The acclaimed indie-dance auteur gives tips on creativity, collaboration and curating your SoundCloud.
Welcome to Sound Advice, the weekly interview series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into the many facets of Next Pro to reach their audience and grow their careers.
Joseph Mount is the headmaster of Metronomy, which started as a bedroom project in his parents’ house in Devon (in Southwest England) and eventually turned into a live band, a remix outfit and one of Britain’s most successful modern pop acts. Coming up in the remix-heavy Myspace and blog house era around 2008, Metronomy was an early adopter of blurring the lines between indie rock, left-field pop and electronic dance music, a fusion that has only become more refined and prescient over the years. With seven studio albums under his belt, Joe released ‘Posse EP Volume 1’ in 2021, a collaborative project where he reprises his bedroom producer roots while working across the globe with newer artists like Biig Piig and Spill Tab. After wrapping an extensive Small World tour at the end of 2023 and recently signing to the vaunted Ninja Tune label, Metronomy just released a trumpet-heavy duet with jazzy hip-hop artist Pan Amsterdam called “Nice Town,” suggesting that Mount’s collab days are far from over. We connected with Joe at his parents’ house in Devon where it all began to talk about creativity, collaboration and curating your SoundCloud experience.
What was the first piece of gear or way of making music that was important to you?
When I started making music, I was a drummer in bands and I’d just play with friends. I developed an interest in trying to make my own music because I would have ideas and I couldn’t really articulate them to the more musically-minded guys. So one Christmas I asked for this Zoom sampler, this really sort of simple thing without much memory on it, and I was crate-digging – you know, buying funny records and sampling them. That was my first attempt at making any kind of music, imagining I was DJ Shadow with a sampler and some dusty grooves when I was 15 or 16 years old.
These days, what do you turn to most often when you’re making beats or starting a track?
I’ve been doing it for long enough now that I have many different ways of starting something but working with a drum loop in a sterile computer environment is still how I feel the most comfortable. I will still always revert to that kind of situation.With my own stuff, I’m not really sending that out to anyone. My idea of making music is very ’90s. The stuff I was influenced by were bands that were afforded huge amounts of money by record labels to record in huge studios and just waste weeks and months together, sharing all kinds of stuff. But even when I started making music, that was already an old way of doing things. I think it sort of shows how good younger artists are with technology now that you can comfortably send people beats and they’ll be able to put them into the computer and record vocals and send them back. I think there was a time when the more old-fashioned part of me thought that wasn’t legitimate music-making or collaboration, but now I realize that the only negative thing about everyone making music at home on computers is that everyone’s quite embarrassed about doing it in front of other people now. But yeah, I find it a very liberating way of working.
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Tell us a little bit about the concept behind the ‘Posse EP Volume 1’ and how it came about.
It comes from the 16-year-old version of myself. I was really into DJ Shadow, Prince Paul, Dan The Automator and that Handsome Boy Modeling School project he did, and James Lavelle and his U.N.K.L.E. project. I was very much into beatmaking and slightly cerebral electronic music and the first Metronomy album is exactly that. But as I went on in my career, I started singing and getting more adventurous. So it was a combination of wanting to evoke that feeling I used to have and also nowadays, record labels, streaming platforms and the press love collabs – they love being able to talk about, like, a Thundercat and Tame Impala collaboration.
I love working with new artists and wanted to collaborate but I wanted to give myself more of a reason to do it. I get really excited finding new up ’n coming people to work with and give them a platform that maybe they wouldn’t have otherwise. And from the moment the ‘Posse’ stuff began, it was such a different way to how I normally make music and such a genuine way of connecting with new artists. A good example of that working perfectly was “405,” the song that I did with Biig Piig on the EP.
What things can you do to make collaborations go more smoothly from the start?
I think it’s about understanding why you’re doing it in a real bigger picture way. I realized that, from the moment I was playing drums with a guitarist, making music was about socializing for me. If you’re collaborating with someone, spend time with them, share ideas. I think that is how you’ll give yourself the best chance to be in a similar creative place where you can make music together. There’s also examples where you might have a very specific idea of what you want. In that case, everything I’ve just said applies but if you have a very particular idea you should articulate it. Being open and being direct is the best way to be. And even if you don’t get any good music out of it, you’ve had a nice day with someone.
There are 273 tracks on the Metronomy SoundCloud! It’s really cool because it’s an archive of all of these remixes and EPs that originally just dropped on blogs and would be hard to find now. Did you intentionally curate it this way?
It’s difficult now to have so many platforms and to decide how you’re going to use them all and individualize each one. With SoundCloud, there is this sort of curated level to it, which you don’t have with other platforms. And it has been a constant in a way that many others haven't been. With a lot of the streaming platforms, they want you to fit in with their way of doing stuff, so when you do get the opportunity to curate your page a bit more it’s nice. And I guess it’s also a sign of longevity when you get to the point where you’ve got hundreds of songs and it’s stacking up on top of itself. It’s nice to be able to have that sort of archive on SoundCloud – it’s unique and works to the platform’s strengths.
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How has your relationship with SoundCloud changed over time?
I remember the first time the label I was with sent out private SoundCloud links and I was like, ‘Whoa, this is exciting.’ I’ve always associated it with a more informal way of getting music to people in quite a direct way. Now, every single time someone is sending me an artist to check out, it will be a SoundCloud link. Every time someone sends me demos, it will be a private SoundCloud link. I just associate SoundCloud with new music because I don’t really know many other ways people are connecting and easily getting music to each other like that.
Can you share any tips or advice for up-and-coming artists who are just starting to release music or build their career?
You just have to find a way to do what you enjoy doing and find a way to articulate the musical ideas that you’re having. That means using whatever means necessary to create what you’re thinking of – don’t ever use a lack of technology as an excuse. Also, whatever you think is a weakness is probably a strength. I remember once hearing one of my songs played in a club for the first time and I thought it sounded awful compared to all this other stuff. But it was just sounding unique, you know? Just because it sounds like you and it sounds individual, it doesn’t mean it sounds bad. Also, make music because you want to do it and because you love it. As soon as you start thinking too much about what other people will think about your music, that’s when you will have a huge crisis of confidence and you’ll get sort of writer’s block, you know? So that’s my advice. Just do it, let it happen and let yourself find your sound in a nice, natural way.
Can you recall any particular experience where you felt like your music production or career had leveled up afterwards?
Probably after I got help from someone else! There’s nothing wrong with getting help. I was a bedroom producer and on my first album I used Apple’s built-in soundcard. For the next album, I bought a separate soundcard and when I heard that, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this sounds incredible. Wow, high fidelity.’ And then for the ‘English Riviera’ album, I worked with an engineer friend, who showed me how to mic up a drum kit and do all of that stuff. That taught me a huge amount. Everything I’ve learned is just from looking over someone’s shoulder. Everything I’ve learned about using a compressor or EQ is just from watching other people. I mean, I don’t think I’ll ever reach a point where I’m like ‘That’s it. Everything’s perfect in my music.’ But yeah, just copy other people. That’s my advice.
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Other artists in different genres don’t have this anxiety about what their music sounds like in the club. If you’re making lo-fi bedroom pop or some crazy SoundCloud rap, maybe you don’t care if it doesn’t bang in the club, if it sounds good in the headphones.
Not to get too Brian Eno about it, but I think the biggest revelation I had in music production is that often it’s about doing the opposite thing. For example, if you think to yourself, ‘I want this track to be super bassy,’ your instinct might be to turn the bass up in volume. But actually, it’s about making space. If you want a huge snare, you just need to give it its own space; you could even make a tiny snare and it might seem big, and have this odd impact that you don’t expect. I guess just experiment with doing the opposite of what you think you want. That took me like 20 years to realize that..
What kind of vibe are you on for spring/summer 2024. What are you into right now?
I’m going to have a trip to America soon. I’ve been watching a lot of basketball so I’m in a sort of basketball fashion zone at the moment. With music, I’m trying to make my own music at the moment so I’m not really listening to anything. But my children are really hammering the most recent Charli XCX song “Von Dutch.” So yeah, Charli XCX summer is my vibe.
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