Artist Profile – Lucy Kitchen – (UK)

The sound of Lucy Kitchen’s beautiful voice has graced some of drum and bass’s most sublime tracks, and we were delighted when she agreed to an interview some months ago now. She has worked with the likes of Technimatic, BCee and The Vanguard Project, releasing on labels such as Dispatch, Spearhead and Shogun Audio. This lady means business.

We wanted to know a bit about her background as a musician and her explorative steps into the drum and bass genre, which is a million miles away from her chosen path as a folk singer/songwriter. We’ve been sitting on this one for ages due to transcribing challenges, but are now very proud to present to you the full interview with one of DNB’s most atmospheric and instantly recognisable female vocalists.

Lucy! Thank you so much for being here!

Thank you!

So Lucy, tell us a bit about your early journey into singing?

Well, starting out musically I always wanted to play the flute, which I started learning when I was eight, so I’m classically trained in that, and growing up it was widely considered that my sister was a better singer than me. In some ways that took a bit of pressure off, and I got to sing and enjoy it.

I did all of the classical stuff and learned piano as kind of a back up instrument, and played in orchestras and all of these kinds of things, and then when I was about 14 I started getting into music with lyrics that I really liked, and I started writing poem type lyrics. My dad worked in a large London library and started bringing home music for me to listen to, as he’s a real muso and had seen that I was starting to write stuff.

At sixteen I came home from work one day and there was a guitar sitting there waiting for me, which my parents had bought. By 17 I’d started to attend some open mic nights having learned a few basic chords, but people really liked my voice and I got a really positive response, so it kind of went from there really.

What a lovely story! We’re asking cheekily though, is your sister still considered to be the best singer?

Well she doesn’t really sing a lot now, although she’s done some backing vocals for me. She’s a cellist now, and plays mainly in string quartets and things like that.

So, tell us about your influences then. You’ve mentioned your dad, but who else was it that made a big difference to your developing style?

Growing up, I was a bought up on a musical diet of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and my dad was really into jazz musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Mingus, which my mum wasn’t a huge fan of! But we spent time dancing in the front room together as my dad did and still does love a good dance when he can.

As well as the classical music I was still playing, I wanted to start exploring jazz and also got into a lot of folk and country by the likes of Joni Mitchel, Shawn Colvin and Nancy Griffith and I also really liked Neil Young. But as I grew up in the grunge era and my friends were all into Nirvana and big guitar music, I was also exposed to the Boo Radleys, Throwing Muses and Belly as a teenager. From that I discovered Lamb and Massive Attack, more electronic stuff, so I have quite a diverse collection of music that I listen to.

That’s quite an eclectic array of artists there. We are very similar here at INSIDE DNB. It’s whatever makes your ears prick up isn’t it?

Yea, and of course it’s mood based too. People often ask me what’s my favourite song, which is just impossible to answer. Catch me on a different day, at a different time and in a different mood and the answer is going to be entirely different.

When it comes to recording vocals then, do you prefer to do it at home, or in a studio?

Well, we do have a home studio set up so I can record at home, and my late husband worked for Apple as a Logic music software specialist, so we helped each other out a lot, but my knowledge studio knowledge plateaus, and now I’m on my own it’s a bit trickier. The alternative of course is going into the studio where I don’t have to think about any of the technical stuff! Luckily, he created me a load of templates, so if I’m recording some acoustic music I’ll use a certain template, and the same for other styles. 

He also created some pre-sets that really help when sending out vocals to people I’m working with, as all it requires is a little EQ and bit of sparkle so that they can see how I’m visualising it in my head, and then they can finalise things at their end.

We are very sorry for your loss. Losing a partner must be devastating.

We’ve talked to a few different vocalists from the drum and bass scene and it’s interesting how everybody has a slightly different way of working.

Yeah, I’d actually be quite interested to see what other peoples processes are. I mean, I approach the writing for collaborations on a drum and bass track completely different to how I approach my own writing.

So how does the collaboration thing work for you then?

I get sent things in varying states of completion. Technimatic for example will send me ideas that they call ‘sketches’, and they will invariably say ‘here’s an idea, or a couple of ideas, pick one and see what you want to do with it’ and I’ll take it away and create something to go with it. They will generally take that back and send me something in return explaining what they’ve done with it and to check that I’m okay with it, and also there may be a couple of changes that require a re-write. Often this entails a bit of back and forth communication in order to get a final version.

Others will send me something almost finished and I’ll write a vocal to compliment it and before you know it the final version will be ready for market, so it’s a different way of working every time really.

How about you recording something on your own with no musical prompt as such, and then somebody else create the music around that? Is that a thing?

I haven’t done it that way around, but I think that would be pretty interesting, because I have loads of kind of ongoing ideas, and sometimes they’re kind of partially formed, so it would be quite interesting to send some of those off and see what happens!

What advice might you give vocalist looking to make their first move in the world of music business?

So, I think being organised as far as understanding all of the rights bodies is a key factor. I self release on my own label for my own stuff, so if you set things up right for your first release, then it makes it much easier for your other releases because you’ve already put all of the ground work in place, so I think things like that are important.

Obviously social media is important, but also if you have a number of releases lined up, it’s useful to have a number of things that you know you’re going to share with people, maybe a YouTube video or sharing some of the lyrics, and even talking about the tracks, just having things lined up in advance so that you’re not feeling that you’re constantly working on the fly.

But also, believing in what you’re doing and enjoying it is really important. There’s such a lovely buzz when you’re putting something out and getting a nice response to it, and I love seeing other people put things out and seeing their buzz. It’s a such a lovely thing. Even if not that many people listen to it, it’s nice to see it have an effect on people.

As we have discovered, you’re fundamentally an acoustic singer/songwriter, so what we really want to know is, how the heck did you get into being a drum and bass vocalist?

Well, there’s still a bit of mystery around this. I got an email our of the blue one day (which I was really rubbish at responding to) from Kier at Shogun asking if I’d like to do some writing and recording. I think it might have been via a link between some friends of mine who were known as ‘The Part Time Heroes’ and John from London Elektricity, but anyway, I got this email with five tracks on a We Transfer link and promptly forgot all about them.

Kier chased me up and I had to ask him to send them again (which was shameful!), but it turned out that they were 5 Technimatic tracks and so I went away and did a rough record, and while other vocalists had also sent in vocals, they luckily liked mine. So, we went into a studio in London and started playing around with what is now known as ‘Looking for Diversion’, but I’m still not entirely sure how Kier got my details!

After that people just started contacting me. So, people get in touch and they send me stuff, and if I like it the I work with it, and if I don’t, I wont. I mean, I don’t really write on anything that I don’t like the vibe of. I mean, some stuff I listen to I think I could, but I don’t really want to work on stuff that I don’t like.

I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily a huge drum and bass fan. I’ve listened to a lot more since doing this work though, and some of the producers I’ve worked with are really, really good. Mostly it’s just been a lot of fun and I really enjoy it. It’s such a difference to the stuff I do myself and I approach it much differently, so it’s been really interesting figuring out different ways to work.

Tell us a bit more about some of your future projects then. Is there any more DNB colabs in the pipeline, or just music projects generally?

Well, I am working on an acoustic collection of all of the drum and bass tracks that I’ve featured on. I’m currently deciding which ones to do, and have some ideas regarding how to proceed with that.

My late husband also recorded some piano improvisations in our home studio, and he managed to record eight pieces before he died, so that is also something I’m working on. They are all improvised recordings and his main dream was to record them on the family Bechstein piano, but due to his illness he wasn’t able to do that. However, I do have his leader sheets that chart the chords he used, so I am also thinking about finding other pianists that might be able to play them, and what I would really like is to get those released on vinyl.

Finally then, we’re curious to know whether you’d consider doing some live vocal work at DNB events? One of our previous interviewees Pat Fulgoni has done quite a bit of this in the past, and it is such a vibe!

I would love to! I sang at Technimatics album launch when I did ‘Weightless’ and that’s the only time that I’ve sung at a drum and bass event. I did say to Steve BCee that I’d love to sing at a Spearhead night, as we’ve got quite a lot of tracks now, so yeah, I’m definitely up for it.

I suppose it’s a bit weird really, being in the middle of the two musical worlds of folk and DNB and being able to look in either direction?

Do you know what, I have had some real DNB heads find my more folky stuff and it was slightly blowing their minds, and there was one guy putting comments on some of my tracks, but using drum and bass speak, so he’d be putting all of these amazing comments but using things like ‘FIYAH!!!!!’ to a track just of me finger picking the guitar. That bought me quite a lot of joy!

We do that!

Yeah, there’s such a lot of enthusiasm in drum and bass music. It’s such good fun! I don’t find those kind of things on my more folky music!

Final words then?

Well, I have a track coming out in September with Mystic State called Stormboy, so keep your eyes peeled for that 🙂

Awesome. We can’t wait! BIG UP!

FIND OUT MORE HERE:

Stream Lucy Kitchen music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on Soundcloud

Lucy Kitchen DnB – playlist by Lucy Kitchen | Spotify

Lucy Kitchen (@lucykitchenmusic) | Instagram