Corrine Bailey Rae sat down with NME to discuss new album 'Black Rainbows', Chicago's Stony Island Arts Bank, Ritt Momney’s cover of ‘Put Your Records On’ and the most unexpected place she's heard her music
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MusicTranscript
00:00 I think sometimes people feel, oh well the label have said I should work with this guy,
00:04 he's had all this success and he's a really cool producer and a 35 year old bringing their
00:09 perspective to your thing, it's different. So I'd rather hear a song that's a bit of a mess,
00:14 maybe it's a bit rambling, maybe the chorus doesn't hit as hard as it's meant to,
00:18 but it's really that girl's real thoughts when she really woke up in the morning.
00:29 Hi I'm Nick and I'm joined by Corinne Bailey-Ray for the latest in NME's In Conversation series.
00:34 How's it going today? Good yeah really well, how are you? Yeah good thank you.
00:38 What's on the cards for after the interview? After this interview I'm recording a podcast
00:43 and then I'm going over to Radio 4 to perform on Front Row. I'm playing two new songs from
00:48 my record that I've never played live before so yeah I'm looking forward to that. Well the album
00:54 Black Rainbows came about from this like transformative visit you had to the Stony
00:59 Island Arts Bank in Chicago. How did you find out about the Arts Bank and what was so kind of
01:06 amazing to you when you got there? I found out about it because I was following a friend's
01:11 Pinterest and she used her Pinterest like a magazine so she has this one board it's called
01:15 Art Creatives and their Workplaces or something and I saw this photograph of this visual artist,
01:20 this black artist, this contemporary artist, staring out of the frame and behind him was
01:27 a sign for Harold's Chicken Shop, a chef running after a chicken with a meat cleaver. In front of
01:34 him was this shaggy goat that he'd made and a set of legs that were these spindles and it was going
01:39 round on this circular train track and there was a pile of bricks and he was just looking at the
01:45 picture like yeah this is my this is my shit you know like I he just had so much sort of confidence
01:53 and belief in this strange work and I thought you know I was looking at it I thought I don't know
01:58 that much about contemporary art I haven't seen a black man presenting himself in this way in this
02:03 context and I found it was represented by a white cube and then I just started digging he's called
02:08 Siesta Gates and I found out about the work he's doing in the south side of Chicago which is this
02:13 regenerative work, buying buildings and and restoring them and I saw that he had bought this
02:19 bank he'd saved it from demolition and he bought it for several dollars from the government and
02:26 then raised several millions of dollars through selling his own own art to transform it and I
02:32 thought I really want to go to this bank and see what's in there I knew that it housed all the
02:36 books from the Johnson Publishing Library and the Johnsons had published Ebony Magazine and Jet
02:42 Magazine and Negro Digest so it was these thousands you know tens of thousands of black books about
02:49 black literature I knew that it had all these problematic objects from America's past I knew
02:54 they had all of Frankie Knuckles record collection and so I just thought I want to get to this
02:59 building and then when I was on tour in Chicago I'd mentioned to someone that I wish you know
03:03 I wish I could meet him and he ended up coming to the show being invited to the show and afterwards
03:09 I sprung out my dressing room and there he was and we just had this big connection and I was just so
03:14 excited to talk to him I was like I love what you're doing on the south side I really like your work
03:18 you know he is a choir director he has a a band called the Black Monks of Mississippi they can
03:24 they're in art music and I just was intrigued about this person and their ideas and I said to
03:30 him I really want to see the bank but we're leaving town tomorrow you know we have to go at 9am to get
03:35 somewhere else and he said I have to leave early too because I'm going to President Obama's 50th
03:40 birthday so I was like oh this is who this guy is like he he moves in these worlds so we met up at
03:47 the bank and it was about seven o'clock in the morning and the south side of Chicago as you
03:53 probably know is a I think they call it a kind of underserved community at this point so the bank
04:00 used to be a thriving middle-class black area and over time this area has changed and there's a lot
04:06 of mental health problems there's a lot of poverty there's gun violence so that's what the neighborhood
04:15 is and then at the center of this neighborhood is this huge gothic bank that was built in 1923
04:21 it really is so it's arresting I mean Chicago architecturally is really fascinating place but
04:27 to be outside this bank and then we're just knocking on the door waiting to get in and
04:32 there was all this kind of chaos around us and when we eventually went in just to be in a place
04:37 that was a kind of cathedral to black art and it was just so rich and I think as someone who's been
04:43 interested in black history and art and literature and politics and all those things and done my own
04:51 research here you know and bought books and read to just be in the kind of volume of information
04:59 was really overwhelming to me and then to look in photograph books and see faces staring out I felt
05:06 like all these objects were talking to me and when I left all I could think about was you know these
05:13 different sculptures and these different objects and I just wanted to get back and also I found
05:18 myself just kind of scribbling down things about them or that their story was coming through and I
05:24 just write it down or or yeah mostly it was what I was writing writing it down and I thought yeah
05:30 something there's something about this building and these subjects I want to interact with and
05:35 and give voice to those stories. When did you realize that this was the basis of an album this
05:41 was going to inspire music? I think really quickly you know I see Aster showed me around and to me he
05:46 was like Willy Wonka and I was like Charlie from the Chocolate Factory because it's not just the
05:51 bank you know I got to see around his workshop where he works and see where he makes these huge
05:56 ceramic pots and where he makes his paintings out of the fire hoses that were used on the civil
06:01 rights protesters that the government and then just like tossing into skips and he would save
06:06 them and say this is this is a this is part of history and he makes beautiful pictures of with
06:11 them that are almost like flags and so to sort of see him working and to be around the events that
06:18 were happening in the Arts Bank like dance parties and there's prayer meetings there was people
06:25 making art music where they'd be walking around and going around objects in a room and I would be
06:31 part of these workshops you know so I just felt like it felt like the centre of the world it still
06:36 feels like the centre of the world to me for the things that I am interested in so when I left well
06:41 on that day Fiasco said oh you should come and do a show here and I think when he said that I thought
06:45 I thought of the music I've made to this point at this moment or to that moment and I thought
06:50 no I don't feel like it's playing what I've already done I feel like it's a new this is a
06:54 new space a new vessel vessel to do a new thing and I thought yeah I think I'm right I think I'm
07:00 writing about this place and about these objects. Is it the case that most of the songs on the album
07:07 are inspired by like individual objects or some of them were inspired by like a collection or
07:12 the overall feel of the place? They're all inspired by the objects and the events in the Arts Bank so
07:18 one of the songs is called Put It Down and that that comes out of this event that was held at the
07:26 Arts Bank where this DJ called Dwayne Powell was playing and he was playing all these Frankie
07:29 Nichols records but the idea is that you go to this party and you write down your woes you write
07:36 down the things that are ailing you and you fold them up and this piece of paper and then you put
07:40 them in this giant pot that theatre's made so everyone puts their things in and then everyone
07:45 just comes and sort of dances out their you know dances out their woes and the building is interested
07:51 where it's sited because it's attracting the hip young sort of black art students and and dancers
07:58 and just art people and cool people and it also attracts the people who live nearby so when I
08:05 went there it was just before Christmas and it was cold you know I remember this one lady being
08:09 there and she had like five jackets on because she obviously didn't have one really good winter jacket
08:16 um so I remember as she's dancing she would just like zip off a layer and throw it down
08:21 they should be dancing like another layer and another layer and hearing this one guy having
08:25 this really intense like dance battle and then he would come into my face and I'd be just like in
08:30 his face and I didn't understand what was happening between them or between us and I love that about
08:35 dance that you don't have to put language and you know thought into it so I remember just being in
08:42 it and and looking around and seeing all the faces and you all just feel like one thing don't you
08:47 when you're at something like that and then all these woes get set fire to and the process worked
08:55 you know the thing that I put down really did lift off you know lift away from me a thing that had been
09:01 weighing heavily on me for a long time so the song is called put put it down you know
09:06 when I've gathered up all our words I put them down I make a burn of all my words and throw them down
09:11 and um you know it's just too much inside I gotta dance it out and and I really wanted to
09:16 make something that kind of reflected that so the whole record started as a side project.
09:24 Yeah I saw that like at what point did you why did you feel like it was a side project to start
09:28 with and then at what point do you think hang on this isn't a side project? I thought it was a side
09:32 project because I thought I want to do something that's really different to anything I've done
09:36 before and I don't want to feel any of the weight of the expectations in relation to what I've done
09:43 before so I don't want to think oh would someone who likes put your records on also like this or
09:47 would someone who likes like a start also like this so I thought let me just make this as a in
09:51 my head it was like a weird side project and that's how I pitched it to people I worked with
09:56 I said I just want to do this thing it won't take me long but it's become my obsession you know
10:00 seven years later and so I really thought like this is something different and then because of
10:06 that I felt like I was able to respond to the objects without thinking about the style so you
10:12 know put it down came out of this big electronic jam that um Stephen Brown and Mikey Wilson had
10:19 um at that time I was pregnant and and Steve was working on this project and he said you should go
10:25 up to the studio you know there's so much happening and there's all these weird sounds and
10:29 I remember saying you know I'm just about to have a baby I really just don't want to do any work
10:33 right now but the studio's above our house so so I would be in the bath and I would just hear
10:39 through the ceiling like and I just think I'm really intrigued so when everyone would go or
10:46 like go home or go to bed I would go upstairs the studio you know and put my headphones on
10:51 yeah I'm so into this and get my mic and then just start singing out the things in my head
10:56 so I think because I thought it's a side project I wasn't thinking where's the verse where's the
11:00 chorus where's the structure I felt like I was just able to kind of bring it as a as a stream
11:06 and that made me feel really free and I found that there was nothing in the way whereas I think the
11:13 projects I did before this I was so aware of the massive budget the pressure the fact that I had
11:20 um you know I'd had my first record was really successful and my second record I got this
11:25 Mercury nomination and the third record I felt there's a lot of pressure from the label to
11:30 be like right you've got to there's got to be the radio smash you know and and I felt like I was
11:35 policing my own ideas a lot of the time to be like should I even finish this if it doesn't
11:40 sound like a massive radio smash and I think that's the most horrible thing to do as a songwriter so
11:45 I thought with this it was I had none of those thoughts I just was thinking this is my weird
11:50 side project about my obsessive thing about this building in Chicago about Black Archives so
11:55 nothing was off limits at all you know so I could do that or I could do a punk song in response to
12:02 this very cool like 50s photograph I saw of Audrey Smoltz winning a beauty competition and then hang
12:08 off the back of a fire truck and it was this cheesecake picture but I used to see a lot of
12:14 photographs like that when I was in my indie band you know they'd be kind of reused as photos for
12:20 like 90s um you know Riot Grrrl posters or whatever so when I saw this great 50s photo I instantly
12:27 thought of just like shreddy guitar punk so I felt with it I didn't have to stay in one particular
12:36 world or style you know there's a piano ballad on the record where I feel like I'm singing almost
12:42 in this operatic style that so I felt just very free in terms of how can I use my voice how can
12:48 write what the music sounds like because I thought imagine I was just starting from here and I felt
12:56 that thing with the Arts Bank of there was a lot of bravery and newness and pushing out the
13:03 boundaries and so it was like a rebirth of sorts walking to that place and experiencing those
13:09 objects. You mentioned uh New York Transit Queen which is yeah it's like a kind of punky Riot Grrrl
13:14 song for you musically did that feel a bit like a full circle moment because as you mentioned you
13:18 started out in a punky band called Helen so did it feel like it might not be what people associate
13:23 with you but for you actually is something you've done before? Yeah it felt really really familiar
13:27 to me and I think that's why it came about I just saw the competition is called New York um Miss
13:33 Transit it's called Transit Queen so I just kind of put it together it's called she was Miss New
13:38 York Transit and I just thought that's just a title right I was like the New York Transit Queen
13:43 so then I just heard it in my head you know just instantly was that way and just being able to
13:50 put on my guitar and we have these there's this amp that you can get that's built into the size of a
13:56 cigarette box so I had these like camel cigarette box and we put it in and it was just like so fuzzed
14:02 and shredded and I just felt like that song kind of wrote itself and then another song the record
14:07 Erasure is the same where I felt it was a visceral response to the to the different erasures that I
14:16 saw in the the Ed Williams collection which is this object you know the problematic objects where
14:21 I'd see black women's femininity sort of wiped away or black childhood replaced by a different
14:29 story you know black children not being seen as children but be seen more as adults maybe being
14:34 sexualized maybe being put in in postcards where there were two three-year-olds but they're almost
14:40 in a uh and love and love rival situation or there's violence or the children are shown as
14:46 criminals and there were so many postcards of children being chased by alligators or or fed
14:54 dropped to alligators they're sort of cartoons and and that to me was so it was sort of shocking on
15:02 two levels one one level was that of course we know that these values and views were held about
15:10 about black people about black children you know you think of children as such an easy target and
15:15 and but also the way that they were on these postcards was really startling you know when
15:20 you think of a postcard you think someone's got to design it someone's got to colour it
15:25 someone's got to um sell it someone's got to pitch it to all these shops the shops have got to take
15:31 it people got to buy them people the post person's got to deliver them you know think of all the
15:36 black postal workers that would have to then you know put these postcards of of children in these
15:44 compromised situations or even of lynchings you know just put a few people's doors and then because
15:49 these are real historic objects looking on the other side to see what people had written on
15:54 these postcards was surprising to me because i imagined the written side would be full of all
16:00 this racial hatred and would refer to what was on the front facing side but they were it was like a
16:06 complete disconnect between the two things so you'd see a really troubling postcard and on the
16:13 other side it would say dear Ma and Pa I arrived in Georgia safely the smell of the peaches through
16:20 the train blah blah you know why don't kiss the dog for me and I think that's it's so strange that
16:26 the on this side the front face side is shocking to us but it was so normal to them that they didn't
16:33 even need to refer to it that was just the the air they were breathing or the water they were
16:38 swimming in so as much as you see all these problematic objects together you know the
16:43 mammy jars and the lynching postcards and the and the derogatory cartoons of grotesque figures of
16:52 you know it's a black person through a circus mirror or through a kind of a white imagination
16:59 of othering you see those postcards you see all those things and first you think all of this
17:05 should surely just go on a bonfire somewhere but of course if you were to do that you would you
17:10 would wipe out all this complicated and important history and you would wipe out all this evidence
17:18 you know I sometimes think when we look back on history you might say was it that bad was it that
17:23 widespread perhaps only in these states perhaps it was only in the south perhaps it was only
17:28 die hard racist but to really look and see the this thinking was so normal you know there was
17:36 one object I found that was um it was a little boy sitting on a potty and I thought this is
17:44 really interesting and you know I'm a mother so that the boy's mouth is open like he's crying you
17:50 know so it looks like maybe he's having trouble on the potty or something but it's quite a
17:55 intricately rendered you know metal sculpture statue and then when you pick up the boy the
18:02 potty stays behind and I thought what is this and I looked around some more objects in the
18:07 arts bank and realised it was an ashtray so this would be just a you know it's widely produced
18:12 it's made in Chicago you'd have this ashtray and you could put out the cigarette either straight
18:18 into the boy's open mouth or you put it out on the teeth of the boy and then put and I just thought
18:24 what is it what is this world that we are made you know that we've descended from we've come through
18:30 where these objects are made to make people laugh but they are the holders of so much pain
18:37 but they're not hidden away like Nazi insignia plates in a cabin you know this would be taken
18:43 out as a party and you would offer it round and just the sort of normality of of black suffering
18:50 and pain how it was funny I thought yeah it's really important that these objects still exist
18:56 and I think you know then you can you can study them to such a great degree you know how where
19:01 they're manufactured how many were sold all of these things are ephemeral most of the ones that
19:05 were made are in the bin but these have survived and so that song erasure was a response to
19:12 all these different children's innocences being sort of wiped out at the same time at the arts
19:20 bank there's the Tamir Rice pavilion and Tamir Rice was shot by the police a young child who
19:25 they had a toy gun on them and someone from the park called and said there's a child here
19:32 it's probably a toy gun but you should come and check it out and the police came
19:36 the gun the toy wasn't even in sight but the police instantly shot this person who was a
19:42 child Tamir Rice and the pavilion in where they died that's been re-set up just next to the arts
19:50 bank as a city want to tear it down so I thought well there's a link here between 150 years of
19:57 tat and stuff which wipes out black children's childhood and police officers seeing a 15 year
20:06 old but thinking it's they're an adult seeing someone playing with a toy and thinking they're
20:11 a threat you know the so all these little things they add up to they have a real effect in the
20:18 world and so yeah in that song there's a there's a lot of blind rage in that song not all the songs
20:23 are ragey but that one I guess that one sort of carries that weight other songs are more joyful
20:31 other songs are more um in amazement at the resilience of people. At what point did you
20:37 think I think the album's kind of finished now because it sounds as if it could have been a
20:41 triple could it could have gone on? Yeah well actually I have actually made two records so
20:46 with it this second one is not finished the second one is not finished and I just thought
20:51 you know you should just put at least 10 of the songs out because I don't want to
20:54 make it take so long but it is as you can see is my obsession and I feel like I've just got
21:01 this freedom to make music about things that matter to me of course I love love songs of
21:06 course I like writing about my own experience and that's what I've done historically and I think
21:12 something in me thought how do you write about other things in the world and I've heard other
21:17 people write about them in a way that's kind of a polemical or political to the point where
21:23 I think it can it can close a door like you sometimes you know you're pushing on a door
21:28 that's uh that's meant to be pulled and I felt like with this record I wanted to make something
21:34 that was my own way of engaging with these things and I think I always lead from my heart you know
21:40 so the emotions were the most important thing and the stories kind of pulled their way into the
21:47 into these different emotions but I think there are lots of stories in there that are told in a
21:52 particular way where where we can all you know relate to them they're just human stories stories
21:58 about a mother missing her children or stories about falling in love and stories about survival
22:04 that they're human stories as much as you know longing for your partner or other things I might
22:11 have written about before. Do you feel like a very different artist than you were seven years ago when
22:16 you began this project? Um I definitely feel yeah I do feel more confident I guess in listening to
22:23 my own sort of voice um music making voice and that I guess that's been a whole process you
22:28 know my first three records were with a major label and by the time I'd finished this I did
22:33 have one kind of major label conversation and it felt like going backwards and I felt it and then
22:40 I had this great conversation with Serti Tagg as this independent label I spoke to the head of the
22:44 company and you know the guy looks like he's in the Grateful Dead and I just I liked him I liked
22:50 him and I thought he understands this and I also thought it was really good to talk face to face
22:56 with someone who's at the absolute top of the tree because at a label my experience has been like you
23:02 really connect with someone and then they leave or get fired or and then you get someone else who's
23:08 like I don't know what to do with you and you can really tell you know and I've always felt you know
23:13 I have this mixture it's like I love soul music I grew up around it but then I was in this indie
23:19 band called Helen and then when I made my first album it was sort of a reaction to having to
23:25 scream in clubs because people couldn't really hear I was suddenly in headphones for the first
23:29 time and a microphone I was like oh you can be really intimate I'd started working this jazz
23:33 club and the record is more soulful and then my second record was like in response to that in a way
23:38 saying I have all these guitar songs as well so I always feel like
23:42 I haven't been able to be in one box and that's been important to me and I feel even more so now
23:50 that you know the record's called Black Rainbows it's a spectrum you know it's broad and and I feel
23:56 like in terms of subject matter and also in terms of how it comes out of me I want it to be able to
24:01 show or just naturally all these different musics have come out but they're all the same music to
24:08 me but they have different names. Because your debut album was so successful like I think it's
24:13 sold a million in the UK have there been times where you felt like a particular pressure to kind
24:18 of a did you feel the pressure to repeat it that's what people wanted? I didn't feel it but I feel
24:22 like perhaps the people that I was in a team with I think they would have been really happy
24:29 to have that happen again and I think you know that's fair enough is it's called the music
24:35 business but that's not the part of it that I am so into and I think I have to just follow the
24:41 thing that feels truthful to me and so this has been really freeing this project to just
24:46 let let allow what's in to to come out. What this is cheesy but what advice would you give to like
24:52 the 18 19 year old you who was in Helen 25 years ago just starting out? What advice would give to
24:59 myself I mean I always feel that I would never go back and change anything on my own journey
25:04 because it's led me to here you know see it was that butterfly effect sort of thing so I feel like
25:08 everything worked out and I was in a good spot but to any young people now I the most exciting
25:14 thing for me is to hear a song that's written actually written by an 18 year old or actually
25:20 written by a 22 year old you know I think sometimes people feel oh well the label have said I should
25:26 work with this guy he's had all this success and he's a really cool producer and a 35 year old
25:31 bringing their perspective to your thing it's different so I'd rather hear a song that's a bit
25:36 of a mess maybe it's a bit rambling maybe the chorus doesn't hit as hard as it's meant to but
25:41 it's really that girl's real thoughts when she really woke up in the morning that's so fascinating
25:47 to me I think there's so much more room in music for um more weirdness and more individuality and
25:54 you know I grew up through when I was a kid it was the 80s and it was just so there was so much
25:58 diversity and I feel now there's so much emphasis on um you know trying to make it really like bang
26:06 I think that I guess definitely in pop music you can feel like the the boundaries have sort of like
26:12 shrunk in a little bit and so I think it's really important for young people to say what they want
26:17 to say in their own way and do more themselves you know there's so much you can do with production
26:22 now you can make a record on your phone now and so many people do and those are records that I
26:26 think they're the most exciting you know the ones that are a bit like DIY and sort of sound like
26:31 they're falling apart they're they're records that would be more pulled too. They don't necessarily
26:36 have to like adhere to a certain structure or feel like they're written with TikTok or the
26:41 radio in mind. Yeah yeah I mean yeah TikTok's a really big one now I've spoke to producers where
26:46 they say the label will say can you work with this new artist and they're like be sure sure
26:50 and then they say can you make us 10 TikToks like don't make don't write full songs with them
26:56 just write 10 TikToks with them and if any of them start to react then go back and like fill in the
27:02 song. So interesting. Yeah it's a way to work right it's like fishing but it's so it's a really
27:10 different way than I know how to do it no that's what I can say about it yeah. How did you feel a
27:17 few years ago when uh Rip Mominey's cover of Put Your Records On Because that actually took off
27:21 on TikTok and then became a huge mainstream hit. Yeah it did and I. Was that kind of weird for
27:26 you to process? It wasn't weird at all because I was speaking to that guy you know I thought he
27:29 was really brilliant and you know he's called Rip Mominey because he's got this Mormon background
27:33 and I have this you know my first husband which family were Mormon so I felt like I had a little
27:38 insight into it you know saying I'm working at home in my basement all my friends have gone off
27:43 on a mission and I didn't choose to and I thought that's a big moment in a young person's life who's
27:47 being brought up in a in a religion and sort of chooses to turn that way off and everyone else
27:54 chooses to go this way so yeah I liked him and I liked his vibe we talked on live you know because
27:59 it's lockdown and like we talked on the zooms and I really I really liked the song and I liked the
28:05 the place in the chorus where it kind of took off and I only heard about it at first because
28:09 some 12 year olds in my street were like oh we heard your song on this one I thought you know
28:14 I was like I don't think that's the original version and then but yeah I liked it and then
28:18 there was this whole like backlash um on the on the internet sort of saying he's this white man
28:25 and if he's covering the song you know this is he's taking it away from of blackness and and
28:31 then I had to sort of step in and say this song you know the song the song's for everyone you know
28:37 and I think I think it's great when you write a song you're out of control of it then you don't
28:42 know how people are going to react to it and you know in the US there's definitely a a thing
28:48 focusing on the lyric you know gotta love you the afro hairdo there's like a whole natural hair
28:53 movement that's like that song is part of there's an hour kind of you know pride but also I think
29:01 that the song is for is for anyone and I wanted to say no it's it's great when people cover your
29:08 songs because you know that that has a benefit to you as well so I was really happy that that
29:13 turned out and I like the video and everything it's cool. Where's the most unexpected place you've
29:18 heard one of your songs? I haven't been the one who's heard it but it's when people come up to
29:23 me and say you know I gave birth to your song like I like I won't say the name of this person but this
29:30 big like tough hip-hop artist was like I walked down the aisle to your you know to like a star
29:35 you know it's like only people you don't expect will be into it I guess and I think I don't know
29:40 I guess that depends on how you think of yourself but um you know someone said oh I was having brain
29:48 surgery and I had to listen to his music and it um you know it helped me feel calm or someone he
29:53 said don't be offended when I have to get to sleep on an airplane I listen to your record
29:58 it's like no I get that because being on an airplane if you really start to think about it
30:03 and I fly a lot it's terrifying so I like the idea that there's a thing that you've that's
30:09 familiar that can calm you or I like when people say they're like a track and it's something like
30:14 buried in an album where you thought I already heard that one or and they say this means a lot
30:19 so yeah it it's um it's just uh if I was saying this in America I'd say it's like it's a blessing
30:27 you know like it is it's something that people come to you and say the thing and it makes you
30:32 feel like you're on the right track. What do you hope people take away from Black Rainbows as you
30:36 discuss the themes as songs and by incredibly challenging objects dark objects but to listen
30:41 to it's very vibrant I don't think it's challenging to listen to in the sense that it's hard work it's
30:45 just it's thought-provoking what do you hope people kind of take away from it? I hope people
30:50 get to hear it I mean I think that's the challenge of making a record but once people hear it yeah I
30:55 have been so happy with different people pulling from different songs and saying I love this you
31:00 know Red Horse is kind of uh it's got this hypnotic beat you know and it's about the pioneers going
31:07 west and what they'll find there or you know Transit Queen there's this this great punk uh
31:12 beauty queen who I interviewed she's in her 80s now and she's had this amazing life and
31:17 I think um I think I would just like people to have an adventure with it you know that's what I
31:23 did that when I found it you know being able to go from Ethiopia and the rock churches to to Chicago
31:30 in the 50s to to um you know the future there's loads of um synth weird uh stuff about I thought
31:39 a lot about time you know what can we do does is time affected by the past or is it affected by the
31:44 future or what is time you know so there's a lot of songs like Earthlings and uh that kind of
31:51 squelchy that make me think of all the great black uh futuristic and afrofuturistic artists you know
31:58 that they were such pioneers and wanted to pay tribute to that idea that we're here but we're
32:04 not really here we're here but we're not really from here and where are we going and so I like
32:09 people to get on in a trip with it you know I find it to be like a trippies of cosmic album that's
32:13 how it worked out for me. Feels like a land without boundaries really do you know what I mean it can
32:17 kind of go anywhere oh yeah well see ya thank you so much for your time thank you
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