Music is indivisible from the environment in which it is created.
Just as the surroundings inform the music, so too does the creative process help to shift perceptions of the world around us. Listening to Lonelady's new album 'Hinterland', it's easy to imagine these nuggets of Brutalist dance-pop springing up amid ruined factories, the decaying architecture of our industrial past.
As it happens, much of the material on the record was thrown up by night-walks around Manchester's tattered environs, with Lonelady – real name Julie Ann Campbell – wandering through the city's lesser-heralded regions.
“It's part of the creative process, for me, to just go out wandering and try to find something,” she explains. “These out-skirt places that really are just little more than patches of rubble and a few ruined buildings and yet they resonate with me, personally, and are very much a starting point for the songwriting.”
“I think it's just about being resourceful with what you've got,” she continues. “This is my environment, I haven't got any other environments, so I have to try and transform it into something creative and magical, if I can.”
Returning to her home studio, Julie builds up banks of demos – sometimes spartan, sometimes fleshed out. Using whatever equipment she can scavenge, Lonelady has built up an enormous array of antique – and sometimes faulty – electronic instruments.
“I really like the quality of this cheap, crap equipment,” she states. “I've got this 80s Yamaha keyboard and it's got this bank of sounds – like flute or cello, or whatever – but when you play it, it sounds nothing like a flute or a cello, but what it thinks a cello should sound like. I like the cheap approximation of these sounds.”
“There is a sort of idiosyncratic quality to these old machines,” Julie continues. “One drum machine that I've got has this quirk of deciding to increase the tempo by 1BPM. It's amazing, I really laughed when I discovered that it did that.”
Whereas Lonelady's first full length – 2010's 'Nerve Up' – was a dynamic, at times difficult, post-punk set, this time round the Mancunian artist has aimed for something a little snappier. At times reminiscent of early 80s New York – think 99 Records, Liquid Liquid, ESG – there's a pop quality inherent in the songwriting.
“I've always loved catchy music,” she says. “I've always loved music with a straight beat which draws you in. I think a lot of the music I'm drawn to does come from the last 70s and early 80s – to me, it's more gritty. I feel like, as much as I love disco and pop, the music from around this period of time has a gritty to it as well, which I'm attracted to, and maybe that has something to do with urban living. Part of city life. The restlessness of that.”
The first track from the album to air perhaps exemplifies this. 'Groove It Out' is as simple as they come: driven by a percussive tick-tock, Lonelady builds up the vocals into a gleeful yelp, part early Madonna and part Lydia Lunch.
“The simplest beat I could find and two notes,” she smiles. “I've been playing it live this week and people just seem to really spring up when I play that one, and that's great. I'm all for simplicity. But having said that, to me, this record, the arrangements are more detailed, there's a lot more going on; it's quite a busy record for me, compared to the starkness of my first album.”
Built up at her home studio, Lonelady then took the elements of the record out to the United States. Working with Bill Skibbe – whose credits include stints behind the mixing desk for The Kills and The Dead Weather – the two began to layer up the demos at a studio in a remote area of Michigan.
“I essentially made the record in my home studio but it did need a bit of finishing off,” she admits. “We did some layering with the analogue equipment. Really the choice was because Bill had this amazing analogue studio out there and he seemed to get the music and I knew he would be sympathetic to it and not want to re-record things from scratch. He wouldn't worry about a bit of tape hiss here and there. He's just a sympathetic person to work with, in a sympathetic studio.”
“All the songs, all the arrangements, everything you can hear on that record I'd already done in my home studio,” insists Julie. “That was just about that immersive process and just really paying attention to detail and spending hours and hours, really, trying out little ideas, adding riffs or motifs here and there. I'm building it up, really, like a painting.”
Visual metaphors pepper our conversation, with Lonelady continually comparing her music to other art forms, other disciplines. “Drawing and painting was my first love – I was always drawing and painting as a kid, I did a fine art degree and actually the music came after that, really.”
“I do very much see sound, and I enjoy the studio side of it – the recording, the mixing – because for me that's like making a painting. And then when it's finished, you've really created a very personal world and, for me, I'm excited to do that. I think it comes from the same place – visuals and music. They both come from the same source.”
The source ultimately, though, is Manchester iself. Seeping into Lonelady's sub-conscious mind, it's the days – literally – spent walking around the city which inform 'Hinterland' more than any other. It's even there in the title: a German word transposed to cover the fringes of a Northern city. To the singer, though, such psych-geography is entirely natural.
“It's just become part of who I am, actually, just to wander out in these places and I do spend a great deal of time pottering around patches of waste ground and ruined buildings. I like to take photographs. I like to constantly document things.”
“These places aren't necessarily remarkable in themselves, but if you're prepared to work with it and bring your imagination to the table as well, it's a combination of both, really. That's what I spend a lot of time doing. Skulking around canals!”
– – –
– – –
'Hinterland' is out now.
Buy Clash Magazine
Get Clash on your mobile, for free: iPhone / Android
