Steven Bamidele - 10 Questions
We have been following Steven Bamidele’s journey for a while now and last year he dropped his second album ‘THE CRASH!’. It’s a stellar album and we love it. We found out that he will be performing in the newly refurbished upstairs at Ronnie Scotts and decided to have a catch up with him to find out more about his early music journey, the creating ‘THE CRASH!’ and how he feels about performing at such an incredible venue.
1. If people were listening to your music for the first time, which track would you tell them to listen to first and why?
It’s hard to narrow it down - I’d say either ‘Sitting in the Dark’, ‘Painted Over’ or ‘Dark Sense of Humour’ Mainly because those songs kind of explain why I make music and persist on this journey of being an artist, and the motivations for it. They feel like a good precursor to the rest of my stuff.
2. Music tends to have memories attached to them. Could you give us a fond memory of one track? School/college, House parties, road trips, holidays etc.
On my 16th birthday, my mum and I had a day out, she took me shopping in Freeport (I think, or maybe Bury St Edmunds) and then we went to see a movie called ‘Love Happens’. I think that movie bombed commercially, but in the film Jennifer Anniston and Aaron Eckhart’s characters go to see a band called Rogue Wave, and they’re playing their song ‘Lake Michigan’. To this day that song reminds me of my mum and that film, and it has the mostly calming effect on my brain, it’s one of my favourite songs ever.
3. What was the first record/tape/CD you bought for yourself? It can be a single or album.
That’s a great question and I honestly can not remember now. The earliest CDs I remember having are some S Club 7 ones and the boyband A1 - but my parents got me these. I really can’t remember the first one I bought myself, but if I had to guess I’d say it was probably From Under the Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy. I was I could say it was like Miles Davis or something really sophisticated but I was super into pop punk as a kid.
4. What was your first experience of Soul or Rap music? How did it make you feel?
My best mate Max and I shared tonnes of music growing up. I was into a lot of indie rock and pop punk as I mentioned, but Max loved everything Hip Hop, Rap, Funk, Soul. Max is a very white, very British guy, so we had a joke that our music tastes were reversed.
My dad just didn’t listen to music at all to be honest, and my mum listened to 95% Christian music, which I didn’t have much interest in to listen to in my own time, so my musical taste was something I built on my own or with friends, it wasn’t really passed down to me like it is for a lot of musicians.
Kids at school would tell me ‘you’re black so you should like rap etc’ and I think I actively rebelled against being told what I ‘should’ do, and so I doubled down on being into rock music. (I was 1 of maybe 10 people of colour when I was at school).
But Max showed me a lot of music, he was actually a big fan of the Tru Thoughts label when we were younger, and so I knew about them for years before I signed to them. I think the first soul record I really fell in love with was ‘Whats Going On’ by Marvin Gaye. Our music teacher put together a band of students to learn this album for a performance at school, and I was the vocalist, so I got to know the album really intimately, and it inspired the way I sing quite heavily.
5. We are so excited to hear that you are performing in Ronnie Scott’s upstairs, could you tell us more about how much this opportunity means to you?
Thank you! Yeah it’s really exciting. I’ve felt like a bit of an outsider for many years in this music space, trying to prove myself and keep getting better. In the last few years since signing with Tru Thoughts, there’s definitely been some momentum, but getting there was a long slow journey - which it’s meant to be! The point being, playing a venue like Ronnie Scott’s feels like a right passage in some way, it feels really fulfilling to be given the opportunity. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right, and to just keep going on the direction I’m going.
6. Could you tell us more about the creative process behind your album ‘THE CRASH!’? From writing and building the tracks to choosing features
My album ‘Summing Up’ came out in September 2023. But I gave it to the label in September 2022. I had been doing a lot of writing through 2023, but maybe only 4 or 5 songs that I knew for sure I wanted on the album. I decided to reverse-engineer some songs. In December I booked a couple days with Dave Bryce, we mic’d up a drum kit and I sat and played a ton of stuff to various tempos. I’m not a great drummer but I can just about get by - I wanted beats to take away that might give me some inspiration. The drums on ‘Turn Ugly’ and some of the acoustic drums on ‘Take Cover’ are from that session, for example.
I knew I wanted this album to be conceptual and to have a story from beginning to end. In retrospect I’m not sure how well I achieved that, but it was the aim and the inspiration for the record. Having some rules and limitations actually help form ideas for me. The album ended up being about a human boy and an alien girl falling in love. But at one point the album was going to be each song being a different person in a town reacting to a spaceship crash landing - and before that, it was going to be in a future world where AI had taken over, and an old man and a young boy travelling to a human sanctuary for refuge. It took some trial and error to find the right narrative. At the end of 2022, I got really briefly into the idea of writing a script or a screenplay, and I made notes whilst watching films to take inspiration. That was when I decided the next album was to be a story. I wanted to make something that could be adapted to screen.
The features were all people I’d worked with previously or just was a fan of. Scarlett and I have worked together on about 7 released tracks now - Our sessions are always super easy going and a good laugh, and we have similar musical instincts. I think we’re just go-to collaborators for each other now. Célia and I met at a Sofar Sounds in 2022. I was playing but she was just attending. We exchanged instagrams, but I didn’t hear her music until months later. When I heard her voice, I became a fan instantly and we struck up a remote friendship (she lives in Lyon, France). I knew I wanted to work with her, and I heard her voice sitting perfectly on some of the songs. Cam and I had done a session a few months before I sent him ‘Cuckoo’. I love his voice and his cadence, and I wanted a rap feature on this album. Aaron and I had worked together a few years back - we were connected by Matthew Halsall from Gondwana Records, we met just outside of Manchester and kept in touch since. He’s a good egg and a phenomenal Trumpet and Flugelhorn player, I could hear him on ‘Phone Home’ immediately.
7. You have some really interesting artwork for ‘THE CRASH!’ Could you tell us a bit more about the thought process behind the imagery?
The concept for the artwork went through so many stages. I had word documents of clothes I wanted to buy and colour schemes and everything. I wanted to create a ‘character’ for the album, like Tyler the Creator’s ‘IGOR’ for example, but in a subtler way, where I just had a look for the whole campaign. So I was originally going to get an orange suit, but I tried one on and it didn’t look great. I also wanted the text to be large, almost graffiti style writings nd for me to be outside of a sunny day. Nelson my photographer and I went to Tichbourne Studios in Brighton just to get some press shots - we weren’t planning on getting the artwork that day. It ended being almost the opposite visually of what I was going for. But we found this stool in the studio, and we got the idea to remove it in post afterwards and make it look like I’m floating. Everyone thinks I’m falling though, but the idea was I’m being beamed up by a spaceship as it ties in with the story.
8. Do you have a favourite song from ‘THE CRASH!’? and which track do you think is the fan favourite and why?
My favourite is ‘Turn Ugly’. It was my favourite while working on the album, and is one of the whackier songs I’ve written lyrically and musically. I wanted it to be the lead single, but we decided against it ultimately. I think ‘Exoskeleton’ has definitely travelled the furthest and I’ve ad the most messages about it. The really cool thing though is every song on the album has been mentioned as someones favourite to me at one point or another, so it feels like there’s something there for everyone.
9. What’s the proudest moment to date for you as an artist?
Never beats a message or a conversation where someone tells you what your music/song means to them. That makes me proud and really spurs me on to keep going.
Beyond that, this year at SXSW with the band was unreal. Our plane to Texas got turned around back to London, and we had to fly out again the next day. We felt slightly defeated initially, but once we were on the BME stage, everything shifted - I’ve been playing with the guys in my band for years now, I think we all collectively locked in and had the best time on stage because it felt like all those years had led to that moment. We have loads of exciting shows coming up but that one will be remembered for life.
10. What have you got planned for the not so distant future?
I have a tune with a producer called Glimlip coming out on 4th June! We’re of course playing Ronnie Scott’s on the 19th June and Stowaway Festival on 1st August. Also a very exciting international show later in the year, to be announced soon…
