Kwes Drops Some Knowledge On Throbbing Gristle and Opera

Though Kwes (full name Kwesi Sey) has ping-ponged around musical circles since roughly 2005, his career went into overdrive when Damon Albarn brought him in on the DRC Project, a musical benefit for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The collective opinion seems to have been that if Damon Albarn, with his infinite taste, tapped Kwes for a big project, he must be good. And, indeed, he is.

Over the last several years, Kwes has been working on his debut album, ilp. In this time, he's fought a creative block, worked in opera, found inspiration in Marvin Gaye, and covertly recorded the sounds of cities and their inhabitants. Thoughtful and admittedly shy, Kwes is quietly self-assured. Such are his musical talents that Warp Records saw fit to sign him to a recording contract. He backed up the hype with last year's Meantime EP, the follow-up to 2010's No Need To Run (Young Turks).

Ilp is a record on which Kwes mutates his Marvin Gaye influence into a sort of experimental strain of r&b. Wisely, he never settles into one continuous sonic format. As a result, ilp is full of a multitude of percussive variations, with instrumentation that cycles through drone, IDM, dub, and the avant-garde baroque pop of Broadcast. Though the entire record is an engaging listen, Kwes achieves a sublime musical transcendence with "purplehands." On it, he sings "red and blue makes purple, crop circles bearing the fruits of our love" with such sincerity that his sentiment obscures the surrealistic absurdity of the lyric.

I recently had the chance to speak with Kwes as he awaits ilp's October 15th release. He told me about the path around his creative block, his love of the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile, and his live performances with the legendary electronic music duo Leftfield.

Noisey: You're just about to release your debut album, ilp. How long have you been working on it?
Kwes: I've been working on the album for a good three or four years. It's been quite a long process.

Did the style of the album shift or evolve over that time? And was that long gestation period the motivation to release EPs over that three or four-year stretch?
Well, I'm kind of not a massive fan of the EP format. I was aware that it was something I had to do at the time. I'm kind of really free-form with my music anyway, so I don't consciously know where I'm going to take it stylistically.

Did you end up discarding some recordings?
I discarded quite a bit. Maybe two or three of the songs on the album are older than the others. Some of the tracks just didn't feel right. When I got back into the record and felt some momentum, I just jettisoned some of the tracks. It was a really enjoyable process.

You've noted you had a creative block in recording the album. Whereas a lot of artists might double-down and push through it, you pulled back and admittedly listened to a lot of music. What music got you through this period?
There were a few records. Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye, that record really inspired me to really get back into the recording. I think I read something somewhere that Marvin had said that by the time he'd started to record that album he'd learned how to sing. He felt that as long as he communicated what he was feeling, however measured or loose it was, that was the main thing. I noticed on Hear, My Dear that he doesn't really belt—he's more reserved in a way. But, you could still feel everything he was singing about.

Another record was the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile. It's funny because I guess the majority of that record was done at home. I really listened to that record when I got my studio. I just really love the sound of it. It's a beautiful record.

You've also said you dig Todd Rundgren and Throbbing Gristle. What's interesting here is that both of these artists are highly experimental, but in vastly different ways. Can you dissect what you like about them and their approaches to music?
As you say, they experiment in radically different ways. With Todd, I love the songs as well. I don't know, he should be almost like a Kate Bush-type of figure. She's well known for her experimentation and great songs, but I feel that Todd Rundgren doesn't get enough credit for that. He was also hugely influenced by Laura Nyro as well, and she doesn't get that credit either.

With Throbbing Gristle, I just like the sounds. But, they have some really brilliant instrumental hooks in their music as well. I just love having that kind of experimentation with a real grasp of melodic sensibility. They both do that in different ways, and I think they're still quite novel ways as well.

You've named several tracks after artists—"Hundertwasser," "Klee," and then "Chagall" on the new album. Clearly you have some artistic inspirations, and you create visual art in addition to music. Do those titles have a certain meaning for you, or are they working titles that just end up sticking around?
More the latter, really. They're working titles of artists I like. I think there is more of a link between the artist and the music with "Chagall" compared with the other two, but that is with the benefit of hindsight.

Meaning you didn't really have an idea of that connection at the time of recording?
Well, I just kind of wrote these short pieces on how their work made me feel. I don't know, there is just more of that link on "Chagall." But, it's a subjective thing. Someone else could hear it and think something completely different.

In the past you played with the electronic duo Leftfield. I'm a big fan of their work. Their shows are legendary for the volume level. What was it like experiencing that from the stage?
Oh, it was unbelievable. [laughs] I had to keep my ear plugs in at all times, because if you take them out it's guaranteed tinnitus. There's just so much bass. I couldn't actually tell you the specs of the sound system they use, but the last time they played Brixton Academy they did some proper damage.

Did you learn anything from watching them in action?
Definitely. I think I learned about holding back. You're playing quite regularly with them, so I feel that my keyboard playing got better. I also learned a lot more about MIDI timecode. It's not something I really do in my music, but it's an extra bit of knowledge to have when you're working with someone and you want to sync equipment up. And I just generally had a good time with them.

You've also worked in opera.
Yeah, I worked with Peroni on a rendition of this Italian opera by Giacomo Puccini called "La Rondine." It went well, although it was hard. Looking back on it, I wish we had more time getting it together. Not to put it or my work on it down, because the musicians were amazing, but it was put together really quickly. We made the best of the time we had, and people generally enjoyed it. It was a novel way to experience opera, and done in quite an arcane setting in a warehouse. It was a really interesting thing to be involved in, and I'm glad I did it.

In what capacity did you work on it?
We tried so many different things, but I more or less became a sound engineer treating the instruments being played, and adding things on top. I wanted the opera to be played differently, and performed with different instruments, but there wasn't enough time to do that. I wanted to have more control over the vocalists, but it would have been too problematic with feedback.

Would you want to return to the opera with an original work in the future?
I'd love to do an original opera. I'd love to be able to learn more about composition in that sense, and then write something from scratch.

Is there a type of story you'd really like to tell through opera?
An opera about love would be an obvious one. Or maybe taking the mundane and turning that into something else. It could expand on the idea I kind of touched on with my last EP with the track called "Honey," where inanimate objects have feelings. I don't know, it would be interesting to go down that route and do something absurd like a love affair between a staple gun and some other inanimate object. [laughs]