OK great, properly back on track, fortnightly, looks like we’re Thursdays now, thanks as ever for sticking with us, and what a treat we have for you.
Meemo Comma - Lara Rix-Martin - is a brilliant electronic musician. Each of her albums is radically different, each an abstract examination of a very particular theme: dissociation and auditory processing disorder on Ghost on the Stairs; “a romantic eulogy to autumn and winter” on Sleepmoss; an exploration of Jewish mysticism and anime on Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter²; hardcore rave and working class masculinity on Loverboy - and so on.
She is also, as any music nerd with an internet connection knows, extremely funny, puncturing of pomposity, and brutally direct. She has the almost unique skill of being extremely outspoken about matters of class, gender and religious identity, radical politics, mental health, neurodivergence, and so on, without being drawn into the rows these tend to entail. This is down to that combination of directness and wit, and to the fact that she’s not a joiner: she doesn’t stoop to silly factionalism or dogma, but says what she thinks herself (not in the way of “I say what I think” people, either, but really) and actually listens to other people.
As well as all this she is, as any music nerd with an internet connection also knows, married to Mike Paradinas aka μ-Ziq and a dozen other electronica aliases besides, founder of the Planet Mu label. This caused some consternation or at least puzzlement at first, as Rix-Martin was 19 when they got together and Paradinas almost exactly twice that. It very quickly indeed became apparent, though, that she was an equal partner in the relationship - and having got to know them quite well over the 15 years since, I can say they’ve got a dynamic that, while certainly unorthodox as you’ll see, is healthier than a lot of way more normie couples. And an age-mismatched relationship is, as you’ll also see, far from the most wayward thing Rix-Martin has ever got up to.
This interview was conducted by Zoom, with Paradinas sitting just out of shot waiting for a lift to take him to a gig somewhere. It quite quickly took on a kind of sitcom tone with his at-first inaudible deadpan interjections provoking reactions from Rix-Martin which perfectly illustrated their well-established dynamic. It was, while occasionally boggling, a lot of fun. Hopefully you don’t need telling by now that there’s lots to link this into our previous interviews: not least lots about soundtracks, subcultures, local characteristics, and the way families hand down super specific knowledge. Starting was easy too: while I sometimes have to think hard to find new ways to steer an interview to the “tell us about your background” bit, for this one I had a no-brainer of an opening gambit….
So it's always funny to me that my first indirect contact with you would have been buying latkes as my go to hangover food from your aunt's deli1....
Yeah, so that's been in my family since the 1950s, it was my great grandmother's - they moved down from the East End in about the late 40s to Brighton, and they had a few shops. My great grandmother who set it up named it Deb's Deli for my great auntie, her daughter. They used to sell dented tins, which sounds very weird but that was the thing. They used to own huge warehouses of stuff, my great grandmother actually helped Jack Cohen of Tesco start all that - it's a weird history, but basically I could have been rich - I could have been RICH! - but they gambled it all away. They were very good businesspeople but incredibly stupid when it came to gambling and doing lots of stupid things, my family, and remained very much working class, bit sad I guess. So yeah latkes have been made there since the 50s, though not any more, we sold the business. Latkes are good though.
So your family had been in Brighton for at least a couple of generations...
Yep, so I grew up there. My dad's family had been there since the 50s, my dad was born in ‘57 so he was born there. My mum's family moved down from Manchester around that time, and they've been pretty much here a couple of generations. Which seems unusual to people, because it's a funny town, it's so... I can't think of the word, people coming and going...
Transient?
Yeah. There's a lot of people who move here then move away, and I actually kind of like that aspect of it, but I do get a lot of people who go [condescending posh voice] “Oh you were born here? Oh.” And I say [even posher voice] “Yeerrrsss.” I have to put on a fake accent you see.
Yeah perception of Brighton is a funny thing. Of course the hippies and the whole foods and the hedonism and the students are all very visible, but it does have a heck of an underbelly.
Yeah it does. But you know what makes me laugh? People going [nasally rock'n'roll type voice] “I don't like Brighton any more, too many drugs, I'm thinking of going to Bristol.”
Hahahahaha I can remember people saying that literally 30 years ago.
Right. And actually drugs are just cheaper there. But I dunno. It's a weird town. I've lived in other places - lived in Guildford, hated it. Lived in Chelmsford, actually it was quite good fun, but equally, hated it. There's nothing quite like Brighton. But for me, it's got all my family, so of course it's home. I'm really close to my family, and not only are they here, but there's history... look, the underbelly you know of Brighton is probably not the underbelly of Brighton I know - knocker boys and drug.... well yeah, anyway. But that part of it, old Brighton, the lineage of Brighton Rock type thing, which you're unlikely to encounter if you come from outside.
Mmm... I did get hints of it. I did go to Brighton for university, but afterwards I spend quite a bit of time in bands with people born and bred there, so I did get a sense of... sorry, “underbelly” is a really voyeuristic way of putting it - but just a pre-existing culture away from what’s visible. Did you have a sense growing up that it was a culture unique to the town?
Well look, I thought having police outside your home was quite a normal thing until I was maybe 11 or 12 when I started to realise, oh, other families don't have that. Because the thing is, when I was really young, I think I was only about four, so it's a really, really, really early memory, but I remember we were walking outside Marks & Spencers in town and there was this helicopter, we kept hearing it all day and just thought, oh whatever - but my dad goes “Oh fucking helicopters been following me all day” and it was. Police followed him all the time. It wasn't just for illegal substances, but because trading of antiques... the police had antique squads. A task force they were called, specifically for Brighton because of the knocker boys. What they would do, the knocker boys, is go to rich people's houses, the big country houses, my dad used to go down to Cornwall, and later on he'd go to the Eastern Bloc after the Berlin Wall fell. He drove across the whole of Europe with a van.
What they'd do is go to these country homes and go “got any furniture?” - and remember a lot of these people had the big house but didn't actually have the money to maintain their houses so they'd be glad of someone offering them cash, no questions. Now some of these people were there to eye up the place, buy a couple of bits, then go “Right we'll come back later and steal that, that and that.” My dad wasn't quite one of those people, but he did use to handle a lot of it. I remember he was on Crimewatch for Lord Nelson's pocket watch that had been stolen from the Queen's cousin. He did go into prison, but he was also very good at getting out. He wasn't stupid, that was the thing. He was quite cautious and good at talking. He did lots. Lots of different things. Some that I can't say and some like that - which is fine, it's on the record, it was 1980s, and in the end he got off anyway. Then there's certain things where you're just like, “How the fuck did he get away with it?”
And I've seen you say your parents were party people.
Oh yeah. Still are. They used to go to raves in the late 80s, early 90s, though of course they had three kids together so somehow they fit it around us. My mum's family are the big party people. They're either, on her mum's side loud Northerners, or on her dad's side kind of... I guess lower middle class? All electricians and suchlike, quite quiet, apart from my grandad who was a big character and just wanted to party. He could be quite violent, he was quite scary, but he was a big party guy, he used to have mad parties at his house. He used to own a house on Highcroft Villas which is now about ten flats, and have loads of strays and weirdos staying with him. He had lots of different girlfriends, some of them went to school with my mum, it wasn't a particularly... it would have been pretty hard for my mum, but it's weird because I'm friends with a lot of those women he went out with, they're the same age as my mum but I sort of see them as like... step? ...grand? ......parent? figures maybe? Like if I introduce them it'll be “This is my grandpa's ex girlfriend." I mean he was a nightmare. But so was my grandmother. She ran off to Iran and took my mum with her, so my mum grew up in Iran for a bit.
But my dad, he came from.... I suppose you would call it now a conservative Jewish background. My dad was supposed to learn Hebrew, but he's quite dyslexic, my father, he can not really read or write, and he went “Well I can't do this,” then also saw that they weren't really doing it either, saw that it was all bullshit, but also as well his parents went to prison when he was 12 for handling stolen items. Now the thing is... well they knew what they were doing, but they got quite a heavy sentence for something other people got off with and actually shouldn't have carried that punishment back then... if my dad was 12, about 1969 or just 70? And he went off the rails, because he was like “Fuck this. The law doesn't like Jews.” The guy who was the judge on this case, he read the reference they'd got from their Rabbi - who was actually that Conservative guy Michael Fabricant's father, which is weird. He'd given a witness statement saying these are really good people and so on, and all the judge said is “All I've heard from this character statement is that you're Jews!” That's it. That's on file, him saying that. Fucking mental.
Anyway they got a couple of years, I suppose it wasn't a long sentence but they'd been told they weren't going to get a sentence, they'd get a fine and a telling off - but they went to prison. Which is pretty hardcore because there were other people who didn't get that. And I think my dad went, “If that's how you're going to treat us as people, then fuck you.” I think as a family, we've always been taught: don't trust people in power. Fuck everyone. Look after your own. I think that's a Brighton thing. I mean it's working class thing, but I think especially in Brighton. A lot of people look after their own. What that actually means is a biiiig label, not just your immediates... which is.... well, y'know.....
Well that's a double edged sword, right? Because Brighton is really quite a spectacularly corrupt place...
My god, it's disgusting. And happening now. I don't know if you've heard about the i360 thing - this observation platform thing, so many blatant backhanders obviously going on around that. It's such a weird city politically, because something I think happens - and this is my theory, I don't know if I'm right on this, I'd love to know, but I feel like it's right - is that people are like political tourists here. They come down to the town to go “I want to experiment with my politics before I go to the big boys in power.” Counsellors especially, but look at... what's their name, Eddie Izzard but she's now called... Suzie? Yeah. She wanted to have a seat here, and it was like “You're not from here...” Like, I'd think it was absolutely great if we had a trans MP, but coming down here to a place you don't know, don't know the people, it pisses me off. It pisses me off in general that Brighton is seen as a place that you can come and be a certain way, or your idea of a certain way...
Ha, well that applies in so many spheres. I mean it was me too! I was that wide eyed student coming down in 1992 because “Ooh Primal Scream live there, ooh raves on the beaches, ooh I can be so Bohemian...” Then very quickly I spotted, like you say, that so few people that you run into on the scene are from there, there's all these old mods, old hippies, old whatever, all who'd rocked up looking for this subcultural paradise and then just never leaving.
You know what, it's cool when people add to the culture, because there's lots of people that do. But you do get a lot of people that have this fantasy... especially with the whole BIMM2 thing, you get so many of these middle class kids coming down, I mean the Kooks and all that stuff - obviously they're whatever now - or Royal Blood, they're another one... not from Brighton, they're from Angmering3! Leave it out! That's the other side of Worthing!! You've got a lot of people who want to take out from the subculture themselves but not put it in, and I don't know if it's a place that encourages that?
Well when I arrived, that was part of what became apparent. Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, whoever, they get their success then go to Brighton for the drugs and the vibes and whatever, but what bands had come from Brighton? It wasn't until Fatboy Slim...
[smirks] He's from Redhill!4
Oh god true. But OK, bands like 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster and Electric Soft Parade and suchlike that it changed...
Alright I'll give you them.
I guess with Fatboy Slim I was thinking he did actually build his thing within Brighton...
I suppose. It's so funny, if you're on holiday and people say “Where you from", you say Brighton and every time... every time... they go “Ohhhh Fatboy Slim!”
So what music were you exposed to growing up? What grabbed your interest early on?
Oh my family listened to a lot of different music, but for electronic and dance music, it was probably my grandmother Hazel - my mum's mum. She was into a lot of different things, she did really like - I know you're going to hate this Mike - she liked Nirvana. No I know it's not electronic, Mike, I'm just trying to list different things she liked. She was the first one to play me Aphex! Also my oldest brother is six years older than me, then another three years, then me - so she took the older ones to see Prodigy in the Brighton Centre. I was way too young, but really wanted to go. I mean my brothers were too young too, but she took them. We used to go to Glastonbury every year, though, so I saw them in... '97 was it? I know it was the mud year. '97, so I was seven, and I loved it. We used to go to the dance tent. I was there the year Björk played and there was a gunshot in the crowd5, that was '94 - I was four - my grandmother wanted to see Björk but they stood at the back of the crowd, because I was in a buggy. At the time my grandmother was dating a rugby player guy, who was huge, and when the crowd stampeded he picked me up and put me over his head, and everyone just held on to him because all the crowd was just running around us. It must have been very scary, because that gun had gone off. But yeah... so I went there from the age of about two til about 19, but it's so busy there now it makes me feel sick. It's too much. Last time I went was 2009. I used to be able to walk around there at four in the morning and know where I was going, but they've added all those fields at the back and blurrgh, it's all too much.
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