Emma Hunter | Matt Connarton Unleashed - Matt Connarton Unleashed

Speaker 1: That is cool. It is cinematic.

Speaker 2: Uh.

Speaker 3: The track is called Snake. The artist is Emma Hunter, and we've got Emma with us a via WhatsApp. I think we do, Emma, are you there? I am absolutely absolutely you sound great.

Speaker 1: Is anyone there from the project with you or is it just you?

Speaker 2: It's just me?

Speaker 1: All right? Well, very good, very good. So Uh, I love that a lot.

Speaker 3: That's a sound that we don't often hear, you know, when we're featuring new music on the show, anything quite like that. And it is it is cinematic, and I know that it's it's part of a story obviously the album that it comes from. Uh, but can you can you tell us about that song? And then I do want to talk more about the the the Yolanda Project. But what can you tell us about that single Snake, that's the newest one from the album.

Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, that's right. I'm going to just see if I've got a bit of an ecker.

Speaker 1: Oh, okay, there we go.

Speaker 2: Let's see how's that?

Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you sound bad? Yeah, absolutely perfect.

Speaker 2: So that is the last single that we are releasing from the album. But it comes sort of early on in a story, and essentially that is her asking her partner to stop drinking. Oh so she's comparing the snake to alcohol and she's saying, do you want to pick me instead? Base? Okay, so that's that is the kind of the background of that. She she meets a guy and the album tells this story of how they meet, and that comes sort of a quarter of the way into the story.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: So it is, I guess, quite a cinematic record.

Speaker 1: It truly is it truly is?

Speaker 2: Thank you?

Speaker 3: Is is the So the album was called Yolanda, and I did listen to the entire thing.

Speaker 1: It's great.

Speaker 3: It's got ten tracks. It certainly does tell a story. Is it inspired by anything specific?

Speaker 1: Is it? Is it based on anything? Did you create this story?

Speaker 3: I mean it kind of it almost you know, it almost under sells it to call it a story. It's like, as I'm listening to it, because like I said, I listened to the entire thing from start to finish, it kind of creates this whole sort of world, which I guess is the point of. You know, when you're telling a story, you don't just want to tell what happens, but where it happens and the environment that it happens. In and all the circumstances and so forth. But I'm curious about the inspiration for Yolanda.

Speaker 2: I think it was because I was I was writing songs that were quite dark, and I wanted to kind of carry on exploring that. And if I was to write songs about my own life, maybe they'd be a bit boring. So, you know, if I could create a character that lived in this kind of combination of all the things that I loved, so Enim or Tony, but also David Lynch, you know, the sort of flamenco side of things. So I kind of built this story around some songs, and then the more I thought about her character, the more the songs came.

Speaker 2: And it was also a cheeky way for me to write about mine own experience. But you don't know what's mine and you don't know what's hers.

Speaker 1: Ah.

Speaker 3: Interesting, interesting, of course. Yeah, it's not just about Yolanda, but Danny of the male protagonists and their starcross lovers in nineteen fifties Mexico. And I'm curious about your what came first? Did the story come first? And then the sound that you create is sort of to a sort of in service of that story or.

Speaker 1: Did you already have this sound?

Speaker 3: Because, like I said, your sound is not something that you necessarily here in twenty twenty six. It is very evocative of another time and that guitar style and whatnot what game?

Speaker 1: First?

Speaker 2: I think singing in that particular way and using the Phryginian scale, which is sort of what Flamenco music comes from. It's sort of quite ingrained. So my dad's family are Sofaradi, so they're is but from Spain, so I think it literally is kind of genetic thing. But because I really love that kind of music, it was also a cheeky way for me to lean into that and think, what can I do that's different? You know, how can I make my music tell a story that has something different to offer?

Speaker 1: Right?

Speaker 2: And I really obsessed with films, so I really wanted to write music that was cinematic. But I think that that style of music came first, okay, and then I thought what's going to fit? And the two kind of just came in tandem. If that makes any sense.

Speaker 3: No, it does, it definitely does. That makes a lot of sense. And when you started this, did you intend for this to be an entire album and an entire story. I'm curious if that was the if that's how you went into this project, or or did it start as maybe a song or two songs and then at some point you thought I could make an entire story out of this.

Speaker 2: It was it was always to do an album, absolutely, And I think what would happen is I would write a Yolanda song, and then I maybe would write a couple of other, like just Emma songs, and sometimes the style of those other songs would be different. Yeah, And I was kind of creating this body of work for this record, and it's taken about ten years because I've in other songs, you know, in the meanwhile, and I thought I was done, and then I recently wrote another song and I was like, oh no, it's another year Land song.

Speaker 2: But that's okay.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well it worked out. It's interesting to me about how, you know, I refer to them, I think as a star across lovers in nineteen fifties Mexico. But there's there's also there's something very relatable in here, and you talked about it when explaining what Snake is about. There's something relatable about addiction really kind of interfering getting in the way with getting in the way in between two people who are hopefully in some sort of a healthy relationship. But but alcohol, I mean again, it's very relatable because so many of us have either experienced that or no people who have experienced that, where alcohol or some other addiction, you know, whether it's drugs or whatever it may be, or even things that are psychologically addictive, not necessarily chemically addictive, but how that can really kind of you know, that one thing can just wreck everything.

Speaker 3: It can wreck everything in your life, but it can certainly wreck everything in your relationship as well. So I would imagine, and you can tell me if I'm right about this, but I would imagine You've heard from some feedback from people who've listened to this, whether they've listened to that song or they've listened to the entire album. We've said, you know, I understand the story isn't you know, it's from another time in another place. But I can relate to this, I can relate to what this story is about.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. And I've had some people that have said, you've got You've really got this sort of nailed bef on the house, and I think it's something that kind of comes up throughout the record, So Marie Ray, it's also about five all plea and it's saying I can see that you are disappearing because the word maria is Italian and it means both to die and made at the same time. And I think that's what addiction can do, you know, it can make the person just disappear. So absolutely a lot of people have said they relate.

Speaker 2: And even that Here I Go is about her recognizing do I stick with this? And if I do, am I complicit somehow? Or do I clear off and start again? And that feels really scary, but it's it's also about reflecting on yourself in that situation and saying, oh is this to do with me? Is this with them? You know? And ultimately you can't get someone else to stop like it's their own.

Speaker 1: Choice exactly exactly one.

Speaker 3: And I think that's something most well, people who've been in that situation, they wind up up learning, whether they you know, figure it out earlier, they learned it the hard way over time.

Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, very very relatable. Absolutely.

Speaker 3: Can you tell us about your collaborators on the album You You Do? You Play All the guitar is all the guitar you Yeah, okay, so you're you're the guitar and all the vocals as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah okay, yeah yeah. And then with some of the older tracks, I've had people like Matt Kosher who produced a lot of the older songs, so things like some Blood where the Roses Grow, and he also played the bass on those. And now I have a brilliant new bassis called Haley Wright, so she played based on Hyde, which was the most recent song. Okay, and that's the last song that I wrote. But it's it's it doesn't come at the end of the story, so I wrote it a really weird order.

Speaker 3: Well no, you know what, though, that makes sense because when when they're making a film, for example, when a director is making a film, they don't they don't shoot the scenes in the order that they're happening in the film. It wouldn't be logistically uh possible, I suppose it would be, but in terms of keeping in with in with their budget. So it's it makes sense to me that you know, you've made something that's cinematic, but yeah, it's it hasn't all been done in order that that makes complete sense to me.

Speaker 3: Now I'm curious too about in terms of the making of this album.

Speaker 1: How hard is it to.

Speaker 3: Well, let me ask it this way, obviously, when you're conceiving of these songs and and they they're creating the story, how hard is it to capture that in the studio what it is that you have in mind?

Speaker 1: Because it's one thing. You know, it's one thing.

Speaker 3: If you're just going to record a three chord song, you know, it's pretty standard, and you know you kind of know what you want, and probably your producer kind of knows what you want, and it's easy. But with something like this, you really got to bring your idea to life in a way that not only sounds good and I sonically pleasing to you, but also.

Speaker 1: Makes the whole story work as well.

Speaker 3: So I'm curious how challenging that is with something that's a project that, again is unique. This isn't something that you hear every.

Speaker 2: Day, Oh thank you. It's definitely something that's come with experience. When I was about twenty something, I recorded an entire album and actually I just I didn't like it. It wasn't it wasn't what I wanted it to be. And I think I really learned from that experience. So I think with this one. I would have guide tracks, so I would say to my producer, I want it to sound like Nancy Sinatra, or I wanted to sound like the Sni MORICONI track, you know, or make the guitar sound like this, you know. So I was really really clear about what I was after.

Speaker 2: You know, can we have a bit of Phil Specter without the gun you know on this? So I would have a really clear i'd say vision, but it was an audio vision, you know, of what it was that I was after. And I'm really particular about who I would work with. So We've had different producers on the record, but I know that I can communicate with all of them and be really honest and go I don't like, can we can we change it? So I would co produce that wasn't in charge of, you know, all the knobs and the butts, but it was very much me going more of this, yes, please, you know, And I think that's how we ended up the product that we were really proud of.

Speaker 1: Mm hmm.

Speaker 3: And what about in terms of who plays on the on the on the album, because again, where you have something very very specific and clear that that you want to create, uh, you know, like I said, it's not like creating a It's not like, you know, just recording a three three chord rock song. Was it was it challenging at all to find the right players to contribute to the album in that way.

Speaker 2: So the first so four of the tracks I did before it even formed my band. Oh, and that was about me going, what sound have I got? This is the start of her story, and I'm going to get it right and then bring it to the table. So then I found the drummer, and then for a long time it was me and Tom Brooks the drummer, and then producers that I work with would then maybe add like a little bit of extra guitar or more specifically bass. I would add synth bits as well, which we want to reintroduce actually to our live aac now.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So and then when we met Hayley, because it took a long time to decide if we wanted a bassist because I use a looper live, so I didn't want to throw that element of the live music. And that's what you don't get from the record, that when I play live, I leap all of these harmonies. Oh wow, Yeah, you should come and come and see, come and hang out Oxford. Yeah, so it was important to me to get that element of layering and of that repetition, you know, different musical components. But it's actually a really small group of us that Okay, yeah, and then like Trumpet is someone that I met through a friend who runs a festival, and Rosie plays the violin and then she's Tom's mum.

Speaker 1: So that works oh perfect? Perfect? Is how hard?

Speaker 2: Well?

Speaker 3: How important is it to you? I'll ask it this way, how important is it to you to to be able to recreate.

Speaker 1: That sound when you're playing it live? Or is it?

Speaker 3: Because obviously you know a lot of artists when they play live, they're not going to get what's on the record exactly, but they're but they're cool with it because it kind of doesn't matter necessarily depending on what they're doing. And some artists are very particular about that. I mean, how important is that to you? Because that's got to be a challenge too. I mean, again, you know, we talked about the challenge of creating this in the studio, but but then to recreate that live? Are are you concerned with that?

Speaker 3: I would imagine you could probably overthink it if you're not careful, But but how much of a concern is that for you or do you just not worry about that part.

Speaker 2: Now? I definitely wanted to get the sound live first, and then I was like, this is how I want it to sound. And then that that was what I took to the studio. And actually it's been a quicker way of recording. The last song that we recorded was High and before that was Gates of Love, and that was a much more live process and using like vintage amps to you know, get that really lovely weaver surf guitar sound. You know, so getting it to sound great live is really important and I am particular.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, is that?

Speaker 1: Is it really hard to get that?

Speaker 3: I mean, I would imagine some shows are easier to capture that than others, depending on the venue and and you know what the house PA is like and all of that. I mean, there's there's so much there's a lot that can go wrong, certainly, And again, what what you're doing is is you know, because you have a specific sound, I mean, does anything ever go wrong with that? Where you go that really wasn't what I wanted When you're at the end of at the end of a show, or or is it all gone pretty smoothly.

Speaker 2: I mean, it tends to go easily because I've got like a particular sound, like I used to my guitar that I've made. I did have a gig the other day where I break my rule and I switched guitars. I've got the acoustic count and I couldn't hear it when I was playing, and I stopped the song. And I've never done that before, but I just went, no, I can't hear a thing.

Speaker 1: Oh no, kidding.

Speaker 2: Yeah, And sometimes the leap won't always work. You've got to really stamp on it. And so that that's the thing that it makes the sound because it creates that lush, you know, kind of soundscape of like layered vocals, right, but that also has potential to be a bit of a gremlin.

Speaker 3: Technology will fail us at times, certainly, but that's but that's the adventure of it all. Yeah, and you're now, do you have some festivals coming up or you're going to be doing some festivals?

Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're playing at Wood Festival in May. We're playing at Riverside Festival as well in July. Yeah, so we might we might add some more festivals into the mix.

Speaker 3: We'll see, Yeah, that's that's fantastic. I've noticed all the all the guests that we have on the show. You know, we have a lot of guests from the UK, and and there's always a heavy emphasis on on playing festivals, which I think is which I think is fantastic. And we have a lot of festivals in the United States too. But you know, the thing that I tell everybody, you know, because I'm a music industry guy, is festivals are are amazing because not all does it get you in front of a potentially huge crowd and exposes you to a large audience that might not otherwise be aware of you or or maybe somewhat aware of you, but now they're going to going to get to see you live and be very aware of you.

Speaker 3: But also just the the networking opportunities, you know, in terms of the industry side of it, the other artists that you'll meet, the other promoters and and everybody managers and this. You can make so many incredible connections at a festival. So I think it's great that you're doing festivals. Like I said, that seems to be the trend with all the UK artists that we have on the show. Seemed to really understand how important that is. And uh and and that's fantastic. And you're already having some success anyway, right like Snake has been getting or I don't know, Snake is the newest single, I know, but but you've gotten some some radio airplay over there with this album.

Speaker 1: Correct. Oh yeah, yeah, good good.

Speaker 2: We've we've done We've done well with it. It's breaking the national radio shows and that that's what's tricky.

Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt because again you have a sound that it doesn't necessarily comport with, you know, with with a lot of what's out today who which reminds me too, I'm curious about who inspires you, who inspires your sound, who's a big influence on you sonically.

Speaker 2: So we've talked about in your Monk. Yes, I absolutely love Anna Colvey's She's amazing and does similar things with sort of exploring a bit of flamenco kind of influencing that David Lynch darkness.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: I also absolutely love David Bowie just from the perspective of being an amazing songwriter, you know, having really good melodies and songs and the idea of it being quite character driven. Love P J. Harvey She's been a massive influence for a really really long time. But also things like trip hop, you know, Massive Attack, pot Head, so like a really big old range, Johnny Cash m you know, there's a lot of I've really got into the milk cart said recently as well.

Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, who.

Speaker 2: Were from the State, So excellent, Yeah, all sorts of things.

Speaker 1: Very good, very good. Emma.

Speaker 3: We're gonna so we'll let you go in a moment. This has been wonderful. Like I said, I really I listened to the whole album. I think it's amazing. Absolutely, So a couple just a couple more things before we let you go. So, uh, we are going to end our conversation with another track from the album, Yolanda, but kind of putting you on the spot. Here, what should we play at the end of the segment. I'll let you pick.

Speaker 2: I would say, here I go.

Speaker 1: Here, I go okay, yeah, all right, the catches one, okay.

Speaker 3: The catchiest one, okay, very good, very good. So the other thing, of course, I want to make sure our listeners know where should they go online? Where's the place to go online to keep up with everything that you are doing, Emma Hunter, Whether they want to find uh the album Yolanda, or they just want to follow you and and they want to know where they can see you live and what you're up doing all of that. Where should people go online?

Speaker 2: So if you follow us on Instagram, I'm much better at updating that. So it's Emma Hunter music is our is our tagline on Instagram, okay, but also camp. So if you look up Emma Hunter music on band camp, you'll find us and you can get that in the States. Company absolutely yeah, and then we are on all the other things you know, Apple Music, Spotify, but band Camp and Instagram is probably the best place outstanding.

Speaker 3: I'm a big advocate for band camp because what I what I like to tell everyone you you realize this, I'm sure, but what what some people don't know is that the file if you download a track on on band Camp, if you purchase a file, you're getting you're getting a high quality file. And it's a much better way to listen to music than to, say, you know, just streaming it on YouTube or something where you're getting you know, not not as not as good quality. And to some people that doesn't matter, but if you're someone like me, obviously that matters, and so I encourage everyone.

Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely check you out on band camp. You can get access to the entire album there. And like I said, I think it's I think it's really really good. And one other thing. So, what what's kind of the future trajectory for you? Are you already working on the next album.

Speaker 2: I've already written it.

Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah yeah, and.

Speaker 2: It's got a bit more of a kind of dark folk vibe. Okay, but yeah, and it's very sort of brutally honest, no hiding behind ylander anymore. Oh, just you know Emma Hunter's dark thoughts.

Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, cool, cool.

Speaker 2: So we're going to start recording that in Jeane. Oh pretty exciting.

Speaker 3: Oh fantastic. Well, when that's ready to go, we'll definitely have to have you back on the show.

Speaker 2: Oh, we would absolutely love that.

Speaker 1: Thanks you definitely count on it. Count on it?

Speaker 3: All right, very good. So we're going to hit this track here I go from the Yolanda album. Emma Hunter again, Thank you so much. It is wonderful to have you on the show and we will talk again soon, I'm.

Speaker 2: Sure, Brinian, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: You gotta take care, bye bye.

Speaker 2: Thank you all.

Speaker 3: Right, That was Emma Hunter and we're gonna play this again. This is from the album Yolanda. This is called Here I Go.