on Thursday 10th October. You can buy a ticket for the gig at www.norwichartscentre.co.uk or an NS&V wristband for £40 from www.norwichsoundandvision.co.uk that will get you entry to all bands across the 3 days.