Emmerald: Who do you think embodies that same spirit now? You would say the West London folks, but does anybody else that capture that spirit?
MDCL: Yeah, for sure, The Roots have done that. Sa Ra do that.
When I listen to other stuff, music from around the world, I don't really want to hear broken music, you know. If it's a banging track I can appreciate it, but really for that style I've got that stuff in my head all day long. So that's why Sa Ra was so refreshing when I first heard their stuff. I can fully appreciate where they're coming from, the jazz history and the deep hip-hop history, and that whole creative ethos, I don't see it as being different at all from IG or Dego. It's just guys making music with a level of understanding about the history of music. Not necessarily theoretically or technically, but just vibe-wise you know. Moody Man has that as well.
Emmerald: What kind of music have you been listening to lately? You've got Sa Ra, and you've said that you don't necessarily, at the end of the day, want to break out your all your Afronaught remixes, (laughs) because that's what's going through your head all day.
MDCL: I've been checking out Messiaen lately, that's nice. He's a French composer. Quite contemporary and very twisted harmony. There's a lot of albums that I'm still coming across from the 70s era. I've been checking some Michael White and Don Cherry albums that I haven't come across before and stuff like that. I'm listening to music that encourages you to want listen to it basically. It's funny, recently we did a, Bembe, myself, Seiji and Domu, did a soundtrack for a Dutch dance company. It was one of the most off-the-wall things I've heard in a long time. And so for about a month that was all I was listening to, it and I was quite happy with that.
Emmerald: Really? Tell me more about that.
MDCL: The show's called Legends of The Underground. We did a show in July at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It's a trilogy and we did one part of the trilogy. They must have had about thirty dancers, European classical dancers, some breakers from Korea, jazz dancers from England, some Dutch kids and many other kinds. They had all the dancers and then a 3D animation which was going out at the same time, and then our ridiculous cinematic afro- cosmic broken soundtracks going on.
Emmerald: Wow!
MDCL: It was pretty mental.
Emmerald: Yes, it sounds like it. So is that something that's going to go on any kind of tour, or is it just a local thing?
MDCL: They're local at the moment. They have a pilot show and they're looking at how to take it further from there.
Emmerald: What were some of your first music playing experiences? You started playing piano pretty early on.
MDCL: Yes, at four, yes.
Emmerald: So how did your career evolve from preschool? Were you in bands when you were a teenager?
MDCL: (laughs) I did a lot of playing solo piano competitions at school, and that was pretty much all classical it until I got an interest in jazz, which was probably through my dad's big band collection and my big brother playing piano. When I got to high school was the first time I got into a band as such. I started playing with some guys jamming at lunchtime and just messing around. And then about sixteen I met a crew from the other side of Auckland which was like meeting a crew from the other side of town. (laughs) They were all hip-hop and new jack swing kids, and so that was where I found a lot of that music. At my school, most of the kids were into guitar music or indie brit-pop. But the black hip-hop and soul music, the first Guy album, Public Enemy, that music
caught my ear. So I went with them for a while and they got some drum machines and keyboards and I got into that. And then I remember I woke up one day and thought no, that's not for me. I sold all my records and my gear and just got on the piano properly studying jazz. I got some different bands together and played with some local musicians. Nathan Haines and I played at a couple of places in New Zealand.
Emmerald: Were your parents musically inclined?
MDCL: My dad was strictly of the mind that all of his boys would learn jazz, so I was playing piano. My grandparents all had different musical inclinations, but my parents didn't really take that up.
Emmerald: What kind of advice would you give an up and coming musician/producer?
MDCL: Be adventurous. There's too much tired shit around, and for whatever reason, I guess because of lack of exposure to other music or other subcultures as music makers, I find there's young people who aspire to what I would conceive is lowest common denominator musical expression. If you're truly passionate about music as a creative form, then you have to challenge yourself and be surrounded by other people who challenge you constantly. Then yeah, be adventurous with it.
