In Conversation With #134 - Low Island
Oxford’s electronic art-rock quartet Low Island have just released their debut album -‘If You Could Have It All Again’ via Emotional Interference. They took a moment to talk to us about how the album came together.
Hey there Low Island - how are you? So your debut album is out now, how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
Hey! Doing ok thanks. So happy to have the album out there finally. We haven’t quite had a chance to take stock yet because it’s been so manic with the release. We’ve done everything ourselves on this record; we manage the project and have released it on our own label, so we all feel like administrators right now more than musicians! One of the biggest stresses was with the vinyl and CD manufacturers. Because of the double-whammy of pandemic + Brexit everything was delayed and kept getting pushed back; we managed to (just) get everything in/out on time. One of the best things by far has been seeing pictures of people receiving their records and CDs. Without any IRL stuff going on, it’s the closest thing we have to talking to people at the merch stand after a show.
It is titled ‘If You Could Have It All Again’ - does that hold a certain meaning behind it?
It’s mainly a record about reflection; about looking over decisions you took in your early twenties and whether the butterfly effects of those decisions led you down the wrong paths. Put in less abstract terms, sometimes pursuing a career in the creative world can come at the expense of stability; stable income, relationships, routines or whatever it might be. When you’re first starting out, that’s one of the selling points; some sort of romantic vision of the artist as a ‘useless flaneur’ in the words of John Cooper Clarke. But as you get older, you can’t (or at least I can’t) help but crave some of those things. ‘If You Could Have It All Again’ was a chance to interrogate a feeling of insecurity about your life choices, and entertain the possibility of whether things would be any different if you had a chance to have another stab. There’s no way of knowing of course, but I think it’s only human to ask ourselves that question now and again.
Where was the album recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the creative experience?
It was recorded over the course of 4 years in lots of different places. My bedroom, our studio in Oxford, some of it in TEED’s studio in LA, and then finished in a makeshift studio that we made in an old farmhouse in rural France. When we were out there, we were working on the final track What The Hell (are you gonna do now?), and Ben Ogunbiyi, who’s worked with us on filming a lot of the live videos that we’ve released to promote the record, left us a voice note while he was walking his dog. Jamie pretty quickly stuck it over the end of track and it felt like the perfect way to end the record.
There is a track on the album called ‘Who’s Having the Greatest Time?’ - which is about the nature of Instagram. Can you tell us a bit more about it?
Online there can be what feels like this huge pressure to be presenting yourself at your best all the time when in actual fact we’re all looking like shit, getting turned down, or even just living fairly ordinary, flat lives as much (if not more?) as we are looking great and being successful. Who’s Having The Greatest Time? is someone toying with the idea of leaving this manicured presentation of the world behind; definitely much easier said than done!
What are the key themes and influences on the album?
Some of the most important influences on the record were books and plays; A Little Life, Norweigan Wood, The Catcher in the Rye, People Places and Things. Whilst all being very different, they were all fundamentally about people just trying to work out how to be alive; how to live, to love, to grow up and learning to accept and even embrace life’s imperfections and about-turns. Musically, we were (and always have been/still are!) listening to a lot of Radiohead, particularly when it came to thinking about how we sequenced the album. We also all love artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and Nick Drake and, believe it or not, a lot of the songs started out as these simple folk songs which we would then hack away at and rebuild.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album? If so, which one and why?
‘So much living left to do’ from Hey man,. There is, and I didn’t think it at the time of writing.
Now the album is out there - what next for you?
We have some remixes coming out in the autumn by some of our favourite artists, as well as alternative versions of tracks from the record and, crucially, a tour! Only a small one in September in the UK, but desperate for it to go ahead and get back to playing live again. One of our main priorities is to get back to being creative again - it’s been 8 months of e mailing and google drive. I can’t wait to just pick up a guitar again and aimlessly whisper random vowels until they turn into songs.