Mechatok: Honestly, I think I spent most of my time on my laptop speaking to people on Facebook and SoundCloud. There were a few things quite sporadically that really mattered. For example my friend Alberto Troia, a visual artist, was throwing sort of like after-parties for gallery openings at “Kunstverein” and always brought out really interesting artists. That had a big impact on me in Munich. And then there was a club called “Kong” that closed I think six or seven years ago, that place was really good. And I really like the Public Possession guys, we did a record in 2015. I think that was what Munich really did for me. But it was a lot of just being in your bedroom and being on the laptop, honestly.

The album wasn’t so much about purely being trapped in some online loop, it was more about the contrast of doing that while existing in this now very imperfect and stressful reality. I mean at least that’s my personal experience, you know, like living in some shoebox apartment in London, having very stressful commutes and things just being very hectic and imperfect. And then you look at these glossy things on your phone that look sparkly and perfect. 

So you probably hear it with these very crystalline and almost clinical synth sounds and then all these samples and quite rough voice notes and stuff. That’s kind of the picture I was trying to paint I think. 

It was super formative when I was a young teenager but it’s funny because in the recent couple of years music has become a lot more real life based. I think going to London really changed that because making music there is a lot more of a social thing, because there’s a studio culture where everyone’s in the same basement meeting each other. Whereas in Berlin for me the social aspect of music was always very much going out and partying. That’s where you meet people, but making music was something everyone does at home on their own. So the internet stopped being the main place to exchange everything, which is cool. I’m glad it became a bit more physical in a way.

Honestly, it feels really good because I think the numbers thing can make you really insecure. Because there’s so many factors that affect how these numbers look, you know? It might be like the time of day that you post something or whatever, so what’s really good about real-life shows is that people pulled up and they clearly have a very immediate reaction to the music so it’s definitely reassuring.

Probably around like 16, 17 or something. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy doing that, it was more that the reality of how that would look is so different. It’s not like violin where you can just be in a big orchestra. Classical guitar is a quite particular thing and that world felt very conservative. It almost reminded me of sports, where people train 10 hours a day and then the rest of their interest is actually super basic. It’s almost like they’re not into art. It just doesn’t feel like there’s a larger interest in culture. It’s more, just sort of athletic, getting really good at doing this one thing.

Jamie Irrepressible: There were tracks that were part of the same world and message that I wanted to add to the record and some of the tracks on the initial digital release I wanted to improve on before it was set onto CD and could no longer be altered.

There’s always a sense of catharsis or raw emotion as the focus of my songwriting and then I orchestrate what I call a landscape around this that holds the emotion of the words and the meaning of the song.

It’s about humanity as the resounding morality. Far too many supposed moralities lack humanity or a true sense of compassion and care.

I think we lose sight of this often in the interests of being the same, fitting in, or feeling like we belong, rather than celebrating what makes us different. Life would be very dull if we were all just the same. So, it’s about owning this difference, how it’s your nature, and how you accept that the next person is different to you.

I feel we live in a time of so much corporate and manufactured music. It’s nice to reach out and do something as an indie band that connects a sense of community beyond what we are constantly pushed from mainly American corporations through their social media platforms.

The desire to put into music desire. To make a record about being homosexual with a focus on the sexual. The part we often shield from the straight world out of shame. But that is so much the thrust of most straight music. It’s record by and for the queer community. My earlier work though always openly homosexual was always focused on the beauty and love of being in love with other men.

I think for me simply there’s a chance to make a record like this and it be heard. Whereas it would have had to be more coded in the past, more disguised.

My aim is to be part of the message. To be part of the story and the personal story of queer people. In the past to make music that inspires greater connection and appreciation of the naturalness of queer sexuality but with this record it’s like a space away to be fully ourselves.

For me genre is just a means to express different emotions. On this record I use grunge/rock/punk distorted guitars as they express the sexual and visceral so well for me. On earlier records I used orchestral instrumentation to create the space for intense internal emotion and sorrow. I’m very interested in different genre’s currently to express other spaces that hold different senses of time space, lineage, and emotion. I will always be Irrepressible in my way of working with music.

I love allowing other visual artists to collaborate and take the music into film, or a photograph, or design an outfit that fits the sonic. For me that’s what is so great about pop music. It’s where fashion, art, and music collide.

In an early collaboration with another dance artist, I started to explore singing in falsetto rather than head voice which sits much better in electronica. I used to sing more often in head voice / countertenor with guitar and classical music as it loud and powerful, but the soft falsetto voice works best in electronic close mic music. Royksopp were and are the wind beneath my wings in the studio. They are respectful, kind, and enthusiastic – it was pure joy to work with them, a high even. They are wizards with the sound and craft of electronic music. With Tinlicker we have only worked online. They send me instrumentals which I compose lyrics and melodies over. Again, I adore their work and the collabs we made together.

Empowered and full of joy! We’re very excited about the shows at EarTH tonight (Friday 29^th August) and in Manchester on Sunday (31st August.)

That’s how I am inside. These sounds, these frequencies and all this vibration that’s what goes on inside of myself. When I’m asleep and I’m dreaming it’s always like these intense scenes and these spiritual situations.

I get a lot of calmness from my music. Like with meditation, I’m very present and there’s no thinking.

I am always already visualizing situations before, so when they happen, I’m very comfortable in them. This is when my brain goes quiet. When it happens it’s just like I am in control, it’s like lucid dreaming.

I came from a very religious background, we used to read the Bible back-to-back. I reached a point in my life whereby I had more questions than I could get answers for, and it was better to live life and have these experiences through music, instead of just being told how life should be.

We started doing this kind of music to just do something we love. And no one understood it, everyone was telling us not to do, this is not good for you, you’re getting lost, you’re going into the darkness. But it was important to me. So you’d rather do it because at the end of the day, you only have one life and you will be alone in the last minute. So why not just live for you.

I just believe we are one. I believe we should help each other out and be kind to each other because it’s just been getting darker and darker through the ages. I think we should start believing once again in mankind and humans bro.

In our music, in the shows it’s all about oneness, equality, coming together and appreciating each other across all these different dynamic backgrounds and all these places where we’ve all come from. Everything that is wrong was indoctrinated to us, it was taught, people came here pure. At the end of the day, we should always come back to being together as one and enjoying the energy and the vibration.

I believe whatever you put out comes back to you and I’ve seen it in my lyrics: I would write some lyrics and then they would happen to me in real life, so I’m very careful with what I put in the music. If you go through the lyrics and if you see the videos and the message behind it, it’s very encouraging and uplifting music, honestly.

No, I don’t feel anger at all. I feel more of empowerment and inspiration, like motivated. It puts me at an advantage that I don’t have any advantage. I have a different mindset. I’m very hungry, ambitious, and aggressive.

Yes, I have many times, being an entrepreneur and also a musician at the same time running a label, making music, you know, there’s a lot of challenges. I had lots of people saying “quit, go back home, give up, you know, that’s it, man, it’s never gonna work”.

But I always told myself I’ve come so far. It’s too late now, we are in too deep. At some point, you just realize that you’ve worked so hard, and you’ve sacrificed so much. I came to respecting that and celebrating the wins along the way.

My new EP and my new performances are an extension of my first album’s themes of the Mau Mau and how they went through the tough, tough colonial times when they were fighting against the oppressors.

We are exploring narratives of abuse, control, displacement, betrayal, loss of land, loss of freedom, and loss of culture. Colonization brought so much loss.

We are also trying to address themes of reclamation, hope, resistance, and renewal. Renewal is a powerful response to the inequalities that happened, all the oppression and systemic violence that had occurred.

We are doing an audio-visual show with NMR CC that’s going to be to be merged with the music, which is going to create a whole universal world that people can travel into, experiencing this message we have and understanding it as a warning.

Its a cautionary tale of what can happen if we don’t stand for our things and our culture, how we can get eroded and how we should always protect and achieve total control of what we have lost, so the future generations can also enjoy it.

Audrey Hobert: I’m so happy right now. I really am. It’s funny because when Ricky and I were making it, it was so much fun to do. The thought that it was also going to be equally exciting to finally get to talk about it never came up. I don’t know, I just thought nothing could be more fun than making it, but now that I’m getting to talk about it and do stuff like this, I’m like, oh, it’s all very fun. 

I mean, I’ll definitely play shows. I have things I would like to do in terms of TV and like certain performances – a wish list. But yeah, definitely I’m going to put on concerts and have fun in that way.

I decided that I would be doing my own project after I wrote “Sex and the City”, which took a full week. Back then, there was not a record label really in the conversation. It was more like, I had finished writing this song, then sought out Ricky, asked if he would make it with me. And two months later is when I started to feel, I guess, more pressure. I thought it was just making an EP, but when I started to get record label attention, I knew that it was in my best interest to make an album. But still, I just was really having fun the entire time.

Yeah. I didn’t think there would be a world in which I wasn’t doing something creative, but I have a lot of interests. I really like to edit. I like to direct. I like to write. I like to sing. I like to dance. I like so many things. And the fact that I’m actually getting to do all of it in this career is, it’s like, I keep saying it, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had, for sure. Because I’ve had other more normal jobs and this is by far, I mean, it’s crazy.

Yes, I shot it entirely at home! I have four music videos in my contract. We had done the “Sue me” music video, the “Bowling Alley” music video and then lastly the “Thirst Trap” music video. I still wanted to do something for “Wet Hair”. So I just filmed for a few weeks randomly if I was in the mood and then I would sort of edit it as I went. And it was actually really fun to do. 

I like to challenge myself to do something different each time. Even though I definitely feel like I have a style that I like and an identity. It’s interesting for me to try and change things up for the songs I’m making videos for.

But yeah, usually there are certain songs on the album that I will kind of naturally have ideas for videos. And then, for instance, the video that we just shot, and I’m editing right now, is for “Thirst Trap”. And that was a song that I didn’t naturally have an idea for a video, but I knew it was going to be the album single.

So I would walk around my neighborhood and listen to the song and just try and see things. And now it’s turned out to be totally different from the others.

My song “Sex in the City” is sonically a little slower. When Ricky and I were making it, we called it our Stadium Somber, you know, there’s not a dark tone to it and it’s not really sad either. And I have a hard time writing a sad song because I don’t want to sit in the feeling of self pity for too long. I need to find a way to make it okay for the protagonist or make it all make sense. So that would be probably the one that I would classify as more like that, but it’s not really sad and there’s a lot of jokes in it and I need to be making myself laugh as I write a song or else I get bored.

I mean, I feel like “Sex in the City” is one that so many people feel. But then also “Girls”, and I wouldn’t mind living in “Friends” or “The Office”. I love television, and New York!

I studied screenwriting for four years. But I also think some people are born with like a natural sense for story, and I think I am one of those people. Then also to getting to study it for four years, you just learn so much, not just by like being in a classroom and being taught, but by being given what to read and what to watch. I’m very interested in story and kind of all the millions of ways you can tell an amazing story. So I think it’s just naturally in me.

It depends. I mean, if I’m really like hunkering down and working on a song, I’m usually at my desk in my house. And I’ll just stay there. But I also get ideas a lot out in public. So, I wrote a lot of “Sue me” at a coffee shop. When I was still living near the beach, and I was stuck on something, I would go walk for miles along the beach and just listen to the instrumental in my headphones and write on my notes app. Or I write in my car a lot. I’m kind of like writing songs everywhere I go.

Yeah, it was definitely a shift where I had only ever written with Gracie. And then when her and I wrapped up writing songs for her album, she went on to promote it and put it out, and I still had the urge to write. So I just tried doing it by myself and also writing with people, both are so fun.

And I’ve historically written alone when it comes to scripts and stuff, even though I do love to collaborate. And what was also so great about the arrangement with Ricky was that he totally respected that I needed to go home to write and then I would come back and bring him a song. And then the fun collaborative part was making it with him and building the instrumental. I got both sides of the coin, which was the best part. 

I mean, I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for Gracie. I had not written a song before her. And it was such fun with her, that it made me want to keep doing it. So I will always be indebted to her.

And from Ricky … The entire time we were making the album, the thought would cross my mind multiple times a day: “I don’t think anything more special has ever happened to anybody.” It just was that kind of connection that I had with him. And we would just laugh all day. But also, his depth was as deep as mine. And we could just have interesting conversations, but then not talk at all.

And I would not have been able to do this with anybody else. He became one of my best friends, too. I mean, we barely knew each other when we started. And now he is like family, and just one of the most special, special people to me. And the whole thing, even when it was hard work, still every day, I was so excited to see him and to work with him.

I can’t believe that there’s a world in which people make an entire body of work with one other person and don’t feel that way about them. It’s because it’s so intimate. It’s such intense work sometimes, but it also should be really light hearted and fun.

I’m always thinking about young people and particularly maybe a young person who is like having a hard time at school or not quite sure who they are or maybe they know who they are, but there is something about the current state of their life that makes them feel like they need to be different. I feel like I’ve gone through that and have throughout my youth sort of felt like I maybe need to dull myself down sometimes or not show so much interest in something because it might be embarrassing. And it’s really a waste of energy to feel that way. The faster you accept exactly who you are, the more fun I think you have in general.

Well, I love theater. And so I am really, really hopeful that I can put on a show in the future that feels kind of theatrical.

And I just really enjoy the suspension of disbelief that happens when you walk into a theater, and kind of the attention that that medium demands of an audience member. I’m gonna play a lot of shows in my life. And the more successful I am, the more money I’ll have to put on the dream show I want.

But in the meantime, I think it’s important that I’m having fun on stage, and I’m feeling free to be myself.