No. 40: Kayla Painter

Exploring time, space, seafaring and the solar system with the DIY multimedia voyager

So we’ve talked a lot about connections on here: how the intersections between the stories and approaches are a vital part of what we’re after doing, and the combination of the portraits and interviews is, hopefully, more than the sum of its parts. A big part of the point of Bass, Mids, Tops the book was to show that you don’t need heavy editorialising to get at the deep themes in cultural history, but can illustrate them by letting conversations wind around them, having different memories or takes illuminate them from different angles. We don’t try and force it with our choice of subjects, but of course purely by nature of naturally following our interests, there are going to be certain recurring themes anyway – and with the older and more established people it’s only natural there are lots of overlaps, and given we’re into people who cross genre and scene boundaries that goes double for a lot of them. Everyone’s got a Jah Wobble story, right?

But even so, the connections can still surprise and delight. When we interviewed NikNak last year, for example, it was again because she was diverse in her connections, but we had no idea a year down the line she’d later crop up twice in a month in our conversations. It turns out not only is our last but one subject Nwando Ebizie in touch with her and discussing potential collaborations, but she is a friend and confidant of the brilliant Kayla Painter’s. It feels like we’ve stumbled onto a low-key experimental music Illuminati! This is also at least the third time conversation has come round to Beatles movies.

But anyway: Kayla Painter. I first became aware of her in 2016 when her “Drones” single and video dropped¹, and was instantly interested to see a young electronic artist who seemed to have such a developed sound and aesthetic, and already, it turned out, had a strong reputation for playing live and several digital and cassette releases under her belt. When her next EP, Cannibals at Sea², came the following year – conceptualised around her Fijian heritage and mischievously playing with folklore, ideas of exoticism etc – it became inescapably clear she very wasn’t your average electronica producer. Since then, her projects have consistently had that extra layer of interest, whether they’re themed around owls, posthumanism or a space mission to Jupiter’s moon (her debut album proper last year, Fractures, was planned to be released on the date of the launch of the Europa Clipper probe³, although weather conditions put paid to that), and she has been impressively independent – not just self-releasing, but seemingly with no need to court the approval of scenes or schools of thought even in Bristol, let alone in London.

Brian photographed her when she was in London for some shows, and I spoke to her on video call from her bedroom studio at home. Painter is frequently self-questioning, with an unpretentiousness that’s emphasised by her pronounced Hampshire accent which has had extra roundness added to the vowels by her decade-plus in Bristol. However the minute she gets onto the topic of her work and inspiration and into full flow, there’s a sense of certainty that very quickly explains how it is that she’s managed to evolve her own hugely creatively ambitious and increasingly successful artistic career completely well outside the worlds of hipster consensus and over-privileged greasy-pole climbers. This conversation was informative not just about why her records are as peculiar and magic as they are, but in providing all kinds of insights about survival in the always precarious “culture industries” of the 21^st century. And there are owls!

OK, so, when I posted the trailer for this on Instagram, there was loads of comments from people in Bristol, which is nice to see, obviously. Are you kind of feeling like you are “a Bristol musician”? Do you feel part of something in Bristol?

Yeah, I do. I think it’s... I suppose most people don’t know that I haven’t lived here always, you know? I suppose I feel that integrated in the scene that it’s like I’m part of the fabric of it, which is a real compliment, I think, because it’s such a rich scene of music and creatives. And yeah, it’s something I love being a part of. But I suppose, yeah, for the most... the time I’ve been producing, I suppose most of that time I have lived here, so it does make sense as well. I do feel like that is appropriate. But as I was in university in South Wales, I do feel like I’ve got like an affinity with there too, not that there’s a huge electronic scene there, but just the people I’ve met and some of the gigs I’ve had and so on. So I feel like, yeah, just sort of being firmly South West, it’s definitely part of my identity now as a producer, I suppose.

You said the word “scene” quite easily: does it does it definitely feel like that in Bristol? That there is a living scene?

Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah, it does, it does feel like that. It just feels like you’re part of something here. Like, I feel like I’m part of something. And it feels very natural to just have that in the city. The live shows, the people you meet at live shows, just the whole thing, I forget that there was a time where I wasn’t part of scene, because it’s been a nice long time now. But I suppose when I was a student in in Newport, there was no scene that I was in, I was just there. And we were all just there, probably waiting to find the right things to lead us down a path or... to be part of something.

And where did you grow up?

In Southampton.

Ah. Just down the road from me!

So I grew up with garage music. It’s kind of it’s my big love really outside of you know, what I do. I do love garage and I think that’s, well, because it was there. I mean literally really very close In location to where I grew up, you know, my cousin lived in the same flats as Craig David and that kind of thing. I didn’t know then what it would mean for me later as a producer being interested in off-kilter drums and stuff that... you know, pulling apart beats and sort of making things that aren’t so sort of formulaic and slightly more wonky. But yeah.

So in an alternate world you could have been a Miss Teeq style superstar of garage.

Yeah, quite possibly.

Southampton is such an interesting town. It doesn’t give away its character that easily – when I first arrived I thought it’s kind of bleak, some of it feels as “left behind” as any kind of northern industrial town but it’s it’s got a real kind of quite strong character actually that I’m slowly discovering...

I think so. I think if you dig a bit, there is a lot to find, and maybe that’s why I like the sort of underground stuff, you know, I like undiscovered music and grassroots music, and I think with Southampton, it’s... it’s not obvious what it’s about. And it is just from living there for a long time that you get beneath that surface and you start to see more of what it can be about. You might not know, but it’s got a big metal scene, a couple of live music venues and stuff. But even garage stuff was very much like, not something you would hear going down London Road – not in that time, possibly you would now funnily enough. But yeah, Southampton. Garage. It’s that and the Titanic. Those are the things right? And that is a bleak story, isn’t it, the Titanic? So you got the old walls and the bit where the Titanic sailed from and sunk, so it’s all here.

Right, the broken old walls are quite something. The phrase that eapt to my mind early on was that Southampton still has PTSD from World War Two, you can sort of see it because the rebuilding was always all a bit shabby. But the diversity is really interesting, it has in some ways the atmosphere of a very conservative sort of town, but it’s actually... not? Obviously being a port town, it’s always been mega diverse and there’s a sort of quiet pride in that from people. Certainly you look at local social media and there’s a lot of pushback against the flag shaggers...

Mmm. Yeah, well, it’s interesting, like, my dad’s side is Southampton, you know, born and bred, and my mum’s side is Fijian. So I’ve got this kind of culture clash, and I do see in the family... You know, my grandma’s lived in the same house for a very, very long time. She is proudly Southampton and, and, you know, we all support Southampton FC. It is very much like, there is a real pride to it, which isn’t to say the opposite type of that pride isn’t a problem, which is what this whole co-opted flag situation is... [sigh] But what Southampton is about and where we come from is... yeah, there is, there is something there. There is a local identity there that I guess I do see in my grandma and my dad a bit. Yeah.

And were you exposed to much music and culture early on growing up?

So both my parents were really, really into music and they went to lots of gigs I think before me and my brother were born. But then obviously, with kids, they became more like... they just exposed music to us via records or CDs. My dad sold his vinyl collection but then had this gigantic CD collection and he’d always be playing music in the house really, and on car journeys, and yeah we were exposed to a lot of really, really cool music I think. It’s not the kind of thing that you think, oh it would lead me to where I am now but I think the fondest memories I have of listening to music when I was growing up was like Steeler’s Wheel and Gerry Rafferty and that kind of rock and pop... I guess 60s, 70s? I grew up with all of that kind of warm sounding, lovely, lyrical great bassline, great playing kind of stuff and I think my love of music probably comes from being played a lot of that stuff, and also taken to shows when I was a little bit older taken to some gigs and watching stuff like Songwriter’s Circle and seeing someone from 10cc on it⁴ and this kind of thing you know when I was a young teenager, and going to the Big Chill festival with my dad when I was a young teenager so it’s always been really important in our household.

My dad is very talented – even though he sort of wouldn’t say he’s a musician, I would say he probably could be if he wanted to be, and you can see that guitar behind me – he made that 12 string. He went through a phase of just making guitars but he’s not, you know... he’s just a very talented person. So I think I grew up with that and just very much... you think it’s normal, you grow up in a certain way and you think that’s what everyone has, but it’s not till later that you realize they didn’t – so I feel very grateful for being exposed to so much music and you know later I got into the early WARP years I was exposed to that stuff as well... so yeah, I think I’ve had I had quite a good start really and you know, it’s always a guitar around the house somewhere.

Were your parents buying WARP records?

Yeah, so my dad was into like, some of that stuff. My mum less so, she was into more like the Motown side of music. She would always play that kind of thing. She had her own separate CD collection. So there was some early WARP stuff in the house, I feel like I had had a real luxury of growing up with like quite a broad range of music in the house and, and art like, too – but that was more like weird animations, like late night animations. This came up the other day when I was thinking about The Herb Garden⁵, that stop motion animation from I think before The Magic Roundabout. Oh, yeah, like the sound quality of it and like the kind of the music in it and all that early stuff, early BBC stuff, I suppose that might have been... but also late night random animations on on odd channels like that kind of thing. We would be exposed to and I think that kind of also played quite a big part in all the musical influences.

That’s really funny, that sort of thing has cropped up so much in these interviews, those things where you might stumble over odd stuff that would really stick in your mind because and then you don’t get the chance to see it again so you then have to kind of reconstruct it in your mind. Like at least two of the interviews mentioned like when the Beatles films used to get shown and Hard Day’s Night with the kooky clips of them all running in and out of door as formative memories. For me it was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That introduced me to the Radiophonic Workshop and the whole idea that sound could build these science fiction worlds. Yeah, those things settle. They wire your brain early...

I think so, yeah, because I was probably shown Help! super early. We had Help! on VHS and Yellow Sub, and just sort of that kind of slightly odd things with that sort of humour. And those kinds of animations that were, I don’t know, unknown animations that were shown not in English, but you’re just watching the shapes and thinking, “This is really bizarre,” or they’re totally wordless, you know, no script at all, and you’re thinking, “Hmmm” but like you say, that you can’t find them again, so it’s very hard to, you do just reconstruct them in your brain. Bordering on surreal, isn’t it? Or giving you that kind of, like lighting that bit of your brain up that’s sort of tickled by that kind of like... “What IS any of this?” And “This is really absurd!”

Yeah, yeah, completely. And I realised as well, as a writer, that so much of what I thought was psychedelic in The Beatles’ language that I absorbed as a kid was actually like a very old, much older kind of weird British wordplay type thing⁶, you know, like the music hall, traders’ patter, this history of weird musical comedians and stuff. So you’re getting fed quite deep traditions through these weird little things that you pick up as a kid.

Right!

And you talking about the kind of soft rock, folk rock stuff is really interesting, because that’s kind of seeped sonically into so much now. And not necessarily through just pure nostalgia. It’s written off as lazy, just recycling culture, whatever, but actually, via movies... obviously Steelers Wheel in Tarantino, that was a watershed for it, but much more recently, Guardians of the Galaxy. “My Sweet Lord” and “The Chain” and Bowie and all of that. And it took me a while to realise that actually, this is because people, kids are hearing it on a Dolby Atmos system for the first time. And the production on those records was just off-the-charts crafted, expensive, and inventive. So people are just getting exposed to a particular sound world. And it does inspire people, right?

No, it’s fantastic to see that happening. But I always listened to that kind of music closely anyway. I think people sort of often a bit surprised like, “Well, don’t you just listen to electronic music 24-7?” Mm, no, I don’t actually. But having that come back, it’s like, oh, yeah, for us, it’s a nostalgia hit, isn’t it? And I think for young people, it’s nostalgia they don’t yet have if that makes sense? Because it’s somehow captured within that sort of sound, like you say. But yeah, I rediscovered that “Right Down the Line” track by Gerry Rafferty – I hadn’t heard that for a really long time, and it’s such an amazing song – because it was in something on Netflix, and I appreciated it all over again. But yeah, it’s just a really nice gift, I think that people could experience that and it can be re-enjoyed or enjoyed newly. Yeah.

So you were engaging, obviously, with music and arts. Did you think that you would be involved with it early on?

I don’t know, I think I went through phases of thinking I might be, but just not really knowing really. I think when you’re younger, there’s this idea that you’ve got to know what you want to be. And the thing that I always wanted to be, apparently, as a librarian, don’t know why, very quiet, opposite to music. But um, so that was, I don’t know until what age, what I’d say... but I think, as a teenager, and discovering the bass guitar, thinking this is pretty cool, I really like the bass, and I like how it sits with the drums. And then I got in a band, and I loved it, I started to think, yeah, I want to do this. But then I think realistically, I wasn’t, I wasn’t sure how that would look. I don’t think I thought I want to be a pop star, exactly... But I knew I liked making things and I knew I liked music. So I think, I think I always thought I would make stuff, but I didn’t know quite how that would, how that would sort of form. And then I think when I went to university, I thought, yeah, no, I want to be a bassist, that IS what I want to do. And then it really changed like from the moment I got to university, to, to then like what came out three years later was quite different, like my ideas of music, my ideas of what I could be and what I wanted to were very different... in a good way. But it was quite a change, you know, thinking like from I want to play bass guitar, it going from that to thinking about John Cage 4 Minutes 33 and “What is sound and what is the world and what is life?” [laughs]

What were you studying?

Well, it was called Creative Sound and Music, but it was more like an art school. So Newport, I think used to be an art school, but it got university status, but there was still this very strong art school vibe. So we got there with our instruments and our dreams of being whatever a function band, or I don’t know what. [laughs] And we were told to put our music instruments away. And then we went outside and they asked us to go skip diving. That was like day one. Day two was like “Perform a piece of music using just these chairs outside the cafeteria in front of other people.” This was them there just eating their food. So that was that kind of university experience. And then it was like you’re being fed stuff like John Cage and Fluxus.. semiotics... like, yeah, thinking about kind of sound on an atomic level. And then this kind of, you know, just thinking about, well, all sorts, really, it kind of changed the way I thought about a lot of things. That’s probably partly where the space stuff comes from, like my interest in consciousness, and then kind of gets bigger, you know. So yeah, it was music, but... it wasn’t music.

That’s brilliant... so it’s funny, I was just this morning rereading the interview with Graham Dowdall, Gagarin, who died last year, that we did for this series – he was he was a kid in Sussex in the 60s and he just happened to have a teacher who was plugged into all of that – Fluxus, sound collage, 60s progressive teaching... and yes, just meeting that one teacher – or even just encountering John Cage – sometimes will tip you over the edge

Yeah, right. Exactly. Amazing, though. Amazing that that can happen. I just think, I don’t know, I was so grateful to, to my university lecturers, particularly two of them, that just changed the way I thought. And that’s beyond just thinking about how I listen to music: it’s about my existence in the world, which is a pretty big thing for someone to be able to do! And I know is with all the tools of teaching and feeding, you know, like, giving us stuff like Burial to listen to, and then reading texts that were by Audio Culture⁷, you know, that kind of compilation, journal thing. So I think, yeah, I think it’s called Audio Culture. But we were being fed all this stuff. And it just they really, it really worked for me. I don’t think it did for everybody. But it really worked for me. So I’m so grateful for that, because it really changed a lot for me.