Music > Interviews

LoneLady

20/08/15

Julie Campbell, from Manchester, is LoneLady. She is funk. She is post-punk. She is electronic. She is bleak and she is groovy. She’s a fine artist and a musical artist. You may have heard her new album Hinterland, or seen her on Marc Riley’s All Shook Up iPlayer show. LoneLady’s playing Norwich Arts Centre soon as part of Norwich Sound & Vision and I caught up with Julie to delve a little deeper into her world.

You started making music when you were also getting a Fine Art degree. How does making music differ from fine art as an art form, and what do you get out of each?

I think both things come from the same source; making music is a very visual thing for me, I ‘see’ sounds and spaces, and building up a song can feel like a painterly or sculptural process. I’ve always loved drawings and monoprints and see parallels between this and the distilled, intimate frame of a song, qualities I was trying to achieve, particularly on Nerve Up, which is quite a stark record.

What’s your songwriting process generally?

I work alone in my home studio. The initial ideas are set down very quickly, and the starting point is nearly always playing along to the drum machine. Then I work and work on it, building up the detail like a painting until its finished. Very rarely will anyone else hear it until it’s presented as finished.

You’ve just had a residency at the Barbican, and presented the resulting work alongside film footage and a live performance last month. How did that come about and did you enjoy that opportunity?

It happened due to a meeting with Chris Sharp, the programme director. He listened to my obsessions and eulogies about concrete and I found myself with a residency in a piece of iconic Brutalist architecture! It was a great opportunity and I loved it; it pushed me out of my comfort zone - working in a glass-fronted studio open to the public was something I am very unused to, being naturally something of a recluse really. It was great to have access to other artists and technicians’ expertise, and to be able to present a really considered show with floor-to-ceiling footage and animation was great; it touched on the beginnings of ideas that I’d like to build on in future. Wrangler were our guests that night and I also worked with Daniela Sherer on the animated text featured in the performance, and it was a joy to have both involved.

Who are your influences and inspirations musically?

Mainly post-punk…Gang Of Four, Wire, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division, Pink Industry, early Section 25 and Isolation Ward. I also love funk - Prince, Rufus and Bohannon and a lot of electronic/ dance / techno.

What sort of music did you grown up listening to?

It was chart pop initially, and I think because of this a pop sensibility has remained with me. Then REM was my first obsession, and later on a lot of post-punk from around ‘78-‘83.

You’re heading out on a UK tour this autumn and are also hitting France, Germany and Switzerland. You went out on a similar tour earlier in the year. What did you learn from that tour that you feel might help you on this one?

Mainly practical things - which have a bearing on the impact and vibe of a tour or show. I won’t bore your readers with the minutiae of it but a hell of a lot of work goes on to make shows happen, and each tour is a learning curve of how to improve.  I’ve been very pleased to see that on the whole audiences have been quite animated and dancing; that’s not something I've really had before, and its great to see and feel this. For this record, and for the upcoming autumn tour I’d like to continue keeping the set oriented around ‘the groove’.

Your second album Hinterland has recently been released. Hinterland means ‘the country behind’ in German. Is there a theme to this album of a certain kind of landscape you are familiar with?

Landscapes underpin the whole record; the geographical landscapes of my childhood, where I used to play, dream and wonder as a kid, the crumbling post-industrial mills, canals and wastelands of Manchester in which I live and explore, and also interior and imaginary landscapes, ‘cause I spend a lot of time in my head.

Your first album Nerve Up came out a couple years ago; the final track, Fear No More is a real belter. Can you tell me the story behind that song?

I think Nerve Up channels a lot of the twining, chiming melodies echoing early REM, combined with the spectral production techniques of Martin Hannet. Fear No More was influenced by the film My Own Private Idaho; I was drawn to the large empty badlands evoked in that film. Starkness is an ongoing preoccupation of mine, only now I’ve reframed it more authentically, as in now I’m writing about my own North of England environment.

Hinterland feels more upbeat and less minimal to me than Nerve Up. Was that a natural development for you?

Yes, I wanted more voices to join in. Longer songs over simple grooves enabled me to be more exploratory and fun without being confined to a tight structure, not that I see these songs as loose at all, just more flexible, colourful and spontaneous.

You play loads of instruments on the album and even recorded, mixed and produced it yourself in your own home studio. How did you go about teaching yourself how to do all this?

I play everything except for real drums. I taught myself to play guitar from a book aged around 15 or 16 and took it from there. While at university I bought a 4 track Tascam Portastudio and immediately loved making simple recordings. When I’m writing I’m producing at the same time; these things aren’t separate for me. I’d rather achieve the sound and atmosphere of the song as I’m going along. The mixing and producing part of the process are hugely creative and fun - and hard work - I've spent hundreds of hours alone in my studio working on songs, and the sound of the songs. 

How is it playing live with a band, as opposed to performing on your own as you used to in the early days? 

There’s more energy on stage, which is better both for me and for the audience - it works really well for this album, which is very groove-oriented. I wanted more band members to bring the fuller arrangements to life in a more organic, ‘real’ way rather than rely on backing track from a laptop.

Marc Riley picked you to be featured on his recent show All Shook Up. There aren’t many opportunities to play on TV these days with the demise of The White Room and TOTP. How did you find it, being filmed for TV?

As far as I know there’s only one mystery portal that leads to Jools Holland. God knows what you have to do to achieve that hallowed slot! There’s not enough live music TV and its great Marc Riley is addressing that. It was great doing All Shook Up.

Who have you been listening to recently, and/or what new acts would you recommend we check out?

Mostly dance music, techno and electronica; Daniel Avery, Photek, Drokk, Daphni, Cybotron. I hardly have time to see new music but stumbled into Daniel Avery’s show at Radio 6music after my own and loved it, so that’s a cool find for me.

 

Lizz Page

 

LoneLady plays Norwich Arts Centre on 9th October as part of Norwich Sound and Vision 2015. Tickets/wristbands are available from norwichsoundandvision.co.uk.

 

Julie Campbell, from Manchester, is LoneLady. She is funk. She is post-punk. She is electronic. She is bleak and she is groovy. She’s a fine artist and a musical artist. You may have heard her new album Hinterland, or seen her on Marc Riley’s All Shook Up iPlayer show. LoneLady’s playing Norwich Arts Centre soon as part of Norwich Sound & Vision and I caught up with Julie to delve a little deeper into her world.

You started making music when you were also getting a Fine Art degree. How does making music differ from fine art as an art form, and what do you get out of each?

I think both things come from the same source; making music is a very visual thing for me, I ‘see’ sounds and spaces, and building up a song can feel like a painterly or sculptural process. I’ve always loved drawings and monoprints and see parallels between this and the distilled, intimate frame of a song, qualities I was trying to achieve, particularly on Nerve Up, which is quite a stark record.

What’s your songwriting process generally?

I work alone in my home studio. The initial ideas are set down very quickly, and the starting point is nearly always playing along to the drum machine. Then I work and work on it, building up the detail like a painting until its finished. Very rarely will anyone else hear it until it’s presented as finished.

You’ve just had a residency at the Barbican, and presented the resulting work alongside film footage and a live performance last month. How did that come about and did you enjoy that opportunity?

It happened due to a meeting with Chris Sharp, the programme director. He listened to my obsessions and eulogies about concrete and I found myself with a residency in a piece of iconic Brutalist architecture! It was a great opportunity and I loved it; it pushed me out of my comfort zone - working in a glass-fronted studio open to the public was something I am very unused to, being naturally something of a recluse really. It was great to have access to other artists and technicians’ expertise, and to be able to present a really considered show with floor-to-ceiling footage and animation was great; it touched on the beginnings of ideas that I’d like to build on in future. Wrangler were our guests that night and I also worked with Daniela Sherer on the animated text featured in the performance, and it was a joy to have both involved.

Who are your influences and inspirations musically?

Mainly post-punk…Gang Of Four, Wire, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division, Pink Industry, early Section 25 and Isolation Ward. I also love funk - Prince, Rufus and Bohannon and a lot of electronic/ dance / techno.

What sort of music did you grown up listening to?

It was chart pop initially, and I think because of this a pop sensibility has remained with me. Then REM was my first obsession, and later on a lot of post-punk from around ‘78-‘83.

You’re heading out on a UK tour this autumn and are also hitting France, Germany and Switzerland. You went out on a similar tour earlier in the year. What did you learn from that tour that you feel might help you on this one?

Mainly practical things - which have a bearing on the impact and vibe of a tour or show. I won’t bore your readers with the minutiae of it but a hell of a lot of work goes on to make shows happen, and each tour is a learning curve of how to improve.  I’ve been very pleased to see that on the whole audiences have been quite animated and dancing; that’s not something I've really had before, and its great to see and feel this. For this record, and for the upcoming autumn tour I’d like to continue keeping the set oriented around ‘the groove’.

Your second album Hinterland has recently been released. Hinterland means ‘the country behind’ in German. Is there a theme to this album of a certain kind of landscape you are familiar with?

Landscapes underpin the whole record; the geographical landscapes of my childhood, where I used to play, dream and wonder as a kid, the crumbling post-industrial mills, canals and wastelands of Manchester in which I live and explore, and also interior and imaginary landscapes, ‘cause I spend a lot of time in my head.

Your first album Nerve Up came out a couple years ago; the final track, Fear No More is a real belter. Can you tell me the story behind that song?

I think Nerve Up channels a lot of the twining, chiming melodies echoing early REM, combined with the spectral production techniques of Martin Hannet. Fear No More was influenced by the film My Own Private Idaho; I was drawn to the large empty badlands evoked in that film. Starkness is an ongoing preoccupation of mine, only now I’ve reframed it more authentically, as in now I’m writing about my own North of England environment.

Hinterland feels more upbeat and less minimal to me than Nerve Up. Was that a natural development for you?

Yes, I wanted more voices to join in. Longer songs over simple grooves enabled me to be more exploratory and fun without being confined to a tight structure, not that I see these songs as loose at all, just more flexible, colourful and spontaneous.

You play loads of instruments on the album and even recorded, mixed and produced it yourself in your own home studio. How did you go about teaching yourself how to do all this?

I play everything except for real drums. I taught myself to play guitar from a book aged around 15 or 16 and took it from there. While at university I bought a 4 track Tascam Portastudio and immediately loved making simple recordings. When I’m writing I’m producing at the same time; these things aren’t separate for me. I’d rather achieve the sound and atmosphere of the song as I’m going along. The mixing and producing part of the process are hugely creative and fun - and hard work - I've spent hundreds of hours alone in my studio working on songs, and the sound of the songs. 

How is it playing live with a band, as opposed to performing on your own as you used to in the early days? 

There’s more energy on stage, which is better both for me and for the audience - it works really well for this album, which is very groove-oriented. I wanted more band members to bring the fuller arrangements to life in a more organic, ‘real’ way rather than rely on backing track from a laptop.

Marc Riley picked you to be featured on his recent show All Shook Up. There aren’t many opportunities to play on TV these days with the demise of The White Room and TOTP. How did you find it, being filmed for TV?

As far as I know there’s only one mystery portal that leads to Jools Holland. God knows what you have to do to achieve that hallowed slot! There’s not enough live music TV and its great Marc Riley is addressing that. It was great doing All Shook Up.

Who have you been listening to recently, and/or what new acts would you recommend we check out?

Mostly dance music, techno and electronica; Daniel Avery, Photek, Drokk, Daphni, Cybotron. I hardly have time to see new music but stumbled into Daniel Avery’s show at Radio 6music after my own and loved it, so that’s a cool find for me.

 

Lizz Page

 

LoneLady plays Norwich Arts Centre on 9th October as part of Norwich Sound and Vision 2015. Tickets/wristbands are available from norwichsoundandvision.co.uk.