interview

27/09/04
brought to you by joe90

1. please introduce yourself

mark de clive-lowe - producer, composer, keysman, husband and dad. i'm half japanese and grew up in nz mostly. home for now is deep in west london. i grew up playing classical piano from 4 years old, got into jazz in my teens as well as the great hip hop and soul that was around then.

2. most peeps probably know you from 'relax unwind', and don't know much about your first lp 'six degrees' - tell us a little about that record

six degrees was the album i made after doing a trip around the world on a musical pilgrimage in 98. san fran, cuba, london, paris, new york, tokyo, sydney and back home to auckland over 12 months in a crazy whirlwind of music and inspiration. it was the first time i hooked up with phil asher, dego, bugz, ig culture, lemon d, francois k, joe clausell and plenty others and not only found great communities of people to share music making with but got my senses blown away left, right and centre. so 'six degrees' was in essence the result of that experience. all my jazz upbringing filtered through the mpc that i bought on the way back to nz when i was in japan.

3. it came out on universal jazz - major label steez - what happened with those fellas?

i had a great a&r guy there who heard the album for what it was and got behind it as much as he could. not all the territories supported, the album never got a us release unfortunately but people seemed to hear it all around the world and dig the vibe. after the album, the label wouldn't invest in me to a level that i felt was needed so we parted company. the great thing about making 'six degrees' and the new album is that there was no influence or intervention from a&r people. making honest music is a really personal experience so it's counter productive to have label bods giving their commercially driven opinions along the way.

4. new album come soon - tell us about that

tide's arising is the new album and that pretty much sums up the intention - it's well time for a change and a change is definitely coming. i think people who grew up on the cultures of the 80s and 90s who are creative thinkers want to hear music that's fresh, progressive and has it's share of challenges. the album's mostly a vocal album featuring bembe segue, abdul shyllon, capitol a, vanessa freeman and a few others. since the last album, i've enjoyed making music with a vocal element and how that can open up a piece of music to a whole new thing. it's a twisted 21st century soul album - latin, downtempo, broken, fusion, soul, all thrown together in the way i like to do that. i started making the album back when i did 'relax unwind' with abdul, so it's been a long process with ups and downs - something that i think can often be part of expressing a big creative work.

5. was this record a chance to call back all the favour from peeps you played keys for?

not for the most part - mainly because most of the people i do keys sessions for are producers and i'm writing music over their beats. for my own music, i like to handle the beats side of it myself so i can get that total expression of how i want the music to sound from the beats and bass up. i'd done sessions on nathan haines' 'squire for hire' album and we've known each other since early days in nz so it's probably not a big surprise that he's on the record, but i have to mention nathan's brother joel. he plays all the guitars on the album and the guy is an unsung genius.

6. i kinda expected it to come on 2000 black, people or one of those labels - how come it's with antipodean?

antipodean is my own label, kicked off in nz a couple of years back with my melodius beats vol.1 compilation and the places & spaces mix cd. i've talked with a lot of labels about the new album and unfortunately not many understand it, maybe it's a bit too fresh for them, but i hear it as music for the here and now. so instead of keeping everyone waiting for music that's ready to go, i decided to put out the album sampler on antipodean and get the ball rolling. ideally i want to find the right label partners in different territories to release the full album so it's properly looked after everywhere it needs to be. the japanese release is the only one confirmed right now with columbia over there. japan's always the first to recognise and support.

7. this information, fat freddy's, joe dukie, yourself - you guys putting something in the water in nz?

nz's a great breeding ground for creatives. the climate, the landscape, the people, the food, it's all pretty special. there's a real cultural melting pot in the music scene with pacific influences meeting international urban sounds all over the country. fat freddy's come from a deep roots culture in wellington and every person in the crew is a great artist in their own right as well. the scene's young there and niche music is still niche music, but it's great to see a growing appreciation for truly progressive and soulful music there.

8. tell us a little about freesoul sessions - is that mdcl live, or a separate improvisational project?

the freesoul sessions is all about creating in the moment - i have the mpc3000 full of sounds but no beats programmed and build up the beats from scratch on stage, get a b-line rolling, drop that in the mp, kaidi's been playing some of the gigs on drums, percussion and moog as well so he'll get his vibe rolling along with what i've got and then the vocalist comes from deep in the thick of it. i love the project because of it's improvisational ethic - everything is fresh, building track after track on the fly and the whole way trying to find ways to twist it up and extend myself even further along with the others on stage. the lineups constantly changing and the idea is to tour the project to the westcoast us, around the uk and europe and get a monthly freesoul session running in london before the end of the year. it's such a raw project and it gives heads a real insight about my creative process with beats, sick harmony and more.

9.what else you got up your sleeve for us - tours, remixes, collaborations etc?

tours, like i said above, also the tide's arising album launch party in toyko in late october, that's going to be a fun one. in the studio i'm working on all sorts of things - musiclovelife which is a new project phil asher and i are doing together, tracks with ovasoul7, lyric l, shaun escoffrey, rasiyah and plenty others. ig's live band is a fun project i'm involved with - there's about 8 of us including lain gray, pino palladino and eric acappoule, we get in studio and just write tune after tune after tune. i think we've done about 50 so far. craziness. that's where i met pino and he's been great to make music with - he brought pure sickness to a few tracks on the album for sure. one really interesting project i've been working on with seiji, bembe and domu is legends of the underground - a dutch crew's dance show with 30 dancers, 3d animations and ridiculous cinematic afro-bruk-soul fusion soundtrack which we've done. that's been a refreshing project to make music for.

10. the future's bright, the future's....?

...being created every second of every day so it's in our hands 100%.

u can get a sneaky preview of mark's new tracks in his radio mix here