For some people, music is just in the blood, and for others, they may seen to be living in the shadow. If you are Abakus, or Russell Davies, the son of the legendary Kinks founder Dave Davies, this may seem the case. However, when you release a piece which is designated “the chill out album of 2004”, you could be said to have made it in your own right. Play as half of Nada (LSD) and remix bands such as The Orb & Kooler, you are in a league of your own.
Russell is originally from North London, and am currently lives in Camden, London, with my 4 year long girlfriend Elie, and his cat Miska. At the moment, he is heavily focussing on production as he expects to release his new album in 2005.
So how do you go about making a “hit” album. Russell says “I have always said that it takes a day to write a killer track, and a week to write a crap one! I try to make sure that when I am in the studio I am in the right frame of mind …. make sure I have a good routine in my life and give myself plenty of space from writing tunes in a week. I am obsessive so I have to force myself to forget about music for a bit, I generally find that when I get back in the studio I get a lot of good stuff done this way.”
In regard to his latest album, “That much closer to the sun” – “I was very happy with the album, and the post album gigging was good fun. I work on a variety of styles, so I can’t necessarily define my style as a whole, I can only really define particular tracks. But I am definitely more of a vibe junkie than a style junkie. I would say that I’m happy to sit on anything that’s just got a really kicking vibe to it, rather than doing something that is just in-fad at the time. I guess what I try to do in my style of music is to explore all sorts but I aim to give it my own touch.”
“My favourite collaborative project was with a friend of mine called Humphrey who is label manager at Dragonfly, the project is known as Nada. It was a very spiritual and psychedelic project… and was written at a time where we were both piecing together a long period of psychedelic and party experiences.”
“Since the summer I have been working hard in the studio on my next album and Rainbow serpent will be the first time I will be playing the lot out to the crowd. I feel my material has moved on a great deal so I’m hoping that the set will be pretty interesting…... It was great to see the reaction to my album at all the gigs last year. After spending so much time in the studio its really good to get such enthusiastic feedback in the gigs. For me its not really about proud moments, I just really love writing music and keep looking to the next track.”
I don’t think the crowds at Rainbow will let you down Russ!
“I’m interested in a lot of styles of music so I’ll keep on bouncing round different ideas and I just see where it all takes me…”
This year, the music takes Abakus to Australia, where you can see him play at Rainbow Serpent Festival on 21st to 24th January. More information available at www.rainbowserpent.net.
