THE SPIRIT OF PUNK, A BELLIGERENT ATTITUDE AND THE ART OF CAPTURING LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. NEIL HOUSEGO TALKS WITH DANALOGUE AND DISCOVERS THAT INNOVATION IS BETTER WITH FRIENDS.  

'We knew we liked recording to tape. We knew we liked improvising, and we knew we liked to move fast. We'd already tried working with other producers and other engineers and other people, and we didn't like it because they always tried to make us go more commercial sounding, and that made us feel sick. We knew we had to do our own thing'. Speaking on the phone from outside his studio on Brick Lane, Danalogue AKA Dan Leavers, is in a reflective mood. The relentless touring halted in the face of the global crisis means he's able to catch a much-needed rest before the wheels inevitably begin to turn again. Leavers is a generous interviewee, relaxed, open and articulate. 'It's almost like that old punk thing. Record yourself. Mix yourself. It doesn't matter if it sounds a bit technically worse if it has the right vibe'. Perhaps most well known as one-third of The Comet is Coming, Leavers has broken into mainstream culture. He's also established himself as the go-to producer for some of the UK's most exciting artists, including Lunch Money Life, Snapped Ankles and more recently Alabaster dePlume. However, it's his enduring friendship with Betamax (Max Hallett) that momentarily becomes the focus of our conversation. When the vibe is right, you just know.

'Basically, I moved to Brighton when I was 17 and started playing in bands. My first band, The Rhythm and Soul Cartel, was pretty dope. We got to this point where we were just killing it in Brighton and could pull a big crowd. It's kind of a bubble in Brighton though, it's beautiful, but you're kind of stuck there. Then me and Max started playing together'. Able to complement each other easily, the keyboardist and drummer began creating in a large group setting. 'We did loads of different bands. We did a jazz thing, then a post-rock thing. We had this multi-instrumentalist band, inspired by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. In fact, our first gig was supporting Thee Silver Mnt. Zion, which is their offshoot band. So that was pretty dope, but that eventually imploded as well. And then it got to the point where I was thinking, 'Right, I just want to do something with Max. Let's cut all the other members out of it and do a duo'. The stripped-down format of Soccer96 provided them with the chance to focus and hone their craft in the face of the inexorable daily grind. 'For years, throughout all this time, I was working day jobs. I was working as a cleaner. I was working at offices doing call centre stuff, Domino's delivery driving. I was doing the whole lot. At the time we were lucky to get twenty quid and four beers for a gig! I was pretty dedicated and just kept slogging away and doing gigs and producing myself and other artists. Almost the whole of my twenties was like that, building up, doing the toilet circuit of gigs, working and producing. We were really ready by the time we started with Comet. We'd already got our style going in the studio'.

Defining himself as a synthesist as well as a producer, Leavers cut his teeth on a Roland Juno-60 and SH-09, two synths that are still a major part of his sound, 16 years later. Equally adept at conjuring gravity-defying pads, radioactive leads and weighty, black hole bass, his work began to bristle with electrical energy, chords and riffs propelled by fierce power and raw emotion. From inside to out, Leavers still resists all temptation to find comfort in the expectations of genre or trend. 'I think it's about having a decent amount of belligerence, a curmudgeonly attitude and an annoyance when you hear music that just sounds like someone else. If it can be traced back, then that really pisses me off. I've always wanted to make a new kind of music'.

Relying on their frenetic, live style, the pair found another soul mate in the form of rising star 'King Shabaka' Hutchings. As The Comet is Coming, the now trio disguised themselves as a jazz outfit and set about infiltrating the scene. With a force that challenges that of 90's Drum & Bass or early 2000's Grime, witnessing this ball of energy live you'd be forgiven for thinking that the shaking foundations were immediate delivery of the prophesy. 'When we came up with the name, 'The Comet is Coming' it definitely changed the way we approached the music. We came up with the name after only two days of recording, so it was quite near the beginning. Still, as soon as we housed it within this world of apocalypse, urgency and the cosmos, rather than being grounded on earth, it totally changed the way we played. I think that set the benchmark. If we were called The Smiths, we wouldn't get that benefit. So it's almost like a place where we can go with the music and actually have a communion with that side of ourselves, which is quite lucky'.

Three albums deep, the trio continue to harness the power of their collective imagination, construct myths and influence the future. Not a moment wasted on earthly micro-politics. Leavers elaborates; 'It's always annoyed me being in bands ruled by committee. Everyone's chatting, and those three people agree, and then someone says, 'I think it should be in A minor'. You know some really stupid detail that causes everything to fall apart. Whereas if we just don't talk about the music, it works. We talk about everything else. We talk about politics or philosophy, spirituality and whatever we want, including football, but then we're down to business'. Formed on the basis of improvisation, the sessions are recorded to half-inch tape with intense, uncompromising energy. Any individual preparation is left outside the door. Leavers credits his bandmates; 'I know Max and Shabs put a lot of thought into what they're doing. But it's outside of the sessions. So we all think about what we're doing separately. But then when it comes to composing, we're not strategising too much'. When the sessions are complete, the findings are stored away for a few months, before eventually being revisited. This Bukowskian approach fosters a fresh perspective, which seems essential as the ominous task of editing approaches. 'Yeah, that's when it gets really interesting! I mean the fact that the tapes are half an hour long means you've got this bottled up energy. You're not going to be recording for hours with the computer scrolling along infinitely. You have to get it in the time of that tape. There's an immediacy, an urgency and then comes the slog'. Working together, Leavers and Hallett begin to mine the material. Even though their recollection is hazy, they have an unwavering faith that they will uncover a hoard of blazing sax lines, dirty synth riffs and nuanced colours from which to build. 'We take all the tapes off and edit them. Basically, you've just got to have loads of patience, loads of belief, and you just got to know that it's going to take a long time. We usually take the tapes off and listen to everything, almost like the 'rushes' when you're making a film or a documentary. We slash and burn a lot of stuff straight away. For the last records, 'Trust in the Life Force’, and ‘The Afterlife' we had about six or seven hours of music. And then we probably mixed and fully produced about double what we needed. We actually spent every day for four months, putting it together. We approach it like a sculptor. Chopping bits off, slapping new bits on and then chopping them back off again. It's a brilliant process, I love it, I think it's so fun, you know?'.

However, creativity can be a cruel mistress, of something Leavers is all too aware. 'In the moment, it's kind of enjoyable, but I do get frustrated, I get angry and also emotional. I feel the full spectrum, really. I can't help but get really wrapped up in it, like being in a relationship, you know? You have an intense relationship with someone, and it's like you gotta take the whole thing. I mean, you accept the entire gamut of emotions'. The pain is worth it, and Comet are leading the way for a UK vision of jazz, fused and open-ended, backed up by contemporaries like Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia. 'I believe the UK ness of our sound is more apparent when we play in France or places like that, where they are way more reverential towards the canon of say, something like jazz. I remember we did a live French TV thing, and after we stopped playing the guy was a bit slack-jawed, and he was like, 'Oh, this is so Anglo Saxon.' He couldn't believe what we were doing to jazz. If you wanted to call it jazz, that is!'. The melting pot of London is perhaps the essential ingredient. The city is an environment that Leavers' relishes. 'London has energy, no doubt about it. It's so varied in terms of music, food, fashion. And that's why it's such a great example that multi-culturalism can totally work and that's why we're all a bit kind of blown away by all of this Brexit stuff and the racism stuff. Because when it's actually going on, I'm on Brick Lane right now, and it's unbelievably diverse, and it's brilliant, and everyone loves it. I think when people aren't experienced in having a multicultural environment around them, they get freaked out about the possibility. For us, I think London has such a high intensity of energy as well. It's like super pressured, super dense, with lots of tall buildings. The only way to see nature is in the sky, and I think cities like that tend to have this kind of pressure cooker effect. And the music explodes out of that'.

Stoke Newington's 'Total Refreshment Centre' is almost a microcosm of this phenomenon and has been a vital home for Leavers since Soccer96 played the centres’ second only gig in 2012. This is not just about studio time though. 'We've lived at the TRC, partied at the TRC, had the best times with our best mates ever at the TRC. And then we've just walked into a room where it happens to be a recording studio with a brilliant engineer who is also one of our best mates (Capitol K). It's more an extension of your life instead of going into a stuffy studio with people we don't know, in a room that might not even suit you, but you've already paid. That would be stifling. I really don't know what Soccer96 or Comet would have been like in a different situation, I can only imagine that it probably wouldn't have been as vibey'. However, a need to consolidate his equipment and have unlimited access to studio space has meant a recent move to Simbad's (Worldwide FM, Brownswood Recordings) old studio. This is not without regret. 'I am still at the TRC at least once a week and the vibe there is insane. I'm a bit gutted not to be there, to be honest. If I could just move everything I've got in my studio to a big space in the TRC, I would be there in a heartbeat'. The sense of appreciation towards the facility and all involved is palpable. However, this may be the start of a new chapter. Allowed to revisit some older projects in recent months Leavers is shifting his focus. 'I plan on not producing as many other artists and am putting out more of my own stuff. I've kind of got a bit sick of producing, and even though I love all the groups I've been working with, this year I want to focus more on doing some of my own stuff. This year, it's more like artists output. There's Danalogue x Sarathy, there's Danalogue x Alabaster, which will come out later this year. So it's basically like when we're off from Comet, we've got a little window to do other things before we start making a new Comet album'.

The recently released 'Equinox' EP with Sarathy Korwar is something of a revelation. Seemingly channelling the force of Terry Riley, Sun Ra, Isao Tomita and Don Cherry without ever feeling like a facsimile. This is Danalogue's Fourth World viewpoint. 'Also, me and Max are working on a new Soccer96 album. So that's exciting and terrifying in equal measures. We haven't really made an album proper as Soccer96 since before any Comet records. So we've got way better at making albums now; also we're just different people. It's almost like a chance for us to completely reinvent it, which is exciting and terrifying'. This certainly does sound like an enthralling prospect and if their recent politically charged ‘Tactics EP’ is a taste of what's to come we are going to find Leavers straddling genres once again in a truly fascinating way. And hopefully, he'll be able to enjoy listening to it one day too. 'I do have to give it a couple of years, but weirdly, I do know one thing. I don't like listening to my music at a party or something like that, you know, it's embarrassing. I'd be thinking about the high hat level and the EQ! I'd be thinking, 'I didn't know what I was doing five years ago'. But, if I'm listening to it on my own, or with Max, I do enjoy it, and it's like it's a useful marker for where I was at that time'.

And then it becomes clear that Leavers brand of anarchic, genre-hopping and forward-thinking music is firmly rooted in social conscience, human connection and above all friendship. And there's no stronger bond than his relationship with Hallett. Maybe having a little more time to reflect is one of the blessings to come from this terrible pandemic. Things have certainly changed for Leavers since the early days, and it's a fantastic journey that he’s been able to share with the best of friends. 'Now we get paid to go and play gigs, and we can live off it. That’s astonishing. And to be honest, it took quite a while for me to get used to. I'm still not really used to it. A lot of what drove my early music, like the early Soccer96 stuff, was living hand to mouth. Having that tension, that drive and wanting to breakthrough. And, you know, I really wanted to stop working in call centres. It was really kind of angry as well. And then it's funny when you get the Mercury Nominations, and you're off touring the States and Japan. You can't really be angry at that. As a result, maybe we've got to dig a bit deeper and think about what we are trying to express. It's not just this reactionary kind of thing anymore'.

Danalogue x Sarathy’s ‘Equinox’ and Soccer96’s ‘Tactics EP’ are Out Now.