“That’s what I love about it, the fact that you can take anything and just make it a little bit more electronic and take it in all these weird and wonderful directions,” British vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter Alexander Kotz explains about the music he’s created over the past five years as Elderbrook.
After releasing four EPs, Elderbrook’s first full-length studio album Why Do We Shake In The Cold? arrived on September 18th via Big Beat/Parlophone. Three days before, the single “Back To My Bed” made its exclusive global debut on BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe Sessions, and all eleven of the album’s tracks were played live during a concert event streamed from The London Aquarium.
Born and raised just outside of London in High Wycomb, Elderbrook bought his first guitar and began playing in a local indie rock band at the age of sixteen. While his earlier musical indulgences as a singer-songwriter leaned toward acoustic folk, he would later begin to discover hip-hop, dance and electronica while studying at Bath Spa University, heavily influenced by the artists who were enmeshed in the flourishing music scene in nearby Bristol.
His first EPs, Simmer Down and Travel Slow, were released in 2015. His cachet began to rise as he began collaborating with industry heavyweights Andhim, Clean Bandit, and CamelPhat—the latter of which resulted in his first major hit “Cola,” which landed him a top twenty chart entry on the UK singles charts, and at number one on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs survey.
Why Do We Shake In The Cold? builds on the foundation that has consistently earned Elderbrook critical accolades throughout his five-year-long professional journey: engaging his sharp instincts for mood and melody using a wide spectrum of compelling rhythms and sounds. The result is fifty-two minutes of sonic shine, from the light, feathery bounce of the set’s lead single, “Something About You” (featuring drum-and-bass quartet and fellow Atlantic Records Group stablemates Rudimental), to the infectious R&B chug of “Take A Minute,” to the spacious simplicity of the album closer, “Next December.” While agile beats and keys are front-and-center, Elderbrook’s soulful vocals also have room to excel in the arrangements.
Like many of his peers, Elderbrook has been using the lull of the COVID-19 pandemic to create new music which, in his words, has generated an “obscene amount of features” that will surface in the near future, and to connect with his audience virtually during live sessions from his London home via his YouTube channel. While his slated performance at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival later this month was postponed until next June, a European tour is still on the books for March 2021, beginning in Brussels and concluding in Austria.
Elderbrook and I connected for a conversation the week before the album’s release to discuss its conception and to dive a little deeper into his ongoing love affair with creating electronic music.
First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on Why Do We Shake In The Cold? It’s a great album and I really enjoyed exploring it.
Thank you! Thank you very much.
I’m always curious about the music different artists were exposed to during their formative years. What do you remember playing in your house when you were growing up, and what was the first song or album you gravitated toward?
Funny enough, my mum grew up in the ‘80s, so she loves all the electronic stuff. But she never really played ‘80s music around me or in the house, or anything. She loved all the electronic music and wanted to keep really current with the radio and stuff. I remember she bought Elephunk, the Black Eyed Peas album. I remember listening to that, and I absolutely loved it, and I’d just keep listening to it again, and again, and again, and kept on coming back to it. That’s what I think she played that grabbed me, definitely. Because what I love about that is that each song on that album is completely different, but they all fit in in a kind of way. Which is kind of what I tried to do with my album to an extent, and it’s all very different stuff.
And I guess from my dad’s side, he always loved country music. It was kind of weird that he loved American country music, but he was born in East London. He loved the stories and the lyrics behind it more than anything. And I now absolutely love country music. I listen to it all the time.
Was there a pivotal moment in which you determined you wanted to pursue a career as a musician?
It’s difficult, isn’t it? Because it’s something I’ve always, always wanted to do. I knew I always wanted to be a singer, whatever that meant. I don’t really think I knew [laughs]. But, I got my first guitar when I was about fifteen or sixteen. And I only really got it because all my friends were getting guitars, and they thought it was pretty cool. I thought, ‘well, I’m a cool guy. I’m going to get a guitar!’ I played and started figuring out...I think the first song I learned was ‘You’re Beautiful’ by James Blunt [laughs], which isn’t the coolest song, but it’s pretty easy. It’s just [mimics the opening notes] ‘doo doo doo doo.’
But quite soon after getting the guitar, I realized I didn’t really want to play anyone else’s music. I wanted to play and write my own songs. I think what I really wanted to be without knowing it was a songwriter, more than being a musician or anything like that. So, I guess the moment when I really thought I could make a career out of it was when I was at university. I was studying music, and I’d kind of run out of money and thought, ‘oh, no. I’m going to have to get a real job!’ But then I thought, ‘hold on...what if I don’t have to get a real job?’
So, I put up this sort of advertisement online locally to see if anyone needed hip-hop beats or something. And someone came back to me and said, ‘yeah, I’ll take ten hip-hop beats, please.’ I went, ‘oh. Shit! I don’t know how to make hip-hop beats!’ [laughs]
So, yeah, I guess I kind of learned how to do all of the production through just sort of recording myself playing guitar, and I realized you could chop things up and make drums out of other drums in a classic hip-hop style, and went on with that. And he actually paid me, which was amazing. That was the first time I ever got paid for doing anything musically. After that, I knew I wanted to pursue it as a career.
I know your work in the genre was an evolution of other things you had been experimenting with over time. Why is it compelling to you, and why do you believe it’s gained such a broad public appeal?
I think for a lot of people, and for me as well, it can be literally anything. With a band—and don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the classic band setup—but at the end of the day, it’s just going to be a bass, a couple of guitars, and a live drummer.
But with electronic music, there can be just an infinite number of sounds. I don’t want to sound cheesy or anything, but the possibilities are endless with it. You can go with the classic four-to-the-floor Detroit tech-house beat, and then you can kind of merge it with other genres. With the album, I’ve tried to merge it with the indie background that I came from musically, and merged all these house and dance sonics with some of the songwriting I was doing before.
So, as you assemble and merge all of those possibilities when you write, is there a specific compositional process you follow? Some artists start with a title, or with a groove, or with a melody. What is that flashpoint for you when a song is born?
Umm...I’ve tried it all different ways, because as I said it can be anything. I’ve tried the title thing, and it doesn’t really work with me. But what I kind of do with my lyrics...I often have, you know, a very simple beat or something down, and then I mumble things until it vaguely resembles a sentence. And then I kind of make that sentence make sense, and then it’s just, ‘oh...well this is what the song’s about.’
I was actually reading David Byrne’s book, and he actually does the same thing when he writes, which is quite interesting. But, yeah, I’m often just mumbling until it resembles actual words and I just go on and write the song from there. Sometimes it really surprises me about what it’s about—sometimes it’s something really specific that I wouldn’t have thought to write about.
One of the songs on the album called “Next December,” I actually already had that in my mind. I was away traveling with my now fiancée and I didn’t have any equipment with me, and I said, ‘well, I’ve got to get this down somehow,’ so I ended up putting down the melody and some of the lyrics on my phone. And that led to that song being much more...well, it’s actually an a cappella song.
So I’m in my cabin right now at the bottom of my garden where I have various instruments and fun toys. I can just pick something up, play it, and if it sounds good, start mumbling.
The new album is, at least partially, a product of the pandemic, and you’ve discussed how it’s, broadly, a concept record built around the idea of human connection and the necessity of closeness. How has isolation impacted you creatively?
Well, the record wasn’t done six months ago when all of this happened. I was kind of in the finishing stage. It’s almost a blessing in disguise because I had a really, really busy schedule of touring, which I’m obviously gutted I couldn’t do. But it did give me time to sit in my little shed by myself [laughs] finishing off the album, and it really gave me time to get into there and be way more involved in the mixing and the mastering of the record as well, which I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to do.
Other than that, it’s been...I quite like it! I quite like being able to be by myself and just be able to make music quite literally all day. I’ve been experimenting with different sounds and that’s what’s enabled me to do the Cabin Sessions I’ve been doing on YouTube, doing covers of various songs. With that I’ve been able to go back and play a little more guitar and a bit more stripped-back versions, as well.
The whole album, you’re right, is about human connection and people needing people. That was something I was working on for a very long time before all of this even started, so I kind of timed it pretty nicely. I’m not saying I’m responsible for the entire epidemic, but it has come together in an interesting way. It’s something I’ve always wanted to write about, and it’s something that’s always affected me whether it’s being on tour and feeling lonely—which is what the song “Numb” is about—or just kind of reaching out to people. That’s what music is for a lot of people a lot of the time, and it helps people connect with other people or with themselves when they wouldn’t know how to do that without.
It must be interesting and perhaps even a little anticlimactic to release a new album in this current state of the world, since so much of the in-person engagement artists usually rely on to promote and help the audience connect to the music can’t be part of the equation right now.
Yeah, it has been difficult. At the beginning, I was, like, “Great! I’ve got all this time and I’m going to sit and make music!’ But now that it’s six months in, I am wondering: when is it going to pick back up again, because I kind of don’t know what I’ve been looking forward to, and when, you know? And in what capacity, because I don’t know if it will ever look the same as it once did with five-hundred people in a tiny little sweaty basement somewhere in the middle of Europe [laughs]. I don’t know how COVID-friendly that would be right now. I’m definitely getting itchy feet again at the moment.
Was there anything that happened during the writing or recording of these new songs that took you by surprise or maybe resulted in a happy accident in terms of the output?
I think what jumped out at me when you said that was “Next December,” the closing track of the album I’d mentioned before. It’s very much a vocal-led piece with no drums at all. I think that really surprised me as I’m always looking for these cool kind of folk-y melodies. I’m always thinking of stuff, and I never thought I’d actually put that down within the Elderbrook album. It also surprised me that everyone I worked with was, like, ‘yeah, cool. I get it.’ It was completely different from all the [mimics percussion] ‘zzzzhh-tss-tss-etsss’ drum beat stuff I was doing before.
You’ve achieved a lot in your career in a relatively short amount of time. In what ways are you seeking improvement as an artist? What does growth in your craft look like for you in your next set of projects?
Something I’d really like to focus on a little bit more is my production. The whole reason I got into electronic music was that I was figuring out how to record me playing my folk music, and I’d kind of just got it wrong to the extent that it would end up as electronic music. I think that’s one of the reasons people wanted to listen in the beginning, that it was a little bit different because I had no idea what I was doing [laughs]. Although that was the charm of it, now that we’re five years later, I would like to get a little more into the production aspect and know a little bit more about what I’m doing with synths and all the hardware rather than doing what I have been up to now, which has been pressing buttons until it sounds good.
I’ve always really loved what Jamie xx does, because it sounds so organic and real and live while, obviously, being electronic at the same time. What I also love about the stuff he does is that it’s so simple. There’s only ever two or three things happening at a time with drums, a weird sound, and some sort of synth—and maybe vocals as well. That’s what I really love. I’ve always loved what he did even with The xx. That was one of the first albums I went and bought and actually wanted to listen to the whole way through.
Aside from The xx record you mentioned, what are your top five favorite albums?
I’d say the Black Eyed Peas’ album I mentioned earlier, Elephunk. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Déjà Vu, just because I absolutely love every single song on that record. The Fugees’ The Score is really great. This is a really difficult question, isn’t it? There’s a Dave Brubeck album I’ve been playing a lot called Jazz Impressions of New York that’s just a really, really lovely load of songs. It’s a record I put on whenever I can’t think of anything else to put on. And also, I’d probably say one of my favorites of all time is The National’s High Violet. I absolutely love The National.
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