Name: Dhani Harrison
Nationality: British
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer
Current release: Dhani Harrison's INNERSTANDING is out via HOT.

If you enjoyed this Dhani Harrison interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you?

It’s funny, most of the things that I have created have arrived fully formed in my head – I just hear them. I have a memory that’s quite eidetic, so my brain is usually a big mess of pop culture references. Then in my waking, sleeping, dreaming world, it will all start to turn into something, and then I just hear it.

Sometimes when I’m doing a record, I hear 10 tracks and there’s 10 tracks that all fit into each other – I’m not out there trying to write songs. The same goes for a film score, when I see the footage I just hear it. It’s more like channeling than crafting, but then the crafting comes later.

When it comes to the impulse to write, I very rarely see something and think, ‘I want to write a song about that’. It just happens, it’s already fully formed.

What role do sources of information like dreams, politics, other forms or art, personal relationships, etc. play in your songwriting?

Movies play a big part. Some of my favourite movies have really moved me. Especially Christopher Nolan, he’s had a huge influence on my writing because the concepts that he addresses in his movies, like Inception, for example, and Interstellar, especially those two.



I’ll watch his films and I’ll dream about music afterwards. I’ve quite often felt like I was in his films and the soundtrack is in my head. Film has been a big influence.

Also, people like Terry Gilliam with Time Bandits and Brazil, but also movies like Bladerunner, Aliens, Terminator, and films like that.



For you to get started, does there need to be concrete ideas, or what some people call “visualization” of the finished work? What is the balance for you?

Channeling, really. I’ll just sketch something out, but I’ll hear it when it’s in my head.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way? Do you create demos?

I like to update everything in-between albums. I’ll quite often choose instruments and set myself limitations.

For example, with this new record, I used a lot of specific old synthesizers called a Novachord, and that was one of my major go-tos. I use certain types of drum machines and even sticking with particular guitar pedals. I find it ties everything together.

For example, I just finished a record with Carmen Rizzo & Huun Hur Tu and I’ve got my new album, and there’s similar sounds that go-between these records, but they’re totally different types of music. In the past, with Fistful of Mercy, for example, we just used acoustic guitars and pianos, but with thenewno2 it was more guitar-based.

But it all changed a lot when I started scoring movies because I had a lot more computer-based instruments to work from and bigger sample libraries I wouldn’t usually use. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what it is – if you take it in a room and hit it and it sounds good it will work.

What do you start with – how hard is that first lyric to write or that first note?

That’s some of the easiest stuff because there’s no rules at that point. If you have a little melody in your head the hard bit is finding something that doesn’t sound like anything else.

I got bored scoring movies and, especially, TV for some time, because you can just hear all these certain plug-in packs and the synths that all the same composers are using. Every once in a while, you have a breakout score, like Geoff Barrow with Ex Machina, and then a year later every soundtrack sounds like Ex Machina.



I do like to hear some of my favourite musicians score movies, because it’s a bit different, like Geoff Barrow and Johnny Greenwood.

Where do the lyrics enter the picture?

Sometimes it’s the words that start the song and you write something to the words and other times you’ve got these pieces of music haunting you that have lived so long without words and suddenly you’re writing lyrics to them.

But I’ve tried different ways to see which one is easier or gives a better a result, and I still can’t work it out.

To quote the great Bruce Duffy, when you come up with a musical idea have you created the idea or discovered the idea?

We do create things ourselves, but I have a great understanding of where my influences come from. Everything is just something else through a different lens.

I was telling some friends that one of the tracks on this new record called ‘Wolves Around The City’ was influenced by Annie Lennox on ‘Sweet Dreams’ and when I played it to them they said, ‘Nope, I don’t hear that at all.’



But that’s the way it sounds to me, in my head.

Some writers say the music is out of there hands once the process starts. Do you like to keep strict control or take them where they lead you?

There’s a moment of chaos where things write themselves. But do you go with that?

I tried to let myself have moments on this new record where the music just plays and I can enjoy it, but it depends on the record. I try and have moments and just feel free, but I end up back in the constraints of my own mind.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. Is there an element of spirituality of what you do?

Definitely. My light. My Love. In Everything. In everything I do, I try and bring in some form greater reverence to it – whether it’s standing up for some belief or honoring a greater power or letting go and letting a greater power be the music.

I grew up with a lot of classical Indian music so to evoke that greater power before starting anything is always a great place to start.

Once a piece is finished how important is it to let it lie and evaluate it later on?

There are some songs that’ll never be done. You come back to them years later and are playing them live and you wish they’d gone in a different direction. Other songs, you do them once and the demo is it – it was a vibe and movement at the time and you captured it.

For this album, I had a lot of time to think because we were locked in our houses by the Government for a really long time. The majority of this record was an instrumental record and existed before I put words to it, which is weird. It’s like it had two different lives, but the songs weren’t there until I wrote the words.

I love collaborating, so anytime someone came in, like Graham [Coxon], it would inspire me to go away and write loads because you felt seen and felt like a human again.

What’s your take on the importance of production?

I mix to master, so my mastering process is always to just make it a bit louder.

After a release do you feel a sense of emptiness?

It’s like your kids have gone off to school.  

If you’re making art there’s a point where you have to start again. That’s the Zen of everything – it’s about the beginning, not the finishing.

You definitely have a come down after a record, but you don’t let it rule your life.

How do you relate making music to more mundane tasks?

If you’re really Zen about it, the beauty of God can be expressed through anything, just look at the Japanese tea ceremony.

Carving a spoon is one of those things I’ve tried to perfect as a talent. It’s extremely hard to do that with a hand axe from a piece of wood you’ve grown and cutdown without power tools – that’s Zen.

It requires training, so if you apply this to any activity it should be as divine as making music.