I work with really young artists and producers who’ve got so much focus and direction.
It's incredible.
And you can have that.
You can have that when you're 16, 17, 18.
And you can not have that if you're 30, 40, 50.
It has nothing to do with age any of it.
But I didn't really have it.
I needed to get a bit older and have more experience because to have the patience to
work with an artist and listen to them and really understand them and then help them
be them.
Often you need a bit of help to get to that.
I am a musician, but I'm not a very good musician.
I like working with very good musicians.
When you’ve got someone in the room who's got a sort of simpler approach, that’s got
a value in the studio.
When I heard “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” by Sampha something to do with the
fact that the opening lyric of Sampha’s song where he says, “No one knows me like"
"the piano in my mother’s home."
"It’s taught me that I have something some people call a soul.”
It made me think of Curtis Mayfield, from the Curtis Mayfield song, “The Makings of You.”
“These words I've tried to recite, they are close, but not quite.”
It’s something so meaningful and expressive about that.
“The Makings of You” by Curtis Mayfield to me is one of the greatest songs of all time.
I didn’t want to mess with it much.
So I played the pattern on the MPC, with a kick and a snare.
But I realized afterwards, it’s very similar to the song, “Keep It Movin.”
That in itself was referencing something.
The Biz Markie drums are themselves from, “Graham Central Station.”
The chain is endless.
I’m into that.
I’m into those threads.
I collect samples.
I’ve always collected samples and sounds.
I record stuff on my phone.
I think these spoons…
It’s like a pair of spoons sampled through the Kaleidoloop, which has got a sort of distortion.
It adds a bit of a crust to something.
So that, that sounds old.
I put breaths on it.
And I put sandpaper on it.
I also did a session with a musician called Baluji, who is a master sitarist and percussionist.
We tried sitar, which didn’t work on this.
We did use some of his percussion.
He’s playing a bell.
He’s playing something called a naal drum.
We did a pass of live claps.
Small, subtle touches.
Too much of that it would have been too pronounced.
The next step really was to ask Sampha if he wanted to hear it.
'Cause even that is not a given with anyone, and he was up for coming around and hearing it.
He was into it.
We put a bit of piano down.
And MS20 bass, so live analog bass.
I play bass sometimes, but sometimes it’s good when someone who can really play bass
plays bass.
And Sampha is very, very good.
He got on the mic and he basically freestyled for I think 16 minutes.
So this is the kind of stream of consciousness.
This became the pre-chorus.
If you have that level of talent that he has, which I think is the top level, normally you
want to be the center of attention.
And that’s understandable.
And he doesn’t really.
But he’s got a huge amount of natural humility, which coupled with the immense talent makes
him a treasure really.
I got a serious illness in 2013 called Guillain-Barré syndrome.
I had full-body paralysis.
I couldn’t move anything when I was in the hospital.
This turned up in the hospital as a gift from Geoff Barrow, he’s the guy from Portishead.
When I first started to get a bit of movement back in my hands, this is what I started playing
with.
And the physio was looking at it and said, “Oh yeah, we were going to give you something"
"to start exercising your fingers with, but this is better."
"You couldn’t really have something better than that to use.”
This was part of recovering and getting movement back in my hands, so it does have quite a…
That means a lot to me.
Then we did backing vocals.
It’s Beach Boys level really.
Some more piano on the chorus.
It’s about a feeling.
It’s all got a lot of feeling.
I thought, “If I sample that Curtis Mayfield line and Sampha performs on that"
"that would be something.”
I could have been wrong about that because the theory is only a theory, but it was definitely
like, “That’s the theory, so now I’m gonna try and do that.”
And it worked.
It’s a massive sample.
So when we got to the end I thought I'd just let it run.
I feel like that’s the most respectable thing you can do in a way.
This is like a direct tribute to Curtis Mayfield.
Because we used the samples. But I feel this is like
making it as specific as possible in a way that I think might make people
think, “Oh, maybe I should listen to Curtis Mayfield.”