Name: Simon Scott

Nationality: British
Occupation: Producer, drummer, songwriter, vocalist
Current release: Simon Scott's Long Drove, mastered by Lawrence English, is out January 20th via Room40.

[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read Lawrence English talk about sound]

If you enjoyed this interview with Simon Scott and would like to find out more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and twitter.  For more information about his mastering services and his work in the band Slowdive, go here and here respectively.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

For my latest album it was sounds I heard when outside in the Fens where I live. But it can be something I am playing on my synths or an interesting musical form that is happening inside the modular synth system I built in Eurorack format.

Inspiration is everywhere so I wish there were more hours in the day to create music.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

No not at all … no concrete ideas that premeditate the music I write and record. I like to improvise, especially on my modular synth, so a track can come from nowhere or even a happy 'patching' accident.

However, when I am going through the song development process, after the initial idea starts to build, I often like to have a final destination in my mind. I usually visualise a place or a scene that I want to start taking the listener to as part of the journey when they listen.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I do a lot of research in the Fens, which is where I live, and about how it is affected by capitalism and the drainage schemes of the past, so that feeds into my field recordings. I also research the hell out of the modules I buy for my ever-growing modular synth collection. As I travel a lot with music I tend to have smaller setup's available and they are really useful for writing on the go.

For example, I wrote a track at Berlin airport on a small drum machine and looper module last Autumn that I actually threw into my live set in London in November, when a great new band from London called Deary asked me to step in and play a support set at Folklore in Hackney.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I am inspired by listening to music, such as Cluster, Sonic Boom, Pye Corner Audio, or whoever I am currently into. But books, films, science facts, and just the strange psychedelic life experiences that I have from time to time also feed into my work.

No rules really, although the Fens really keep revealing many musical inspirations to me just when I get home and think I am out of musical ideas and inspiration to write more music.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I hear it from listening, mostly anyway. It could be a conversation that triggers a sound, or a sound that triggers an idea that I can reach into my back-pack and pull out a small travel-ready modular system that then begins the process. I sometimes simply have to stop reaching for my creative tools if I am midway through a project to limit the amount of music I am developing.

If the well is dry with inspiration, so to speak, I might pull out some unused modules and switch up my system or turn to a synth or equipment that I haven't used for sometime (like my Moog Grandmother, Korg MS-20, or even a bunch of guitar pedals or microphones that might have in my draw in the studio).

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Sometimes it's a day and it is finished. Over times it takes years! It is ready when it is ready.

Long Drove, my recent album out on Room40, took a couple of years to record, edit and finish. Lawrence English did a great job of mixing and mastering the album too.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I like how turning on and playing a synthesiser can take you away from any preconceived notion of what you intend to play. The sound possibilities are really complex these days, especially when I patch in my modular set up, so I like to let it freely open up and become a journey that I don't fully control. I think field recordings, which I have used a lot, tend to carry narratives and they are often essential to the journey or message a song has. But I don't keep strict rules and I like to often run into unknown (chance) territories to seek new sounds or musical patterns.

Hence, the modular synth is what I have been really loving playing and working with for about ten years now, since I was taken into Control Voltage in Portland and bought some oscillators, a granular synthesis module and a spectacular resonator.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Yeah, as I said before, and I try to record everything. I carry a ZoomH6 around to capture ideas too.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Yeah there is something very transcendental about losing yourself to the moment and just hyper focussing on listening.

Just listening does this to me, without actually physically playing an instrument, so it is more than creating music. I think it is tuning into something that reveals how we need to pay attention to the sonorous world around us as there are many messages to hear.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

Good question. It is difficult to stop sometimes so a deadline become of great importance and use! But I think if you always strive for producing something that gets your creative juices going, and you produce the music that resonates with you, it'll form into a body of work that usually forms a project or a set of releases.

But there are way too many options these days, in terms of music tech and endless equipment possibilities, so I like to not use the kitchen sink and keep my tools fairly limited to synths and field recordings or a guitar and a nice looper put into a handful of euro rack modules.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

I don't do endless rerecording and trying various versions over and over again. I have been in this situation with bands I have played in and it's painful as there's always the risk of trying to make it sound like the very first version that was recorded in the bedroom or on a 4-track using an old cassette.

So for my work it is always essential that I do it, finish it off fairly quickly, and then try to mix it quite soon after it is recorded and move on.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

I have been mastering now for about five years and it has been such a joy to finally build a mastering studio and work on other people's music as a mastering engineer.

I think mastering, as is mixing, are essential for today's musician and the overall production of their records. In my mind mastering is finishing off all the hard work a band or artist has done and bring everything up to the perfect point where the music sounds as great as you can get it.

I use a hybrid analog and digital system that I started developing in around 2014 and now I am working on with artists whose music I have bought and am a fan of, so I enjoy it as music as writing music.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

No, as I always have other pieces of music that I am ready to move onto.

I have a new album out now and basically I can't tell you what I am working on right now but I am really excited to develop these ideas.

After this I have not looked too far ahead but I am sure it'll keep evolving and changing.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I mean sweeping my path or cleaning my garage is a nice way to spend a day off, where I can listen to the breeze and birdsong. But to be immersed in music and creating narratives in my studio, that mean so much and feel so important to me, is like comparing eating a bag of potato chips to having a wonderful family meal that has been cooked over hours or even days.

However, I have created a lot of music that has come from inspiration of being outside and recording the whistling wire fences or broken bridges in the Fens that clank and clang like the drumming by Klaus Dinger on a Neu! track.