After 32 years of learning, testing, experimenting and composing, Alex Banks is still searching for emotion to guide his music. That's what matters most in his creative process: connecting with listeners, allowing them to feel and dream. His productions and live sets are cascades of rhythms and harmonies that build a space of dance and freedom.
"When I was young I was hearing everything for the first time, it was all new and exciting. The energy and rawness of rock and heavy metal, or the experimental sounds of electronic and techno felt so fresh the first time I heard them when I was a teenager. Now having been making music for 32 years, it’s become harder to find that same feeling of excitement" says Alex.
Alex is a musical polymath: DJ, producer, composer, sound designer for film, TV and advertising campaigns. He came to Romania for the first time this year and performed as part of Alternative Culture. We talked to him about his creative process and how music is making its way in 2023.
Chapters in your development
I’ve been making music since I was ten years old when I started playing Guitar, Drums and Piano. Now 42, there have been so many landmarks in my development on this journey so far, I could talk for a long time about each and their significance. So I’ve limited myself choosing three chapters:
1 - Learning
My early days in music were spent learning instruments, playing in rock bands, orchestras and recording on 4-tracks tape machines at home. I immersed myself in whatever musical opportunities I could find and wanted to learn as much as possible. Starting off playing Rock and Heavy Metal, at the age of 15 I started getting into electronic music for the first time, inspired by the Prodigy, Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers and Orbital. I started to learn how to sequence using very basic computers and music tech gear that they had at my school and was starting to make my first electronic tracks. After school I moved to London to study Jazz at Brunel University whilst developing my production skills further by myself, then studying Music Production and Business at the University of Westminster where I continued to develop my sound and meet like minded creative people. Along the way I was going to festivals such as Glastonbury and Glade, and illegal raves across London, experiencing incredible music that fuelled my creativity and desire to perform electronic music live. I was experiencing so much music in so many different ways, and on a subconscious level, it was all feeding into my creative output and inspiring my sound. The early albums I made were very varied, going from downtempo trip-hop to breakbeat and drum n bass. There were a lot of influences in there but I was still working out how to make my sound cohesive.
2 - Releasing
My first release came after I moved down to Brighton on the South Coast of England. I met my manager Jonny who took some of my music to Ninja Tune who then offered me the chance to remix Bonobo’s ’The Keeper’ for the Black Sands Remixed album. Having not released any music on labels until this point, this marked the beginning of my career as an artist. As a big fan of Bonobo’s work it was a huge deal to be asked to remix a track by him, and amazing that the remix was very well received, which lead to a publishing deal with Just Isn’t Music (Ninja Tune’s publishing division), international DJ bookings and inspired me to start work on my first album release which I signed to Monkeytown Records in Berlin. From there I got to play live all over the world, including supporting Moderat on tour in Europe and playing at prestigious festivals.
3 - Development
Having had successful releases and toured live, the next chapter is about keeping the momentum going and finding ways to develop my music. Keeping my ideas fresh and exciting has always been important to me so it’s been an interesting challenge to find new directions to take music that keep me inspired but also relate to the work that’s gone before. Through new technology and equipment, experiences touring live and generally maturing as a person throughout my life, I think I’m achieving this and hope that my music will always keep evolving with me and I continue to grow as a person.
Changes
As I’ve become more experienced and skilled in playing and composing music, the way I personally experience it has changed. When I was young I was hearing everything for the first time, it was all new and exciting. The energy and rawness of rock and heavy metal, or the experimental sounds of electronic and techno felt so fresh the first time I heard them when I was a teenager.
Now having been making music for 32 years, it’s become harder to find that same feeling of excitement. I’ve made so much music in so many different styles, that when I hear a lot of records, I’ve got a good idea of how it was made and I will naturally deconstruct it, and without wanting to sound too cynical, often I feel like I’ve heard it all before. However, I think having this level of critical listening gives me the opportunity to appreciate really well made music on a very deep level. If I hear a track that’s been well put together, I hear all the level of detail that’s gone into creating every sound and the quality of the production, and that can give me similar feelings of excitement as when I first started discovering music as a teenager. And it's a similar feeling writing music too, where it can sometimes take me a long time to find an idea that interests me, but when I do the feelings of excitement are just as strong as they’ve always been.
What inspires you
I can be inspired to make music in many different ways. The most simple and perhaps the most literal, where I listen to a record by an artist I respect and I hear a cool drum sound, or some interesting synthesis or arrangement. The next time I’m writing a track I might recall how that sounded and add an element to my own music that has a similar feel.
Or I can be inspired by hearing music in different contexts and taking note of how that feels, for example listening to a track in a club or at a concert on a huge Sound System and feeling the energy from the crowd and remember how the music felt in that space. So then when I’m writing I can try to imagine that space again and create something that might evoke that feeling too. Other than that, all aspects of life can inspire me. Being in nature, traveling to new places or just the simple things in everyday life can trigger emotions that I can express through music.
Your message
When I make music, I’m trying to make something that I connect with on an emotional level. It needs to excite me and I want others to feel that too. There’s so much media out there that we are consuming all the time, I think we become desensitised to it and it’s harder to engage with anything in a meaningful way. I want to make music that allows the listener to escape and experience a moment in time, be it just for a short time when listening on headphones during their commute or for 90 mins watching my live set in a venue.
The creative process
It can be hard sometimes to get into the creative zone with so much other music business or life stuff to take care of. When I’m going to the studio to write music, I try to make sure that everything else that needs my attention has been dealt with so I can have a clear mind when I go to write and not feel like I need to be doing something else. Some days I might start putting a beat together in Logic or Ableton, or messing with a synth or drum machine and the basic ideas can flow really quickly. Within one of two sessions I could have most of the main ideas sketched out.
Other times I might experiment with ideas for a week and struggle to find something that I’m really excited by. I’ve learned that if I really can’t get an idea working well within a few sessions, then I’ll move onto the next thing and come back to it. Usually with fresh ears and perspective it’s easier to take the best parts and work them into something new.
How do you connect with the public
The thing I love most about playing live is connecting with an audience. In the digital world we live in, it’s great to be able to connect with fans remotely from all over the world in ways we could never have imagined before, but nothing can replace the feeling of being in a room with a group of people who are experiencing my music together. When I perform, I can shape my set depending on how the music feels in the room. In some contexts I might extend sections and be more experimental with structure and sound design to suit the mood, perhaps keeping the flow going more like a DJ set. In other situations it might work better to move through sections quicker and have more separation between the tracks, and treat it more like a band would perform a concert. It really depends on how I feel and how the audience is responding, which is one of the things that keeps it interesting for me as the show will always be evolving and changing.
How has the atmosphere at concerts changed
The use of mobile phones I think has had a big impact. In some ways it’s a great compliment to see people filming sections of a gig, and it’s cool to come off stage and find that there’s lots of video clips posted online where people have shared on their networks. But I also think it’s a shame when people over use their phones and feel they need to capture everything all the time, as it’s hard to get lost and enjoy a moment for what it is.
Personally if I go out, I like to capture a few moments from a show to remind me of what it was like, but am conscious not to spend too much time with my phone in my hand so I can allow myself to be immersed in performance as it takes place.
The biggest challenges in 2023, from a creator’s perspective
I think one of the biggest challenges is creating something that stands out and has something unique about it. With so much content out there fighting for our attention, being seen or heard amongst all the noise can be really hard. The more art that’s been produced, the harder it is to create something that hasn’t been done before. But that’s not to say it can’t be done, and the increased difficulty can make it even more exciting when you touch upon something new that hasn’t been done before and release it into the world.
