Lauren Martin: (singing)
One two, one two.

Adam Bainbridge: Hello? Hi.

Lauren Martin: Hey everyone, thanks for coming. On the couch next to me is somebody who writes, records, and performs music. But also tells stories about himself and all the people that he works with. So please help me welcome Adam Bainbridge, aka Kindness.

Adam Bainbridge: Thanks.

Lauren Martin: Thanks for warming up earlier with some records. We've got a lot to get through today. Before we do, I would like to start with a difficult question. What do the words "Where are you from?" mean to you?

Adam Bainbridge: Can I just preface one thing by saying that I was a little bit nervous about this, so I went out and got drunk last night. It's not helping today, because I really thought I would be able to come in here and talk easily about things. But, it's going to be harder than I thought.

Lauren Martin: Okay, thanks man.

Adam Bainbridge: I might have had a good answer to that once upon a time ... I'm from Peterborough in the east of England, and it's a small town. It wasn't a very fun place to grow up. It was very small towny. There wasn't much music, there wasn't much culture, there definitely wasn't a real sense of multiculturalism or of alternative culture. That was important to me because my mother's Indian, my father is English. I was growing up mixed race in a town that didn't really like non-white people and was further confused by mixed race people.There's a quote by Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer. He says that growing up in Queens, he was talking about Queens in New York, he said, "Growing up in Queens was great, because it was the perfect place to leave." And that's kind of how I feel about Peterborough.

Lauren Martin: That's a good quote. You mention that your mother and your father ... Even if you feel out of place in a place, the people that are around you are the most important to you. Your family's got very strong musical and political stories. Could you tell us about the people you grew up with.

Adam Bainbridge: My dad was a DJ in his 20's. Not a massively famous one, but I've seen pictures of him and it looks like the peak of Italo with the kind of crazy DJ booth with the lights around it. It's kind of cool because his record collection is behind him, or maybe it's the nightclub record collection which was the old thing. At the Paradise Garage, all the records were behind the DJ and anyone could pick them out and DJ. Though Larry Levan would probably kneecap you before he actually let you do that. But it was an option. Seeing my dad in that kind of environment I was like, "Ah, okay." It was real. It took a few years to get to that point. When we were younger, me and my sister would just roll our eyes and be like, "Yeah, of course you're a DJ. Right. What kind of music were you playing?"
Even then not really understanding some of the tracks that he tried to put us onto. He used to play the 19 minute album cut of "By the Time I get to Phoenix" by Isaac Hayes, which is just an organ drone with a heartbeat kick drum underneath it, which finally kicks in at 16 minutes. I was like, "How did you play this in the club?" He was like, "Well, you have to remember in the 1970's, people were smoking a lot of weed. They weren't necessarily dancing all the time." I was like, "Oh, that kind of DJ. All right I get it."
Then on my mum's side, my mum was also heavily into music and it came in useful when I was a teenager because she told an anecdote about how she used to spend a lot of her money on records. Her food money, her money to actually buy groceries. I would go to HMV and spend all of my money on vinyl and she'd be like, "You were out buying records again?" I would be like, does this seem familiar to you? I got away with buying records then. She was heavily into jazz. She was brought up in South Africa until she was 14 to Indian and Indian-Malay parents. The worst of apartheid was happening and my grandmother was arrested by the police for collaborating with her lodger, who was then thrown from the 10th floor of the police building in Johannesburg and died. My grandmother was in interrogation in the next room and this happened, she remembers that going down. After they killed him they put her, a 50 year old woman, in jail for 5 years followed by 5 years of house arrest.
At that point in time, my mother and her siblings were just ... They had no choice. They had to leave. Their father was dead so it's like, the family is kind of being forcibly being broken up and they all came to Europe. My mum and my two aunts to the United Kingdom and my uncle to Sweden. I think that has definitely left a mark on me and my family and how I perceive things like race and social justice even. There are friends who are going to watch this and it's going to raise a wry smile because I guess I have a reputation amongst my friends for being somewhat overly zealous about these things. When it comes from that family background, at one point you start to understand why it matters and why you're not going to passively stand by and watch people display racism or prejudice or whatever may happen. To this day, I won't take that bullshit. Can I say bullshit?

Lauren Martin: Yes.

Adam Bainbridge: All right, so what did I bring the swear jar for? Oh yeah, and Lauren... I knew that there was going to be some moments in this interview where I might go too far. Either I was going to get really depressing and dark or legally unsound. You just have to hit this bell. Just save me. Because I'm ready. Today's going to be only real talk, but I'm a little scared of where that might go to be honest.

Lauren Martin: Well if it's only real talk, we won't need the bell.

Adam Bainbridge: But real talk can still get me sued.

Lauren Martin: Okay, I'll bear that in mind. Thank you. I appreciate the gesture of the bell.
Before you sidetracked me with a bell. The quote about Queens, it was a great place to leave. Before you left this town in England that you didn't really like and you don't really feel attached to, you might have had music ... The classic escapist idea. I can't imagine the streets of Peterborough have a really popping ... What were you listening to at the time that gave you a sense of a space where you could explore and belong? Is there any music that you'd like to play at the back?

Adam Bainbridge: Yeah, I could probably find something. I've talked about this with other mixed race and British Asian kids. We found that white music culture, by that I mean mainstream indie and rock and roll, didn't have anything for us. It didn't speak to us in any way. As much as I was going to underground shows in Peterborough, going to see hardcore and punk and noise music. At one point I was like, "This is some weird white people shit. I don't really understand it. Is there something else?"
It's funny that you mentioned Westwood earlier. It was mainstream hip-hop, and R&B, and eventually garage, and drum and bass and jungle, and those things. To be fair, mainstream British radio, Radio 1, were doing a pretty good job of it in the 90's. Even John Peel, to a certain extent, would play one of those awful noise records followed by a jungle tune and you'd be like, "All right John, nice. That's diversity, I like it."
Peterborough did have a tiny bit of that trickling through. I remember for about 3 weeks, someone tried to open a record shop that only sold garage records. I would go in and I would go, "Oh, yeah. There's that big garage tune coming through. Can I buy it here?" And they'd go, "No mate, why would you want to buy here it's 12 quid on white label here. It's going to be at HMV for £2 next week." I'd be like, "What? Don't you want me to spend my money?" That's why record shops didn't stick around for long in Peterborough.
I don't know. It could have been garage, it could have been hip-hop, it could be house music as well. I remember hearing.... this might be a good one. Let's just play this, this really reminds me of growing up in Peterborough. And buying records in HMV, and Our Price, and Virgin Megastore.

Love Like This – Faith Evans

Lauren Martin: If you were trying to buy garage records in Peterborough, what was it about that era of R&B that really spoke to you?

Adam Bainbridge: I think there's a direct lineage between the Bad Boy records era of R&B, and sampling, and production, and what I do now. I'm trying to work more on an alternative side of production, but they were doing such a smart and hooky kind of sampling. I love the original Chic record that this is from, but I think the Faith Evans hook is way better. No disrespect to them, but that is the best use of that guitar riff. It was just my eyes opening to what sampling and production could be I guess. At the time, there were other things like Stardust and Daft Punk where I started to understand that these records were made up of samples rather than played instrumentation. When you don't have a great studio, when you don't have instruments, the option to sample stuff becomes a freedom. Especially when you're flying under the radar and you can still get away with sampling stuff and not clearing it.

Lauren Martin: Once you started to absorb these idea of how to make music through sampling, when did you start making music? What were the first instances where you felt you could do something like this?

Adam Bainbridge: I went to Berlin around 2003-2004 and a friend of mine called Ramsey saw me struggling to make music in Garageband. He said "there's this new software called Ableton and you should try it". It was like, Ableton version 3 where you still had to manually warpmark every piece of music you were working with, where everything was kind of janky and off. But it was amazing. It was so intuitive and so different from music software that I had tried in the past. I started working then, but I was working more making DJ mixes because I didn't really understand how you produce music. I think layering different elements from different tracks in a DJ mix made me start thinking, “Well I guess what I'm doing is sampling if I'm taking this drum part, and then fading it into this four bar loop from the beginning of this record, and blending it with this vocal....” I could just make songs this way.
Eventually, living back in London, that's what I started doing. I was living in a house with Sam and Rory from a short lived British band called Test Icicles. Which, my good friend Dev Hynes was also part of. We used to play PlayStation in the evening and we thought that the sound effects in Quake or whatever we were playing were kind of lame. So I was downloading much more outrageous explosions, and gun shots, and nonsense from LimeWire and just layering them on top of the game as we were playing so that it was a little more bombastic. They were like, "Wait, that sounds great. Why don't you do this over our shows?" I was like, "Wait, what do you mean?" "You know play gunfire, and explosions, and air horns. We've always wanted air horns." I was like, "You want air horns? All right." The next day we left on the road and I was now the DJ.
That was fun, that was interesting, that was my first experience of sleeping on the floor while the rest of the band sleep in the beds. It was still a lot of fun and it was really nice just to be taken along on what was a short lived roller coaster ride for those guys. And that's how I got to know Dev as well. That was quite an intense baptism by fire into their world.
Back to London, after these tours, that band was blowing up at the time and they had all of these remix offers. People were offering them crazy money to do remixes and they didn't have time to do it or maybe they didn't want to do it. I said, "Look guys, why don't I do the remixes and we just say that you did the remix? Why not?" They were like, "Yeah, all right. Split it 50/50?" Done. I started doing all the Test Icicles remixes, please don't look any of them up on YouTube. See, maybe the bell is going to be... I'm gonna get me into trouble. I was doing these remixes and that got me into production properly. I started to think, I can do this. Maybe I could put my mind to it and it can be a career. Little did I know that was just going to be my first attempt at making a career in music.
I'm going to preface the next part of my story by saying if anyone here is doing this for the first time and it's not quite going the way that you wanted it to go, don't be discouraged. I quit music once and I went away and I had to reset my whole life and get my head straight. Then I came back with a different name and stuff is working out in a roller coaster way of its own. Maybe sometimes you have to have a failed first project to get to the second project that is actually who you want to be or the sound you want to have.
Test Icicles were also collaborating a lot with grime MCs at the time. That ended up being my first release proper, a Test Icicles remix with Ruff Sqwad. I've decided I really don't want to hear it, but I know you have a part of it.

Lauren Martin: Yeah, I do have it.

Adam Bainbridge: Let's not.

Lauren Martin: Well is there something else you'd rather play from that time, because this is actually a really interesting time. Before you ...

Adam Bainbridge: This.

Lauren Martin: Yes, let's play that. We're talking about the new rave era, the birth of grime, the growth of grime as an underground industry. This amazing independent spirit. While new rave was like a field project-

Adam Bainbridge: You're going to get me started on new rave.

Lauren Martin: Some interesting people came out of it, so lets keep it happy.

Adam Bainbridge: No, we're not going to keep it happy. I'm going to go in in a second.

Lauren Martin: Have a bell.

Adam Bainbridge: Just try and use it.

Lauren Martin: Just play the record.

Adam Bainbridge: The only thing about this is an instrumental for people to MC over. It's just a loop, but it's one of the greatest grime loops of all time I guess.

Wheel – Dizzee Rascal

Adam Bainbridge: Dizzee, known more as an artist and performer now. But back in the Boy in da Corner days, doing insane production like that and that was really a moment. That was the thing about living in London in 2003,4,5,6 is that what was happening and growing in British music was insanely exciting. And it was more progressive and a lot more futuristic than anything anyone had ever heard before. It had been years since the mid 90's and jungle and drum & bass. It had been years since any electronic music had come out of nowhere, or seemingly come out of nowhere, and brought this whole new sonic template. Which I guess we still hear echoes of today in Night Slugs and Fade to Mind and other people. It's crazy to me, I hear MikeQ edits of grime tracks and I'm just like, "Well, ballroom grime. I guess it was going to happen one of these days."

Lauren Martin: Night Slugs is a crew that you're really intimate with. Could you explain to those in the room who might not be so familiar with the climate of black music in London at the time when they were starting and what you've learned from the Night Slugs crew? I guess hanging out with them is quite an education sometimes.

Adam Bainbridge: Oh yeah, for sure. Myself and Alex Sushon, Bok Bok, have been close for a number of years. He was around at the same time that I was putting out these first productions and he was very supportive. We had a good dialogue about music at that moment in time. What's fucked up is after this impending tumble comes and I didn't feel good about the music I made anymore, I just stopped going to those raves and listening to that music. And I remember one day we were having a text conversation and he's like, "You coming down to Night Slugs?" And I was like, "Man, I'm too old for that. I just don't understand. I don't think it's for me." He got angry with me and he was like “you're such a loser”. Why would you just shut off a whole side of your musical personality, partly because you got burned. He understands that I didn't feel good about the music. It's kind of taken me years to slowly get back to that place.
Now it's great. I'm actively working on music with Alex. I get to spend time with Girl Unit and with Jam City and just hear the exciting places that they're taking music. Jam City, especially, I think is pushing the envelope so much with sound design, and song writing, and production. Can I just talk about the bad shit in 2005 now? For a second?

Lauren Martin: Sure, go ahead. I was going to ask you, but if you're happy now.

Adam Bainbridge: I want to get it out of my system. I think once I've got this off my chest I'll be ready to go to a happier place. This wasn't going to be easy.
2005 and 2006 in London, I just associate with being completely toxic. In my mind now I'm just like, that was a bad time. New rave was just a side show to that, but it was kind of a part of it. New rave, if it stands for anything ... I don't know if anyone in this room actually ever listened to that music or followed it, but it was kind of a bastardized indie version of rave music. It would be guys in fluorescent trousers and American Apparel shell suits playing kind of break beat stuff with air horns and sampled phrases from old rave records, and it was horrible. It was the worst music of all time.
I was living there at this moment trying to be open minded, trying to be positive about music and just thinking, I feel like such a fake. I have to go to these parties and keep a smile on my face when I see this absolute douche bag walking in the door, who is kind of destroying everything good about pop and alternative music. This is also where it comes into identity and things like sexuality, I feel like ... Peaches said this in an interview the other day, "New rave music was electroclash with everything gay sucked out of it." I liked electroclash on a song writing level, the production of it grated on me after a while. But at its heart electroclash was originally a queer scene and it had a diversity and open mindedness, even the producers making that music.
New rave was 90% straight bros that had seen this opportunity to get famous fast and do it by adopting all of the signifiers of an underground... And at the time a queer culture. There were parties called things like Boombox and Family which were 90% gay men dressed that way. Then bands like the Klaxons and Hadouken and stuff came in and were like, "All right, we'll have that." And, here we go.
I just thought it was a bad time, it didn't feel good. What made it worse for me is that I was struggling with my identity and my sexuality at the time. There was a blog called 'Styleslut', and I'm going to name the guy now. There's this guy called Donald Crunk, that's a pseudonym, that's not his real name. I'm not going to say his real name, but he still writes under that pseudonym. Now in 2015, this motherfucker is now making short films with young girls and trying to pass it off as some Nowness thing, but it's just ugly exploitation. Back then, in 2005/2006, he started this blog which was recounting what was going on in London. New rave, grime, hip-hop, alternative bands. But this blog was the most virulent, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, trans-phobic, piece of shit I've ever seen in my life. It's still on line if you want to go back and look at it.
One day this guy decided he was going to pick on me. He started talking about me in homophobic and trans-phobic terms, and I was just like, "Wait, what? Where did this come from?" What was even more fucked up is rather than being angry at him I was like, "Wait, how did he know? Do people know this? Shit, what am I going to do? I can't be a grime producer if people know I'm gay. If people know I'm queer. If they know, fuck." What took it another step deeper was that at the time, again with questions about identity, I was researching hormones. I was thinking about going there and this guy is not just abusing me in homophobic terms, he's abusing me in trans-phobic terms and I'm like, "What the fuck? I gotta get out."
And over night, I just shut down. I stopped my music. I left London. I was scared. I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be in a place where people can be in a position of power and have these platforms, widely read platforms, with a shit load of positive comments on every article from other people that seem to appreciate this base, racist, misogynist abuse.
Honestly, to this day, I can't believe that this guy got away with this shit. That's why I want to talk about it now. This guy got picked, by the BBC, to be one of the panelist on what they call their annual 'Sound Of'. Which is music people from the industry talking about who they think is going to be the next big artist for the year upcoming. It's bullshit. It's always very commercialized and it's kind of rigged. But for me, it was more like... the industry and the media should take one look at this guy's blog and see how toxic it is. Yet, they embraced him and his writing and his thought process. And they give him a platform where he can now be influencing what happens in music, where he can choose the next artist coming up.
And I'm just like, "That's not okay. We shouldn't give people that power to fuck up people." If you are a racist, if you are homophobic, you shouldn't be allowed to work in the music industry. Full stop. Because the music industry, and this goes back to blues and Motown, is based on the talents of nonwhite people. People of queer identity. That's where so much of good music comes from. House music comes from disco music, which comes from black gay men. How can you allow people that don't like those things, and want to go on record saying how much they don't like those things, have any influence within that arena. For me that's not possible. That's part of what we really need to solve now.
I look around this room and I see nonwhite faces, I see women, and I'm happy to see you here, but I'm going to tell you it's going to be tough. It's still not a smooth ride, especially when even in the younger generation that's working in music, and management, and record labels now, they're still predominately straight white guys. They have a language and a vocabulary amongst themselves. They don't even know how to talk to you, or talk about you, or understand your issues. I've spoken about this, especially with black women. Black women in the industry they're like, "My manager is a white guy. And I have to sit him down and say these are things I need to see you actively defending and pushing back against. And if you don't do that, we can't work together." And the guy will go, "Oh funny, I didn't realize that might be an issue." She's like, exactly. All right, rant over.

Lauren Martin: Thanks for that, I appreciate you talking ...

Adam Bainbridge: I can see your worried eyes to your colleague...

Lauren Martin: No, not at all. Thanks for being so honest I and everyone else really appreciate it. I didn't ring the bell once.

Adam Bainbridge: You could've.

Lauren Martin: That's how real it was.

Adam Bainbridge: Should I play something happy?

Lauren Martin: Why don't we play some music, yes.

Adam Bainbridge: Let me see, what happens next in the sequence?

Lauren Martin: What happens next, for you. You left London, you cut it all off, it was a bad time. What did you do to make amends with yourself and what happened?

Adam Bainbridge: It has to get worst before it gets better. My father died the same year, so I was just like all right I'm out. I'm out of music, I'm kind of out life. I went to work back at the Hotpoint factory back in Peterborough. The washing machine people.

Lauren Martin: Washing machine factory, okay.

Adam Bainbridge: I was telling my mum about it the other day I was like, "You remember when I used to work at Hotpoint to make money?" She was like, "Yeah, I kind of remember that. You must have been so bored." I was like, "Mum, I was asleep." After a few days I realized that the women working in our portacabin didn't give a shit, so I would come in and earlier every day I would just put my head down on the desk and sleep until someone woke me up and was like, "Come on mate. That's not cool. You got to do some work." I kind of reset that way. That was quite a good way to just start a fresh. And I saved some money and I moved back to Berlin.
I can condense this a little bit. In Berlin, at that moment in time, the climate was good, I fell in love again, I was happy, I had a new relationship, and I was like, "All right. Maybe I'm just going to music for me, for fun. I'm not going to play it to anyone. It's just for me." And I started messing around and one of the first things that came out of it was my version of "Swingin' Party" by the Replacements. I was like, "Hm, all right. You might be on to something." I had never sung before in my life. To this day, I'm going to put my hand up, more real talk. I know I'm a pretty mediocre singer. I'm not a great singer. I'm a producer, I'm a music fan, I'm not a singer. It kind of sucks to have to play shows in front of 10,000 people. There's other artists doing the same though ... You know Taylor Swift can't sing.

Lauren Martin: So shady.

Adam Bainbridge: She deserves it. I had been making these productions thinking, maybe I can find another vocalist to sing on them. I didn't think I would ever end up singing on them. Which to this day, might not have been the smartest idea, but it started coming. I was like, "Well the melody will kind of be this, I guess I'll finish it." I ended up with 3 or 4 tracks. I sent them to two places, this is quite funny. I sent them to Red Bull Music Academy, didn't get in. But what it did do was it gave me this deadline where I was thinking, "What am I making this music for?" There was this submission deadline where they wanted X amount of music and this kind of brief about who you are and your personality. Writing that helped me figure out what my music was, and finishing the tracks for it helped me figure out what my music was. To this day it doesn't makes me mad that I didn't get in. It got me going.
The other place I went was ... I got an email from a label that I had actually been dealing with in my grime days and they said, "We've heard this track on MySpace, we'd like to put it out." That lead to a seven inch single coming out on Moshi Moshi records. Off the back of that, things just started happening. We can go there in a minute, should I maybe play "Swingin' Party"? I think I have it somewhere.

Lauren Martin: Yeah, sure.

Swingin' Party – Kindness

Lauren Martin: Are we doing the b side or are you just having a flip?

Adam Bainbridge: No, I'm getting it ready for the other song. But, I just realized that ... We're only up to 2009 and we've already been here for 40 minutes.

Lauren Martin: What did we just listen to? Talk us through that a little bit?

Adam Bainbridge: That was the album version of "Swing Party." The seven inch version is way more crazy sounding. I really couldn't sing then. I prefer this version.
Another thing that I thought about talking to you guys today was that I wanted to break down some stuff that might happen to you as you come into the music industry. If you get signed, if you're going to put out a record. Stuff that doesn't normally get talked about. I think as much as it might be slightly boring, it could also be really valuable, because if anyone had sit me down when this stuff was happening to me and gone, "That's a red flag." I might not be in the position I am in today, which we'll also get onto later.
Off the back of putting out this record in an independent label, some majors came calling. Apparently what had happened was that 2009 was a terrible year for music. There was just no music worth signing. All of the A&R guys have a signing budget and they have to assign a certain amount to money to artists within a year. They have to, they get into trouble if they don't. October 2009 comes around, and I start getting all these phone calls and I'm like, "Wait, what the fuck is going on?" I think it was just that they hadn't signed anyone that year so they were like, "All right, this guy is getting some heat on the internet, let's sign him." Things got really out of hand. People started bargaining off of each other and the money starts getting higher, and higher, and higher.
Here's where it's interesting, it doesn't matter to me anymore. It's going to sound completely outrageous because no one gets signed for these sums. At least not an alternative artist anymore. I got signed for £100,000 by Polydor. And a £150,000 by Universal Publishing for my publishing. Which is a shit load of money. But I didn't know the reality of that, which is that 50% goes to tax, because you've reached a certain threshold in the year. 20% goes to your manager. So, of £250,000 you're left with 30%, which then has to last you the 3 or 4 years until your record comes out. You're not getting any more money. Something that seems like a ray of light coming down from the heavens is actually way more practical than that. That's just ... Kind of like a regular salary to keep you going. I can't imagine what it is now when people are getting ripped off for label deals and for publishing. I know people getting signed for £5,000 now.
Here's another bit of real talk. If some independent label, naming no names, is coming at you for £5,000 to sign your publishing and you've never put out any music but you believe in your music and you know it's going to go somewhere, don't do it. There's a guy at one of the labels who used to look up 'New Band of the Day' at the Guardian. As soon as it came out he'd get on the phone and call up that band and be like, "I'll sign your publishing. £5,000." Do you know why they were doing it? Because they got tax breaks on it. They didn't do it because they believed in anyone's music. The label, that owned that publishing company ... Maybe you'll want to hit the bell soon. By doing that, they didn't have to pay the £x million of tax that they had outstanding. Now that's kind of fucked up.

Lauren Martin: Where do you fit into all of this? Your first album was released independently-

Adam Bainbridge: No, it was released on a major.

Lauren Martin: Was released on a major, sorry. The first release, not the first album. And then you went to-

Adam Bainbridge: No the first album was also released on a major. Someone didn't do their fact checking.

Lauren Martin: Don't be shady.

Adam Bainbridge: I deserve it.

Lauren Martin: I know more about you than you do sweetheart.

Adam Bainbridge: I'm not... come on.

Lauren Martin: Whatever the hell you put out, who cares at this point. You went between indies and majors in quite a short frame of time. What were you doing at the time within that world where you went, "No, I can't do this. I have to go back doing this myself and I have to figure it out all myself."

Adam Bainbridge: I got dropped. That's what happened.

Lauren Martin: Obviously you do know more about you than I do.

Adam Bainbridge: I should probably just play some music and talk about making music. At the same time ... But seriously, there's going to be people in this room who are going to get approached to do similar things to what happened to me. No one is ever going to sit you down or write this down for you. Part of it is admitting that you were foolish and didn't know what was going on. I just assumed that I could trust my management, which was also a foolish thing to do, and that I could trust the best intentions of an industry to be putting out music for the right reasons. That's not necessarily the case. In some places, yes.
Album one didn't really go the way that the label wanted it to. They sacked both of my A&R men that signed me. That's another thing, if you were to sign a contract with a major, there's a thing called a key man clause, which is kind of empowering for you, which says that the person that signed you and believes in you, if they leave the company you have the option to leave as well. I think that's really important. I can think of other artists this has happened to where you get signed by a big label, maybe you get signed by an independent, and the guy that was really your champion and can take the finished record to the head of the label and go, "This is what we're doing with this." If they're out the door for whatever the reason, you no longer have a champion. And you're literally just the CDR in the corner of the office. And you don't want to be that person.
You need someone that who's there every day saying, "All right, things didn't go the way we wanted with this first video, first single. Lets keep going." I got dropped by Polydor and Universal, but in a way that was a blessing. A genuine blessing. One of the things my ex-manager did, bless him, was he went into Polydor and he said, "Look. We don't really think you're engaged with us on this record, you let go the people that were going to work on it with Adam. This is going to sound crazy, but we want the rights back. Give us the master rights back to the record." Because when you sign a contract with a label, they get to own the copyrights and master rights kind of in perpetuity. For whatever reason, the guy said, "All right. The masters are yours. We'll give it back to you." Now I own my first record.

Lauren Martin: To be honest, for all the major label things, that deserves applause.

Adam Bainbridge: That never happens. It's like winning the lottery. To this day, owning the master for my first record and now owning the master for my second record and licensing it, means I can survive. I don't make a lot of money, but stuff like streaming. If you own the master rights, because that's really where the money comes from streaming, you take home 90% of streaming income. If you're signed to a label like Universal, maybe if even if you signed to an independent, you're taking 5% of that 90% home. You're not getting paid. No wonder you get these checks at the end of the month, like Spotify, 3p. Because it's 5% of 90%. When you can, if you can self finance your record and self release it, do it. Look around. People are getting huge off of self made, self promoted music.
If you have a vision, unless you think that a label is going to help you catapult yourself to the next level, it's not necessary. It really isn't. You can be your own team. You're the best PR, the best A&R, the best stylist, the best musical director you have. Because you have all of those talents within you. It might seem scary, or maybe you don't want that responsibility, then honestly you could find that team. And if you can find it, more power to you because a good team is the best thing to have of all. But it's so hard and you can't necessarily trust the people that you're even close to in terms of a work life. Maybe we'll come to that later.

Lauren Martin: Okay right. Now I'm going to do some real talk. Lets talk about some of your music.
Could we please run the first video?

Still Smokin' – Trouble Funk

Now that wasn't you. Evidently.

Adam Bainbridge: Should I ... Maybe this ... We haven't had a lot of music. Should I play this?

Lauren Martin: Hang on, I'm talking to you now. Who was that and what was that song?

Adam Bainbridge: That was Trouble Funk and the song was called "Still Smoking" and that performance was from, funny enough, from Sunderland in 1986 I think. There was a British music TV show called "The Tube." Trouble Funk got signed to Island Records and they were one of the few go-go bands to actually start releasing music outside of D.C., and internationally, and gained a worldwide recognition.
Does anyone know what go-go music is?

Lauren Martin: I was just about to say it would be really great if you could explain it, because it's such a regional sound.

Adam Bainbridge: This kind of comes back to LimeWire era of file sharing where stuff started trickling through that you might not of have had access to, in the United Kingdom especially. And I remember hearing "One Thing" by Amerie, produced by Rich Harrison, and thinking, "What are these drum breaks? These are crazy." And researching more and finding out that Rich Harrison was from the D.C. area and that he was influenced by go-go.
Go-go is live music that's performed in clubs in the D.C. Area... It was started by a guy called Chuck Brown. The band plays continuously for about two hours and it's all based on this one groove. The drum beat doesn't really change, some of the percussion elements on top like the congas and the cowbells change, but the drum break is fundamentally the same on every song. There's a load of bands, and Trouble Funk are just one of a number of amazing D.C. bands that are still going actually.
What happened to go-go was it couldn't get out of it's regional scene and it doesn't really work on record. To this day, I have a lot of go-go records, they don't deliver 1% of what it is to see a band play live and communicate with the audience, because a lot of it's based on audience participation as well.

Lauren Martin: Once you found this track through LimeWire and finding this Amerie record, you went on to make a track that samples that track. But it's not just a case of sampling, and how a lot of people in this room might make a record through sampling, you actually went out there and met them and worked with them on this track. Could you talk about that experience and within that, where do you differentiate between finding a track and sampling and asking for permission, and then actually seeking out the people and working with them on the record? Because that's what you did.

Adam Bainbridge: I'm all for it. I was telling someone the other day that everyone I sampled on the first record, I ended up meeting and working with. That's a hot tip. Sample some of your heroes and maybe it will happen. With Trouble Funk, I actually met them later when I wanted to make the music video. The studio version of this we did from a high quality wave file of the song and then me and Philippe did all the production here in Paris. The first record I worked on with Philippe Zdar from Cassius. When the song was done and it was time to make a video for it, I thought, "Well, this would be kind of nuts. What if I could get the band that wrote the song and made the audio that I sampled from, what if I asked them to replay the song with the new hook and the new lyrics and the new arrangement." They were up for it. I went out to D.C. and did that with them. Amazing people, great guys, just funny how stuff happens like that.

Lauren Martin: Should we listen to your version of it? I think that would be quite interesting to see the difference because we saw the original. I have it, but do you have it as well?

Adam Bainbridge: Yeah, I have it. This is a version here.

Lauren Martin: You're so ahead of me, thank you.

That's Alright - Kindness

Thanks very much for that. So that experience of working with Trouble Funk, and performing with them, and you present to them a new version of something that they'd work on many years before, that's not the only kind of way you collaborate with people. Your very hands on. Who else have you collaborated with and how has those various processes shape what you do individually?

Adam Bainbridge: On this new record, that was kind of my collaboration record. That was where I decided to get it all out of my system and just work with everyone. Predominantly with Kelela, with Dev, with Robyn ... And on an equally creative, and in terms of contribution, just great session people. People that I've met now through the music community who play on the top of their game. I think a really soulful professional player can just do something incredible. This may be a taboo.... around using people do gigs, but they did it on Motown, they did it on Phil Spector, they did it on ... Chic were studio musicians, it doesn't mean that "I'm Coming Out" wasn't a great record. Collaboration has definitely become a good way to ... Hopefully bring the best of what I do, which I guess I think is more on the production side, and the best of what other people do which is normally like songwriting and incredible vocals. This is a good example of hearing someone's music for the first time and saying, "I have to work with this person."

Lauren Martin: Okay, lets play that then.

Bank Head - Kelela

A gorgeous record, yeah.
Who is Kelela for somebody that might be unfamiliar? We've heard her voice, but who's the woman behind the voice?

Adam Bainbridge: Kelela is probably my favorite living vocalist. She's a black woman of Ethiopian heritage originally from Washington D.C. I just remember hearing that track, probably on Soundcloud, and thinking, "Holy shit. I will move heaven and earth, how do I work with that voice." I guess what was nice, either serendipity or just ... It still took a bit of work, but she was collaborating on her first release with a lot of the Night Slugs and Fade to Mind guys at the time. I remember putting an email into to someone saying, "You're working with Kelela right?" And they were like, "Yeah, you should come meet her in LA." Literally the first day we met, we cut some vocals that ended up being on my album. Which I don't normally do. I like to get to know people first, and maybe hang out with them, and get drunk. Once we've been drunk together and hung over together you've probably a bond for life.

Lauren Martin: It's like a level playing field.

Adam Bainbridge: We know each other now. We've seen the best and the worst. She came into the studio and I played all the demos I had at the time for "Otherness" in one long strip. We turned the lights down, and she sat in the back of the room with a handheld mic like this, no fancy vocal mic, and just improvised. Once or twice she said, "Oh, can I have that again. I have some more melodic ideas." Her vocal parts and adlibs on "Geneva" for example, that is the sound of her hearing the song for the first time. There was no second take, there's no edit. It's just purely the melody that came from her mouth is in the track from start to finish. Not just the voice, but that kind of melodic gift, I remember sitting there going, "Oh, what? Oh dear." It's a bit like Ghostbusters, what if we cross the streams? The universe is going to end.

Lauren Martin: With Kelela then, to be kind of ... You obviously want to collaborate the best people possible. The people that you think are the most talented or could have an affinity with you, rather than something in common. You say you're really in awe of her voice but you don't really like your own. How do you feel singing on your own music when you're working with other singers? There must be an anxiety you have to work through with that.

Adam Bainbridge: Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. I don't really have any choice. The thing about music now ... You get so uncomfortable every time I go to real talk.

Lauren Martin: I like the real talk, it's cool.

Adam Bainbridge: Part of it is that ... I guess what people want from you is also partly your personality. They don't just want melody, or production, or songwriting. I can't justify releasing music that I don't sing on at all. People might be able hear a little bit of my personality in my production, but if there's a song that's kind of in my vocal range, I might as well have a go. And knowing that I can get some support from better vocalist to layer things and make it sound good. It would be dishonest of me to not try, knowing that I can even if it's not my favorite thing in the world.
That's also part of being honest. If you're making music you might as well make yourself vulnerable. You might as well be open to the things that scare you. It's what the Joubert Singers were talking about the other night. Even for great singers. Who was in that studio session with them? What was interesting was that when they broke it down to just the four of them alone in the room and they were trying to do the takes to the song, I don't know if you picked it up but they were as shy as we were. At one point they were like, "I don't want to sing that part. Don't make me adlib." She was starting to hold back on the mic, and even the best singer in the world probably has hangups about their voice.
That's also part of collaboration, I think for me I was really glad that we did that session together. Because it does show that people who that are mainly producers all of the issues that come into producing a vocal. It is emotional and it can be kind of scary and intense. But you have to be real and you have to be kind to the person and just hope that you get through it together. And when it does work, it's incredible.

Lauren Martin: You don't just work with other vocalists though, you work with producers, engineers, live musicians. Is there anybody in particular that really stands out for you? I know we have a video that you'd quite like to play of somebody that you work with.

Adam Bainbridge: What's special about this video... is when Dev finished his last album "Cupid Deluxe", we had been hanging out in London the week before and were looking at pictures of Eddy Grant in Georgetown in Guyana. And he was like, "Damn, that would be amazing. What if we just went to Georgetown and shot a video for the new record?" And I was like, "That sounds crazy?" He was like, "I don't know, you film it." I've only directed video for myself really. He's like, "I don't care. Come." I was like, "Are you serious?" And he has to leave to go back to the airport and all the way in the cab we were texting "No really, are you serious? This is going to cost money. We can't just fly halfway across the world to make a video. And you know I only shoot on film as well because I'm an idiot." And he's like, "You can do that if you want to." Let's show the video.

Chamakay – Blood Orange

Lauren Martin: You worked on that track and directed the video, and what I find particularly interesting and inspiring in regard to that is how you present yourself and the people that you work with as in a direct and honest as a way possible, by directing your own videos and being the face of them, that's a form of empowerment within your music. Could you talk a little bit about thoughts that you have when you direct these videos and come together like that?

Adam Bainbridge: Working on that one ... It was just a gift. I really thought he was joking, and then all of the sudden we were on a plane. It was intense and it was a lot of work, but imagine going to the country your friend's mother is from with your friend and meeting his family for the first time. The whole thing, start to finish, was like, "This is a trip. I can't believe we're doing this." And it's nice to document it as well. In a way, I think what was more important for him was going. The fact that we got a video out of it was a bonus.
I think in terms of music video as well, and self directing because he just self directed his new one that came out a couple of days ago which was amazing. I think this is the thing, maybe there's people in the room that are starting to make music videos for their tracks. Maybe you're still making videos on your own, and that's amazing. Don't think that there might necessarily be a better alternative. There are really great directors out there, who do frequently make incredible pieces of work for people's tracks. But on the flip side, if you make your own video, you know how much you're spending. You get to choose what you spend it on. There's just no reason not to. A lot of who you are comes across in those mediums.
And also, it's a financial thing. A video that a production company might ask £10,000-20,000 for, you can honestly do for £1,000 if you cut out all of the middle men. It's not in the interest of your label to tell you that, because ... I think this is the normal way it works, but a video is paid half by the artist and half by the label. So the label puts up the money for it, but whatever it costs you are now in debt for half the cost of the video. Which is fine if you manage to keep the budgets small, it just adds a little bump to the total amount that you have to recoup from your label. If, and again I'm not going to say who it is, you're a label that makes their major label artists spend half a million dollars on a video that never gets released and you as the artist and your management were like, "We think this is a good idea." Now you're another quarter of a million dollars in debt to the label. You might manage to clear that, but you've just got to be careful.
Video can be really expensive. Equally, maybe the most appropriate thing for your track could be you shooting with your selfie cam on your iPhone. Don't let anyone stop you do that.

Lauren Martin: Speaking of expensive, you have a live band that you go on tour with. I'm curious to know, as I'm sure a lot of other people are, how you go from working in a studio on your music to transferring that to a live show. It's something that a lot of people do, a lot of people have gotten very ambitious with. It's a much bigger undertaking than you just packing up a van. How did you put together a band that you're happy with and what were the trials and tribulations of doing that to a point where you were happy?

Adam Bainbridge: This is a pandora's box too. Let's be honest, it's not actually that easy doing this. The reason why I have so many ambivalent stories about things is because it isn't always the smooth part. I guess I haven't expected it to be either.
Putting a band together. There are ways of putting a record on stage, especially if it is heavily electronic. The simplest way is probably to have you as the vocalist and backing tracks. Honestly, from that point on, you're just adding things. You might add a keyboard player, you might add more vocalists, a drummer, all of these things. Fundamentally, most live acts now start with the original studio version of the track and build on it. That's what we did as well. I have guy called Blue May who was my musical director for the first record and this one. Then he also ended up mixing my second record, so shout out to Blue. He helped me find musicians for the live band at first. On this time around I ended up working with Chris Egan and Bryndon Cook who play with Solange Knowles as well. Chris Egan also drums for Blood Orange.
Live band ... Okay. A live band costs money, and again, there's a lot of people in the room [indicates RBMA room] who if you're solo artist, if you're starting out as a producer, you're not in a band. You're not splitting the proceeds from gigs four ways with other musicians, you are the person who gets paid for the show. If you're going to have a band you have to pay them wages, or you should be paying them wages. Over time, it's expensive. What can I say. I don't make money from playing live. I do it to support the music that I make, and I want people to see a live show, and I want ... Again, it's a really good way to communicate your music to people. I think there are bands that are making money, but they're headlining festivals and they're two notches higher up the bill than I am. Where I am right now, I'm breaking even. And I'm breaking even until ...
Here's another thing just because I want people to understand how easy it is to go from being totally stable and having a vision for where you're going and then one day you get a call from your new accountant and he says, "Adam, you're technically insolvent. You're bankrupt." That happened to me two months ago. What happened was that after a year of touring, I had got to the same place. Not really making any profit from my live show but I knew I had broken even. And when you do live shows, you account in the budget for all the fees that are going to come into play in finalizing all of these things. There should be a line in the budget that says accountancy fees X for all of these shows. In my budgets, I guess we sort of underestimated because after all of the profits had come in and we're back at zero, my accountants turn around and they're like, "You owe us £60,000." I'm like, "Well, I have no money. I don't know how I'm going to pay £60,000."
I try and get out of it and I try and talk to my lawyer. My lawyer doesn't want to help. So I say I'm going to change lawyers as well, because I reckon I'm off. He's like, "That's cool. You owe me £40,000." And I'm like, "Wait, a week ago I owed no one nothing, now I owe £100,000 to two companies. What is going on?" I managed to negotiate deals with both of those people and now, bless them, thank you very much. We're done. Don't worry about it. I'm digging myself out of a hole. I'm not technically bankrupt now, I'm just in debt. But I have future earnings that will offset.
That's the thing, you need to know that ... I know a few of you think that I'm doing well, but I thought I was doing well. And now... nope! I'm not doing well at all. But it's going to be fine, and I truly believe that. This also comes back to what I was saying about a team. Get your team straight. Know that you can trust your lawyer, know that you can trust your accountants. Know that they're not going to present with the same bill they're presenting Mariah Carey. You probably shouldn't work with the accountants that are working with Mariah Carey. My mistake. Over all of this, watching like a hawk, should be your management saying, "Maybe they are too expensive for us" or "Maybe we shouldn't do this." I take partial responsibility for what happened. But I also feel like my ex-manager probably should have ... Well alright, you chose a good moment to hit the bell. Anyway, just be careful is all I'm saying.

Lauren Martin: That was more of a hover. It's not been doom and gloom, don't worry. It's been informative. I think a lot of people in this room will definitely appreciate your honesty.
Putting it a little bit back to your music. Is there something that you would like to play that really demonstrates where you're at right now? Be it something of yours or something that you've bought and you love. You've gone through a lot of musical journeys up until this point and it would be great to get a sense of where you are right now coming out the other side of whatever all that is.

Adam Bainbridge: What would that be?

Lauren Martin: One record to solve all of that.

Adam Bainbridge: This is something uplifting. Do you want to put this on? Okay, all right.

Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust

Lauren Martin: Could everybody give a big hand to Kindness for talking today?

Would anybody like to ask some questions, for Adam?

Adam Bainbridge: Can I also just explain that I put my cheerful sweater on. That's actually what this was sitting waiting for was just the moment when I need to like, all right. All right. Get started.

Gareth: That was really refreshing, thank you for your honesty. I have a boring question after all of that, you kind of touched on it already. Kindness sticks out to me because, maybe 2012 after resisting it for a long time I downloaded Spotify and did the radio thing and a track called "SEOD" came up and I loved it. It was kind of my first discovery of the streaming generation. So I'm glad to hear you say that it's coming to the point where you're making some money from it. I'm just curious to hear some more about that, because I'm still in two minds about streaming. From both sides, as a musician and a consumer. And maybe some more thoughts on what you have.

Adam Bainbridge: What's your name?

Gareth: Gareth.

Adam Bainbridge: Hi Gareth. It comes back to what I said before. If you actually own your music, or the masters, if you're licensing with someone, maybe if you even negotiated a good deal with the label that you're working with. Which is possible. You can be signed to a label and talk specifically about streaming income, and ratios, and how much of the royalty they're going to pay you. You could be in a good place.
That's what's kind of dumb about royalty ratios for streaming. A royalty ratio for a physical CD is around 6%, roughly for every one sold. The traditional reason for that was the overheads, and producing it, and marketing spent, and things around releasing a record. A digital stream has no overhead. Once it's uploaded to the server somewhere, it doesn't cost the label anymore money. Why are they only paying you 6%? It doesn't make sense. Now there are more progressive labels that if you're signed to a contract with them and they own the music, they might actually pay you 50% of the royalty on the streaming alone. That's pretty good, that's better than 6.
But if you're going to get played a couple of million times, which in 2015 sometimes can you do, what if you owned the master? That's maybe a few thousand pounds a month. That can make all of the difference.

Gareth: I feel like that's becoming a more common thing to be heard form a musician, particularly of the independent side of things and not Thom Yorke. That's really refreshing to hear from those people who are saying, "This works. If you can do it, it works."

Adam Bainbridge: It's more that there isn't a better alternative. There are things at Bandcamp and there's ways of selling music directly to people that want to hear it. But at this point, unless something completely unexpected comes along, I see everything going towards the streaming model. It makes sense. I don't particularly like it, I think it devalues music overall. It's the same way that Netflix has become the go-to for moving video on TV. Why won't streaming become a thing for music? I meet music fans and people in the industry now that said, "That's great, I actually bought your record on iTunes. It's the only record I bought this year." And I'm like, "Well, I'm honored. But you only bought one record this year?" "Yeah, I stream everything else." "With the adverts?" I mean, anyway-

Gareth: It seems like more people are using it for discovery and then going out and buying the records. In theory ...

Adam Bainbridge: Potentially.

Gareth: On a side note, it was the vocals that really attracted me to that record and the imperfection. It was cool.

Adam Bainbridge: I appreciate that. Thanks for your time.

Speaker 4: What's the most I can do as a straight white male to combat the deeply rooted flaws in the music industry?

Adam Bainbridge: Really good question and I'm actually happy that a straight white man would ask that question. I had a discussion with one last night that wasn't ready. Not naming names.
You can't be passive. If you're ever on a label, and one of your label mates is getting fucked over, you need to say something. If you're playing a music festival, and you realize that an artist of colour or queer artist is being marginalized and you're being given an opportunity that they're not, maybe you say something. Say something to the promoters, say something to the booker. I tried to do this at Pitchfork Festival last year and I made myself another enemy. Some of us are just going to have be that guy that sabotages their career, but does it for everyone else.
I'm just tired of it, I'm really tired. I'm tired that talented artists of color, talented artists of non-heterosexual identity are having such a hard time just breaking through a glass ceiling. Because there is one. And you can just be an ally, be friends with those people. Be honest with yourself if you're influenced by their music.
I think that's what outraged me the most was this guy was like, "There is no 'black music' anymore. White music can be a version of black music." I was, "What are you talking about?" That was what upset me about the Charleston shootings as well. You had a lot of black artists coming out online saying, "This is fucked up. Something has got to change." And then all of the white artists who make their living off hip-hop, or R&B, or club music that comes from a direct lineage from black culture are like ...

Lauren Martin: The silence is pretty loud sometimes.

Adam Bainbridge: Yeah, and you're just like, "Now you don't have anything to say?" You're happy to slip into some code switched Ebonics when it suits you on Twitter, but the minute 9 people get shot in a church it's not your problem anymore. Well, fuck you. Sorry.

Speaker 5: I don't really have a question, I just want to thank you. You really touched me and I think you touched more people. The time you have on that couch, instead of talking about your own material you really thought about what you think is important to tell us and I think that's ... It really got me emotional, because I think it's so important that someone at some point in your career reaches out and tell you that shit. Because I almost fucked up my own career and I didn't do it, because someone stepped and was like, "Yo, do you know what you're signing?" I really want to thank you for that. Thank you so much.

Adam Bainbridge: Thank you.

Lauren Martin: Is there anybody else that's curious at all?

Speaker 6: First, thank you so much for being here and being honest. I don't even know how to ask questions, I just really appreciate you talking about racism, and sexism, and stuff. I'm from Japan, I'm Asian, and I'm a woman and I had some difficulty working as a musician and also about music industry thing... I also had many difficulties. I've been living in Japan and tried releasing some of my records in the United States, and tried hard to learn English, and learn how the indie music industry works, how media works, how publishing works, but it's always really hard. And I already made some mistakes and I lost my money. I still want to make music and I have to deal with it.
My question is, I want to do everything about a lot of my music, as much as possible by myself. But, there is a limit what you can do and at least in Asia you can't find trust. I'm finding it difficult to trust people. How you could find your manager that you can trust or how you can trust people?

Adam Bainbridge: That's a really good question. I just want to say I don't think there's anyone in this room that hasn't made mistakes. What's amazing is you're still here now, you didn't give up. If you gave up, you wouldn't be sitting here. I think everyone needs a round of applause, because I don't know what you've been through but ...
We're all going to get there. I feel like we're part of a new generation. There's a new generation that's going to look out for each other. I see it coming up on the internet, and I see it on Tumblr, and places like that where I'm like, "Damn, this bullshit with racism, sexism, and homophobia that I experienced in 2005, it wouldn't be allowed now." People would just shut it down and that's what we need to start doing.
In terms of finding people that you can work with, managers and labels, I think you just have to ask around and people have to be honest with each other. I feel like, people are sometimes shy talking about the mistakes they've made because they don't want to seem foolish. Privately, I maybe did it too much publicly today.... I would talk about people that I think are bad news in the industry. There are other people that are as toxic as that blogger I was talking about, but they're heads of labels and they're lawyers. And they feel the same way about women and gay artists, but they're in positions of power.
And if you said to me, "I'm thinking of signing with X label" and I knew that guy was like that, I would be like, "No, and these are the reasons why." We just need to keep our ears open and talk to each other. Now that I'm looking for new management, which I probably just made harder for myself, I went around the industry asking artists that I trust and I was like, "Who have you spoken to? Who do you like? Can you name me anyone who actually likes their management?" There were a few yeses, and I was like, "Well, that's good to know." When the time is ready, maybe I'll go and have a conversation with them.
That's the other thing, management has its role if you're ready to do something, and it's going to get complex, and the logistics of it are difficult. If there are a lot of things happening at once. But at the same time, if someone's just going to come in and take over and tell you what to do, and how to dress, and how to present yourself, and what is your strongest single, they might not be the right person for you. And that person can equally damage what you have and what's unique to you. Like I say, one day you can trust someone, but just be very careful and maintain your guard until you know that it's right to let that person in.

Speaker 6: Thank you so much.

Lauren Martin: I'm just quite conscious of time, so if there were anymore, now's a good time.
No?
Thank you so much, I really enjoyed that, I genuinely did. And thank you so much for being honest. Everybody, Kindness.