Part 1

Name: Milo Korbenski
Nationality: British
Occupation: musician
Current Release: Vol. 1 on Phantom Limb
Recommendations: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby / Nothing for Me, Please by Dean Johnson, its some of the best song writing I’ve heard in a long while / Yo Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy

If you enjoyed this interview with Milo Korbenski you can listen and buy his music at milokorbenski.bandcamp.com

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I feel inspired to move a fair amount when I’m listening to music. This is probably why I listen to music usually when I’m walking around. Or if I’m listening back to a mix of something I’ve been working on I usually get up and pace about. I dance quite a lot. More than people know. This is my confession.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

I recall there was a lot of hacking down power chords and writing heavily derivative songs that didn’t really have any meaning to them. I remember being quite aware that it wasn’t great and always wanting my songwriting to improve and I don’t think that feeling has ever really gone away, even though I think I’ve progressed quite a bit a songwriter. Jack Steadman from Bombay Bicycle Club said in an interview once (although I think he was quoting someone else??) that you’re always five years behind where you’d like to be, and that’s definitely true. If you think you’ve reached the top of the mountain you’re going to find the truth is you’re just circling the peak of a very misty foothill.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Yeah, for sure, the music I got into between 13-16 was definitely the most influential to me. The music/musicians I loved then are still the most inspiring to me. Not so much the songs themselves these days, although they’re great songs, I still love them. But I think it’s the initial things those bands taught me that have stayed with me, the general ethos. Like Foos taught me that playing music is super fun and let’s be honest, pretty cool. White stripes taught me to do it with a real strong sense of identity and to keep that as simple as you can. And White Denim taught me to really make it your own, something only you can come out with. And I think about all of that all the time.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Guitar. Love those things. Like I really like guitars as a thing, I think they’re just such cool things to hold and look at and the fact you can then use them in such dynamic and diverse ways to create will always be pretty mind blowing to me. And I’m a big fan of and advocate for GarageBand. I still use it all the time. Pretty much everyone has in their pocket the ability to record entire songs anywhere. If you want to make music, there’s no better place to start in my opinion, it’s right there.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I’ve always like stories and storytelling. My music started out as me trying to tell my own story in cryptic and hidden ways and hoped people would relate to the general feeling. Nowadays I try and write stories within my songs that aren’t specific to me, or even about me, or sometimes not about anyone or anything real at all, but I try and write songs these days that I can relate to. I just like writing about the pure human aspects of living. I feel like I used to write about specific subjects in quite a broad way. Now I tend to write about fairly broad subjects in a more specific way.

Paul Simon said, “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I definitely focus on the general feeling of a piece of music rather than any specific aspect of it. You gotta set the scene. It’s like the cinematography in a film or something. You gotta get the right tonality across the whole space to make the story make sense in there. So, I think about the way a song feels in tandem with the subject matter. For me to feel like I’ve got it right, they’ve gotta go hand in hand.

In terms of personal sound, I don’t know man. As a musician, you get asked this all the time and I guess depending on what you do it’s easier to answer than others. All my favourite music has always been hard to pin down. It’s fun when other people get asked to define my sound and seeing them have no idea how to describe it either makes me feel like I’m doing something right. I guess it’s like an eerie, sultry kinda alt-pop, grunge-country. I don’t know man. Tbh these days, if people really wanna know it’d take less than thirty seconds for people to get their phone out and give it a listen. Then they can um and ah over how to define it for themselves. Open to suggestions on buzzwords by the way.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Waves are a non-human sound I’ve always found fairly entrancing, bit of a basic answer but they’re good y’know. They’ve got that god rhythmic white noise thing going on. What’s not to like?? I must have a bunch of voice memos of waves from walks down by the sea. Never do anything with them, don’t know why I record them, just feel compelled to do so sometimes. I definitely focus on a sound more if I’m recording it, so maybe it’s that, my roundabout way of trying to get myself to be more mindful or whatever. But yeah waves, dig it.