If there is such a thing as ‘normal’ hip hop, then Stanley Odd’s past work has shown that what they do certainly isn’t it. They challenge hip hop. They play with it. And in doing so, they make listeners question what hip hop – especially Scottish hip hop – can be and where it can go. They aren’t just one of the country’s best known hip hop acts – their unique style has given them led to critical recognition and crossover success. However, it’s now been over six years since their album A Thing Brand New dropped, an album that cemented the band’s reputation for pushing the boundaries (and even achieved mini-viral success in the midst of a historic political referendum – not bad going).
Fans won’t be begrudge the wait given what the result is: Stay Odd: The Magic Of Everyday Things, a 14-track album with a 56-page companion book. The time in between albums hasn’t diminished their sense of adventure and as the title suggests, Stay Odd continues their tradition of beautiful irreverence. To find out more, Hip Hop Scotland’s Delaina Sepko sat down with the band’s emcee Dave ‘Solareye’ Hook to chat about the project.
The album is called Stay Odd. Is the book called The Magic Of Everyday Things or are both called that?
The album’s called Stay Odd. The book’s called Stay Odd: The Magic Of Everyday Things. The album’s probably called that too. We called the record Stay Odd for a long time but I kind of felt like The Magic Of Everyday Things was a subheading in terms of what we were trying to do with the record. I think if we’d only released it as a record, then we wouldn’t have given it the second title but you can do that in literature.
Up at the front of the book, there’s a manifesto and it’s in bold. Can you talk us through the manifesto and how that wound up in the book?
The manifesto is an attempt to explain the book. What is it all about? Since 2012 everything we’ve released has been on vinyl or as CDs. And people seem to like physical products, something tangible to hold on to. So the conversation started with us last year asking: ‘what is it that people like about having a physical thing?’ And I think part of it is because it’s a tangible, real thing you can hold and you can look at and pour over. But I was wondering how many people buy the record but listen to the digital download code inside? And if that’s the case, then what if we poured all of our resources into creating something that you could physically get as much out of as possible? And if we took the record out of the equation, then we would have more options than just the square front, square back and maybe what you can get printed on the record sleeve. Like, we could expand that out. Do more pages. And it grew arms and legs. It’s grown into this 56-page book! We thought we could tell much more of the story of the record and every song and more of the meaning behind the album if we did that.
So, that was the initial thought behind it. Then, I kind of realised that every time I explain it to people, I’m having to explain it. ‘Why are you releasing a book? Is this a book? Is it separate to the album?’ These sorts of things. The more I think about it, the book is meant to be a companion, like a navigation device, like a map to lead you through the record. That’s why it’s got the big stop sign at the front. It’s supposed to say: ‘go on and get the music before you go any further’. Once you have the music, then have a read of the manifesto. You know the sort of thing that we’ve all done in the past where you put an entire album on and you pour over every word you can get your hands on in the inlay card. You read everything about it and try to dive into the world of the music and that’s the idea behind the book. So, I tried to put a bit of that into the manifesto.
Also it’s not just a bunch of lyrics to read along with. There’s photography and other artwork. There are lovely flow charts of the creative process as well, little notes about what synth you’ve used for things or where something was recorded. I know I’m not the only one who really appreciates those details. Those are the sort of things that bring a project to life, I feel. It really opens up a window into not just the content but also the process and the people. It’s personal and accessible. The book felt like a bridge between people coming to this project and you guys.
There’s that nervousness, I guess, around how people respond to it. To see if it resonates with folks. It is meant to be a bridging sort of device. Making this record has been quite a personal experience and quite a journey for all of us in the band, more so than previous records. It took us a lot longer to do. Musically, I think we’ve concerned ourselves less than ever about how other people perceive what we do and more: ‘Let’s get together and make some songs’. You can then invite people in through the book to join the family and feel like they’re part of it while they’re listening to it.
The process was a bit longer than you’ve taken with other work. At the front of the book it says the record was a couple years in the making.
Oh, at least. Up until 2014, we made a record every year. Our release schedule was really hectic and we were touring an awful lot as well so we were constantly busy, either playing or recording. After November 2014, when we put the last album out, we started working on projects straight away, but everybody else, at that time in particular, was playing in lots of other bands and had other commitments. We put a single out in 2016 and had a bunch of songs that were looking like an album, but they don’t exist anymore. It was really the last two or three years that we started making this record. It’s funny, though. We made the Solareye record [All These People Are Me] in between, which came out in 2018, and that to me still feels like a Stanley Odd project because it was Dunt that co-produced it with Harvey Kartel. So, it feels like part of the same family tree.
And the last year of that will have been during lockdown. What impact did that have on the way you put the project together?
We were fortunate that the record was 90% recorded when we went into lockdown last March. The way it worked was everybody made beats and we started filling a Dropbox folder with everybody’s instrumentals and ideas. Then we started booking four or five day studio sessions and we’d turn up at the studio and pick four or five songs from the big folder and say: ‘Right, this weekend or this block we’ll work on these’. We were fortunate that we had the studio pretty much 24 hours a day, so we could just live in it while we were there and it felt dead exciting to be working away on ideas and stuff in the middle of the night. Most of the songs came into life at that point.
Then when we went into lockdown and we had vocals that weren’t done and different people’s overdubs needed done. All the mixing and production from Dunt still had to get done. And some of us have studio spaces. We were used to that. Veronica, less so. We had to post her a microphone and audio interface and list of instructions to go and start recording her vocals. Everybody was busy in their own spaces and sending things to each other and then listening to it. The record was so close to being finished and we planned to put it out last September. When we went into lockdown we had an Easter tour planned, which got cancelled. We had festivals in the summer that got cancelled. We were just starting to book a bigger tour for September for the album, which didn’t happen. But we decided from July to start releasing singles every six weeks. That was amazing because we’ve certainly never had the opportunity to focus on seven singles from a record. For each one, we worked with an artist Matt Sloe, who has done all the hand drawn art. We worked with different videographers. To give that amount of time to so many songs on the record and tell their stories is kind of unheard of.
I was keen to see the full tracklist knowing that you’d had this really long run of single releases ahead of the album. It felt like we were getting something from Stanley Odd really consistently over the last year. How was that different than some of the other promo periods that you’ve had?
It was bananas because we put one single out last January and then we started the six-weekly single releases in July. So, we’ve basically been releasing the record for a year and two months, which is bananas! But I guess it all came about because of the global pandemic situation and I had concerns about how much of this record we were releasing before it came out. I think it’s ended up ok because it’s a 14-track record and we’ve released half the album as singles. That still feels quite good to me. Some of the single versions are slightly different to the album versions. The album has seven songs that haven’t been released yet at all. I like that number. Whole albums these days are potentially seven songs. Nova’s well-deserved SAY Award-winning album is about 22 minutes and five songs long, I think. So, there are seven unheard songs on this record plus the seven that have already been released and I feel like the book gives you a bit more story of all of them.
Not to say I forgot entirely about the early singles, but there have been so many good ones that by the time the next one comes out I’m always sure the newest one is my favourite. Listening to the album is a lovely way to go back and remind myself.
Human beings like repetition. We reward ourselves with dopamine when we recognise stuff we know. That’s why we like rhymes as well because sounds are the same but different. The familiar and the unfamiliar. Hopefully there’s an element of that in revisiting some of the singles. Also, another reason for doing so many singles was we hadn’t been releasing for the last few years. It felt like a really good opportunity to engage with our audience and engage with the community and let folks know what we were about just now and spend a bit more time doing that. Although I think it feels like we’ve constantly been doing stuff, Stanley Odd hadn’t released anything since 2016. So it felt like a good opportunity.
I really appreciated the album’s depth and breadth of content. The tracks and their messages are topical, but you guys made them in a way that was still approachable and sensitive. They are insightful without being preachy. I’m one of those stubborn folks that doesn't like to be told what to do and I struggle to absorb things when they’re pushed. But I didn’t feel that with Stay Odd. I was sure “Night Rip” was my favourite track and then you dropped “The Invisible Woman” [a track that delves into the history of activist women]. I’m not ashamed to say that it gets me a little teary as it was particularly powerful. Thank you because that doesn’t get said a lot in hip hop.
I’m pleased with how that tack came out, but I’m in exactly the same position as you that if I feel a particular perspective as being forced upon me then my natural response is to counter that rather than engage with it. That’s something as a writer I’ve always tried to consider because I know that that’s my response to things. If somebody states things in black and white, then naturally I tend to take the alternative perspective and say there’s other ways to look at this. As a writer I’m always aware of that and try to think about how you frame ideas and talk about things without turning them into a lecture. In the digital world that we live in, it’s important to understand that there are always several sides to a story and it’s ok to be wrong! Or you just changed your mind. I think it’s great to try and get that idea into your music from time to time.
For “The Invisible Woman,” I think it is important to talk about women and gender and how gender is represented in music and how it’s represented and talked about in society. I was nervous about putting it out with a man’s voice talking about it but I’m pleased with how it turned out. I think Veronika killed it. It was so great to hear Veronika’s voice on it. I’ve been keen to hear her rap more for a while. It’s interesting when you read Veronica’s comments at the end of the book. She sums up the things that I think we all felt. Everybody on this album tried to step outside of their comfort zones and that’s evident in Veronika’s rapping. It’s evident in the vocal parts that she does throughout the record as well. The flip side of that is evident in the melodic things that I’ve brought to the record.
There’s a lot of risk taking on the album, in terms of instrumentals and Veronika rapping. Do you expect fans will be prepared for that? You’ve given them this huge run up. Maybe that’s part of the way to make sure Stay Odd is successful because it’s been six years since the last Stanley Odd album. People were hungry and then you drip fed them with singles for over a year. You’ve slowly led them to this new place.
Totally. I also think part of it is how hip hop is perceived in Scotland. Part of stepping outside the traditional musical boundaries of hip hop is also about people’s perceptions in Scotland outside of the hip hop community of what hip hop is. Scottish hip hop is so much wider and broader than people think it is. I think there’s an element of mischief in making music. Some people think Stanley Odd is a hip hop band that can only be played on specific shows or can only do certain things and if we haven’t – like in ‘Night Rip’ – hen they don’t know what the fuck to do with that aha! They’re listening to the music with an ear that’s already put them in a box. I think hip hop in Scotland is so much more diverse than that. I think there’s a conversation to be had with wider Scottish culture about all the places hip hop’s allowed to go.
I told a friend about an opportunity to make a dedicated Scottish hip hop radio series. The first thing he did was congratulate me but almost in the same breath say: ‘That’s a niche one, isn’t it?’ That old chestnut!
You’ve totally encapsulated it because your pal’s an ally so sometimes you have to go gently, gently. You have to store that one away and correct that later because if you go in hard now, you’ve just lost somebody.
We do have to open up a conversation about cultural relevance and where hip hop is allowed to go. It’s not as niche as my pal might think it is. It’s distinctive, yes. Has Scotland been able to take hip hop in all its various forms and use it, adapt it and set it back out into the world in a way that is Scottish? Yes. Obviously, we could spend a lot of time debating what that means, but it doesn’t have to be singular. There are so many different styles and so many people making hip hop in Scotland that it’s frustrating to hear things like ‘that’s niche, isn’t it?’ because I know that that’s not the case. Stay Odd is a great example of that diversity and range. It does have the usual signifiers, but they’re not around long enough for you to get comfortable with them.
I think that culture is continually hybridised. Especially because we live in a global and a local society at the same time. The most exciting music and art for me is the kind where you see human beings representing this cultural hybridisation and synthesis that we do all the time. What makes us is a combination of all the things we experience everyday and we experience local life and global life and we put them all together to make ourselves. It’s nice when you see that reflected back in music.
It’s certainly heartfelt and sincere – that’s all anyone can ever ask for out of an interaction with a group of people like yourselves.
It’s good to hear it’s come across well. Some of the album’s content feels like an extension of “All These People Are Me” from the Solareye album. The idea is that it’s okay to be a contradictory combination of all sorts of different things that argue all the time. It’s ok if the record leaps from being raging to being daft to being heartfelt. One minute the album is a parent interacting with a child. The next time it’s two people not telling each other that they’re both doing a moonlight flip and leaving each other. All these sorts of things. It’s okay to have all those contradictions.
When does it come out?
It’s being released on 12 April. The physical pre-orders will go out to people the week before and it will be out on all digital services on the 12th. And if people don’t want a physical copy, then they can buy the digital book and the album instead. As a consumer I would like to be able to sit down with the book and listen to it from start to finish but I would also like to do that on the bus with my phone. I want to make sure that the digital version works the same way as the physical version so people can get as much of the same experience as possible if they’re on their phones listening through headphones. Then we have a live thing that’s going to happen too that we’re rehearsing for just now. It will be a live filmed event that we’ll release as a digital gig for folks to watch on a Saturday night.
So, the fun isn’t over when it’s released on the 12th.
That’s it! The fun isn’t over. A few weeks after the record comes out, there will be a live gig for people to watch in their homes. We might call it The Last Night In or something like that seeing as it will come out not long before we’re actually allowed to go into a pub again. I’m really excited for it. We didn’t know if it would happen or not but we’ve got some funding to make it. It’s expensive enough as it is for a band to put together a tour in normal circumstances. But in normal circumstances your upfront costs are minimal until you actually start touring and you need to pay for hotels and travel and all these sorts of things. Then the income from the tour starts to pay for the tour, but when you’re trying to make a live recording for broadcast, then suddenly you need to pay for the venue and you need to kit the venue out with all the equipment to record it and you need to pay for the crew and others to film it and mix it and edit it. The costs to do that for an individual band if you’re not doing it through an organisation or a series of events is bananas. So thankfully we’ve got some funding to make that a real thing. And that will be coming out a few weeks after.
A review of the project drops on the site later this week.
Delaina Sepko