Planningtorock

Chal Ravens

So I’m here on the couch with Jam Rostron, a musical and visual artist whose music often challenges us to think about the status quo, and power structures and gender and family and many other issues. Their new album is called Powerhouse, it’s coming out on DFA in November. Please welcome Planningtorock.

Planningtorock

Thank you so much.

Chal Ravens

I thought we could just hear “Transome,” the lead single first, from the new album, just as an opener.

(music: Planningtorock – “Transome”)

[applause] “Transome,” new single. It hasn’t been out very long in fact, has it? You mentioned, when we had a quick chat before, that each of your records feels like maybe a separate chapter, or that you couldn’t have made each one without having made the previous. I thought we’d start in the present day really, but we can loop back to it eventually. Could you give us a bit of an idea about where you are now as a musician, and what this album represents for you?

Planningtorock

Sure. Yeah it’s interesting, this is my fourth album, and if I was to think back on all the albums, the first album I wrote, called Have It All, I wrote that on stage. I was making music on my own here in Berlin and performing as much as I could in small venues, and I would just test material out, super punk. Berlin is a great place for that. And then when I got the chance to actually make that into an album, there were a lot of songs that were about leaving the UK, leaving what I thought was home and finding a new home. And then my second album was really, I would say, in reflection to that. It made me understand that the first album was really my life up until that point, which was a long time, and then from that to have two, three years, four years to make another album, I really needed to live to make another album.

So where I am now is, I feel I get more and more direct with my music, clearer, more like “This is what I’m thinking, this is where I am, this is what I need to share.” And I think from recording for so many years now, what I feel for me, music is a language, it’s a space-giver, it creates space. And it’s definitely given me a space to understand myself and to be able to explore personal issues, and also my politics too.

Chal Ravens

Yeah. On your previous album, there was a definite change in terms of your directness. A lot of the track titles are very bold, “Misxgyny Drxp Dead,” “Patriarchy (Over & Out),” you were very direct with it. Did it take you a while to feel comfortable just being that direct with your words?

Planningtorock

It took me being disappointed with my own album. With W I really felt like I was being direct and talking about personal issues and also about gender and about my sexuality and also about how I felt about patriarchy. It just didn’t communicate, it didn’t cut through. I love that album, I had to make that album to get to make All Love’s Legal, but I had a bit of a crisis after W, after my second record. And to get myself through it, I really started to ask what music was for me. You know, there’s a lot of people making music, and it’s amazing, so I had to work out what music was for me, what was my purpose? How could I use music?

So I set out an exercise for myself, I was like, “OK, I want to write a song about patriarchy.” And I really asked myself, “How do I feel about it?” And my feeling was, patriarchy’s shit, and I just want it to get out the way. It spoils, ruins everything, it’s a terrible invention. So I was like, “OK, write a song like that.” And so I wrote “Patriarchy (Over & Out),” and the lyric is just like, “Patriarchy, you’re out of date, get out of the way.” For me it was a breakthrough, because I think... I feel like I’ve managed to write a song about patriarchy that isn’t confrontational, it’s open, people can connect to it. They don’t take it personally, but they get it.

And it was a dance track, it was the first time that I really constructed a dance track that was super dancefloor friendly and energizing, charged and clear. Then from that track it was very easy to write the rest of All Love’s Legal. It was a joke, I told my manager the first song was “Patriarchy (Over & Out),” and I remember she was like, “Ooh.” I was like, “Don’t worry, the next song is not gonna be that intense,” and then the next song was “Misxgyny Drxp Dead,” and she was like, “Whoa! OK.” The nice thing about being really direct and open at the same time is... All Love’s Legal really created a space for me to share, and people completely talking to me about their feelings about these issues and spaces that I didn’t have before.

Chal Ravens

We’ll talk a bit more about your songwriting process in a bit, but we should work out a bit more about who you are. You’ve lived in Berlin for a long time, where were you from originally?

Planningtorock

I’m originally from a village called Dunscar, on the outskirts of Bolton, which is North West UK, right up in the north.

Chal Ravens

What was that like as a place to grow up?

Planningtorock

I mean there was a bus every six hours at the end of our street to Manchester, so as soon as I could, I would get on that bus to get to another city to meet people, have a life. It was rural, and out in the sticks. So it took me a long time until I found people that I could connect with.

Chal Ravens

Did you have family that encouraged you to make music?

Planningtorock

Yeah, definitely. My mom’s a really big influence for me, my mom loves music. It’s a bit emotional for me, because this is very much what this new album’s about. The album’s called Powerhouse, and basically the powerhouse is my mom. She still has a really big record collection, and would always play music every day, especially in the morning, really early, getting herself ready. Loud music. And it was a big influence on me, and it got me really into music. Yeah.

Chal Ravens

Pop music, or other kinds of music?

Planningtorock

My mom? Everything. A lot of... Massive Aretha Franklin fan. Big voices with lots to say, basically. I always say that I would watch my mom play her records and literally put the music on like armor, really like, “Right, ready for the shit day I’ve got ahead of me.” I don’t know, it introduced me to the magic of music, what music can do for you.

Chal Ravens

You were classically trained as well, right? Violin?

Planningtorock

It’s a myth.

Chal Ravens

Really?

Planningtorock

It’s a Wiki myth. I love it, it makes me laugh every time. I delete it, people delete it, then it pops up again. There’s somebody out there that needs Planningtorock to be classically trained. I am not classically trained at all. I am totally self-taught, yeah.

Chal Ravens

Is violin correct?

Planningtorock

I did have a violin, yeah, I did. But I wasn’t trained.

Chal Ravens

You also... But you’re making music at home, is it right you’re also making tape loops and playing with tape and things?

Planningtorock

Yeah, basically I left school when I was 14, and my sister as well, when she was 15, school was terrible. We were lucky that... Not my dad, but my mom was definitely like, “You can leave school, just stay at home.” So I spent a lot of time at home with my sister, and we... I was born in 1972, so that was early ’80s, so cassette players and tape-to-tapes. We would listen to music, recording music in our own way.

Chal Ravens

What kind of music that was around at the time did you like? The Smiths?

Planningtorock

Oh, no, hell no. Sorry. [laughs]

Chal Ravens

Just as a local band.

Planningtorock

No, I know. It’s weird, because I think I was really... I was not connected to any... It took me a long time to find music that I liked, but I like pop music a lot. I was thinking about this, because I thought this question would come up, it does come up. Joyce Sims, I don’t know if anybody knows Joyce Sims, but she released an album in the ’80s called Come Into My Life, and it’s really synthy, poppy, beautiful love songs mostly. She wrote it, recorded it, produced it, amazing talent. Her songs were like, I would see her on Top of the Pops, kind of synthy-pop to be honest.

Chal Ravens

And then you ended up, as I guess a lot of British pop musicians did particularly, maybe in that period, you went to art school. What kind of art were you actually making? Was it music or visual art?

Planningtorock

How I got into art school’s funny, because I didn’t have any exams or qualifications, and my mom... So my sister’s autistic, so we were both at home, my mom got my sister into a local art school, she hustled, got my sister in there. And then when I came to an age where I could go to an art school, the teachers were like, “Well if you’re as nice as your sister, we’ll let you in without any qualifications.” And then I got into art school at Sheffield, and in the interview they were literally like, “How have you got here, because you don’t have any of the qualifications?” But I just was drawing a lot and painting, trying to make art. But when I got to Sheffield, Sheffield then was a very special art school, you could move between different departments, so you could go into performance, they also had video, I discovered video basically. I could use video cameras, and I started to make video art, and make music to the videos. This is how really I started to make music, but it was for video art in a way.

Chal Ravens

Performance art as well?

Planningtorock

No, not then, not at all. How I got into performing is totally different.

Chal Ravens

What kind of things would you put in your videos then?

Planningtorock

I put a friend in a video. I would film a lot of my friends and make them do things, and I would put music to it, [laughs] and was very arty. To be honest with you, when I got to art school, I couldn’t believe that I had three years paid to do whatever I wanted. It was phenomenal. It was the best, most important time in my life. I remember a lot of the other students were just complaining, “I don’t know what I want to do.” And I’m like, “F---, this is amazing, I can make work and do whatever I want.” It was great.

Chal Ravens

And at some point then, you arrived in Berlin. Did you intend to move here? How did you get here, and why did you stay, what did you find?

Planningtorock

I got here on the back of two other friends who were making an art project here, I had no intention of moving here. I didn’t know what I could do or what I wanted to do. But when I got to Berlin, I just... I think the biggest thing for me was not being in the UK, and not being in the culture I was brought up in. The biggest thing actually was nobody knowing my class, my background, they couldn’t locate me, they couldn’t... I was just freed, nobody could... It was just really freeing actually. And then I liked that, and so I stayed.

Chal Ravens

So you moved to Berlin in ’99?

Planningtorock

Mm-hmm.

Chal Ravens

Your first album came out in 2006, so I guess I’m curious about what you were filling your days with in those seven years in between. What did you get up to?

Planningtorock

I did a lot of money jobs, a lot, and parallel to that I was secretly making music and recording songs. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I just started to play live, tried to perform my music live, in small parties, private parties, and it just started to build basically. Then from that, a friend of mine booked me in a music festival in Amsterdam, and I just remember being terrified. I was on stage, and I just had a microphone and my music was playing and my videos, and I was just walking around on the stage just terrified. And a musician called Kevin Blechdom, she’s not really that active now, but she’s an amazing electronic musician, phenomenal, genius, and she saw me after the show, and she was like, “You’re amazing, who the hell are you?” She was living in Berlin and so we formed a friendship and then we started to put on shows together. Then from that I did a gig in Hamburg in the [Golden] Pudel club, and Melissa from Chicks on Speed saw me play, and offered to put out my first record.

Chal Ravens

I’m gonna play a track from this record which is possibly not that representative of everything that you do, but I feel like it gets at something slightly different. It’s called “The PTR Show.”

Planningtorock

Oh.

Chal Ravens

And it’s very brief, actually.

(music: Planningtorock – “The PTR Show”)

[applause] I’m detecting show tunes and musicals, and possibly Morecambe and Wise? [laughs] But I wanted to play that one just because it showcases an obvious humor that seems to be quite a key part of what you do. Can you put that in context a bit with the instruments you’re using, you were just making everything on your own at the time. Tell me a bit about why you would end up making a little piece like that?

Planningtorock

Musicals is the key. I love musicals. And me and Kevvy would make these musical marathons where we would just watch as many musicals as we could in a night.

Chal Ravens

What’s your favorite?

Planningtorock

Oh my god. I mean I do love West Side Story. Of course, politically it’s problematic in some ways, but it’s still... I was fascinated by harmonies, by how to put music together, different instrumentation, and also humor and attitude. For me that first album was really about working out what was my musical attitude and how could I use music to express my attitude.

Chal Ravens

There’s also an element of, if you’re gonna use humor, you have to have a sense of shamelessness, you have to be willing to put yourself out there and laugh at yourself as well. Is that something that you’ve drawn on in general, the boldness of that?

Planningtorock

Yeah. I think with my first album and my first shows, I had a lot of attitude. It was really a lot of fun. It was very exciting to suddenly have audiences to connect with people, and to be playful, yeah.

Chal Ravens

I want to fast-forward now a bit to a track called “The Breaks,” which is from your album W. And I want to show the video, because at this point, you also had a particular visual look, which was pretty cool. Can we get the video please?

(video: Planningtorock – “The Breaks”)

[applause] A lot of artists have used masks or various other physically altering elements for various reasons. What was your reason to create a kind of face, a new face?

Planningtorock

That was specifically... I was interested in changing, or exploring, in a way, the gender of my face. If I increased my brow, then, in a way, my gender would become more open and less identifiable. It was a lot of fun. It’s so funny to see that now because that was shot near Schönefeld and it was so hot and the prosthetic was actually putty and it just kept sliding off my face. And we’d have to do it really quick and then it’d be sliding off my face.

I make all the videos myself. The reason I do this is because I love it. It’s really, again, like another language for me to play around and understand things. For me, image, moving image, and music together is my favorite... It’s just, oh, I love it. And I get this playground where I can really do whatever I want and become, in a way, who I want to be, and definitely from exploring my personal exploration. Yeah.

Chal Ravens

Could you explain a bit about your studio, your production setup at the time? There are certain sounds, certain instruments,that you go back to quite frequently. You produced the whole thing yourself?

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Chal Ravens

Give us an idea of what your staple materials were for that record.

Planningtorock

This is interesting. My relationship to gear has changed over the years. My first record I made in the room that I was living in, in Berlin. So it was very, very DIY and it was very, as they say, “in the box.” I’d have a few MIDI keyboards. And then for W I got into more hardware, I guess. Then, it’s really expensive and... I’ve been very fortunate that there have been labels that have wanted to release my music and supported me, but even with that it can be an expensive thing to do, so I started to really embrace digital production. Really from an economic perspective, where it’s like, I love digital software. I think it’s great because it means everybody and anybody can make music and I think that’s very, very important. And it definitely gave me a chance to make music the way I wanted to. And, fortunately, I do really like synthesized sound.

So I’ve gone from having quite a bit of hardware and then having to sell it [laughs] and then being more in the box and then loving that. Also, in terms of... For Powerhouse, for example, I recorded that over a period of four years, and everywhere. Wherever I was, whatever jobs I was doing, whether it was being in LA or in London or here, or wherever. And it meant that I could always work. I like that too because, for me, my music is very much about my life, and so if I’m making music on the run, wherever I am, then it’s just feeding it all the time and I like that flexibility. Yeah.

Chal Ravens

What about saxophone?

Planningtorock

Love saxophone.

Chal Ravens

It’s real saxophone?

Planningtorock

I love the real and I love the synthesized. There’s something about that instrument, it’s sexy and hilarious. It’s just a beautiful instrument, and also there’s so much humor in it too. I really admire anybody that can play the instrument as well. Joyce Sims used a lot of saxophone in her pop songs back in the ’80s, and I think that’s definitely influenced me. As instruments go, I love strings because they just make me cry. They’re so emotional and powerful, and I think that’s why I first thought I’ll try and play violin when I was a kid. But saxophone, yeah, it’s just... Also it just takes up so much space. It’s like. [makes short saxophone noise] Yeah.

Chal Ravens

Related to the use of the prosthetics, the putty, you have consistently put your voice through different processing effects. I guess there’s a related purpose to both of those things. Can you tell me a bit about some of the things you were doing with your voice, on the early records particularly?

Planningtorock

Pitching my voice. I mean I spend a lot of time in the studio, and you know yourselves, when you’re working, you noodle and noodle and noodle with sounds. You’re just bending stuff, pushing stuff as far as you can go with it, and I did that with my voice. What I did was, I don’t even remember how it happened, but I sang on a song that I’d written and I sung it higher than it should have been and then I pitched it down. So I didn’t use gear, I just sang it too high and then pitched it down.

On a personal level, when I heard that voice it was like, “There I am.” I was like, “Wow.” I really related to that voice more than I related to my so-called voice that you hear, and it blew me away. I just thought that sounded so good and I was like, “OK.” I think W, the second record, was the first record that I really tried that method on. It really brought me closer to myself. It made me get to know myself. I mean, for this record, because also I did for All Love’s Legal and I also do it live as well, it’s interesting because when I first started doing it, people were like, “That’s not your real voice,” but for me it is. It’s my authentic voice. It’s also my authentic voice in terms of my gender identity, of being a queer gender person, for being gender queer.

In my private life it really helped me come out as a gender queer person. And so therefore it is very authentic for me. But in terms of actually then writing songs with that voice, it just all started to really come together. Again, it’s about a certain attitude. I could really speak through that.

Chal Ravens

You have used the same studio for a long time, right? Or you had the same studio for a long time.

Planningtorock

Yeah. Together with my friend Olof, Olof Dreijer, he’s half of The Knife, we built a studio together here in Berlin, about five years ago now. The studio... Basically two soundproof rooms, and the idea behind it also was that we would share it with a lot of our friends. It was cheap rent. And it turned out to be such a special space. We wanted to create a space also that was for our queer producer friends and female-identifying friends that don’t have gear. We just shared everything and it made for such a special safe space and also an educational space. A space where... Because if you’re producing on your own, it’s lonely. It’s nights and nights, days and days. It’s really lonely and it’s really nice to have people around. And for me, and for Olof as well, because he works a lot on his own, it was nice to have some human contact with people that were also making really, really interesting work. Right now I finished my record, so there are four other producers in there right now, Sky Deep, Paula Temple, and Pan [Daijing]. They’re all in there now making amazing music. It’s an inspiring space, yeah.

Chal Ravens

Before you released W you also worked with Olof, both with The Knife and Mt. Sims on an opera. Did you know anything about opera before you did that?

Planningtorock

None of us did. Actually, we all went to the opera here. We were like, “We’d better go and check out what an opera is.” [laughs] We knew it as a recording but we’d never been to an opera. If felt really serious, the deal.

Chal Ravens

The opera is called “Tomorrow in a Year” and it’s inspired by Charles Darwin. Tell me a bit about working on that, particularly working on it as a group, because I gather that when it finally came to be performed it was quite different to how you’d written it. Right?

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Chal Ravens

When you’re so used to having total control of your projects, how was it, firstly to collaborate with a bunch of people, and then for somebody else to perform it?

Planningtorock

I loved it, because when I’m working on Planningtorock stuff it’s about me, it’s Planningtorock stuff, but it’s very clear. So for me to work with other people, it’s very exciting because it challenges me, it opens up my skills, it just opens me up. How it happened, actually, was it was Olof and Karin that got the commission, but at that time I was still finishing W, and for W I got really into acoustic recording, so I was recording a lot of percussion, and I got really into mics and all that stuff. Olof had never really done acoustic recording before, he was really, really an electronic producer. So he asked me if I would do with him an acoustic recording.

So a good friend of mine actually is an amazing percussionist, Icelandic percussionist. We traveled to Iceland and recorded him. Basically he’s the headmaster of a school, and so we went and stayed with him, and in the night after working all day in the school he would record with us, play all his musical instruments. And so we made this archive of percussion, and then came back to Berlin and then slowly made that into the music. What was nice for me for that project was I didn’t have to sing, I didn’t have to think about the lyrics, that was Karin and Matt’s department. Me and Olof just were all about the acoustic recordings and the sounds, so the sonics, yeah.

Chal Ravens

But when it was performed it wasn’t how you’d imagined it to be?

Planningtorock

I think because it’s an electronic opera, to replicate that live would’ve been really a big thing. And I think in the end we just were like, “If we just make a really nice surround sound and just blast it out,” as an electronic opera can be, and it worked. It was a bit tricky working with the performers a bit. But that’s like two different fields coming together, traditional and not so traditional.

Chal Ravens

You went on tour around this period with The Knife, with Peaches, and with LCD Soundsystem.

Planningtorock

Actually it was earlier than that.

Chal Ravens

Yeah.

Planningtorock

That was 2007.

Chal Ravens

So in the period leading up to W, I guess.

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Chal Ravens

How did touring with, I guess what you could call mainstream indie, bigger huge indie acts, LCD especially, how did that impact where you wanted to take your music and your career?

Planningtorock

They were three very, very different experiences. Touring with Peaches was just like, “Hello.” The crowd were just totally into what I did. With The Knife it was... I think for all three it was really nice to tour with friends, because they’re all friends, but with The Knife it was a bit more of a sober audience, a bit more reserved, so I think I just terrified them. [laughs] And for LCD Soundsystem it was very interesting, because some fans were just like, “What the fuck?” Other fans were just like, “OK.” So I think it made me... I just really enjoyed it and I felt very, very lucky as well because also all three artists really took care of me as a support artist. Back then I’d only just started playing so they really took care of me. But I don’t know if it influenced my making music so much, actually.

Chal Ravens

Talking of The Knife, I guess they have been an influence on you, or probably in both directions. A particular lyric of theirs kind of inspired the next chapter, I guess.

Planningtorock

Yes.

Chal Ravens

There was a track that we were playing on the way in from “Full Of Fire,” which has a lyric. Perhaps you would like to explain how this lyric triggered the next period of your music.

Planningtorock

Basically, Karin and Olof asked me if I would do a remix of “Full Of Fire.” You know, I love the track, but I’m listening to it and then right at the end there’s this, “Let’s talk about gender baby.” And I’m like, “What is that?” And it’s like, “Let’s talk about gender...” I’m like, “That is such an amazing lyric.” Let’s talk about gender, baby. Like in, “Let’s talk about sex, baby, let’s talk about you and me.” And it’s squished just at the end. I’m like, “That’s a song.” So I made a whole rework of their track around that lyric. And then when it came to my album, I’m like, “I want to write a whole new song just with that lyric.” That’s actually how it happened.

Chal Ravens

And then you pushed that idea into this feeling of wanting to be really direct...

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Chal Ravens

... Really blunt with the lyrics.

Planningtorock

Yeah, yeah.

Chal Ravens

Can you tell me a bit about how that changed the way that you were making the music itself, and how that shaped...

Planningtorock

I think when I came to write All Love’s Legal, those songs, there was things I wanted to say and share, and I was aware that writing a song like “Misxgyny Drxp Dead” could be a bit intense for somebody. And so what I really wanted to do was make music that felt really fun, really open, really... I wouldn’t say light, but really dance-y and just brings you to a really nice place and also just brings you on the dancefloor, and then to sing about something like that. That was really, in a way, the idea behind that record. And it really worked. The tour for All Love’s Legal was just a party. It was amazing, so much fun, and people were chanting and singing all these lyrics and having a really fun time at the same time.

Chal Ravens

Yeah that’s something that The Knife had talked about, the idea of your disco tunes being a bit of a Trojan horse for something else.

Planningtorock

Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. Also, historically, that’s happened also in house music. You had incredible tunes that just make you move deeply and then there’s a lyric on it that you’re like, “Whoa.” It’s a really amazing formula and it works, I think.

Chal Ravens

Let’s have “Let’s Talk About Gender Baby.” Would you like to introduce it, musically speaking, maybe? Tell us a bit about what you were doing with vocals and production. Or we can talk about it afterwards, if that helps.

Planningtorock

Classic disco beat, I wanted it to be really classic. And bassline... I’m really proud of this bassline. Basslines are really, really hard to make. I’ve tried and whenever I get one that I like, I’m like, “Ooh.” Yeah, I really like this bassline. Also “Misxgyny Drxp Dead’s” a good bassline too. I hope that’s okay to say that but I do think it’s good. Yeah, cheesy, super cheesy. Cheesy’s good in music. Yeah. Totally went for it.

Chal Ravens

Okay, let’s hear it.

(music: Planningtorock – “Let’s Talk About Gender Baby”)

[applause] Were there any particular disco/house artists that you were thinking about when you were putting together that record? You just mentioned the brass.

Planningtorock

Yeah. I like all types, like all sort of genres of disco. I like, obviously, the original disco, and also politically as well. And then I like the ’80s versions and the ’90s versions.

Chal Ravens

Sort of tackier a sound, in a way.

Planningtorock

Yeah yeah.

Chal Ravens

You’ve spoken before about the idea of “queering sonics,” and this idea that it could be possible to create a music that’s not heteronormative. So i’d like to ask initially what would you mean by queering sonics. What would that approach involve?

Planningtorock

I remember when I said that in an interview. I was like, “Queering sonics,” and then I was like, “Oh.”

Chal Ravens

You’ve got to do it now.

Planningtorock

Yeah. I’m like, “OK.” I think producing music and working with sound, and spending so much time with sound and finding your own sound. When I first started writing music I was writing music like a lot of other artists that I liked, I think that’s how you start. Then finding my own sound and then, in a way, on top of that, finding what I wanted to do with music and music production. And I like to think in terms of spectrums, also in terms of gender identity or sexuality.

There’s a whole spectrum, a diversity there, and it’s the same with sound for me. Sound is like a spectrum of frequencies, of charge, of energy. It’s very, very diverse. Music, sonically, is very diverse, and I think, for me, queering sonics was about, in a way, finding my own queer sound, actually, and using sound to combine my humor, attitude, fun, and a space and a place, eventually a place because of performing live as well with that. Anyway, that’s, in a way, what queering sonics is for me.

Chal Ravens

So when you walk into your studio and you’re looking around at what to do, what would you do to try to channel that thought? Or, rather, perhaps once you’ve come up with something, how do you work back and make sure that you’re doing it the way that is true to your idea?

Planningtorock

I think it’s a lot about... It’s not so head-y. It’s actually very, very instinctual, and especially when you spend hours... If I think about when I produced a song called “Public Love,” and on that is a synthesized sax sound, and I just was working on that sound for days, until it was so chunky and aggressive and had so much attitude that then I could put a vocal on it, a lyric on it. It gave me that charge where I’m like, “Now in a way I can sing on top of this sound.”

So to actually dissect it, like in a head-y sense, is a bit difficult. It’s more about, again, with that sound that I worked on for ages, then I get to this place where I can communicate something. And it’s communicated through the sound and through the lyrics as well.

Chal Ravens

Is there an element, thinking of yourself as an artist who also has to see themselves as a business in a sense, and sell themselves, is there an element of the queerness and queering sonics that is anti-capitalist?

Planningtorock

I think it’s more that in a way it’s a fight to not have... In a way not to have things commodified. You also mentioned this pink washing. Basically capitalism is about anything that you can make money out of, and what does that mean? If queerness as a topic becomes something that somebody can make money out of, then it will get capitalized, and then it gets commodified, and then there are consequences to that and to the integrity of that, and also how that impacts lives and more to do with anyway what really is that? You know? Because we’re talking about people’s lives and people’s feelings, you know?

And it’s a difficult one because especially working as a music producer, it’s not easy to make money out of this job. You know, I do a lot of other jobs. I’m lucky to do other music-related jobs, I get commissioned to do like soundtracks and that, and I’m very, very fortunate like that, but last year alone I did seven other jobs. I made music for a documentary, made music for a dance piece, made music for a fashion show, and I’m also trying to make an album between all that. So it isn’t easy. I think a lot about that, you know, when people get offered money in order to make music, in order to express themselves, it’s really important. It’s a complicated topic, yeah.

Chal Ravens

I’m interested to know about any of the other projects that you’ve done recently because, of course, if you're a relatively underground artists, you do have to look around for other jobs, find other things. What have you done that’s been particularly exciting or that you’re proud of?

Planningtorock

Well, I wrote... I got asked by a documentary filmmaker that I really love called Nora Mandray, she’s French, and she was making a documentary about the uprising of the right wing in France, which was really intense. Creatively, musically, it was really a challenge to make music to footage of Marine Le Pen speeches. It was like, “Ugh,” and finding the right tone, finding what the documentary was saying and what the music needed to say, you know? That was a great project. I mean, creatively it was really, really challenging. The fashion show was actually a friend of mine who... It was like her first... Oh my god i’ve just gone totally brain-dead, the name of the fashion brand that she works for now, but she commissioned me to make a piece for her first fashion show and that also was quite challenging, and because also she was a friend and I wanted it to be really good for her.

And then, actually for the last three years, I don’t know, like before this year, three years before that, I was working with a choreographer called Ian Kaler, and I produced three soundtracks for those pieces, which again was really interesting because it was a time where I could be... I’m going to say this now, just a musician, not a performer. Where I just produced instrumentals. Actually for the last piece I did vocals, but it was really nice just to be with the gear, with the instruments, and just produce music, yeah.

Chal Ravens

And even though you’re a solo artist, you do have a quite a lot of involvement in your wider community, I guess. You also have a record label. Could you explain a bit about the sort of purpose of the label?

Planningtorock

It actually, I started this music label called Human Level, and it was after I’d been touring all of ...Legal actually. And the artist rRoxymore, who is also electronic music based here in Berlin, she toured a lot with me, and is an amazing musician in her own right, and also a great inspiration. We spent so much time together, it was just me and her, and she was producing her own music. I was like, “I want to release a 12" together.” Basically I started Human Level so that I could put a record out with me and Hermione’s music. That’s how it started. It was also my way of, in a way, saying thank you back to her.

Also, I’m a really big believer of sharing platforms. I’m very, very lucky because people have used their opportunities and their privileges in order to give me chance, to put out my music. And it’s really how it works. If you’ve got a platform, share it, definitely.

Chal Ravens

That kind of brings us close to the new album. We heard the track “Transome” earlier. What have you done on this album that you couldn’t have done on the previous albums? You were saying that it’s got you to this new place. That track is Auto-Tuned, right, rather than a different type of pitching technique?

Planningtorock

Actually it is a pitcher. It’s a TC-Helicon pitcher. It’s a little pedal and it actually has a knob on it called “gender.” It can be gender off, gender on, I’m down with that, and gender hard or gender soft. I’m always in the middle. A little hard, a little soft. I’m not doing any promotion, I know I’m not allowed, but it is really amazing. And that’s what I used on this record quite a lot.

Chal Ravens

I think if it’s gear you’re allowed to talk about it to your heart’s content.

Planningtorock

All right.

Chal Ravens

So it’s not Auto-Tuned as we know it...

Planningtorock

Well, the thing is it’s not strictly Auto-Tuned, but it still tries to put me in tune, and so sometimes it’s like a little bit accidental Auto-Tune.

Chal Ravens

It still has quite different connotations though, I think, on this record, which, I mean, it’s not out but I’ve heard it. It sounds more, I mean, perhaps more American in some senses. It has a sort of pop and R&B flavor to it. Can you tell us something more about this musical chapter and anything new that you’ve learned?

Planningtorock

I think, with this record, it is the most personal record I’ve ever written because... And it’s also the record that I feel the most vulnerable. I’ve really shared a lot about myself and about my life. It’s very biographical actually. It features songs about my family and people close to me. When I was writing it, I had up to about 30 tracks. There was a lot of material. And again, trying to, from a lyrical standpoint, what I really like to do is, if I want to say something, and even for this record, something that is so personal... Say, for example, I wrote a song about my mum, and there’s so much I could say about my mum, but just to fit it in a song was such a challenge. To find what it was that lyrically I could use to communicate what I was trying to say about my mum. And it ended up being like kind of an anecdote. That’s what I use lyrically. I really like lyrics that are also not too complicated. That’s why I like pop, in that sense anyway. It’s very to the point and economic, lyrically. I think, for me, I feel, I hope, that I have achieved even more that skill that I’m into. Into writing kind of pop songs in a way, but that have... They’re a little bit different, yeah.

Chal Ravens

And did you feel the same feeling trying to be so direct about family as you had done with the previous album about patriarchy, feminism and so on?

Planningtorock

I mean, I think the difference was, talking about things so close to me was, you know, I am a bit nervous about everybody hearing it. And so far the feedback has been amazing. And it’s also something that I had to do. Again, for me, music has really been a space where... A healing space, a place where I could let go of stuff, a place where if you release something, you literally release it and then you get to look at it, and then it’s gone. It’s a relief as well. This album is definitely a healing album and an educational one. Music is my education, ultimately.

Chal Ravens

Yeah, I mean, it’s a cliché that music is therapy, but clearly that’s why a lot of people start to make music in the first place. Yeah, perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to say any of those things had you not got to that point. It’s a very good album.

Planningtorock

Thank you.

Chal Ravens

It’s not out yet. Yeah, talking about gender equality would be pertinent on any day in history really, but particularly today where we wake up to a bunch of women getting arrested protesting against the Supreme Court nominee. I wondered if anything about the mood of the last year or so in the public sphere, fed into what you were doing at all? If you fed off of that?

Planningtorock

I think... It’s funny, these things are happening and are talked about in the media, but what I feel more and more that this is just part of everybody’s lives, you know? It’s great that the media is talking about it, but just because the media is talking about it doesn’t mean that suddenly “Oh now it exists.” It has existed. Also the politics that we have to live in, you know? I think it’s good that the media is talking about it but what I feel, in my more immediate circle of friends and families, you know, different kinds of families is how we support each other. I think around this topic, the more that we share stories, the more that we believe the stories, and give those stories the space, that’s really important. I feel like for a lot of my friends and families there’s a sense of being quite overwhelmed by the present day. And I think it’s really important that we all take care of each other. This is something that I try and talk about also on the album, this sentiment of care. The power of care. My mother, for example, has been my sister’s carer all her life. This is unpaid, caregiving. Nobody sees it and yet it’s incredible. And it happens all over the world, with millions and millions of people that are doing this, and that is such a beautiful, powerful thing, and so I think it’s how we deal with it in our lives that is really important.

Chal Ravens

I’d like to open up for some questions in a second if anybody has anything. Perhaps while you just quickly think of something, you did mention your circle. I mean, Berlin, as we’re here, it’s a haven for artists to come and live here and be kind of outside the mainstream, in a sense. But I guess the purpose of making such a pop record is to make an impact beyond that community.

Planningtorock

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. And also I have my friends here and my family is here but I have a lot of friends everywhere. This is going to sound so cheesy, but you know, your cyber friends. And also people that I’ve never met that I have really long conversations with online, so, and definitely for this record, it’s been interesting since my last record came out, which was 2014, how much this talking with people online has, for me, intensified and it’s really important. Yeah, so definitely I want this record to connect outside of Berlin for sure.

Chal Ravens

Any questions from the audience?

Audience Member

Hi.

Planningtorock

Hi.

Audience Member

I was wondering, being a songwriter and producer of your own songs, is there a special way you approach the process? Because you also mentioned earlier that on one of the tracks you took sounds to a level where it was chunky enough so it charged you to do something specific? Is it always like that or...?

Planningtorock

That’s a really good question. It took me a while to work that out, but I think it really is that sometimes I will create an instrumental, and then there’s just something, like it had something, and i’m like, “OK, it’s bringing out something in me lyrically. I can imagine I’ll try and sing on something like that.” So that inspires the vocal, and then sometime absolutely flipped. Sometimes I will just lay down a vocal and then, in a way, I’ll build around the vocal, so it’s usually one of the two, yeah.

Audience Member

Okay. I’ll maybe ask one more question. Is there a special way you treat your vocals, apart from using a TC-Helicon pitch...?

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Audience Member

Which mic you use? I’m getting too technical maybe.

Planningtorock

No, AKG C14.

Audience Member

414.

Planningtorock

Yes, the C414. I love them. AKG, I’m a big fan. Sorry, more promotion. And it’s really affordable. It’s not that expensive and I really like it. Because I pitch my vocal, I have to EQ it a lot. There’s a lot of low end on it, so, and I like a little slapback [delay] and a bit of reverb. And I love digital reverbs. That’s the other thing. There’s this snobbery about reverbs, like, “What plate are you using and...?” I use a lot of Ableton’s own digital effects. I love them.

Audience Member

Hi, thank you for coming today. My name is Sequoyah.

Planningtorock

Hey.

Audience Member

Hey. I used to actually listen to your song “Beyond Binary Binds” in high school. It’s like a really short, one-minute-something track.

Planningtorock

I should have made it longer, I’m sorry.

Audience Member

No, no. It was really cool because I would just sometimes want to hear that texture, and so I would turn that on. I remember being in PE and listening to that.

Planningtorock

Yay.

Audience Member

But anyway, I just wanted to comment on how you were talking about finding the humor in music and specifically saxophone and certain things. I definitely understand that and I think like a lot of times some people don’t want to find humor in songs, but like there’s a lot of things that I listen to that are horrible on purpose. That’s a separate side of me from like my main musical side, which is like very, very serious and driven. I have another side that loves to find the most horrible things to just laugh at and I just thought that was interesting to hear someone else talk about that.

Planningtorock

Thank you so much.

Audience Member

I just wanted to share that with you as well.

Planningtorock

Thank you so much. It’s true, it’s like it’s a whole... Again music can be, it can just do so many things. You can be so playful with it. I totally hear what you’re saying, there’s like taboo areas, you know? Yeah, nice.

Chal Ravens

Maybe because you’ve now had several albums, you’ve been able to do a different thing on each album. You know, when you’re at a stage in your career where you maybe haven’t done an album yet, it’s a lot of pressure to choose what you’re going to do I guess. Maybe after you’ve got a few out of the way...

Planningtorock

Yeah, totally. It definitely took me three albums to get to “Beyond Binary Binds,” for sure. yeah. And that track also was so much fun to make. And playing live as well was really great, it was really cute, yeah.

Audience Member

Hi.

Planningtorock

Hi.

Audience Member

Yeah, we heard a lot about your process with songwriting, making albums. I know we’ll see you perform later tonight, but I just wanted to hear a bit about if you’re thinking a lot about your live performance when you’re writing music, or how you translate one to the other?

Planningtorock

Good question. All right, really short, when I first started making music and I wanted to play it live, I was like, “I’m going to do it all live.” I got eight musicians to play with me and it was a bloody nightmare, really just so much work and I was just too far ahead and my music at that point had orchestral sounds in it and all this, you know. I had a bassoon player in my first band. Oh my god. Nothing against the musicians, it was just a bit ambitious, you know?

So then I just cut it down and I was like, “Playback. Playback, video, me, microphone, done.” You know? I really like those shows as well, when you’ve just got someone on the decks, someone on the mic, there’s something really good about it. And I toured like that for years, you know? Literally my own little show in a bag. But for this album, or apart from All Love’s Legal, when I was touring with rRoxymore, for this album I’m actually producing a larger live show, and I’ve been fortunate enough to get some funding together, so I have a light designer and a set designer and all these things, and the reason I wanted to do this for this show is because, back to humor, I wanted, whenever I tour, when it gets in between the songs, I never know what to say, but I always want to say something, so I’m always like, “Thank you,” or “Mm-hmm.” I’m like, “OK, I want to face that head on.” I want to try and put a show together where I learn how to talk between songs and I have something to say, because it’s a skill. When I see artists do it and they’re just chatting I’m like, “My god, that’s amazing.” And I want to learn it. So for this time I’m putting a show together and I’m rehearsing it. Normally I never rehearse. I have a week, we learn the songs, and it’s on the road. So this time it’s making a show where I can actually talk a little bit. Also with the music playing in the background a little bit, just chatting about some of the subjects that I’m talking about, and it’s really fun. It’s really fun, yeah.

Audience Member

You said that you have some kind of producer collective here, right?

Planningtorock

I wouldn’t say collective. It’s more like I have producer friends, in our studio that I put together with my friend, we share it altogether, yeah.

Audience Member

Yeah, do you want to tell us a bit more about how that works and how you work together or if you work alone in different rooms or if you... A bit about the logistics behind it...

Planningtorock

The overlaps.

Audience Member

How you... Yeah.

Planningtorock

I mean, we have a Google calendar together. [laughs] And we fight a lot for the rooms. Like, “I’m in the big room,” “I’m in the small room.” The great thing is we have this really small social room, we call it the social room, where you can make tea and stuff. And we’re all workaholics. Usually when we see each other we’re like, [makes tired face] deadlines. Then there’s moments where we’ll sit and have a tea and we’ll be in the social room, or one of us wants to hear something, so when I started to finish the album more I would say to the others, “Come and listen to this track?” Or, “What do you think of this?”

For example for this record I worked with a mixer, an amazing mixer, called Marta... Holy crap. She has an Italian surname.

Chal Ravens

Salogni.

Planningtorock

Thank you, thank you. She is phenomenal, and she would send me the mixes. You know, you send a track to a mixer and usually you hear it and you’re like, “Mmm, going to have to change this.” She would send me something back and it just sounded so much better than I could have imagined, I had nothing to say. So I was literally to my friends like, “Come and listen to this mix.” It was amazing. So for things like this, you know, sharing stuff like that, and also gear.

Audience Member

Do you also walk into each other’s studios and like, “Oh, I could add this, or I could record this, or do you want to record a violin on this one?”

Planningtorock

Ah you mean, yeah, actually for this record, Sky Deep, who is one of the producers working in this studio...Amazing guitarist. Her electric guitar is called Janet after Janet Jackson. And her and Janet came in the room and we did a little recording together. So yeah, it’s a really beautiful space for that and we have another tiny space that we pile all our gear in, all our tom drums or cymbals or whatever percussion we have, and just everybody can use it at all times.

Audience Member

Sounds amazing.

Planningtorock

Thank you.

Chal Ravens

Also, on that note of working with other Berlin artists, you briefly had the Aquarian Jugs alias.

Planningtorock

Yeah.

Chal Ravens

Is that every happening again? It’s like a techno alias I guess.

Planningtorock

Aquarian Jugs. It’s so dirty. I mean, it is dirty, it’s meant to be dirty. Yeah, it’s a side project that at one time I would love to pursue more. I produced a lot of tracks on it and they’re really funny and just pure dance tracks. When I get the time, yeah, I’ll definitely... I think I should just put them out, like just put them online, yeah.

Chal Ravens

Great, well then I would like to say thank you to...

Planningtorock

I just wanted to ask...

Chal Ravens

Oh.

Planningtorock

Didn’t you have a question? You didn’t get the mic. Sorry, I’m just curious what you wanted to ask.

Audience Member

Thank you so much for sharing so much about so many facets of what you do. Something you said early on, I think pertaining to your inspiration or song writing, you’re talking about being transient, moving. Are there any places that you haven’t been, or you have been that you haven’t written in, that in your mind’s eye you’d like to go and write and have a process in a certain place? Is there like a gemstone somewhere?

Planningtorock

That’s a really good question. Because for this record it was the first time that I... Because All Love’s Legal I, just for economic reasons, I had six months to record it and get out on the road so I could start earning money. So I had six months and so I just locked myself in the studio basically. So for this album, exactly because I was moving around a lot, I was recording in living rooms, I was recording in airports, everywhere. And I liked that because the studio can be sometimes not an inspirational place at all, you know? Even when we were in New York I recorded one vocal from this album in my friend’s closet, literally, because it was the driest place to get a good vocal. I have to think about that. That’s such a good question.

Audience Member

You just get back to me on that.

Planningtorock

Yeah, I’ll get back to you. Thank you.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Chal Ravens

OK, apologies for that false ending. Planningtorock, thank you very much.

Planningtorock

Thank you so much.