{"id":132,"date":"2011-12-12T20:46:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T20:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/?p=132"},"modified":"2016-11-20T18:54:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T18:54:25","slug":"checking-in-with-mocky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/news\/checking-in-with-mocky\/","title":{"rendered":"Checking in with Mocky"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1998, I had just graduated from film school. I was bumming around doing random jobs, and I\u2019d just laid down some tracks of my newly formed solo project at a friend\u2019s bedroom studio. That studio\u2019s owner, my longtime friend and collaborator Dominic Salole (now better known as Mocky<\/a>) announced that he was leaving Toronto to move to London (he would later ramble on to Amsterdam before settling in Berlin).<\/p>\n

He and I had known each other as kids in Ottawa\u2014I saw his first band play at basement parties and talent shows. Later, he and my brother were roommates in Toronto, and that\u2019s how I came to meet Chilly Gonzales, Peaches et al. I have a million great stories about all those years, but I\u2019m saving them for the coffee table book.<\/p>\n

His move was the catalyst for an exodus to Europe among our group of friends\u2014Gonzo left a year later, Peach and Taylor Savvy the following year, and Feist not long after. Now, after 10 years in Berlin, Mocky has made another dramatic shift, moving to Los Angeles with his wife, fashion designer Desir\u00e9e Klein<\/a>, and their two-year-old son.<\/p>\n

During his time in Berlin he produced three solo albums including last year\u2019s amazing Saskamodie<\/em> and too many collaborations to count, but in the wider music world he\u2019s probably best known as a producer\u2014of Jamie Lidell\u2019s Multiply <\/em>and Jim <\/em>and as part of the team behind the Feist albums The Reminder <\/em>and Metals<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When Mocky was in Montreal recently, working in the studio with Bassekou Kouyate<\/a> (Malian master of the ngoni, an ancestor to the banjo), we caught up and I thought I\u2019d take the opportunity to find out more about his latest move and where it\u2019s taking him. This interview is based on conversations in person with an email follow-up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mocky raises the roof at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango with Bassekou Kouyate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WP: <\/strong>Where did you get the idea to move to LA?<\/p>\n

Mocky: <\/strong>Jamie brought me out here in 2007 (and I hadn\u2019t been there since the 90s\u2014a much different time) and I saw so many similarities to Berlin in terms of decaying relics of former magnificence.<\/p>\n

WP:<\/strong> Was it hard to leave Berlin? Do you miss it?<\/p>\n

Mocky:<\/strong> Not really, I am Canadian after all not German. My Wikipedia page says I\u2019m \u201cSomalian-Canadian,\u201d but that is inaccurate and not how I identify. I have a very mixed ethnic background including British, Italian, Somalian, Ethiopian and more, but I was born and raised in Canada and only identify myself as Canadian. However I lived in Berlin for 10 years\u2014I miss my Berlin friends, \u00a0I miss\u00a0the parks and my two Canadian friends who still live there, Peaches and Taylor Savvy. But otherwise LA is so fresh and exciting that I don\u2019t miss Berlin much yet.<\/p>\n

WP:<\/strong> What\u2019s the atmosphere like in LA?<\/p>\n

Mocky:<\/strong> LA today is like Berlin in \u201999. The American dream kind of collapsed in on itself, so there is new space there to create\u2014much like Berlin in the 90s after the wall came down\u2026 a new space opening up after the “fall of the wall” \u00a0of American cultural imperialism. There is TONS going on here, and I started skating again, so it\u2019s the perfect climate. I hit sort of a bohemian glass ceiling in Berlin, and LA seemed like the right answer.<\/p>\n

WP: <\/strong>I heard that the new Feist album was largely recorded live off the floor. Can you tell me about that decision?<\/p>\n

Mocky: <\/strong>It was an incredible experience! We did it live off the floor because we didn\u2019t want to leave anything to chance\u2014we wanted to KNOW we had something as it was going down.<\/p>\n

WP:<\/strong> I saw that you did a soundtrack [to Xiaolu Guo’s festival hit UFO In Her Eyes<\/em>]. Is that your focus these days, or producing\/other work\/your own music\/all of the above?<\/p>\n

Mocky:<\/strong> All of the above\u2014I\u2019m starting a new project TBA.<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s been working and hanging out with underground artists such as Juiceboxxx<\/a>, The Hawnay Troof<\/a> and Kevin Blechdom<\/a> (whose album Gentlemania <\/em>he\u2019d produced in Berlin), Mocky\u2019s most recent coup de coeur<\/em> was someone seemingly at the opposite end of the music-business spectrum: superstar producer and songwriter Linda Perry, who he had the occasion to see perform at a club.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe came out wearing clown makeup,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand said \u2018I’ve been depressed for two weeks, so this is how I’m dealing with it.\u2019 She had a record player and she was lifting the needle and putting it back down\u2014real Andy Kaufman shit. Then she sat down at the piano and started singing, and it was just AMAZING. Great songs, a voice like Nina Simone, totally heavy shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Mocky has actually had the chance to work in proximity to Perry\u2014producing one of her proteg\u00e9s at her Studio B and, as he says hopefully, \u201csoaking up her writing skills through osmosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am officially intrigued. I hope to report directly from Mocky\u2019s new home at some point\u2014in the meantime, I\u2019ll be keeping an eye out on what he\u2019s up to. He has always been one of the most inspiring artists I\u2019ve known, so here\u2019s hoping the move to this cultural hot spot will bring his various projects to more and more ears.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1998, I had just graduated from film school. I was bumming around doing random jobs, and I\u2019d just laid down some tracks of my newly formed solo project at a friend\u2019s bedroom studio. That studio\u2019s owner, my longtime friend and collaborator Dominic Salole (now better known as Mocky) announced that he … Continue reading “Checking in with Mocky”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[70,50,47,46,73,48,74,59,71,72,39,35,38],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bassekou-kouyate","tag-berlin","tag-chilly-gonzales","tag-feist","tag-hawnay-troof","tag-jamie-lidell","tag-juiceboxxx","tag-kevin-blechdom","tag-linda-perry","tag-los-angeles","tag-mocky","tag-peaches","tag-taylor-savvy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldprovider.net\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}