Artist Interviews

Q&A: MaJiKer

By | Published on Monday 9 November 2009

Majiker

MaJiKer, aka Matthew Ker, is the British production talent behind Camille (the rather successful French popstress, not the former La Clique singer and Edinburgh Fringe favourite – though both have been getting more attention in the UK of late). He helped produce Camille’s award winning 2005 album ‘Le Fil’ and produced and co-wrote her 2008 outing ‘Music Hole’. But he’s an accomplished musician in his own right, recently releasing album ‘Body-Piano-Machine’ via Gaymonkey Records. His live shows are really arty affairs, incorporating both theatre and visual art, all of which will be on show tonight when he plays the ICA in London. Ahead of that gig we asked Ker our Same Six Questions.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I’ve always made music. I learned piano and percussion from a young age. As a kid, I used to regularly perform in school orchestras and bands. I started experimenting with recording music in my early teens, and after studying at Dartington College Of Arts for three years, I started to focus in on developing as a producer. This eventually led to me producing all kinds of intriguing pop music, including two albums for French singer Camille, and more recently my own album ‘Body-Piano-Machine’.

Q2 What inspired your latest single?
On most of the songs on my album, I sing about ‘bodies’, ‘pianos’ and ‘machines’, exploring the relationship between them in playful and provocative ways. My new single, ‘Tongue’, however, feels less metaphoric and more directly personal. I’m pleading with someone I care about to express themselves, to stop being so reserved and repressed: to let me in and to let their feelings out. The tongue is not only a sensual organ, but also the one that is used to communicate verbally, and I liked this dual meaning. At one point during the song, I start ‘speaking in tongues’. This is actually a text I wrote, which I had translated into Finnish. Even if the content is incomprehensible to everyone (including Finns!), it doesn’t matter: the song is about an inability to communicate and somehow Finnish has always been a very mysterious and elusive language to me.

Q3 How do you go about creating a track?
For this album it was a specific method: all tracks started out as instrumental grooves. I would create loops of body percussion, human beatbox and synth riffs from my machine (my childhood Yamaha keyboard). Much later, as the pieces took shape, I would add in piano patterns and eventually find the topline, usually taking great care over the lyrics to make sure they were not lazy or too obvious, and that they fitted with the overall concept of the album. I do not always work like this, and am equally happy sitting at my piano with a finished lyric sheet, and “doing an Elton”.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?

For my production, all music I hear helps to enrich my production palette, especially stuff that has provoked a strong reaction in me (negative or positive). It’s all about having choices, and finding fresh ways to make things sound as powerful and evocative as possible. So I listen to an enormous amount of new music, from pop hits to dubstep, from contemporary opera to hip-hop… For my stage show, I have been partly inspired by the stage work of Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, David Bowie etc. I play my catchy pop songs with a theatrical and physically rich performance. I feel like this kind of work was exceptionally vibrant in the late 70s / early 80s, and having performed my own show for the past two years in France, we’ve seen that audiences are thrilled to see something more than just a typical pop gig.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?

“Thanks for listening!” And “Come see the stage show to get the full experience”.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
More of the same! I’m looking forward to getting this album heard by new open ears. I’d love to perform more next year, to share this crazy stage show with new people. It’s a really entertaining and interactive set. As body percussion is so visual, I think it maybe helps some people to enter into my artistic world by seeing ‘in the flesh’ how I use my body to make music. For the future, I hope I’ll always be producing and writing with the most interesting new artists I can find, as well as creating my own projects. I’m looking forward to exploring my own voice more on future projects. I’m quite new to singing solo, so it’s like a whole new vocal world to discover.

MORE>> www.majiker.com



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