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Bo Keeney is a young multi-instrumentalist talent, hailing from California but now living in London. Described as a Musical Polymath, Bo Keeney crafts abnd writes heartfelt, emotionally strained pop tracks that consumes the listener in a mesh of soul, funk, jazz, bass and electronica. after experimenting on his first EP Don't You Worry, mixing the element of field recordings into his tracks, he;'s returned with Versus, featuring Throwing Snow, My Nu Leng and maximalist Bobby tank to give his lyrics an extra dimension. Here' Bo has mixed us our latest Fresh Blood mix and delves deep into his intricate thought processes and songwriting prowess. Read on.
[Read on for tracklisting]
You once said you were not born with a talent for singing. What process did you have to go through to train your voice? I'm neurotic to start with. I'm inclined to analyze and try to control things. So with singing I had to learn to take in information, and form an understanding, then ignore the information and put the song across. And I had to get comfortable with being a freak in public, and not inhibit that.
Is there anyone you base your delivery of vocals on? I wanted to imitate a lot of soul singers like Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder and Otis Redding but my voice sits deeper than that. Ray Charles and Glenn Goins influenced me - they had a lower range and used it soulfully.
I based my delivery on just about every great singer I knew of who had their craft down. I've tried to incorporate those sounds into my own style, but I could never imitate anyone convincingly because my voice sits in a strange place. So I've tried more and more to sing the way I speak, just being natural. I don't want my voice to sound like anyone else's.
You strike a good balance between authentic sounds and heavy bass. Is there anyone else out there you think are hitting the same sound? I don't think so. But on this EP - aside from ‘Jump The Gun’, which was me alone - the credit for most of the sound and texture goes to the remixers. They wove my songs into their sounds. I asked them to use as many samples from the original tracks as they could, but the sound of this EP is still dominated by the remixers I chose. I've learned from it by hearing my voice and songs in the context of the sounds they make. It gave me a short cut to hearing what my tracks would sound like if I'd emulated their production styles myself.
You’ve handed a number of artists your tracks to remix. Do you like to work with them in any way or do you just let them do their thing? I only passed on a couple suggestions - keep as much of the lyrics intact as possible, and sample as much of the original tracks as possible. A couple of the mixes had to be shortened so they didn't disrupt the flow of the EP. That aside, each remixer did their own thing.
The thing about this EP is that it's transitional. It's an intermediate step. Up to now, I've always had total control of every aspect of my music. The whole idea of this project was to let people in, and let go a little bit. It was an experiment. I chose four artists whose sounds I liked the best, and suited the tracks the best. I handpicked one for each track, and they needed to have styles that would complement each other. The biggest challenge for me was finding the kind of artists I trusted enough to hand tracks over to, then release myself. That's weird. It's at odds with the way I would normally work, but it's part of a transition. When I make music I like to do the opposite of what I've done before, then find a middle ground that suits me.
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You’ve said before that you enjoy working in an isolated environment – does it take a lot of personal reflection to write the sort of tunes you do? At this point, I'm done with working in isolation. I did that for a long time, but the future for me is to collaborate. I'm more able to be my own musician when I'm not trying to handle every role. As far as writing the sort of tunes I do - apart from ‘Jump The Gun’, I personally couldn't call this an EP of my tunes. It wouldn't be fair on the original songs, or the artists who remixed them, because the songs changed a lot in the mix. The material I'm working on now is different from those original songs too. It'll probably sit somewhere between the remixes and the songs that were remixed, with the style I've been developing ever since I started making music.
The EP project was an open collaboration, it took me and my music out of isolation, I learned from it, and some great sounding tracks came out of it. That's the best thing that could have happened at this point. With the next batch, yeah there'll be some personal reflection, and I've created the blueprints in isolation, but there'll a lot more looking outwards than before. It'll be a much more collaborative process.
Is there any particular story you try to tell through your EPs? No. But I guess they tell a story about the past couple years for me musically. The whole lead-up to those couple years has been left out - I want to tell some of that with what I release next: where my music has come from, and what it's now led to. Neither of those two things have been exposed on the two EPs.
That's what the 'Versus' cover is about. It's a before and after photo. The songs have been roughed up and bruised and stitched onto new sounds, and you can't hear what's behind the curtain. The first EP and this 'Versus' EP have just been an introduction really, a way in. It's like a movie where it opens a few years into the story, and then you're led up to that point, and then past that point.
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What process do you go through when writing your vocals? Do you have an idea in your mind first or is a little more spontaneous than that? It's hard to explain because the way I put songs together right now is very removed from the current EP. The tracks that were remixed for this EP were originally put together as songs, not as vocals. The vocal was just another ingredient in the arrangement. I put the arrangements together extremely meticulously. Almost all of the original small ideas, melodies and things came spontaneously, but then weaving them together into songs, and fleshing them out and sculpting them into tracks, was the hard part.
At this point, though, the music I'm making is minimalist, and I've only been working on the spontaneous end. I make blocks of audio, sections of songs, with just vocals and a chord progression. And I make licks that link in with those. All of the blocks are linked, and with the right collaborator I'll turn those blocks of audio into tracks that make sense./
If you were to categorise your music where would you place it? You clearly don’t want to be pigeonholed to one genre. I don't think it's ready to be categorized, because it hasn't arrived yet. It's up in the air. The first EP was eclectic - 'Don’t You Worry' had mariachi, drum and bass, vintage rock and electro. The other songs had bits of funk and r&b too. Bobby Tank, My Nu Leng, SpectraSoul and Throwing snow contributed their sounds to this new EP. I could label each of their sounds but I'd probably be vague or off the mark. My music is still on its way. Once it's arrived and gone, someone might put a label on it and that will be that. Right now it's not stapled down.
Are there any production techniques you use that are unorthodox at all? To be fair I think this whole EP production process was unorthodox. I recorded ten tracks piece by piece. I created arrangements for months; I even sat in with the mixer for three weeks while the tracks were mixed. Then I released one of those tracks with a couple demos, on my first EP in 2012, and on this EP I'm releasing another track, which I remixed myself, and four of the remaining nine, remixed by other people. And the original tracks are coming out afterwards. It's fucked up really but there you go.
You’ve done a Fresh Blood mix for us, what styles and sounds have you included, what can we expect? It's all new music, this year or end of last. Most of it I guess you'd call electronic. All the tracks are full of chords and melodies. There's one track in there that doesn't fit the electronic mould, but I couldn't not put it in – ‘Ode To Viceroy’ by Mac De Marco.
What are your plans/ expectations for the rest of 2013 and where would you hope to be by next year? I'd like to finish the material I'm working on and turn it into an album and release it. I want to put the unreleased material out, possibly across a few EPs. So as long as nothing gets in the way, I should have at least a couple albums' worth of music coming out within a year from now.
I'm gigging a lot too, so that'll play a big part. The live thing has gotten stripped down and really natural. I've got two guys I'm working with on it that are amazing. We'll be gigging and touring a lot this year. But mostly, I'd just like to arrive as an artist and a writer. All the material is there; I've got a lot of music in my back pocket. I just want to find the right balance and create something new that makes people excited. And then I want to open up the vault and have the rest of the music heard. In the meantime, I want this EP to go down well. There are some amazing artists on board so I know it should be up a lot of people's street. Hopefully some people will put it on repeat, which would be amazing.
Fresh Blood: Bo Keeney Tracklisting
Ghostpoet - plastic bag brain
Jai paul - jasmine (demo)
Fryars - in my arms
Ifan dafydd feat Alys Williams - Celwydd
King krule - the noose of jah city
Mister lies - lupine
Les sins - grind
Birdy - people help the people (two inch punch remix)
James blake - digital lion
Short stories - on the way
Mac de marco - ode to viceroy
Jacques greene - quicksand
Two inch punch - love you up
The slow revolt - this dark matter
Listen to Bo Keeney on Pulse Radio.
