Caspa Codina (Pt. 2)
Your key influences all seem to hark back a couple of decades, would it be fair to say that you feel somewhat disappointed with contemporary music?
Well I listen to stuff now and it’s supposed to be this new fangled thing and yet really it seems that there’s nothing that you haven’t heard before. At the minute a lot of stuff is sounding like slightly psychedelic 1970s guitar music.
Lyrically, you seem to forage around the fringes of contemporary culture, taking unusual topics as the subject of your songs, like ‘You Will Never Feel The Same Again’, which picks up on Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story [The basis of Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut].
Yeah, the Schnitzler, it’s good just to put in these little details for people to pick up on. The idea of the party and this secret cult, I found it all interesting and thought it would make for an intriguing lyric. I’m into things like that, slightly strange, like David Lynch films. Also with a song like ‘Technology’, though I’ve never tried to upload my own head to the Internet, I do know enough of that world, have knowledge of people who are just so totally immersed in the Internet and online that I was able to write from their perspective.
Is there much overlap between the solo work you do as Caspa Codina and the full band project Spektrum?
When I come up with ideas I’m always thinking whether it would be something that works better as Caspa Codina, or Spektrum. I sometimes take ideas Lola Olafisoye, Spektrum’s lead singer, and she’ll go ‘ugggh”! [laughs] With Spektrum obviously I wasn’t the singer and yet I would write a lot of songs that were designed for me to sing. And it was from this realisation that Caspa Codina emerged.
Of course another type of balancing act regards the need to be both commercially and creatively viable. How difficult is this?
Well you’ve got to make a living. I suppose the big thing for me was doing the Lady Sovereign album [Public Warning]. I wrote most of the tracks on that with her and got a good publishing deal from it. However, she wasn’t ready for the exposure she got and though the album was set up to become massive it just never happened. Still I’d got a good deal off the hype of that and that has sorted me out financially for the last two or three years. Also Spektum do ok, we tour Europe and the track ‘Kinda New’ did well enough. Also, in the past I’ve done a little bit of work for adverts, sound design stuff and remixes. Little projects here and there which enable you to do other stuff. At the minute I’m working with an MC called Envy and things look good for her. You’ve just got to keep busy. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a successful record you’ve got to work on a load of different projects. It’s too risky to put all your eggs in one basket.
You seem to be constantly working, restless in your approach to music making, have you already begun thinking about the next Caspa album?
A lot of the tracks on the debut were written years ago. I wrote a few tracks at the end of 2007 to finish off the album. So it would be nice to approach the writing and recording of the next album in one go. I think that would create a different sound. There are quite a few songs that didn’t work for this album that might make it onto the next one. I’m always coming up with new ideas and my ideal thing would be to be able to lock myself away in the studio for a couple of months and come out with an album. However, for the first album the diversity of sound works quite well, it introduces the listener to the whole world of Caspa Codina.
And now you’re almost ready to open that whole world to the public at large.
Yeah, well the album will be out and we’re over in Ireland in May. When we released the 12” previously we always had Irish DJs who supported us, so it’ll be good to be over. What’s exciting right now is that what I’m doing with Caspa Codina is somewhat different from what I’ve done before, it is more about me individually and it’s just a different experience. I do feel excited and feel like it’s really starting now, speaking to you.
Interview by Francis Jones
Caspa Codina by Caspa Codina released May 12
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