It’s taken him six years to get his album together, largely because he kind of feels bad about releasing one in the first place…
It’s such an interesting time because you can share your music with the world all the time through the blogs, so it’s kind of hard to motivate yourself to make a disc and limit yourself to 12 or 13 songs that serious music critics can then put down as if it’s the worst thing ever in the history of [rude word for testicles]. Ha ha! It’s a very hard thing, because when you get people to pay for something, they have an opinion, but if you give it to them for free, they’re happy. ‘Oh, it’s free! This is actually amazing!’ Y’know? When you go over to somebody’s place to eat, you never complain, but when you go to a restaurant you’re like, ‘This thing’s overcooked – you’ve gotta get it right because I’m paying for this s**t!’
There’s a good reason his tunes tend toward the exploratory…
My father named me after Captain Beefheart. So imagine how I grew up. My dad was a big avant-garde music listener. My brother’s also in music, and he really went off in that direction, and I’m stuck somewhere in the Twilight Zone! But I’m making a living, and this is the real world. There’s not somebody coming to my door every week giving me a cheque because I’m such a good guy. I have certain dreams, and I like to travel the world and meet new people and work with other people.
Not that he’s any kind of sellout, you understand…
If I really wanted to sell out, I would have done something completely different. I’d have let the love take over, and just written about that! I was No.1 a couple of times last year, and no one knew who the hell I was. It’s come from the people – they’re not forced to listen to it or to download it.
He certainly knows what he expects from himself…
I don’t make songs; I make tracks that are targeted to destroy the dancefloor. You take a track like ‘Hooligans’, or the collaboration I did with Sidney Samson, or the one that’s coming up with Diplo: it has one goal, and that’s to entertain people on a dancefloor and to get their hands in the air and go mental. You don’t necessarily want to listen to it when your parents are coming by. Although thinking about it, it might be a good way to get them out of the house.
Eddy Lawrence. Life is a Festival is released this month on Sony records.
