Part 1

Name: An Alien Called Harmony
Members: Nadeem Din-Gabisi (poet, rapper, visual artist), Momoko Gill aka MettaShiba (drummer, composer / producer, singer-songwriter)
Nationality: British
Current release: An Alien Called Harmony's new, self-titled EP is out via New Soil.

[Read our Alabaster DePlume interview]

If you enjoyed this An Alien Called Harmony interview and would like to know more about the band, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, and bandcamp.
 


For a while, it seemed as though the model of the bedroom producer would replace bands altogether. Why do you like playing in a band rather than making music on your own?

Nadeem: I suppose our set-up isn’t like a traditional band, we sort of find ourselves in between the bedroom producer and band model.

Momoko: We are really conceptual creators so we would always start with a concept for a song and a lot of conversation around it. Normally I would make a rough instrumental around it, and Nadeem would lead the writing of the words. We love detail in beats and compositions so there’s a lot of time refining within the world of just us two.

But we love the spontaneity, aliveness and conversation that is possible with musicians, so for the live show we always love performing with musicians who are able to improvise, embellish, elevate the sentiment of songs and create new pathways that we don’t ourselves expect.

What, to you, are some of the greatest bands, and what makes them great?

Momoko: The way the first question was phrased made me think of "After the Love Has Gone” by Earth Wind and Fire and we started singing it over the phone to each other so let’s start there…

Momoko/Nadeem:

Earth Wind and Fire - Attention to detail, amazing stage show, brilliant songwriting and concepts.



Parliament/Funkadelic - Outlandish Outrageous presentation whilst being insightful and witty with lyrics and themes, really influential and generous to the next generations, same with Earth Wind and Fire really.



Sly & The Family Stone - The way they are on stage communicates an inspiring freeness – it’s musically refined yet playful, and somehow the presentation feels relatively free of gender-based restrictions on how someone can be on stage.



Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?

Nadeem: We had been working on my solo project POOL and had also been talking about making music as a duo. So we had plans in motion and the creative partnership was just very easy and fruitful.



Prior to working with Momoko I hadn’t heard her drumming, I just spoke to her and we gelled. I trust who someone is first and how I can work with them over just their ability alone. How you can communicate with somebody for me is really important for forming fruitful creative partnerships.

Momoko: I think we were really in sync in terms of wanting to reach further with the concept and a frustration with not seeing enough of it. I knew I wanted to make a lot more music with Nadeem after the first rehearsal for Pool we had at Trinity Laban. He channelled something very deep even though we barely knew each other, in an airy institutional conservatoire setting … I was impressed.

There are many potential models for creativity, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?  

Nadeem: All of them have their pluses and minuses … I think the ideal for me is something where we are in the same room together with access to instruments, music (to listen to, be inspired by), recording equipment and can jam out ideas, talk about concepts and make songs.

How do your different characters add up to the band's sound and in which way is the end result – including live performances – different from the sum of its pieces?

Nadeem: When we work with Mei Kirby and Tamar Osborn for live shows, they both really bring certain elements of our sound world to life. They are two musicians who are both uniquely sensitive, brilliant instrumentalists and really thoughtful people who blend in so well with how we want to shift dynamics and improvise during a full band live performance.

Momoko: For this EP, as well as the 2 singles before that, the creation of the recordings and the live performances evolved in quite different worlds.

The EP was made during lockdown, when there were many restrictions on physical togetherness. I played many of the instruments and layered them, and asked other musicians to overdub afterwards with the exception of 998 Bricks where some live recording was possible at the end of lockdown. So the creation of recordings felt quite self-contained, where Nadeem and I came up with concepts and I was at the centre of pulling the instrumental together.

For the live show, I think we have found an amazing sound with Tamar and Mei which feels integral to the show now. Musically it feels much more decentralised and conversational which we would love to bring more of, and I can see where it would like to go …

Nadeem and I create the space for the tunes to emerge through one organism that is An Alien Called Harmony. I would love for it to continue to become more like that and to access new levels of freeness and conversation.

Is there a group consciousness, do you feel? How does it express itself?

Nadeem: If it is anything, I don’t think it’s fully formed yet. It might be that it’s being present but feeling apart from things, a feeling of subtle or overt detachment from the world, things in it and from that place creating a new world ...

We are constantly searching for ways to make a better world (and also by world it’s not some superhero/villian world understanding but our villages, communities) through questioning ourselves, our fellow humans and the things we build and destroy. World building is a sort of consciousness.

Tell me about a piece of the EP which shows the different aspects you each contribute to the process particularly clearly, please.

Nadeem: “Corpse Pose” is an interesting example.



So Momoko had sent me before a beat or had asked me to write something about death and we were calling it “MoMorbid” or something to that effect. Some months, years (time is fluid) passed and we were in a studio together listening, writing and she played the beat to “Corpse Pose,” which I felt should be about what Momoko had prompted the first time.

The lyrics came and Momoko worked on the instrumental, and bam we had a song.

Momoko: “Great Expectations” is a good example too …



We were in a studio, I was playing around on a keyboard whilst Nadeem was scrolling on his phone I think (Nadeem’s senses are surprisingly alert when he seems idle). We had probably just done a Youtube trawl for inspiration. I was playing in a totally structureless way for a while and then thought right, I’m going to do a thing now, and my hands created a little progression, and Nadeem clocked it and said it was a nice thing to build on.

Nadeem wrote his words to what became our ”Arrival” song, and conceptually it felt like it needed me to respond to Nadeem. At this time I was still new to singing and songwriting so was a little reluctant, but the concept called for it so I stretched into that role.

Now I love singing and songwriting … so the concept-ledness of this project and Nadeem’s openness helped me grow into those roles, I think.