Quality Over Opinion: Inside The Mind Of Louis Cole

Louis Cole is a man of many talents. When he isn’t working on his own unique brand of pop, jazz-funk, electro and everything else in between, he’s usually working on material for KNOWER, the electronic duo formed with his friend and regular collaborator Genevieve Artadi. 

If he isn’t doing that, he can regularly be found collaborating with his friend and Brainfeeder labelmate, Thundercat, and may or may not also be one half of the enigmatic musical duo Clown Core. He claims never to have heard of them.

Whatever the case, Louis Cole is a very busy and incredibly talented musician. Not content with merely playing, he’s also established a reputation as a creator of some downright mind-boggling DIY music videos. Bolstered by support from a team of wildly talented musicians, including saxophonist Sam Gendel, Cole’s Live Sesh videos truly have to be seen to be believed.

Clash caught up with Cole fresh off the back of his brief European tour back in August, when Paul Weedon spoke to him about his long-awaited fourth studio album, Quality Over Opinion, as well as the challenges associated with assembling a small orchestra in his living room and his love for keeping things strictly DIY.

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Louis, you seem to be one of these artists that’s constantly working. Is there ever a time when you’re not making music?

It does happen. It’s not that often. It’s most of the time. I think I’m just happiest when I’m working on something musical, or, you know, a related creative project.

How many instruments do you actually play?

That’s a great question. I really feel like if I were to be called to do a gig of somebody else’s music, I would say the only thing I can really nail is drums. As far as my own stuff, the second best instrument would be the keyboard, because I write on that. Then probably singing, which has been getting better. I mean, if you hear me live, there’s still some really weird notes that will get hit, but I think after that, it kind of drops off significantly. I’ve learned bass to be able to play five of my songs. But as far as really being able to play the bass, I can weirdly do these very difficult lines that I’ve written – they’re like slap bass – but I can’t play major scales very well or basic fundamental stuff. It’s kind of a really weird skillset that I have. And guitar – I could play maybe one song of mine from memory. I have to learn them and then record them and then I forget them and I can’t play them again. It’s really weird, man.

What strikes me is how technically complex what you’re doing is. I know that your preference is a DIY setup. You’ve never really been a fan of going into a formal recording setting, right?

Yes. 100% Correct. Yeah.

How do you go about translating these really dense, technical pieces of music into something that you can play live with a band? 

I guess there’s a couple answers for that. One of them is like, when a song idea hits me, I feel it and I kind of try to remember the idea of what it was and then I have to figure out how to play that on an instrument that I can’t really play, such as a guitar, or a bass or something. So there’s that, but then if you’re talking about playing the songs that have already been created with a band? That can be hard. Some of the songs I just don’t play live, because I just don’t know if I feel strongly that they would translate the right way to a live band. A lot of them on the new album, I just don’t know if I’ll ever play live unless I think about it more and it somehow makes sense to me. If it’s a song that I feel makes sense, luckily I know musicians who can pull off these crazy parts. They can pull off stuff that’s way harder than anything I could make. I’m very thankful for that.

It’s always mad watching some of the Live Sesh videos, looking at this amazing group of musicians playing this awe-inspiring stuff.

Yeah, man. I actually feel the same way. Right now I’m mixing a ‘KNOWER’ album and it’s all recorded in my house with a live band and I’m just being a hit with that realisation. Every time I open up my computer and work on it, I’m just like, ‘How did I just find all these people that sound like this?’ It’s crazy.

You recorded ‘Quality Over Opinion’ in your own home studio. When did you start working on it? 

It actually started as the songs that didn’t make the ‘KNOWER’ album that I’m working on now. It was mostly the songs that didn’t make sense for Genevieve to sing, or just didn’t make sense with the band setup that we were trying to record with. So that’s how it started, mixed with some older songs that I feel like didn’t make sense on the last album, or just weren’t ready. And then later on, those two groups of songs started to become really exciting to me and I started to really like them, so then I wrote more songs because I was really starting to get excited about the album. The songs I wrote later were probably more during the 2020 Coronavirus era, so there’s a wide range of times and eras. 

Is it quite nice to have in a bank of unfinished material that you can dip into?

I love that. Creativity and inspiration is so mysterious to me. Sometimes for whatever reason, I don’t know in the moment what the reason is, but sometimes a song just isn’t working. You know you believe in the original idea of the song, but it just isn’t working at that time and it’s just not meant for that era. It sometimes needs more time to be thought about or felt before it becomes clear what it needs to be its best version. I like having a lot of songs in the bank that haven’t been finished because of that reason. Later on, eventually they do maybe make sense or something and that’s a great thing. It’s kind of an end of the journey with a song that feels long and it’s kind of fulfilling to actually finish it later on. It’s pretty cool. 

You’ve got a jazz background, but your relationship with jazz, especially in terms of the music you make, is far more conceptual. I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit.

I think jazz, for a lot of its height of popularity at least from what I know, was kind of the dance music – big bands and all that stuff. I’m not a historian, so I’m not really a quote machine on that, but it was definitely the dance music for a lot of its life. I guess some of my stuff links to jazz in that particular way in that it’s dance music. That’s what I’m going for. A lot of people end up not dancing at the shows, because they’re just trying to watch what’s going on, but I attempt that. I like dance beats, you know? And it’s also similar to jazz in that it seems like there’s improvisation in almost all jazz now. I guess that’s a pillar of it. The genesis is improvisation. There’s only a couple of solos, but somehow, I guess what jazz harmonies become, and maybe even certain melodies, that’s also what makes jazz what it is. And I’m definitely coming from that world. Some of my favourite harmonies and melodies are from jazz, for sure. Like Gil Evans and Miles Davis and stuff like that.

And I understand that Super Mario Kart was also a big influence for you.

That might be the biggest musical influence for me ever, because I used to spend hours a day in the summer playing Mario Kart and that music would absorb into my head. I didn’t really consciously think like, ‘Wow, what a great song’, at that age… Actually, I guess I kind of did. I was like, ‘This music is killing’. But later on, like the last few years, I would go on YouTube and check out the soundtrack again. And I was like, ‘Holy shit’. My music really sounds like this because it’s just been in my DNA. It’s been in my cells for so long.

I need to ask you about working with your friend Sam Gendel. That guy can play. You’ve sort of alluded to the fact that you can’t play brass stuff. His solo in Mean It is ridiculous. What’s it like to have a creative shorthand with someone like that?

We went to music school together. We met when we were 18 and kind of grew together. I remember there was one summer where I was like, ‘Hey, I actually want to be good at drums’. And I remember Sam at the same time being like, ‘Yeah, I want to be really great at saxophone too.’ We had this summer where school was out and people went home for the summer, but we stayed and we practised for four or five hours every day. Some people maybe can do that, but for me, I remember being dead. We would get out of our practice rooms and we would both just look like we had been through something. We shared those moments a lot and I think it made us really close, musically. And we’ve been collaborating on and off, like the Mean It music video or the KNOWER stuff. We definitely have this very kindred energy. Actually I don’t even know what the word Kindred means… We have a very similar energy and intensity when we played, so it just feels so comfortable whenever we play.

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On that note, can I ask about Clown Core?

I’ve actually never heard of Clown Core.

Fair enough. You’re really good friends with Thundercat. He dedicated the track ‘I Love Louis Cole’ on ‘It Is What It Is’ to you. That track was built around a demo that you sent him, right? How did that kind of develop?

I think I was writing stuff for my album before this new one, Time – around that era, like 2016. He’s just like, ‘Do you want to work on stuff?’ and I was like, ‘Come over’. So he brought his bass and he recorded three songs and that was one of them. That one stuck out to both of us, so I was like, cool, I’m gonna choose the bass lines that he recorded, and then the solo and all that. Then I sent it to him and he just recorded these vocals that were about us hanging out and it was just really nice. I named the demo something like ‘Rock 2016’, or some stupid thing, but then he sent his demo back, called ‘I Love Louis Cole’. And then he was like, ‘I want to put this on my album.’ So I wrote and recorded the verse that I sing – the second verse – and, you know, it’s based on true events, like him coming over to our house. He doesn’t drink anymore, but he used to drink and it was pretty loose. It was very fun.

You toured Japan with him as well, didn’t you? How was that?

Yeah, that was very fun. That was just three shows and I’ve only ever done one offs, so that was kind of cool. The thing about Japan crowds is they don’t get unruly or anything like that. They’re so founded in respect and showing respect that they never blow their lid off. But I like Japan crowds – they’re actually some of my favourite crowds – because they react to everything. They give you energy.

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Something I liked on the last record was the way you tonally shift from one vibe to another and on the new record, you’ll go from something like ‘Message’, which is this really gorgeous slow jam to ‘Failing In A Cool Way’. Do you like surprising people with those sudden shifts? Is that a conscious thing for you?

Yeah, that’s cool that you like that. I definitely like that. I think that’s the reason. I think it’s less about me wanting to surprise someone else and more that I want to keep myself interested in it. I have a huge range of what I like – really soft and dark – that end of the spectrum – and I also like really insane fast, groove stuff, hard hitting stuff. So it’s mostly I would say for myself to keep myself excited.

You’ve obviously got a great relationship with Flying Lotus and Brainfeeder as a label. How much involvement do they have in the final output in terms of creative suggestions and the like?

You know, I kind of only accepted the deal with the requirement that I wouldn’t be open to anything like that. That’s so important to me. I just don’t want to hear it because it’s just kind of extra noise and I want to keep my head as clear as possible. So they’re like, ‘We trust you. So let’s make it. Let’s do it.’

Let’s talk about the Live Sesh videos. According to the blurb, they’re recorded in ‘some guy’s house’. Firstly, who does it belong to? How do you convince them to let you put a mini orchestra in the lounge, backup singers on the balcony and a drumkit in the stairwell?

Well, yeah, it’s actually the house that I’m living in right now. I’m renting it. I thought it’d be better for the video if I didn’t say it was my house and make it more mysterious. The landlord’s a musician himself. He’s a very cool guy. We sometimes run into each other on tours.

And it’s you that edits them, right? 

Yeah, I love video editing. My sister went to school for video editing, actually, and she showed me for my first couple of videos, how to use Final Cut. So after that, she kind of gave me my foundation and since then, I’ve just kind of been figuring everything out on my own, either through YouTube tutorials, or just trial and error. Stuff like that.

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The DIY aesthetic feels like it’s a really important signature for you now. Can you ever see yourself moving away from that? 

I think I’d rather keep it DIY unless there’s some incredible high budget production thing on the full other end of the spectrum. That’d be interesting, but I feel like my music and my vision is just closer to what you see with the DIY thing, and me being in full control and directing everything. That’s where I feel like I’m expressing my ideas to the fullest.

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‘Quality Over Opinion’ is out on October 14th via Brainfeeder.

Words: Paul Weedon / @Twotafkap