Interview, November 2004

A lot has happened since we last spoke to Matt in February. Karlsen, for example, has bought a new hat. He went to see what Matt has been up to.

First of all we'd like to congratulate you and Kim on the birth of Kofi. How's it going?

It's amazing. He's just sitting down there like an actual little person in his own right, which I guess he was already before he came out, but it was a bit less easy to believe.

How old is he now?

He'll be six months old in a couple of days. And he's very cool and he's got crazy hair, and he looks a bit like me when I was small.

Was it the extraordinary experience you were expecting?

Of course it was. Often things are built up to be absolutely amazing, and when it comes to it - like for example, the reissue of Star Wars - it's not all that amazing, it's kind of annoying. So it's an incredible thing to be anticipating the most amazing thing you've ever experienced in your life and then it turns out to be a billion times more amazing than that... well, you know what I mean. You experience some more profound feelings than you can probably get at any other way. It means there's a whole new capacity for being terrified and horrified by the world... I feel like I've put up my aerial all the way for the first time, and I'm receiving all frequencies. And the other side is you experience this amazing deep love and joy and constant sense of wonder. It's as amazing as anyone could have predicted and more again.

How have you been spending the last six months?

It all went by very fast. The first three months were very chaotic. It felt like a bit of an emergency. It's not an emergency, it's normal, but because it has some of the characteristics of an emergency, like being in hospital and not being able to sleep and rushing around, you react to it that way. So it takes a while to stop being in emergency mode. And since then it's been about assembling a new normal life, but now I have a son which I never did before, and so my normal life is very different from what it was before - but it's been very pleasurable, the new normality. And in the last month I've started working again, touring, writing, recording - doing all the stuff I used to do with the extra bonus of him being part of it.

Has he inspired any songs yet?

He inspired some songs before he came out. It was funny recently doing some gigs with Tiesto, because the song I did with him was the only song I explicitly wrote about the experience of anticipating the birth. And because it was for someone else, it felt like I didn't have to justify it. And it was great to be playing these giant stadium gigs, singing that song, which is called 'U R' and now he is. It made what were frankly absurd gigs have a moment in them that was very real.

What was absurd about them?

Everything. These were three football stadium gigs that Tiesto had sold out in about half an hour - two in Holland, near Amsterdam and one in Belgium, near Brussels, where trance music, which is his thing, is absolutely huge. And it's all really epic, it's like a grown-up Alton Towers. They started at midnight and went on till seven in the morning, and they had all sorts of crazy spectacles, from an hour-long 3D presentation and a fireworks display and a trapeze artist and a Vegas illusionist and a Bulgarian female choir... a lot of weird stuff, and weirdest of all was this English guy playing the piano on his own, which was as disconcerting for them as it was for me. There were so many people there. They were the biggest gigs I'd ever been part of, and I was entirely on my own on stage. It was really stupid.

Did it give you any ideas for your own stage show?

Well, those people who are lucky enough to be coming to the Christmas show will see, I think, that it has had a profoundly... detrimental effect on my stagecraft. It was the most spectacular live show I've ever seen - I've never been to see any of the big shows by Michael Jackson or Madonna or Prince - but they were saying that when Madonna played the same stage, she only brought a quarter of the amount of stuff... although she was probably only playing for an hour and a half... So I don't know whether I'll have the 3D display or fireworks. Or a Vegas illusionist, but let's say there I will introduce some aspects of it. It was fantastically camp, for one thing. I very nearly went on in fancy dress. As a toucan. But that would have been a bit too stupid, even for me.

Can you reveal any of the special guests who'll be performing at the Christmas gig?

As with all these things, the details won't be finalised until quite near the day, but it looks like between three and five other artists will be joining us in various ways. We just had our first rehearsal for it. It's more or less the same band as in March, but we're trying to find different, new ways of playing the stuff. It's starting to shape up. It'll be a game of two halves. The first half will be me and my friends and some musicians I admire playing their stuff and me playing with them, and then there'll be another half which will be Aqualung music, but presented in a way that no one will have seen or heard before. It's a lovely space, and because it's so near to Christmas it should be a great evening.

Any carols?

We'll see. I don't want to make it too cheesily festive, but as it's the last Friday before Christmas it would be ... miserly and humbuggish not to have some acceptance of the festive season.

So it won't be the classic support-act followed by headliner?

No, it won't be that. It'll be some weird combination of a classical recital, preceded by a pilot for a strange TV show which is a cross between Richard & Judy and Later, hosted by me.

What's the situation with your record label at the moment?

What's happened is we've left B-Unique and Warners who were our labels for the first two albums, and we've signed a new record deal with Columbia, which is part of Sony, but Columbia in America. So we're signed now to an American record company, with whom we're going to release a compilation of the first two albums, and then they will have the rights for the whole world for the third album.

Does that mean that you'll be based in America from now on?

If you're signed direct to a US label, they kind of treat you as if you're a domestic act. So inevitably the focus will be there for a while, particularly as they are the last major territory to release the first two albums. They're catching up, so we'll do quite a lot of work over there to make sure that goes as well as it can. And after that we'll be able to plan a campaign for the whole world for the third album.

You've just been to Hong Kong, and I hear you'll be going to Japan. Are you looking forward to that?

Yes. The first two albums just came out in Japan, because since we got out of our deal with Warners we've been able to do new deals in places where they hadn't released anything. It always seemed a bit annoying to me that nothing had come out in Japan, because the RUTH and 45s albums had been released there and done quite well. So they've finally come out there, and that means we get to go. We're doing a gig in January in Tokyo, so we get to experience Japan which, if it's anything like Hong Kong, will be quite surreal.

When do you think the third album will come out?

Well, this combination album will come out in America in the Spring, so I can't see them wanting to release another record until the end of the year, or maybe early 2006.

Do have any idea what you want it to sound like?

I've written quite a lot of songs, some of which may survive... I don't know really. I'm just keen for it not to sound like what I've done so far. I want it to be a step forward. Or backward. Or away, at least.

A step away from both previous albums?

That would be interesting for me. Obviously I want it to be good and everything, and not be something people who like the other records will hate. But I think you should push yourself and try and learn something. I'm experimenting with not using the piano, and thinking of things as a producer rather than just putting the piano and vocal down and seeing what sounds nice around it. That's one thing I'm definitely going to try, and some of the recordings I've done recently do have a different flavour as a result, and I really like how they sound. I'd like the make the Aqualung music world more expansive and maybe more dramatic.

How did you feel about making the compilation album?

It meant I listened to the first album a lot more than I had for a while, which was actually really enjoyable. It was a very useful thing to do while thinking about making a new record, because you can give lots of different impressions of Aqualung depending on which twelve songs you chose, so I was thinking 'which one of those Aqualungs do I want to do next?' and that helped me clarify in my head which aspects I wanted to pursue. So the way the compilation turned out is quite telling, really.

What did you choose?

Strange & beautiful, the Jim [Copperthwaite] mix of Falling out of love, a new mix of Good times gonna come by me, Brighter than sunshine, Breaking my hear again, Tongue-tied, Left behind, You turn me around, If I fall, the single mix of Easier to lie, Extraordinary thing, Another little hole.

Generally it's tended towards the more atmospheric and even the slightly more ... rock end of the spectrum, and further away from the classic singer-songwriter-y stuff... I dunno if that's true. But I can see myself playing it in a stadium, which, now I've done a gig in a stadium, is obviously what I want to do.

You're also producing a solo album for Melanie Blatt. How's that going?

It's good. I'm hoping to get that done by the end of the year.

What does it sound like?

It sounds like some of the obvious things like Erykah Badu, maybe a little bit of Norah Jones and all the nice female singer things, but with an unexpected Kate Bush-yness. It's got some very sweet music on it, but also some quite strange things as well. I think it's going to be a really good album, and hopefully more interesting that you might expect.

Did you write much for it?

Me and Kim have written just over half of it.

Finally, what records have you been listening to recently?

I've been listening to the new Wilco album [A ghost is born], and that's confirmed my desire to work with their producer, Jim O'Rourke, cos it sounds lovely and is very interesting... I bought some Pink Floyd, which turned out not to be as good as I thought it would be... I bought the My Bloody Valentine album Loveless, not that I'm going to be doing anything that sounds like that, but I like it because it's really really loud, but kind of beautiful. There's something beguiling about that combination.

Thanks very much.

None taken.