Those with their ears to the ground in the electronic music world, particularly in the UK, really should have come across the work of Mystic State by now. After releasing their debut album in 2020, the introspective listening experience titled My Own Private Island, the duo have been busy refining their sound and have now treated the world to their second solo LP, Between These Moments.
Despite being well versed in other genres with their dubstep work on Deep Dark & Dangerous, Artikal Music and Infernal Sounds, as well as further explorations on their own label The Chikara Project, they’ve opted to continue to refine their skills within the drum and bass tempo bracket and illustrate their creativity at the higher tempos they were inspired by when growing up. The arguably disposable and instant gratification nature of music consumption these days hasn’t phased them, with the album flowing flawlessly between each track whilst still showcasing a variety of moods. This is Mystic State’s most mature and detailed work to date, cementing their place as artists whose music will continue to be essential listening.
We caught up with Will and Mike to understand more about writing emotive music, the headspace they were in whilst making the album and their approach to collaborating with other artists.
What have you guys been up to recently?
Mike: I just got back from America for a show and Will’s back there next week. We’ve been pretty locked down in the studio this summer, so it’ll be nice to get back on the road. We’ve got the album and heaps of other music we want to play out, so the gigs have come at a good time.
Will: It’s been nice to be back in Bristol after four years in Canada, it’s given me a burst of creativity. There’s been a lot of settling down, but I’ve also been able to explore a lot of places around the UK. It’s been simultaneously homely and really fresh.
Mike: I missed him! But we’ve been in the studio quite a lot and haven’t played too many shows this year, we’ve been getting the album ready along with a few other bits. It’s been a really nice and rounded summer this year.
That’s quite a long time apart, but it seems like you were really productive in that period.
Will: I feel like we were even more productive if anything. That could have been down to the pandemic happening in that time. We would have worked in that same way if I was in Canada or not.
Mike: We were both home-bound but fortunately are able to connect in other ways now. But it’s definitely better to connect in person.
Will: It’s so different. We met up the other day to check out some beats that we’ve been working on and ended up getting a mad buzz. We started something new and had a few beers, it was such a sick session. You don’t get that in remote studios.
Mike: That sporadic flow state when you’re in the same room together. The single we recently dropped was a product of that.
Will: It’s a lot easier to ride the wave and get stuff turned over quickly when you’re not at the mercy of sending stuff back and forth. The creativity is at the same level but things work more quickly. Now we live up the road from each other too which helps.
Mike: We’ve been friends since we were super young, it’s been really good to have him home.
How does the album fit in with this? When did it become an idea?
Mike: For me it’s all connected. It encapsulates those days in between bigger things going on. We both went through ups and downs, but it’s the days in between those moments that really matter, when the magic happens and the creative vision aligns. Those filler days.
Will: That was the whole jumping off point for the album. There was nothing to do, it was written in the middle of the pandemic when everyone’s mental health was in the gutter. It was really difficult to see the good in things sometimes. The title is a reference to how the little things that happened in between all the drama made that time liveable to a certain degree.
Mike: Keeping us sane in a crazy world.
So all of the tracks will be a few years old by the time they come out?
Mike: ‘The Uprising’ is a new one, but even that’s over a year old. After that we wanted to mix all of the tracks together before waiting for the vinyl to be pressed. It’s a long process and it’s a personal one. We got a few other artists involved, so it didn’t happen overnight. On a side note, this album is dedicated to Will’s son too.
Will: He was there for the whole creation of it. Not by his own choice, when I was looking after him he’d be listening to the tracks being built from the ground up.
An important pair of ears!
Will: He was my quality control.
Sounds like he did a really good job. The album was a joy to listen to and it feels like you guys are really honing in on your sound. How did you build on your previous album?
Mike: We write so much music between the two of us that it’s more about curating the ideas. Three years feels like a long time when we think about how much we make.
Will: This album is leading directly on from the first one. When you look back on your own work a few years later, you can pick it apart and think about what works and what doesn’t. I do think towards the end there was a bit of content which could have been trimmed down.
Mike: There were some self-indulgent moments.
Will: At the time it was great, but you look back and we’ve grown a bit in terms of sound. We don’t want people to get ear fatigue from ten minutes of unnecessary noise. We tried to cut it back and make sure everything in there is essential.
It sounds like you’ve been really critical of yourselves and studied the previous album, but haven’t approached it too differently?
Will: You’ve got to be your own harshest critic. And yeah, this new album was built the same as the last. You start with a few tracks that work together, then have a few others that work with each of those. You’re then onto an album. If you can get it to 10 or 12 tracks then you’re done.
Mike: We’ve just been building on the moments.
It sounds like the process flowed so naturally, is there anything else about the concept of the album?
Will: I was stuck in a place that I wasn’t familiar with and even though we were confined, I was finding new things. I was doing a lot of hiking and exploring cities I hadn’t been to before. Although there wasn’t a lot going on, there were a lot of moments intertwined into that. Those little moments!
Mike: In our eyes the album highlights the importance of taking a step back and acknowledging moments. For me creativity is part of it as well, the ups and downs. Nothing is linear. Going around in circles, having really good moments in the studio and not letting yourself get down. Keep riding that wave, it’s a reflective album.
The emotion and melancholy comes through in a lot of your work, but especially in the albums. It’s interesting that you keep on coming back to that and it sticks for you guys. But you can also do the heavier, more dancefloor oriented tunes too.
Mike: That works for shows too, we can’t play some of the stuff off the album in a club situation. It’d be cool to do a chill out set and experiment with a live audience. But until then we want to do the full spectrum.
Will: It’s difficult because you get booked to do an album showcase and you’ll want to bring the big guns as opposed to the soulful cuts on the album. But realistically, the soulful tunes are the best bit. It’s a weird one because you can’t really play your favourites because it would dead out the crowd.
Maybe a different environment would be more suitable, like what some artists do with live shows.
Mike: There we go, it gives me tingles just thinking about it. Saying that, the soulful cuts do get the attention every now and again. It depends on the crowd and if they’re there for it. But the general theme is go hard or go home. We’re going on tour in Australia, New Zealand and the US now after making beats in the summer. We’re going to experiment and test them out.
Will: We’ve also got the SWU show which allows some scope to play some of the slower stuff because there’s less of a live audience. It’s fortunate they’ve come back at this time because our first show is going to be an album showcase.
Mike: It’s out to a worldwide audience too. We’re really excited about that.
Like the previous album, this one’s also around the 170 tempo apart from a few slightly slower cuts. What is it about the tempo that you enjoy so much, especially for the albums, when you guys make other styles of music too?
Mike: It’s just our foundation, we used to mix vinyl back in the day and always had a passion for drum and bass. Keeping that rolling is important for us. We might do albums in the future with multiple genres, but at the same time it’s nice to experiment with that one tempo. You can do so much with it.
Will: I was toying with the idea of getting different tempos into this album but the gap between 130/140 and 170 can be a little bit jarring when listening through it. When listening to an album from start to finish and there’s a tempo drop, there’s something subconscious about it which brings the energy down a bit. But if you’re writing slower and more melodic stuff anyways, you do need to maintain a bit of energy to it. I know a lot of people have been putting out albums that go from 170 to 140 and then back to 170, but there’s something about that which doesn’t flow to me, like an album should. It can end up sounding more like a collection of tunes. With this album we tried to keep it cohesive and work off the back of the previous track.
There’s no interlude this time, was that a conscious decision?
Will: No lude, last time it was the best tune … I forgot about that, such a sick cut of music. It worked with that album, but with this one we just had it flowing.
Mike: One of my favourite things about this album is the intros on the tunes so it’s got the interlude built in.
You guys seem to be pretty open to collaborations and there’s quite a few here. How did you end up working with the collaborators on the album?
Will: They’re all friends. Lucy Kitchen is one of the first vocalists we worked with. Instead of working with everyone under the sun, we just want to work with people we’ve collaborated with before. All the tunes with vocalists were written with that vocalist in mind, it wasn’t like we were going to pick anybody else. That tune was always going to go to Lucy, Feel This was always going to Elysia. It’s just having that person in mind rather than thinking that we need anyone to finish the tune for us.
Mike: Just keeping that community aspect to it and keeping it personal. It’s nice to explore working with different minds.
Will: The tune we did with Elysia a while back ended up being one of our most popular tunes. It’s about finding the person that works with your style, if it’s not broke then don’t fix it.
If you know them well enough then why not keep it going? We mentioned earlier that melancholy is a big part of your music, would you guys say you’re self-confessed sadbois deep down?
Will: Yeah, I’m really sad…
Mike: It’s emotive music, you want to feel something. Just that vibe that makes you want to cry… only joking. You’ve got to feel it, if you’re not feeling it then it’s not getting done.
Will: Doesn’t it work the opposite way, the people who write the saddest music are usually the happiest
Mike: One of the most annoying things for me is when people call emotive music depressing? Someone’s poured their heart out into the music and they’ve been called depressed. It can help with depression but it can also help with life in general. It can help us get through those moments.
Maybe indulgent is the word.
Will: Writing complex music that’s multi-layered is what we want to do rather than throwaway stuff.
Mike: It did take time to make the music and it should if you want to get it right… The occasional track happens in one session, but other than that we take the time to get it right.
Will: Is it Deadmau5 who only releases tunes that he finishes in one session? If he doesn’t finish it in one session he doesn’t consider it worthwhile because he didn’t want to stay there and get it wrapped. But we can’t do that because there’s so much that you have to do to get it right. There’s so much going on that one slightly wrong sound could ruin the whole tune.
It sounds very thoughtful and calculated, a labour of love. I’m sure some people will be motivated to know that, you often hear people knocking up tunes in a few hours.
Mike: Music shouldn’t be rushed.
Will: If people want to put out music they’ve written in four hours then fair enough, but I can’t do it.
Mike: I wouldn’t say I envy their ability, but fair play if they can.
Will: Music that I’ve made in four hours is about six seconds long. Whatever works for that person.
It’s amazing you’re still able to make so much music then.
Will: We have so much on at once, it can get a bit much sometimes. I’ve got a list of tunes I need to work on, there’s 10-15 that we need to work on and there are a few that are more of a priority.
Mike: Those projects at the back come forward sometimes, and it’s always at the right time.
Will: We’ve already started writing the next album and half the tunes are done, so it’s just about staying consistent. If you’re balancing a day job, which most people are, it’s just making sure you’re committing a few hours each night to music. By the end of the working week that can be 10 hours.
Mike: We do work quickly, we’ve been using Ableton for over 10 years. It just takes a while to get the vibe right. We have a quick work rate but it’s just about taking the time to execute them properly.
You mentioned nature and your son, Will. Outside of music where else do you get your inspiration from?
Will: Films.
I noticed a lot of samples that you use sound like they’re from films or TV.
Mike: Will’s the film guy and always comes with these crazy samples.
Will: They’re usually random movies from years ago that no one’s ever seen
Mike: They fit in with the atmosphere of the tunes really well. For me, I’m inspired by the people I’m around me. Bristol is a big creative community. I get inspired by people I meet when travelling too.
What’s coming up next then?
Will: A couple of EPs and singles, we’re definitely going to have the new album written by next year.
Mike: Pushing forward in the other tempo brackets too.
Will: We’ve got a couple of compilations forthcoming on The Chikara Project as well and have some great releases coming out over the rest of 2023 too.
Mike: We need to do a Mystic State release on The Moth Club (my dub and dub techno label), we have some more dubby bits we’ll put towards that. There are a few other labels in mind that we’re sending demos to, but we won’t say anymore than that just yet… But we’re trying to keep it in-house as that’s important to us.
Amazing, just one last question. Let’s say you’re both about to get back to your own homes after being out all day and you notice your studios have gone up in flames. If all of your production related equipment had gone up in flames and everyone was safe, what one thing would you save?
Mike: Curveball! I have an old cigar box which was passed down from my grandad, so I’d probably save that.
Will: My grandad was in a 9 piece orchestra, so I’ve got this old poster they did for one of his live shows. I’ve also got this sick plant, an alocasia, so I’d probably try and save that too. I had to revive it because my mum nearly killed it, so I’m really proud of what I’ve done.
READ
