It Turns Out Luke Abbott's Tactile Techno is Inspired by English Forests and Sun Ra

This article was originally published in THUMP UK.

Luke Abbott has always existed slightly apart from dance music. While his earliest releases, on Trevor Jackson's Output, sounded something like a bouncier, circuit-bent Autechre, his recent work has been an altogether groggier affair, matching pastel textures with beautiful, melancholic melody. It's not really dance music in its content, but in its form it is at least congruent with the club. With his second album Wysing Forest, Abbott's work has become even more abstracted. 

Recorded during a residency at the Arts Centre in Wysing, Cambridgeshire, Wysing Forest owes more to synth experimentalists Charles Cohen or Steve Hauschildt than it does even to the Border Community label contemporaries with which his debut Holkham Drones sat so easily. As Abbott drove through a storm somewhere between Glasgow and Manchester, we spoke to him about his time in Wysing, and the intricacies of his beloved modular synthesis.

THUMP: Let's talk about Wysing Arts Centre. Was that your first experience of a residency?

Luke Abbott: It wasn't the first residency I've done, but it was the first one I've done in quite a long time. They got in touch via the Arts Centre in Norwich; they were looking for a musician in residence and they'd never had one before, and a guy who was working there put me in touch with them.

Do they do writer or visual artist residencies as well?

Luke Abbott: They have a lot of residencies, and it's usually people from the visual art world, but they also had a writer in residence while I was there. They seem quite keen on multi-disciplinary activity. They're not trying to guide themselves towards any particular medium. It's quite an open-ended, open-minded place. They also have visiting talks by people. While I was there they had a lecture from the doctors at the clinic down the road, who were the guys that pioneered embryo research so that you can have test tube babies. That happened round the corner from the Arts Centre. They're trying to mix it up, and trying to put people in touch who are doing different things—just, to see what happens.

Did you collaborate with the writer in residence?

Luke Abbott:We did actually collaborate on a little bit of work! I appear in a book that he wrote as a result of his residency as well. He would have conversations with people and write them in later.

Much of the record was made live in front of a small audience. It seems that improvisation has always been an important part of your work, but how does that process change when there is a performance element involved?

Luke Abbott: When you're recording stuff in a live setting, whether there's anyone there or not, it always goes differently anyway. I suppose doing it in front of an audience there was maybe more of an inclination to try and structure it somehow.

How much of what you hear on the record is what was originally recorded, and how much of it was done later in the computer?

Luke Abbott: Very little in the computer—basically just the edit points and a little bit of EQing. With the exception of one section on the second side, where there's a long crossfaded bit, there wasn't really any manipulation of the audio. It's as much as possible a straight-up recording. There's a couple of little sections which are looped to create an introduction, but for the most part it's just about finding the things that happened that naturally relate, and overlaying them so that there's a transition between ideas.

You've spoken in the past about your frustration with idea that everything you do is based in the modular synth, but do you think that the spontaneity that modular synthesis demands is an important part of your process?

Luke Abbott: There's definitely something about that way of working that I find particularly intriguing as a musician. But I've always worked with computers and hardware stuff like a hybrid instrument: you put together a little system of stuff, and that whole system becomes the thing that you play. You don't stop interacting with one thing just because there's another thing there. It's about how everything works together.

I know you've been building your own instruments for the modular. Was that out of necessity, because the instruments you wanted didn't exist?

Luke Abbott: In a hobbyist way, it's something I like doing—a bit of soldering's fun. I'm not an expert in electronics, but all the information is out there if you want to learn about it. It's quite a fun thing to get to know a little bit about. Most of the things I've built in the past haven't been very reliable, so they don't end up getting used for very long. Right now I just don't have any time to be doing that side of things, but it's also a really fertile time for modular synth manufacturers, so if you wait long enough someone else will make the thing you want anyway. There's no real necessity.

So there's been an increased enthusiasm among manufacturers, as well as among artists?

Luke Abbott: I think it's encouraged a particular kind of engineer to be creative in an exciting way. It's all really cottage industry. There are a lot of people running one-man operations, making really interesting an unique modules, and that's a fun thing. It's a good situation we've got.

You've spoken about getting into a lot of spiritual jazz while you were making Wysing Forest. Which sorts of records in particular?

Luke Abbott: A lot of the Alice Coltrane stuff I really like. Sun Ra as well, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, all of that. But at the moment I'm listening to a lot of new age music. There's this blog called Sounds Of The Dawn, and it's got loads of old new age meditation music that's been recorded from tape cassettes. It's a really wonderful resource of this music that I'd never heard before. It's really exciting.

A lot of musicians seem to sustain themselves on DJ sets rather than by playing live. Is that something you're interested in?

Luke Abbott: I don't think I'd be very good at it. I'm a bit too cantankerous. I like doing obtuse things with music, and obtuse things are better done in a live situation than in a DJ set. DJ sets have to be quite satisfying for the audience. I think it's a different dialogue that you have when you're DJing, and I think that I'd probably just annoy people if I was a DJ.

You gave an interview recently in which you talked about "Free Migration" being your "anti-UKIP" statement. Am I right in thinking that was meant with tongue in cheek?

Luke Abbott: Ha, well, It was written before the European elections, but it seemed quite relevant at that point. I am quite anti-UKIP, but it's coincidental that I made the track. I'm not trying to make political music. I'm not Billy Bragg.

And thank god for that. So much of the writing about Holkham Drones talks about imaginary connections with Norfolk. Do you think people might finally move away from that conversation with Wysing Forest?

Luke Abbott: I didn't like that connection that people were making when my first album came out, but I think this record is actually much more to do with the place of Wysing than anything I've done before. That connection is really there for me in this one, where it wasn't in the first one in the same way.It's kind of fine. Once you put something out in the world it gets taken by other people and they re-author it for themselves, so by the time the record's out you have to let go of it. It becomes what people want it to be instead.

Luke Abbott's Wysing Forest LP is out now on Border Community. 

He also plays live tonight at St Pancras Old Church, London. 

You can follow Josh Hall on Twitter here: @JoshAJHall and Luke Abbott here: @lukeabbottmusic

Read more artist interviews on THUMP:

"I'm an OG Again": Goldie on 20 Years of Metalheadz, and Turning 'Timeless' Into an Orchestral Score

Dubstep Pioneer The Bug is Back, and He's As Devastating As Ever

"I Pretty Much Grew Up Going To Sun Ra's House": an Interview With Fhloston Paradigm

Cruising Down 'Momento Drive' with Rebolledo of Pachanga Boys

This article was originally published in THUMP UK.

Luke Abbott has always existed slightly apart from dance music. While his earliest releases, on Trevor Jackson's Output, sounded something like a bouncier, circuit-bent Autechre, his recent work has been an altogether groggier affair, matching pastel textures with beautiful, melancholic melody. It's not really dance music in its content, but in its form it is at least congruent with the club. With his second album Wysing Forest, Abbott's work has become even more abstracted. 

Recorded during a residency at the Arts Centre in Wysing, Cambridgeshire, Wysing Forest owes more to synth experimentalists Charles Cohen or Steve Hauschildt than it does even to the Border Community label contemporaries with which his debut Holkham Drones sat so easily. As Abbott drove through a storm somewhere between Glasgow and Manchester, we spoke to him about his time in Wysing, and the intricacies of his beloved modular synthesis.

THUMP: Let's talk about Wysing Arts Centre. Was that your first experience of a residency?

Luke Abbott: It wasn't the first residency I've done, but it was the first one I've done in quite a long time. They got in touch via the Arts Centre in Norwich; they were looking for a musician in residence and they'd never had one before, and a guy who was working there put me in touch with them.

Do they do writer or visual artist residencies as well?

Luke Abbott: They have a lot of residencies, and it's usually people from the visual art world, but they also had a writer in residence while I was there. They seem quite keen on multi-disciplinary activity. They're not trying to guide themselves towards any particular medium. It's quite an open-ended, open-minded place. They also have visiting talks by people. While I was there they had a lecture from the doctors at the clinic down the road, who were the guys that pioneered embryo research so that you can have test tube babies. That happened round the corner from the Arts Centre. They're trying to mix it up, and trying to put people in touch who are doing different things—just, to see what happens.

Did you collaborate with the writer in residence?

Luke Abbott:We did actually collaborate on a little bit of work! I appear in a book that he wrote as a result of his residency as well. He would have conversations with people and write them in later.

Much of the record was made live in front of a small audience. It seems that improvisation has always been an important part of your work, but how does that process change when there is a performance element involved?

Luke Abbott: When you're recording stuff in a live setting, whether there's anyone there or not, it always goes differently anyway. I suppose doing it in front of an audience there was maybe more of an inclination to try and structure it somehow.

How much of what you hear on the record is what was originally recorded, and how much of it was done later in the computer?

Luke Abbott: Very little in the computer—basically just the edit points and a little bit of EQing. With the exception of one section on the second side, where there's a long crossfaded bit, there wasn't really any manipulation of the audio. It's as much as possible a straight-up recording. There's a couple of little sections which are looped to create an introduction, but for the most part it's just about finding the things that happened that naturally relate, and overlaying them so that there's a transition between ideas.

You've spoken in the past about your frustration with idea that everything you do is based in the modular synth, but do you think that the spontaneity that modular synthesis demands is an important part of your process?

Luke Abbott: There's definitely something about that way of working that I find particularly intriguing as a musician. But I've always worked with computers and hardware stuff like a hybrid instrument: you put together a little system of stuff, and that whole system becomes the thing that you play. You don't stop interacting with one thing just because there's another thing there. It's about how everything works together.

I know you've been building your own instruments for the modular. Was that out of necessity, because the instruments you wanted didn't exist?

Luke Abbott: In a hobbyist way, it's something I like doing—a bit of soldering's fun. I'm not an expert in electronics, but all the information is out there if you want to learn about it. It's quite a fun thing to get to know a little bit about. Most of the things I've built in the past haven't been very reliable, so they don't end up getting used for very long. Right now I just don't have any time to be doing that side of things, but it's also a really fertile time for modular synth manufacturers, so if you wait long enough someone else will make the thing you want anyway. There's no real necessity.

So there's been an increased enthusiasm among manufacturers, as well as among artists?

Luke Abbott: I think it's encouraged a particular kind of engineer to be creative in an exciting way. It's all really cottage industry. There are a lot of people running one-man operations, making really interesting an unique modules, and that's a fun thing. It's a good situation we've got.

You've spoken about getting into a lot of spiritual jazz while you were making Wysing Forest. Which sorts of records in particular?

Luke Abbott: A lot of the Alice Coltrane stuff I really like. Sun Ra as well, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, all of that. But at the moment I'm listening to a lot of new age music. There's this blog called Sounds Of The Dawn, and it's got loads of old new age meditation music that's been recorded from tape cassettes. It's a really wonderful resource of this music that I'd never heard before. It's really exciting.

A lot of musicians seem to sustain themselves on DJ sets rather than by playing live. Is that something you're interested in?

Luke Abbott: I don't think I'd be very good at it. I'm a bit too cantankerous. I like doing obtuse things with music, and obtuse things are better done in a live situation than in a DJ set. DJ sets have to be quite satisfying for the audience. I think it's a different dialogue that you have when you're DJing, and I think that I'd probably just annoy people if I was a DJ.

You gave an interview recently in which you talked about "Free Migration" being your "anti-UKIP" statement. Am I right in thinking that was meant with tongue in cheek?

Luke Abbott: Ha, well, It was written before the European elections, but it seemed quite relevant at that point. I am quite anti-UKIP, but it's coincidental that I made the track. I'm not trying to make political music. I'm not Billy Bragg.

And thank god for that. So much of the writing about Holkham Drones talks about imaginary connections with Norfolk. Do you think people might finally move away from that conversation with Wysing Forest?

Luke Abbott: I didn't like that connection that people were making when my first album came out, but I think this record is actually much more to do with the place of Wysing than anything I've done before. That connection is really there for me in this one, where it wasn't in the first one in the same way.It's kind of fine. Once you put something out in the world it gets taken by other people and they re-author it for themselves, so by the time the record's out you have to let go of it. It becomes what people want it to be instead.

Luke Abbott's Wysing Forest LP is out now on Border Community. 

He also plays live tonight at St Pancras Old Church, London. 

You can follow Josh Hall on Twitter here: @JoshAJHall and Luke Abbott here: @lukeabbottmusic

Read more artist interviews on THUMP:

"I'm an OG Again": Goldie on 20 Years of Metalheadz, and Turning 'Timeless' Into an Orchestral Score

Dubstep Pioneer The Bug is Back, and He's As Devastating As Ever

"I Pretty Much Grew Up Going To Sun Ra's House": an Interview With Fhloston Paradigm

Cruising Down 'Momento Drive' with Rebolledo of Pachanga Boys