I found Kiran Leonard backstage, engaged and seemingly very relaxed an hour or so before his Saturday evening set on the Folly stage. Probably a good deal more laid-back than this interviewer, to be honest, fussily setting up his voice recorder plus a second back-up voice recorder as a safeguard against technical mishaps, so Kiran fires the first question. “Have you read that book ‘Transcription’? It’s a new novel by Ben Lerner.” I confess I have not. “It’s about a guy who goes to interview his old professor and just as he’s about to do it, he drops his iPhone in the sink. Well, I won’t spoil it, but it’s about how recording conversations affects your memory of the conversation.” And with that recommendation, I seamlessly (ahem) launch my questioning with an enquiry about memories for the Kiran Leonard KLOF interview:
This being the twentieth anniversary of End Of The Road, do you have any personal memories of the festival from that time period? I believe you have played here before?
So many times, I have a really strong sentimental connection to this festival. I first played here in 2014, just before I turned nineteen. I was playing a secret set on this stage and have been back many times since. I feel really grateful that Simon’s stayed open to booking me at times when there’s been a lot of infrastructure and a label and a booking agent, and at times when there hasn’t. I feel like my professional context has changed a lot over the last fifteen years; it doesn’t look like other festivals, you know?
What do you look for in a festival both as a punter and a performer?
This is a good size; I don’t like super big festivals. I was talking to someone in the campsite today; I think End Of The Road is fifteen thousand or something? That’s a good size. I think the breadth of music here is really stimulating; it means you can move, and you can always find something that suits the mood you’re in. I think it stimulates you to make connections between very disparate kinds of music. Like, I really enjoyed seeing The Space Lady on Thursday at the Boat Stage and then seeing KeiyaA, who, on the face of it, makes completely different kinds of music; but seeing them in the same space at the same festival, you see the connections. Very different types of experimentation, different approaches to song in an experimental way, coming from different places because you see them in a good context that’s diverse but consistent; consistent in, like, a long sum sort of z-axis, which I think is really impressive.
And how are you finding the audiences responding to your own music here? Are they more open to less conventional formats?
The audiences here are always great; there is always a balance between people who listen, but they tell you when they enjoy something. It’s a good balance, you know? Obviously, I want people to listen, but my ego is as fragile as everyone else’s, and I still want to hear people go “yeah!” But it’s always a good balance here.
Where your music is at today is a world away from when I first encountered you back at the time of ‘Bowler Hat Soup.’ You are pretty hard to define these days; are you striving to be uncategorisable?
I’m not striving to be uncategorisable; I try to work in very broad categories. I’m interested in song, which I know is almost a useless category in its breadth. But I’m interested in song; I’m interested in structure and playing around with structure, trying things that supposedly aren’t supposed to belong in song. Structural techniques that might be more appropriate for composition, trying to use them with songs, and I’ve found that takes me to interesting places, like thinking very structurally about the song. I feel like I’m always trying to follow the same thing; I’ve realised more as I’ve got older that what I’m really interested in is things that give an almost physical response. Certain types of volume and density, certain types of spaciousness, so they are very broad categories that I think superficially make [it seem like] on the surface I do jump around a lot. I’m always striving to follow these threads. But I will say, as a caveat to that, I have sometimes been a bit stubborn, making left turns just to be unnecessarily provocative.
Do you listen back to that 2013 material now and think “that’s the kind of thing a seventeen-year-old would write”?
I don’t listen to that record, I don’t play songs off that record, but I am very proud of it. I think that record and the one I made after, ‘Grapefruit,’ they’re like adolescent. They are very maximalist; they are very additive; it’s just like, let’s play everything at once and let’s scream and sing as hysterically as possible, everything is at a very hysterical pitch because time feels very… You just have to do it, you know? So, I am very proud of it in that sense; it’s like an earnest expression of being that age. I find now it’s impossible to re-access that state of mind. I’m in my early thirties now, and to play those songs that are coming from that adolescent place – I know lots of people can do it, but I can’t access that same thing; I sort of need to keep going ahead with the new material.
In live performance today, are you consciously trying to leave space for live improvisation?
No, there are bits of improvisation, I find, with the songs that I’m writing – and this was the case with ‘Bowler Hat Soup’ stuff as well – because the structures are jumping around a lot and because I and everyone I play with, we all have other jobs; time is very limited. We don’t really have time to get into the zone and improvise really freely around a lot of the stuff, so I find a lot of what we play is notated; it’s scored out, and that’s not because I am a dictator, but I find that is the most respectful way really to deal with people’s limited time. It’s like, here are some notes; you can just play this if you want. If you want to try some other stuff, we can try some other stuff, but here’s a starting point. So, we’re not in a room going listen to this and this and we’re not spending a day just doing half of one song. There are bits of improvisation. I am fortunate enough to know a lot of musicians who are excellent improvisers and take improvisation really seriously, and I feel like a bit of a neophyte; I would like to be a better improviser for sure.
Playing a gig like you are about to today, is there a different approach to a festival performance?
Yeah, the bangers, you know? (laughs) As a performer, I don’t have any obstinacy at all; I want people to enjoy the performance, I want to give a version of what I do that is immediate and exciting for people. I tend to end up playing the stronger songs, the louder songs, the most propulsive songs. I am a popularist in that respect.
You are a multi-instrumentalist, so I am wondering, is there an instrument you prefer to compose on?
With this group, I use the guitar, and Mike O’Malley plays the cittern, so I write for those instruments. For broader arrangements, I just use the piano because it’s the best; it has most of the notes.
I’d like to know what notes it doesn’t have. I suppose it’s the notes between the notes?
Yes, there’s probably some big, big saxophones or something that can hit… but I don’t really want those notes. Well, maybe I do? I haven’t found the need for them yet!
Which instrument has taught you the most about composition?
The piano and the guitar are really the two instruments that I know best. The piano’s sort of egalitarian; there are white keys and black keys, but basically every note looks the same. It allows you to visualise a huge range of notes, especially when arranging for other instruments. I think the piano’s layout is really helpful. But I love the guitar. I teach in secondary schools; it’s my day job. When I’m trying to help thirteen / fourteen-year-olds who are interested in writing their first song, one of the things I try and say is that there are two approaches we can think about. We can really get into the theory, say, here’s a chord, you know and think about what chords go well with that chord, what notes go well with those notes. Or, we can think about shapes, which is a bit more punk. What shape is this? What happens if you move that same shape a fret up? It’s kind of dissonant, but it sounds good. What happens with this riff if you play it again but over there? You can do that with the piano as well, but I think with the guitar, using shapes, there is a physical aspect with a guitar that I think is really stimulating, and I think in the history of guitar music of the past 100 years, there’s so much music that is really dissonant or harmonically advanced but not necessarily written by people with doctorates in musicology, you know?
I suppose it offers versatility as a performer as well, doesn’t it?
So much versatility, yes, you can do anything with it.
In terms of public perception, I have seen you described as a musician’s musician; would you say that versatility is a bit of a curse?
Yes, but I mean, I’m getting better at it. I think the work you mentioned- many people are familiar with the work I did as a teenager, but I am trying to get better at it. Going back to the other thing, I don’t really see what I do as versatility; I feel like I am always trying to develop how I am writing songs and how I am writing words. It feels like it is going down the same track; stylistically it might touch on some other stuff, but I like to think the more that I do it, the parallels between the other stuff are self-evident, like it’s building its own thing. Really what I want to do is build a language for myself that can go to different places, but it’s all tied together.
And finally, I have seen the term prog rock sometimes attached to your music; can you live with that terminology, or is it unfair?
I’m sure it’s only meant as a compliment, or maybe it’s not always meant as a compliment? I had a compilation of recordings that was between my first two records, which I called ‘Adolescence Of Prog’ because that’s what my adolescence was like. I loved a lot of then more contemporary prog; my first favourite was the Mars Volta. I loved the Mars Volta, and I loved that excess and jumping around. I’d say the one prog band I still return to and love is Henry Cow. ‘In Praise Of Learning,’ that record I love. But I think the thing I love about that is, it is a bit ridiculous; it’s very theatrical, but structurally I love it. It’s not ponderous in the way that a lot of prog is, it’s very very rigorous. So yeah, prog! There’s loads of great things about prog.
For those who weren’t at the festival, check out this live session at The State51 Factory