From Invisible to Mercury Nominees

After the success of The Invisible over the past year, I thought it would be interesting to revisit my interview with them that took place almost a year ago now. We should be able to see their answers in a whole new light.

The Invisible are a London based band consisting of Dave Okumu (guitar/vocals), Tom Herbert (bass) and Leo Taylor (drums) and they have produced one of the most unique sounding albums of the year so far, leading to comparisons with the likes of TV on the Radio and resulting in them being hotly tipped as ones to watch in 2009. With a host of highly acclaimed projects behind them, including the Mercury nominated Polar Bear, and the album being produced by Matthew Herbert, the future is looking bright for The Invisible With that in mind I headed to The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch to meet up with Dave and Leo and find out about the birth of the band, their sound and their opinions on their critical acclaim so far.


How did The Invisible come about?

Dave: The Invisible came about through a series of horrible accidents that resulted in a prison sentence. Really I guess it came about as there’s a long history between Leo, Tom and I. We go back a long way, kinda played in lots of different bands so we’ve played music together for years. Around 2006, Leo and I were both touring with Matthew Herbert and he basically expressed an interest in making a record with me. I was really up for making a record as I’d done so much with other people I just wanted to do something on my own and with Leo and Tom. And in the process of working it out and bashing out songs, recording them in the studio, we became a band and decided to give it a crack really.

As you’ve been in so many other bands, like you said, do you still get the same buzz with this project as you did with your first big break?

Dave: Ah man, I tell you what, it’s just amazing doing your own thing. It’s been really important to me to have been involved in other projects and I think me, Leo and Tom have all been really lucky to have been involved with things that we really loved and believed in and that have resonated with our tastes.

Leo: We were lucky in that respect to have found other artists that we’ve really shared a similar ideology with musically. There are a lot of other musicians out there that just get stuck in situations that they don’t relish or enjoy. So we’re very lucky in that respect. But it’s great doing our own thing now.

Dave: It’s a bit like independence really, like going off and getting to the point where you want to be in control of your own thing. Flying the nest and getting your own place or whatever, it’s the same feeling and it’s really exciting. It’s difficult in some ways, like growing up can be difficult.

Leo: Like the responsibility that comes with what you’ve decided to undertake, whether it be on stage or whatever. Just controlling your output and what happens. It’s kind of that thing that everything you do you feel responsible for and it can be hard but it’s also one of the most rewarding things there is.

Dave: I think for me, I sort of knew that, well the test for me to see if something is right or not that you’re doing is that it’s got to feel slightly uncomfortable. There’s got to be an element of being slightly out of my comfort zone (Leo: Down a shoe-size), yeah down a shoe-size. There’s got to be a feeling of almost being like a child again in some ways, like you’re learning again. I knew that this was the right thing to do because starting this band kind of made me feel a little bit like when I first started playing music. It’s sort of a mixture between ‘Oh this is quite scary’ and really exciting and I know I’ve got to do it. So yeah, it’s really, really positive.

Where did you pick up the name from? It seems quite unusual as most groups that use the prefix ‘The’ name themselves as a collective, whereas you’ve gone for a singular. It seems like more of a statement than a title.

Dave: Yeah, I really love the name but people always want to make it exactly that thing that you’re saying. They always want to make it ‘The Invisbles’, which makes it something totally different.

Leo: We’re not superheroes, well Dave is....

Dave: Yeah we’re not superheroes, we’re not a collective. The Invisible is much more conceptual and ethereal in some ways. It basically comes from this book that I really love by John O’Donohue, it’s a philosophical book really. He writes a lot about creativity and just the sort of issues surrounding human existence and he kind of has this idea that, to be alive, is basically to exist on the threshold between the visible and invisible world. He explores all these ideas about your sense of fulfilment coming from these two things being reconciled and actually being in touch with both sides and I guess when we were thinking about what we wanted to be doing we thought, well I thought, about how our culture is obsessed with an exterior world and that’s at the expense of your interior life really. So The Invisible is about knowing that sometimes what’s important is what you can’t see. I really like that idea. I think it suits our music as well because we have many layers to our music and that idea of depth basically and how we engage with things. I think what excites me about our music is that hopefully it presents people with an opportunity to explore all the layers and find their own ways in to it but it seems like a lot of music that’s out, especially in the mainstream, seems to about that impact, that immediate impact.

Leo: Yeah, immediately digestible.

Dave: So maybe The Invisble is about something more profound than that.

You’ve made a sound that is quite unique. Do you think that the musical diversity that you brought from your previous projects is responsible for that or is it more of a ‘let’s start fresh’ kind of thing?

Leo: I don’t know. I think, in a way, we’re a sum of all the things that we’ve been involved with and obviously our own influences and things that inspire us on a personal level. But all of that stuff absolutely comes out in our playing, I know I feel blessed to have done so many things in that way and they’ve shaped us and they all add to the tapestry.

Dave: Yeah I think it is. I think that only real sort of agenda with our sound is to basically reflect ourselves and we are just a product of our experiences and more. And allowing all of those things to filter through in to what we’re doing is great because that’s how you end up with something unique and then being ok with that and trying to develop it and refine it, I think that’s what our ethos is as a band, to just try and really reflect what we love about music. That’s an ongoing process as we’re always taking in new things and really that’s what keeps it alive.

Leo: Yeah and it’s interesting that the same tunes that you’ve probably been playing for the last two years are constantly changing and evolving, being refined and shaped.

Could you talk us through your process of creating a song? Do you come together with different parts or work at it as a group?

Dave: I don’t think there’s a system. There are definitely things that we all bring to the process. In this instance of making this album, because it was supposed to be a solo project, I had done a lot of writing of songs and then we developed them in the studio and in post-production and we’re still developing them now even though the album is recorded, so they just take on a life. I really like that idea of writing something and it just comes to life and that life can continue for the rest of time as far as I’m concerned so that’s one thing. I think there’s something about our history, there’s an ethos of getting together and jamming things out and that, to me, is one of the most exciting ways of writing. What often happens is that we’ll get in a room and we’ll start playing and we’ll hit on something and we’re just recording and seeing where it goes and then we’ll take all of those bits away and maybe in our individual spaces we’ll work on them and bring them together again and just keep on refining it until we end up with something that really resonates with the three of us as a unit. So really there are no conventions, if any one us writes a song and it’s a complete thing and they bring it to rehearsal then that’s fine. Or someone might bring a bit of something and go ‘What do you reckon to this?’ and the others would add bits to it so it’s just wide open that process really.

Do you find it harder to create a ‘live’ sound in the studio or transferring a studio sound to the live environment?

Leo: I think when we first started making the record we were a bit daunted as to how we were going to reproduce a lot of that stuff that’s on the record live because there’s so much. I mean, Matthew Herbert, just the amount of sampling and processing and recording he did was pretty phenomenal. So, actually, as it works out, we’ve got someone who is reproducing quite a lot of that stuff live through sampling and the sounds build up to that kind of sonic landscape so, yeah, it’s working out well.

Dave: I think that there’s a thing though that says there’s a really interesting relationship between studio and live things. I like to think that there’s a fluid exchange because, if you make something in the studio, I’m not really interested in replicating that live. You want to interpret it basically so the values of that thing still remain and hopefully it’s another opportunity to be creative. You’ve made something in the studio and then it’s like ‘how do I interpret that live?’ and, again, that comes to life in a new way and it stops things from getting stale. It’s as if you’ve set yourself a challenge in a way and that kind of gives you another impetus and then that’ll probably inform what you do in the studio the next time round. I think that’s part of development. If you go about things in a really rigid way, like ‘I’ve made this and now it has to sound exactly the same’, you’re not really going to move forwards and you’re not really going to be challenging yourselves. You’re just going to be going through a functional set of motions and what I love about this band is the fact that there’s an imagination there. If something doesn’t sound exactly the same as it does in the studio it doesn’t mean that it’s not working necessarily, it might just have to take on a new life. That to me is much more imaginative than just replicating.

You’ve been hotly tipped for 2009. How do you feel critical acclaim compares to public reaction?

Dave: Interesting. We’ll just have to wait and see in a way.

Leo: It still feels like early days even though it’s been around our lives for quite some time.

Dave: It’s funny isn’t it because I do think that journalism and the media has such a power and such direct influence on things and creating an impression of something or just giving a platform to something. As soon as you have a platform it gives people the opportunity to make their own minds up about it. I suppose what I hope is exactly that. I just hope that we’re allowed to have a platform so that people who want to find our music can and can make their own minds up about it. Obviously it’s good if people like what we’re doing and if that resonates there’s a validity to just doing your thing and being yourself and being uncompromising about that. I think that’s something that we can all identify with in all spheres of life. I mean not everyone is going to like that but some people are going to love it hopefully and other people might hate it but that’s OK, you know, it’s fine. In terms of the kind of praise that we’ve had so far it’s just amazing and really flattering and sometimes a little bit scary because now you’ve got to live up to it but we’ll just wait and see. There’s something exciting about just making something, putting it out there and seeing what happens. You can’t really ask for more than that. If someone gives attention to something that you’ve made that’s actually a real privilege and that’s all I could hope for really.