Inspired #352: Leo Clarke
Having honed his sound, London multi-instrumentalist Leo Clarke crafts bubbling, technicolour sonic landscapes that instantly evoke visions of warmer climes; somewhere a far cry from the London bedroom studio in which the music is created. He talked us through his inspirations.
Who are your top three musical inspirations and why?
I’d say David Byrne, David Longstreth and Paul McCartney. All three of them just represent unbridled creativity to me. They take inspiration from all over and mash it all together to make a pretty ridiculous tonic.
Is there a certain film that inspires you and why?
I really love films that disorientate you and leave you spending the next week unpacking it. The last film that did that for me was ‘The Lighthouse’. These two people crammed full of Mania, confusion, loneliness and locked up together in a Lighthouse? It’s madness and I love it. The devil is in the detail for me that’s something that I strive for in my own music. I spend WEEKS trying to fit the pieces together so you can’t see the seams and I really get that from this film.
What city do you find the most inspiring and why?
I find my hometown of Sheffield very inspiring. It’s the place where I decided that I wanted to be a musician and I spent so many years learning about music and how powerful it can be in that city and I owe a lot to it. I was lucky enough to live pretty close to the Peak District too and there’s something really special about those rolling hills. It’s also the home of all my favourite pubs and it’s hard to not feel inspired when you’ve had a wee drink.
Who is the most inspiring person to you and why?
My partner inspires me everyday. Her resilience and determination is something that I’m constantly in awe of. No challenge is too great and she’s pushed me to trust myself and to always back myself. Though I’m still working on that she inspires me to keep doing it every day.
What were your inspirations when writing your new track 'All Things to Somebody'?
Well as somebody who’s approaching 30 I feel like heaps of pressure are put on us to have achieved something by now. It feels like people are expected to be married or to have started a family or be at X point in their career or to own expensive things and I increasingly feel like our worth as humans is somehow connected to these expectations. That doesn’t make any sense to me so I wrote this song to try and reassure myself that I don’t have to succumb to these pressures, I can do what makes me happy and makes me feel my own sense of worth.
How would you like to inspire people?
I use my music as a place where I can direct my energies, good and bad and create something positive for myself. It’s ambitious but I would hope that I could one day inspire people to do the same by directing their energies into whatever makes them happy and to just enjoy the process of doing and not be blinkered by expectations of what it will be. But ultimately I just hope my music inspires somebody to feel something, even if it’s blind rage that’s fine.
