Interview: Ultra_eko Talks About His New Music Video "Yellow Redux" and Upcoming Album "Off the Grid"
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“...The title ‘Off the Grid’ is a good summation of what it, and me as an artist and person, is about. It’s populated with characters who feel isolated from a society which does not value the human spirit, who struggle with communication and connecting with those around them. ”
Despite the circumstances due to the pandemic, you have been staying very busy lately. Why is it so important for you to stay grinding and release new music?
Yes, I was concerned that the lockdown would slow me down, but to be honest, I’ve continued pretty much as before. Financially it’s been a huge struggle, but where there’s a will there’s a way. In terms of the writing it’s what I’m passionate about, it’s where I put my heart and soul. I can be listening to beats up to ten hours a day, completely lost in the writing. I’m obsessive, driven and compulsive, and I’m really happy to be able to direct these energies into my music at the moment. There have been many times in my life where these character traits have been directed into much more destructive and unhealthy pursuits, so I feel very lucky and blessed to have this creative outlet. I have a pretty clear vision of where I want to get to, musically. Not in terms of any career or material success, but the soundscape I want to create, the ideas and concepts I want to express, the stories I want to tell. And I remain determined to reach that place.
My aim is just to maintain momentum, keep producing, keep trying to improve and do things better with every track. I think being productive is very important. One of the best pieces of advice I read when starting out, probably about a year ago now, was not to obsess over each track too much; try and get something done, and then move on and try and do things better next time. I’ve come across individuals who have been obsessing over a single track for months, and this mentality seems to really slow their development. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but also most people won’t see those same imperfections that you do anyway. I think that you develop faster and improve quicker by keep trying to make something different and improve on the last time. I can look back a year and see great improvement in what I’m doing. I used to discard half of everything I made, but I’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t, and that number is drastically reduced. I have so many ideas, so many things I want to record and write about, that I don’t see myself slowing down. I have always been prolific in whatever I do; I remember writing a 60,000-word novel in two weeks as a teenager. If you love what you’re doing, it never seems like work anyway; I’m thankful for the time I have to be creative.
Perhaps my main concern when the lock down started, was that I would not be able to go to the studio to record. But all the tracks from the forthcoming album, ‘Off the Grid’, were recorded in my loft, and I am very pleased with the results. (picture included).
Big props to you on your new music video “Yellow Redux”. Who directed the visual and why did you select this song to create a visual for?
The video was again created by the fantastically talented Eli Lev. He is a brilliantly talented video artist in my opinion, creating everything from stock footage. This is the eleventh video he has made for me, and we have developed a good understanding of each other in this time, I hope.
The track itself was the most obvious ‘single’ on the album, and I hope it will help me to reach out and find a bigger audience and be able to showcase my work to more people. The track is called ‘Yellow Redux’, because there is another ‘Yellow’ track I released last November, which has the same lyrics but a different instrumental.
There was also a techno remix made by Kalihamihari!, a Scottish hip-hop artist, from this original track, so in fact ‘Yellow Redux’ is actually the third incarnation of ‘Yellow’. I guess I must have a soft spot for it.
If your music could be the soundtrack to any movie, which one would you select?
I really liked this question and gave it a lot of thought. As I’m so engaged with creating at the moment, I don’t consume anywhere near as much film, music or literature as I once did. But as a teenager and throughout my twenties I loved my films , and so it was an interesting exercise for me to look back and reflect on what has influenced the kind of aesthetic I have so far been trying to create in my music.
Looking thematically at the forthcoming album, ‘Off the Grid’, the narrators and characters within the songs are increasingly isolated. They are individuals lost and without meaning, caught within the cogs of society’s vast capitalist machinery. They live in a world full of new technologies which are supposed to make us all more connected, and yet they feel more alone than ever. People are thrown together, yet communication is misfiring, relationships are breaking down. The drunk father and his tripped-out son in the ‘Yellow Redux’ track is a perfect illustration of this. They walk the street arm in arm, yet they could not be in more different places from one another. As the narrator in the ‘Eternal Sunshine’ track states, ‘I feel so separate, as if there were a pane of glass between us. I write upon it, backwards, from right to left so you might read it right, but it seems the meaning of my words always getting lost.’
There’s a lot of Orwellian imagery, and rather than mention a single film, I have been thinking about a writer and director who was hugely inspirational and influential to me; Terry Gilliam. I love the work of Gilliam, and to me his films are a celebration of the creative and imaginative power in all us. It is a wonderful, beautiful gift, and we should all try to maintain that childhood wonderment at the world. Our power to imagine, and the things we do imagine, are where the world we live in is conceived. The orderly and structured nature of this society we find ourselves in, regimented by time and routine, capitalism means of production, can often grind us down and crush our spirits, and it is important that we don’t lose sight of the magical, spiritual beings we are.
The Gilliam film ‘Brazil’ really blew me away the first time that I saw it, and it has always been a powerful influence on me. I can look at the track ‘Boy Done Good’ from the new album, a song about an employee trapped and suffocated in a mindless job, where he enters numbers into a computer all day long, the meaning of which he has no idea. He escapes from his dreary reality through the power of his imagination, through which he sees himself as someone important and respected, commanding the love of a beautiful woman.
There’s a lot of Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ right there in that track along, and much of his work centres upon imaginative fantasies characters get lost in, and which is a kind of magic by which they use to escape from authoritarian regimes. His films often focus on the struggle we face in trying to satisfy spiritual needs, in a modern world that makes us feel disenfranchised and often meaningless. I think my work too covers a lot of these ideas; characters who feel isolated, outsiders. Aside from ‘Brazil’, ‘Twelve Monkeys’ and ‘The Fisher King’ are absolute classics. Of course, there is the brilliance of ‘Fear and Loathing’, though I would always favour the Hunter Thompson’s book in this instance.
What can you tell us about the “Off the Grid” album, and how is it different sonically and thematically from your debut EP “Kitchen Sink Dramas”, which you dropped a few months ago?
The new album is a lot more diverse than the EP in terms of the sound. I also think it’s a much more enjoyable listen. The few people I have shown it to have responded very positively so I really hope it is going to have a good reception. I believe it’s the best thing I have so far created, and I also think it is a lot more accessible than the EP, so it would be great for it to be a springboard and help me to continue finding new listeners.
Having said that it still has a lot of the same themes, and the title ‘Off the Grid’ is a good summation of what it, and me as an artist and person, is about. It’s populated with characters who feel isolated from a society which does not value the human spirit, who struggle with communication and connecting with those around them. But it is also about the power of human creativity and imagination to be able to transcend these limitations, and to each lift ourselves and be the best we can be.I hope that amidst all the darkness and despair, there is a message of hope and positivity.