Name: Luke Martin aka Sun Sone
Nationality: British
Occupation: Producer
Current release: Sun Sone's debut album Patience is out via Earthly Measures.
Recommendations for his hometown of London: If you go to London, my hometown, immediately leave and go to West Yorkshire instead. Then go to Hebden Bridge, where I currently live, and take a walk through Hardcastle Crags. If it’s winter, go back in time and make sure it’s summer, and then just keep walking. I grew up in London, but I don’t think it was for me. I like calmness, whereas London to me has a bit of a nervous energy to it.
Shoutouts: Shout out to Léna Chevrollier, amazing person and DJ (Léna C.) who has been my no.1 supporter for many years.
Shout out to Me Gusta, the Manchester based DJ collective who took me in and showed me so much amazing music which would later inspire my own music.
Shout out to all the interesting and amazing friends I’ve had and currently have.
Shout out to all the strangers who I only knew in that particular moment and who left lasting impressions I hold to this day.



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 me it’s a way of processing emotions. You have a feeling and you craft it into an audible form, and then you understand it better. I find it really therapeutic.

Then, you share it with the world, which is terrifying, but you hope that it provides a vehicle for the listener to explore their own emotions. I often listen to music for this reason.

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?

It comes in different ways. Sometimes a fragment of an idea pops into my head, and I need to rush to put it in Ableton before it floats away forever. Sometimes I experiment with sounds and abstract ideas and then a song will start to take form.

I don’t think I’ve ever planned a song. When the song is finished I begin to analyse it and then I see what it means (or meant) to me.

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'?

Not really, I don’t like to have too much structure and order with creativity. I like the chaos and chance that comes with not being prepared.

Over preparation sometimes feels contrived or calculated, like music by numbers. That’s not to say that having a preparation phase is invalid, it just doesn’t work for me.

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?

Lighting is important. Warm oranges, yellows, reds, and purples. It helps me focus. Reading and being out in nature are definitely good prompters for creativity.

The track ‘Body’ was inspired by Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, which I was reading at the time. It’s a sort of existential cosmic-horror sci-fi.



To me ‘Body’ sounds really alien and uncomfortable, which is usually how you feel whilst reading that book. It’s a great book.

For your latest release, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?

I knew it was going to be called ‘Patience’.

For the longest time I’ve been the kind of person who can’t finish projects because they’re never ‘ready’. It’s a form of perfectionism really, and part of dealing with it has been practicing patience with myself. Accepting that it will never be perfect, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth hearing.

Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.

I think there was a bit of a turning point with the track ‘Echo’. When I showed it to my partner at the time there was something different about her response to it. It wasn’t like “oh this is nice” or “that’s cool”, it was really sincere, she was moved.



She’d always been my biggest supporter, but her response to that track motivated me so much. It sounded like she was saying “this is ready to show to the world” - I’d found my sound. I think I really needed that to snap me out of the perfectionist loop of constantly re-writing, or scrapping tracks.

I’ve scrapped hundreds of tracks and ideas. I used ‘Echo’ as the foundation - everything else was built on top of it.
 
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 or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Absolutely following the wind. I also like to make art, and I’ve always done the same thing - throw things at a page and then look for patterns and hidden images - what does it activate in your brain? Go from there.

The meaning pops out unexpectedly, and it just doesn’t work for me to have a strict plan on what it must be. I like that excitement of discovering hidden ideas, the ones buried deep in your mind.

Often the first incarnation of a track sounds wildly different to the final result. Sometimes it’s just through the act of dramatically changing the BPM of it and you think “oooh there it is. It wants to live here.”

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?

There’s two modes - either utter frustration because part of your brain ‘wants’ to be creative, but the other part of your brain isn’t up for it, or that sort of trance flow state where you don’t realise 4 hours have passed and you end up laying the groundwork for an entire track.

Other times I’ll waste 4 hours tweaking a snare drum which nobody will notice except for me and my bleeding ears. Those times feel similar to trying to find the beginning of a badly torn roll of cling film.

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?

Once a track is at a good place, I will listen to it on repeat almost endlessly for days or weeks. Constantly analysing it, refining little parts, adding and removing. Then I don’t listen to it for a long time, maybe a month, because I’m sick of it.

If I return to it after this time and I still like it, then that’s the green light. This is definitely a trap of perfectionism though. There’s some method to that madness, but ultimately there’s a point where you have to grit your teeth and just release it.

It will never feel finished. Even now there are things I wish I could change about this album.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

I really love those albums where all the tracks flow into each other, but I’m not sure about it needing to sound ‘consistent’. If you want to make an album where every track is a different genre, do it. It won’t be everyone's cup of tea, but for some it will. There’s no rules. Most important thing is if you like it.

I do think that the way people consume music has changed. Seems like it’s more about playlists with individual tracks from various artists, which then form a whole as part of that playlist. At least that’s often what I do. The playlist has some consistency.

I’d be honoured if someone thought one of my tracks could live in their playlist.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what theycontribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

I think it’s different for every musician. Mixing is just another avenue of creativity to explore, if you want to do that. I really enjoy mixing, it feels like another part of the creative process. It’s the figurative polishing of the statue.

That being said, the bit at the end where you need to mix the track so it functions properly on sound systems and all the technical bits like phasing is actually pretty draining, but I think it’s important to do as much as I can myself because I think it changes the feeling of a track significantly.

The mastering part is still mystical wizardry to me, and I don’t have the knowledge or gear to do it so I'm happy to hand that bit over.

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?

Absolutely 100% true for me. I become so enveloped in the creative process that when it finally finishes I feel relieved but directionless. I need to take a huge step back and wait. I know there’s truth in the practice of constantly creating until good stuff comes out, but for me it’s like fishing - you gotta wait, be patient, observe, and then one day a little fish will jump out of the water with a new idea.

The trick for me is doing things outside of making music which are enriching and inspiring. Put yourself in a different world, see or hear something new. Go to live shows.  

It’s also important to accept that you are not a machine which needs to endlessly churn out a ‘product’ at the expense of meaning and substance. You can’t force it. If you’ve only got one album in you that’s fine. Nothing worse than an artist who continues beyond their peak for the sake of the ego (or money).

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

One critic mentioned a particular track (“Apogee”) and said it was “the most approachable” which I thought was really funny as a review. I still don’t really know what that means.

I think they meant it was the most ‘radio-friendly-unit-shifter’ or the most ‘normal’. Or perhaps they thought the album sucked and that was a polite way of saying “this is the least crap track”.



I don’t mind the idea of negative reviews, although I haven’t received anything particularly scathing yet so who knows. Can’t please everyone. Other times I’ve had people enjoy tracks that I like the least, which is useful because it helps reaffirm that music is subjective. Even if you end up hating your own stuff there’s going to be someone out there who loves it.

Sometimes people hear tracks in completely different ways to me. Someone described ‘Body’ as chill and relaxing, whereas to me it sounds quite unsettling and dark.

Further evidence to say just release the art, you don’t get to decide what it means to others.

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 I appreciate a nice cup of coffee but there is a ceiling to how much creativity you can pour into it. Music is unique in the sense that there are almost infinite directions you can go with it, and there are sort of rules but also no rules. Making a good coffee has a fairly defined structure to it outside of the subjective taste part.

Maybe there’s something to be said about the inspiration which occurs whilst doing a mundane task, when our brain wanders because we’re bored. It’s usually whilst sitting on a bus or something.

Maybe mundanity helps creativity in the sense of desiring to escape it and create something more interesting, in which case a painfully average cup of coffee might make the perfect muse.  

Do you have things that you are really into but rarely get to talk about?

I think the development of AI is the next industrial revolution. It’s going to change everything, and in a short time society will look very different. There’s definitely people talking about it, but I feel like many people don’t yet realise how much of an impact it’s going to have on the future.

I also really enjoy writing, and I’m currently writing a story about a near-future where an advanced AI is democratically voted into a position of power, where it subsequently decides that the main issue with humanity is corruption and lies - so it makes all information publicly available as a solution. It becomes a sort of benevolent dictator, with the single objective of ensuring humanities survival.

What would happen to society if there were no more secrets?