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Music

Tourist Would Like You to Have Meaningful Sex to His Music

Noisey caught up with the London-based electronicist to discuss UK garage, #feelings, God, and Hugh Grant.

When I sat down with Tourist I did not expect to cover any of the following topics:

1. God

2. “The most supreme thing humans can do”

3. Break-up sex

4. Hugh Grant

But Tourist—that’s London-based artist Will Phillips—has a good sense of humor and he doesn’t mind fielding questions that are both ridiculous and personal. I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising, given the kind of music he makes. His electronic music is the antithesis of cool and clinical, it’s nuanced and surprisingly stirring. On Tourist's current, third EP, Patterns (a joint release on Disclosure’s label, Method, and his own, Monday), the 26-year-old's garage-tinged, Balearic electronica is given a beating heart thanks to guest vocalists (Will Heard, Lianne La Havas). Yet even when his songs rely largely on smooth synth textures and instrumental hooks—as on early songs “Your Girl” and “Heartbeats"—they still have an emotional tug. Never more so then on the submerged-to-reemerge beauty that is “Together.” (His remixes of Haim, Chvrches, and London Grammar are also worth repeat plays.) After studying music Thames Valley University, working at a studio in Soho, London, Tourist decided to move to Brighton and move back in with his mom because as he puts it, he was “getting into the wrong things.” The tipping point? “Just waking up not knowing where I was or how I got there or what I'd been doing the night before.”

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Noisey: So was moving to Brighton the juncture where you started hitting a groove with the music you were making?
Tourist: Yeah, I was being a real bum—I didn't have a job. Not many people in Brighton do—you can just sit on the beach and play bongos.
Totally. It was a really important experience for me in Brighton—completely separating myself from everything I knew and going somewhere different. That was four years ago now.

Did you immerse yourself in the Brighton scene?
Not really, I've never really done that. I always look at myself as the outsider, that's how I think of myself. That’s what I heard.
I do though. As soon as you define yourself by a scene then you're limited, you can only do so much within it. I like the idea of being able to pick and choose what I do. So you’re a loner?
Yeah, I like that. Being a tourist. But you have kind of fallen into a crew now, working releasing with Disclosure’s label, writing with Jimmy Napes [he co-wrote “Latch”]…
Yeah, but that was never a plan, just circumstance. Jimmy’s like the fifth Beatle and he's really coming into his own now. I've written a lot of my new EP with him.

You’ve started working more and more with vocalists. How involved are you in lyrics writing process?
Yeah, quite a lot. I view voices as an instrument—they're no different than a synthesizer. I think a lot of people can be quite scared thinking, “Oh, God, what do I say and why do I say it? And should I be Bob Dylan?” But I love poetry and books and reading and language and I think that comes out in some of the songs we've written. Some are quite direct and then others are maybe more in-between. I really embraced it—it’s an honest next step. I really feel it should go that way because I love pop music and I love electronic music and there doesn't need to be a barrier. I think Disclosure tread the line very well, managing to please the fringe of cool people, but then also please 14‑year-old girls. I saw them recently and I've never seen so many girls in a crowd.

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Right, they’re a pop act.
Yeah. I think these boys never set out to make music for young girls with Disclosure t‑shirts on, they just do what they want and that's honorable. It's a funny side effect of writing music that's very good is it sometimes means people you would never expect to be your target audience end up listening to it. It's just funny when you see hundreds and hundreds of teens. It's so nice that those years in their lives must be so defined by that music.

Oh, a hundred percent. As a teenager you feel it so passionately. It's like in you. Obviously I still feel very strongly about music now, but it's different.
Yeah, back then the world is defined by your musical taste. What kind of music was defining your world when you were a teenager?
Lots of UK Garage, I used to listen to that loads. Like M.J. Cole, Wookie, but also Roni Size when I was a kid, like that old D&B. It was always electronic music—from 10 years old on.

This was when you were living down in Cornwall as a kid right?
Yeah. Everyone down there's a bunch of chewed up surfer dudes or skateboarders or whatever. I would sit in my room and try to make music. I had decks so I would DJ to myself and it was dreadful, but it was the nicest thing in the world too. I think my parents were just happy that I wasn't out doing drugs, that they knew of anyway! It was great, but it was weird because I had no one to bounce it off because no one else was into it.

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Really? There was no one you could bond with down there?
Not musically, no. I think maybe that's why I don't really associate myself with scenes because I've never had a musical blood brother or family. It’s always been very personal. Also I couldn't be, getting drunk doing drugs and listening to UK Garage in Brixton: I was in Cornwall as a 13‑year-old kid and so it meant something completely different. I listened to the melodies and they really touched me. Music was this complete world of mine—and still is. It's the most selfish thing in the world.

What instruments do you play?
My earliest memories are of sitting on my dad's knee playing the piano. A really crucial part of my live show is me stripping away a lot of what's on the record and performing it myself. I love gadgets, synthesizers, and technology, but I have my roots in harmony, keys, piano. Live shows are not about making the record sound exactly as it does, it's about contextualizing it for people, it's about making a vibe. It's not about me. I'm not Avicii. I'm not an interesting guy to look at.

Well I don't think Avicii is interesting to look at either.
Yeah, he kind of looks like Taylor Swift doesn't he? [Laughs] Honestly! You're going to struggle to see which one is which. But yeah, it's not really about me, it's more about the communion of human beings being in a room and listening to something and it making them feel something.

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Do you think people have sex to your music?
I'd hope so. I think that would be quite… I guess it depends what kind of sex.

What kind of sex do you think they would have?
Hopefully loving, meaningful, like tender, you know. Maybe make‑up sex.

What if they were having break-up sex? That would be so devastating.
What's break-up sex? That's when you're like, it's over, but let's just do it one more time. It's like anguish sex.
You know what, as long as it's a sincere thought. If it's two people having a one-night stand, I'm not sure that's the most meaningful of human interactions. But if there's something that's got depth behind it, if it's, you know, two people copulating to try and reinvigorate, or to try and put an end to something, that's kind of cool. It's a very strange thought to think someone might have had sex to my music. But they probably have. Although I think people have sex to music more when they're teenagers than they do later.
I think people see it in movies, don't they? You see Hugh Grant put on some Aretha Franklin and he does his charming English thing. You're a fan of Hugh Grant then?
Not at all! That was merely a reference plucked from my head.

What would you say is your biggest non-musical influence?

It's a weird one but I think one of the biggest ideas that has had an influence, that really changed the way I think, is realizing that God doesn't exist.

Really?

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Yeah, isn't that a strange thing to say? I remember never believing in God, but then one day being like, “Fuck, this is so arbitrary. Life is completely… it's a mistake.” There's nothing before or after your life, you have to get on with shit. I love philosophy and I love questioning things—I've always had that trait in me—but I think when I really realized that this is all completely arbitrary, there is no real meaning or reason, it had a real effect on how I viewed the world. And also what should be the purpose of art in society and things like that. And it really sounds so naff, and I hate having to bring up the whole God thing.

I don't think it sounds naff.

I think it does. Some people would say like, “Yeah, my mum is an influence,” or some random artist, but exploring creativity is a really important thing for me. And actually the highest point of a human being is expressing their ideas in a way that hurts no one but can touch so many people. Think about how much you feel when you listen to a song. In three minutes people manage to do way more than any conversation you can have. You can have a three‑hour conversation with someone, and not really feel much. I listen to a Talking Heads record and in three minutes my brain is in such a different place than it was three minutes prior. The most supreme thing for humans to do is to aim for art. I don't know why God came into it, but yeah, that was a real thing that hit my head when I was like 21.

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When was the last time you asked for forgiveness? Or have you not been bad recently?
No, no, probably so often that it's now meaningless. I don't know. God. I screw up very regularly. Not in relationships, but in life. I don't believe in God, but I carry a sense of Roman Catholic guilt with me a lot of the time. I always feel like I'm screwing up. You know if you're Roman Catholic it's you're guilty from birth, you feel sins.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I'm not religious because I was like, “Why do you always have to feel bad about everything?”
Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel lot of the time. I'm not sure. I don't really beg forgiveness that often because I'm very aware of my flaws. But I try to keep it at bay. Yeah, I fuck up regularly.

Final question. What's the strangest field recording that you have on Patterns?
I like recording really weird parts of my day. I sat on the tube recently and there was this broken train, it had like a broken brake or something and it made this beautiful, almost like a string instrument noise. Actually I like to contextualize [field recordings]. One of my favorite records is the Burial LP, that sounds like London to me and I love that. There's something so poetic about that. I think my latest EP sounds like my last few months of my life in London.

What do you dance around your house to? Do you ever dance around your house?
Honestly I don't dance around my house. I think the last time I danced was when I heard Annie Mac play my tune on the radio. I unashamedly did dance to my own tune. In front of my girlfriend.

Tourist Tour Dates
5/23 - George, WA @ Sasquatch Festival
5/24 - Winchester, CA @ Lightning in a Bottle Festival
5/26 - Detroit, MI @ Movement Electronic Festival
6/06 - New York, NY @ Governors Ball Festival

Patterns is out now

Kim is always talking about sex with bands, it seems, and she’s on Twitter - @theKTB

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