6th November 2023
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Anxiously awaiting the release of his eighth album ‘OCTOPUS’ and an accompanying UK & Ireland tour, I sat down with Newton Faulkner.
N: Nice to meet you too. Yeah, good. Really busy. Really busy. But busy is good. especially in my particular industry, you’re either busy or something’s wrong.
L: Yeah, generally a good sign then.
N: That’s soon, isn’t it? Oh, it’s really soon. Terrified. I’m terrified and excited in kind of equal measure, both ends of the spectrum. I think I am more excited, it’s just terrifying releasing stuff, I’m gonna have to spend the next week kind of making peace with whatever happens once it’s out, because if you don’t prepare yourself for all eventualities you can kind of come unstuck a bit.
L: Yeah I think a dash of caution is always advisable.
N: It’s been amazing. I mean, I definitely, it was quite a steep learning curve. I haven’t done a huge amount of like full collaborations before. And it takes a huge amount of, just, perseverance and organization that I didn’t really expect. I was like, oh, let’s get someone else to do something. That sounds easy and fun. Cool. Means I don’t have to do it. Great! And then, yeah, it was so much more work just getting all the bits to kind of function together and getting everyone in the same place at the same time. It was, yeah, it was long, long-winded, literally right up until like the day before release. I’m so glad we did all the ones we did. They all served such a huge kind of purpose within the track and made such a huge difference to where it landed.
L: Yeah, I really like gravitational. That’s one of my favourite tracks. It’s got this really just infectious energy that sort of grabs you.
N: That was really, that took a lot of messing around with to get to the right place. The vocals take up so much space in the mix that A, getting them to take up that much space was a huge challenge in itself. I was like either it’s going to go off to the mix, it’s going to come back and it’s going to get cut from the album. Or it’s going to come back and I’ll be like, oh, that’s exactly what I wanted.
N: I am a fan of sea creatures. I mean, to be honest, there’s kind of two parallel stories. I kind of saw the album cover and I was like, I want like a white album cover with like a drawing of an animal in the middle. And I want it to be quite stark because we’ve had quite busy covers in the past. So then I started digging through pictures of just drawings of animals, and I went through thousands. And that was kind of three days of my life. And then I saw a picture of an octopus. I was like, yes, that that’s exactly that’s that kind of weird, organic shape. And also it’s reaching out in loads of different directions, which I kind of feel the album is doing naturally anyway at that point. And then the first interview that I did about the album, the interviewer was like, ‘So Octopus, your new album, I’m guessing it’s called Octopus because it’s your 8th album?’. And I took a moment and was like, yeah.
L: And that was the end of that question.
N: Yeah, no, I can’t wait. I’ve had nothing but amazing gigs. in Liverpool every time. But yeah, I’ve been really lucky. Really lucky. I kind of, yeah, it’s got to that point where I’ve been doing it, what, 25 years now? And it’s still challenging, still really fun. And one of the huge challenges that I felt was that it’s not like a sitting down album. It’s got a lot of energy to it. By any stretch of the imagination. I think if I go back to something like Studio Zoo, you could sit down and play it, would kind of make sense. But with this, it just, it doesn’t. And I think I learned how to make people physically move in a way that I’d never done before. I think I have to work harder to get the crowd kind of up!
N: I think literally the smaller audience is interesting and terrifying! It’s like a different kind of animal. I think when you’re dealing with like quite big rooms, the audience becomes an organism. Whereas with the small rooms, you’re so aware of the individuals. And it is like, it’s so much more intimidating. I definitely get more nervous about little things than I do big things. Big things kind of take care of themselves. But yeah, the little ones are quite, scary in quite a fun way.
N: I mean, the songs, the songs have a different vibe. Vocally, they’re in a really fun place to sing. Stuff like Don’t Make Me Beg covers so much like twisty ground. And Where the Spirit Meets the Bone is really fun as well. And I think with that, it’ll be adapting older songs to fit this new space is going to be quite a fun challenge. The rest of this week, I’ll get everything set up and be like, right. What could I do that I haven’t done for a while? What can I bring back? What can I change? How can I kind of adapt the space?
N: Oh, there’s loads of venues I’d love to play that I haven’t and loads of places I’ve played before. I mean, it’s quite hard. It does kind of become a bit of a blur, I must admit. A lot of places, I go to a venue and I’m like, I know I’ve been here before. I just can’t quite remember. But then sometimes it’s something totally weird. Like I’ll be loading out at the end and see something in like the loading bay and I’m like, oh, it’s this one. But I’ve got some amazing things coming up. I’ve got just booked an amphitheatre. For next year, which looks absolutely beautiful.
Yeah, I’m just hoping when people hear the album, they’re like, oh, I want to see this live.
N: I couldn’t tell! I mean, it changes. It used to change year on year. Then I think it started changing month by month. And now it’s almost day-to-day. And with the aggressively advancing technological developments, it’s fascinating. I keep a very kind of close eye on it because I know it will affect things that I do. It’s such a strange landscape. And I mean, ultimately I think it’s going to completely change how we view human intelligence. Yeah, if you think of what’s been the kind of stamp of intelligence has been, can you learn this information? And then when you’re asked a question, can you answer the question on that information at that time? But I think creativity is actually going to be more important now than it’s ever been before. Because you need to be able to think creatively, even if you’re asking it to do something. And it is like, I think, I always go back to the analogy of drummers. So drummers, when drum machines first came on, Some of them were like, no, I’m not touching them. They’re weird and creepy and I don’t want to do it. And then clever ones were like, oh, if I learn how to program drums, then people will come to me as a drummer to program drums, which is what people still do now.
L: So I suppose it’s about, it feels like a bit of an onslaught sometimes, but I think it’s the name of the game feels like adapting to
N: It’s adapt or die at this point. I think for multiple different industries. But it is that, yeah, it’s that thing of learning how to work with it and use it as a tool.
N: I mean, it didn’t exist! It was MySpace. Didn’t really have to do anything on MySpace. It’s a totally new thing, which is 100% part of my job as well. It’s such an amazing tool, which is like a way of reaching people and a way of communicating. And also because I think for some people I work with, like social media isn’t even a thought. It’s like an instinct.
L: I mean, definitely in terms of like, album rollouts now. Before, you wouldn’t have bought an album if you hadn’t heard it before because the physical format, the place you could hear it was on an LP or on a CD. Now, we’ve got all the music under the sun a second away.
N: Well, yeah, I think that’s changed multiple things. So if you look at the old links between music and fashion, they used to be like so rigid. But I think the reason was that, you couldn’t listen to stuff before you bought it. Yeah, so you had to like fully subscribe to a thing and then spend all your money on something that you haven’t heard because it’s part of your thing. It goes with your whole vibe. It goes with your hair, your jacket. And I think that’s kind of just dissolved because you can listen to anything whenever you want and you don’t have to do that anymore.
L: Yeah, these sort of like identities, I guess. Everyone’s musical identity isn’t so rigid anymore.
N: And but like people, I mean, I spoke to one person was like, ‘Oh, what kind of music do you listen to?’ It’s like a cab driver. He was like, ‘Oh, like kind of chilled house.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, what kind of artists?’ ‘I’ve no idea.’ Okay. ‘But that’s your favorite thing?’ ‘Yeah, it’s my favorite thing.’ ‘How do you know what to listen to?’ ‘Oh, I, I’ll just type in. Chill house. So then I press enter and that’s it.’ I love it. It’s great. No idea what any of it is. Couldn’t give you a name, couldn’t name a vocalist, a producer, nothing. Just type in chill house, hit enter, which is like a way of, it’s a way of consuming music, but it’s totally different at the same time. It’s fascinating.
L: I have so many conversations now, and I’m guilty of doing this myself, where I talk to people, I say, What music are you into? And the given answer is ‘a bit of everything’.
N: Yeah, I think it’s ’cause everything is available. And it’s not really a choice you have to make. And there’s loads of algorithms that are very happy to make the decision for you. I mean, I still listen to kind of vinyl at home. I love listening to whole albums. And I think I’ve probably learned more from albums than singles. I think I love singles and there’s loads of singles that I love, but in terms of like bodies of work, I think that’s, there’s something, I think it’s the difference between writing an article and writing a book.
L: Yeah, okay
N: Like a book is a complete start to finish story, whereas I feel like, just one song on its own doesn’t give you the full picture, I mean, I guess it’s of the artist at that time or the band.
N: Yeah, I think it’s going to probably have another resurgence. I don’t think people are going to let go of that idea quite so easily. I think it’s probably going to fade out almost to completely disappearing. And then someone will release an album and everyone will be like, oh my god, what’s that album? What is this? There’s so many songs. Like it’ll just be like a totally new thing because no one will have done it for a while. So it’ll suddenly be like a bold move. And then I think everyone will start making albums again. And then like gradually people will forget and stop doing it and then it will come back again. Same with the old like music. Music, fashion, everything just kind of goes around.
L: We sort of had that, I felt that last year with Charli XCX’s Brat album where I haven’t, I can’t remember an album getting such, making such shockwaves for a while and then listening to it and thinking, oh, this actually is like, there’s really something here. There’s something for everyone here, almost.
N: Yeah, it’s an amazing record. And it’s so like, just of the time, it just totally ticked that box. It was amazing. And then occasionally you listen to albums that are like, I mean, I was listening to album that came out in 2007 and I was like, oh my God, this could have been made yesterday.
L: I was listening to a song that day by a band called Hum. I hadn’t heard of it before. I sort of imagined that they were maybe releasing their things in the past few years because they’re quite sort of like a grungy rock and I feel like we’ve had a little bit of a comeback of that in the underground spaces. And I was shocked when I saw that from 1985 or something like that.
N: I was listening to Midlake and I was like, Midlake, that whole sound has totally come back. From like ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’ album, so many people have been influenced by that vibe. I mean, it’s such good driving music.
N: Of course!
N: It’s not something I do a lot. I do learn something when I do, especially if I’m like, oh, it feels a bit like it’s similar to that, but let me just check if it’s the same. And then I’m notice all kinds of things like, oh, wow, I wouldn’t do that now, but that is quite nice. I mean, I had one moment where I, something came on and I was like, when you’re kind of just bobbing your head, it’s like, oh, quite like this. And then a bit in my brain was like, wonder what it is? And then the other day in my brain was like, dude, that’s you! I was like, oh, wow. I just heard myself as if I wasn’t me for the very first time in my entire life! And I couldn’t really remember what it felt like, because it was just one of those like really fleeting like, what is that? So I don’t know if it’s a cardinal sin. I mean, obviously, like, if you invite people around for dinner and you play them your entire back catalogue, you’re a dick! That’s a dick move!
N: Oh, I mean, I’d have to be an octopus right now! I’m in full octopus mode and also think of the gigs. Gigs would be great. I could play so many things. Yeah, I’d need no pedals. I think I’d be a happy octopus.
Header image belongs to Lewis Webb.
To listen to Newton Faulkner’s album ‘OCTOPUS, click here
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