Chapter 1: What inspired Robert's friendship with Attawalpa?
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I am Robert Diamant and this is Talk Art. Welcome to Talk Art. Today I am feeling that I believe in magic and that is because today's guest genuinely has made me feel that over the past kind of four or five years when we've become friends.
He's someone that kind of reminded me of my childhood self in a kind of fraternal way, maybe definitely in a kind of best friends way. Every time I'm with him, I feel so comfortable and I can just be myself. And I always felt very seen from the minute I met him. And we have had some amazing adventures. He's come to stay in Margate. We've hung out a lot in London.
We've even been to art fairs together. And we sometimes go for lunch together. And also his music. He's made two incredible albums. If you haven't heard them yet, you must download them now. The first one is called Presence. And the latest one was called Experience. And he's currently just begun recording his third album, which I have a feeling is going to be a breakthrough record.
It already sounds really, really exciting. And I just thought now would be the right time for us to meet and to celebrate this wonderful man who came into my life at a time when I was feeling quite low.
And he sort of reminded me why I cared about art, why I cared about music, why in my childhood being creative, even just as a kid, before you even understand the world, that kind of urge or drive we have to just create something, to collaborate, to make a community, to kind of have friends. He just reminded me of that whole kind of spirit.
So I'm really, really grateful to him and I'm so excited to introduce you to him. You probably already know him because he's been doing a lot of film soundtracks and TV shows and also co-wrote Too Much with his partner, which was the amazing TV series last year on Netflix. So if you haven't seen that as well, I really recommend seeing that.
But I would like to welcome to Talk Art my friend Atta Walper, aka Lewis.
Hi, Lewis. Hi, Robert. Thank you so much for having me. What a sweet introduction. I mean, I just don't know where to put my arms, so I'm folding them. Oh, thank you.
You're all coy.
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Chapter 2: How did Attawalpa's upbringing influence his music?
And I remember because I grew up in the music industry from the age of kind of 13. And I remember a lot of people that I was around were like, why are these musicians calling themselves artists? Because the people I was hanging out with were from the 60s, 70s kind of successful music scene. And they were all like, we aren't artists, like we're musicians, you know, we're songwriters.
But suddenly it became this idea of artistry. And I do think it's a valid thing because people like Prince, the whole postmodern, like, you know, even Madonna, like there was a whole generation of artists who were using pop music as a kind of material.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think it's also a way of them to separate themselves from the industry that was turning. So it was basically an industry like the movie industry at the time, which is basically everything's advertising, everything's marketing. It's like that's how they stay true and not go crazy. In these worlds, you make an album, you're on the road for a year and a half.
It's like you have to separate yourself from that. And by calling yourself an artist, it's kind of a cool way to do it because you feel a bit like an outsider. Yeah.
When do you first remember being creative yourself? Because you're a very like polymath kind of figure. I feel like you do loads of things really well.
Thank you. There used to be a lot of acoustic guitars around my house, like Spanish guitars. So the strings were very soft and I wasn't afraid of them, but I knew whenever I picked it up, it didn't make sense to me. But I remember being, you know, six or seven years old and just really wanting to create something out of nothing with this tool.
Me and my friend at the time, a guy called Callum, decided to start a band. And I think we called ourselves the Abujas because it was like I'd looked at a map and it was like a city in Africa. And I was like, that's a really cool name. And that's what we called our band. And we wrote a song. I don't remember the song. But that was the first time I remember thinking, this is fun.
But I didn't really equate to anything until I properly picked up the guitar around the age of 15 and probably wrote the first song around 16, 17. Yeah, my brother gave me a Korg 8-track and me and my friend William, who we started a band called The Eraserheads with after the David Lynch film, Yeah, we would just sit around and in the middle of nowhere in the countryside and sort of make songs.
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Chapter 3: What role does collaboration play in Attawalpa's creative process?
Couldn't sit still, no. Were you good at sitting still as a kid? Probably not, no.
I was always dancing. I wanted to be a dancer when I was a kid.
Do you still dance?
No, and it's really strange. But I do enjoy going to nightclubs and stuff the older I'm getting. I need to do it more. I've been craving it. I interviewed Holly Blakey the other week and I was talking to her about it. It's like, I don't know, I think I found a real liberation in my early 20s going to clubs and stuff because I love dancing so much and I kind of repressed it.
yeah first of all she's incredible yeah and i think dancing is yeah the purest form of expression i sadly can't do it i'm on stage i move i was gonna say you were also in you had a cameo in too much as a dj and you were like upper body moving I was maybe a little bit of, you know, 20% of underbody moving as well, but you couldn't see it because it was cut.
But yeah, I always feel extremely self-conscious, you know, even when I was young and my friends would love to dance, I would watch them and be like, oh, That's so cool.
I mean, I remember growing up a little bit in Peru, and one of my first memories of being around artists out there was like my mother, this amazing painter you should check out called Alberto Grieve, G-R-I-E-V-E, and his paintings. We have a few in Peru that are kind of abstract, sort of Pollock-y, but... You can kind of tell it's Latin American.
There's something quite light about it and intriguing, but also there is a darkness to it. And there was a darkness to him. He was a very characterful guy, very charismatic, always a drink in his hand. But it was like my mom, Alberto, this woman, Rossi Salinas, who's a makeup artist. And I remember we all went to see her girlfriend do a dance show in Lima. And I must have been about...
nine and it was you know a place where adults hang out i don't think my mom would always take me to like exhibitions and cool shows and cool stuff like that and i just thought that was like the wildest thing to do that these adults are getting together and doing this like modern expression dance thing and then talking about it afterwards i was like this is the dream yeah
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Chapter 4: How does Attawalpa define the concept of artistry?
Yeah. But I also love the idea of album cover and music videos. It's super important to me to tie all those things in and having someone that's known me for nearly 20 years or maybe over 20 years, like Emma, who also we've been in a band together.
you know understand the craft of creative direction it's just super cool to have those conversations like it's great if you can do it yourself but i think behind every artist like the princes the title of the creators the nirvanas there is someone there like sort of taking all these ideas and logging them and making them filtering them to make sense into like a product which at the end of the day is kind of what you're putting out there
Yeah, and I was really struck with presence because of the visual language around it all. Like even the live show, it seemed to like really, because I came to a gig you did in a record store. I think it was Jack White's and White Stripes.
Third Man Records.
Yeah, Third Man Records, exactly, in Soho. And it was a really intimate gig, but it was so impressive. Like the sound was incredible. Your band was incredible. There was probably like eight of you on stage or something.
There was a lot of us on stage for the album.
For that size venue as well. There was like so many people on stage. I was like, this is insane. Yeah. But there was something so strong about the vision of it. And then also that kind of technicolor, really vivid colors that you used in the photography and the videos. There was something quite dreamy about it all. And like, yeah, it really stuck out at the time.
Yeah. Thank you. I mean, thanks for noticing. When we made that record, that was when I decided that we needed a band to play it live. And we met so many cool musicians making that. You know, Freya Hicks, who plays viola now in the band, and Henry plays drums. Matt, who was playing guitar at the time, and now he's a bassist, plays bass and co-produces and co-writes.
So we met Orchin, who's fantastic. He went to art school as well. He's a great artist. So it's good to be able to see both those sort of sides. For that record, we had I met a guy called Martin Wick. I think his name is he lives in Hackney Wick. So maybe that's why he called himself Martin Wick. And it might be his Instagram handle.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of being an artist in today's music industry?
And he's done the lights there. And he's been working forever. And I had dinner with him and asked him if he would do our stage show. And he was really into it. And he...
literally brought down all these boxes and they were so cool and i love that side of it it's endless you know if you sort of get on a vibe i read this book once and it said before you write any music you should take the band photo first so you have something visual wow to jump off on yeah which you know you don't have to do that but it is an interesting way of looking at the process
Well, it's more conceptual, isn't it? It becomes a bigger thing. It's world making.
It's world making. And an attitude or something. But you could have the same thing making a song and using a synth. I mean, we're in my studio right now and using a synthesizer over there, putting that through a delay pedal and for a certain amp. And that builds the sonic world of what you're doing. But to have something visual is like really important.
And also, you know, now that I've done two EPs and two albums, I've worked with a lot of directors and a few animators as well. And you kind of get to collaborate with all these different people and see how they make you feel and how they make the music feel and the visuals feel. And you just grow and constantly evolve through that power of collaboration.
we're a similar age as well and i think maybe like we've grown up in a very specific time which is partly probably why when i met you something resonated or something i think occasionally you have that click but i was in islington this morning and i walked past the hope and anchor and it reminded me of my teens because i i used to make music myself and i i was part of a kind of um
In a way, an indie rock band scene. And all the bands I was looking up to were people like Pulp.
And when you look back at Pulp now... Who took about eight years or ten years to break through as well.
Totally. But also, if you look at what they did, they did actually have an incredible visual language around what they did. Including connecting to the live stage, to the videos, to the album covers.
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Chapter 6: How does Attawalpa integrate visual art into his music?
called Saga, which is by Brian K. Vaughan, who's an amazing writer. A few of his books have been turned into shows and movies and stuff. But Saga was like, you know, Romeo and Juliet or Titanic, but set in space, you know, like kind of with a Star Wars flex. You know, like people love Star Wars and I'm not going to start hating on Star Wars, but like it's a very boys club thing.
There's no romance in it. But this was like, I think this guy's a genius, saw that and saw the space for Saga. And Fiona Staples was the artist that did the work, the drawing in Saga. We hunted her down. I was like, where were the label? You guys got people that can talk to people. So we got Fiona and she did the artwork for us. Really?
Sadly, that album never got shelved because I left the band and started writing Attawopastoff just before I got sober. But yeah, that's how I wanted to do it. It was like, okay, if I have these resources, then why are we just dealing with these guys? I mean, no offense to the in-house artists at the label, I won't mention, but it was a subsidiary of Universal, so you know.
But yeah, I was like, that's how you do it. And I think musicians should always be peeking over the wall and seeing what's going on in the art world, you know, or film or comic books or, you know, contemporary art. Like it's important.
Growing up, I thought I was very cool because I'd read a book, Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me, which is all about the 70s, 60s, 70s, late 70s sort of punk movement from like
lou reed iggy then bowie then sort of stiff bait as well as this band called dead boys rocket from the tombs richard howe like all the stuff that sort of you know malcolm mclaren went and saw and brought it back over here and created the sex pistols look but it was like all done through journalism and interviews it was a really really cool book
And, you know, Andy Warhol's like mentioned a hundred times in that book. And it made you realize, you know, I looked into those videos of the Velvet Underground playing at the factory and it just, they just look like the coolest band in the world because they had this manager who was telling them to project these amazing visuals while they're playing.
You know, they play for hours at these parties and they just had these like lava lamp sort of visuals behind them in like the 60s. And I just thought the whole concept and idea of the factory was so cool. And like when we started doing the Young Knights, like I wanted to make something like that, like bring everyone in, you know. Yeah, it's important. It also led me to an amazing book.
I think it's the Andy Warhol Diaries.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Attawalpa share about his upcoming projects?
Like they are really all artists, all of them. And even the stage show like David Byrne does, that's really an art performance. I mean, it's really ingenious.
He's incredible. All of the aspects of that band, you had the guitarist who was like the guy from the Modern Lovers, which is kind of, you know, without the Modern Lovers, you wouldn't have a lot of music. You definitely wouldn't have bands like the Strokes, like that guy just sings like that guy.
And then you have the bassist who did that tune that Mario Carey sampled, I can't remember the name of her band. But it was just like such a cool mixture of people. And also in New York and probably the most, you know, arguably one of the most happening times. It was an explosion of cool sort of creativity.
I love it when I go to artist studios and you hear the music they're playing. Well, not every artist does, but there are definitely loads of painters that I know who have music on in the background when they're painting, if they're able to focus in that way. I do like that as well, the way that music can kind of inspire artists to make work.
And writers, you know, people are listening to playlists while they're writing and... Yeah, I think it's a sort of soundtrack of your mood, isn't it? But I think nowadays with streaming, it's a bit dangerous because you can just see music as a mood rather than, oh, someone's actually made this record. Let's put a record on, you know, I think like...
Do you know, I never use playlists. I saw it the other day. I think it was Kim Gordon was talking about it, about how ridiculous playlists are because, you know, she was like, wouldn't you just play an album? Like, you know what I mean? And what I do is I go and play an album. Like I look up what new albums have come out that week and I listen to them. I would never think like, I'm feeling sad.
I'm going to listen to the sad playlist.
I mean, I think a lot of people do that, sadly. But I do believe also that the album is coming back and it's so important. You know, it's funny putting music out. As an independent artist in the world now, it's like you're competing with all the music that's ever been in the world, ever.
And, you know, the way that I get my head around that is, you know, I want to make an hour or 45 minutes of something that I can get lost in that I would want to listen to. You build a world. That's all we can really do.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of Attawalpa's collaborations with Lena Dunham?
It looks like a big donut.
It was a pavilion originally in the Serpentine.
In the Serpentine. Yeah.
And they, I don't even know if it's still there, but maybe it is there. But I think they had it there maybe temporarily or permanently. I'm not sure. But yeah, and they relocated it to Bruton. It's made by an architect, I think.
And I was so excited to play. And I was like, you know, sent photos and there was lots of conversations that we could do in the gallery. And I was like, that looks so cool. Let's do that.
Yeah, and in connection to nature too, because it was right by their beautiful gardens.
Yeah, so beautiful. I mean, it looked like we were about to take off and we did the sound check and it sounded incredible. And I was like getting really excited about the space and the people that work there are so lovely. And they were like, you know, you could record here if you ever wanted to use it. I was like, well, drums would sound amazing in here.
Or, you know, a string quartet or just recording vocals. What a beautiful place to be. And then when people started pouring into the room, totally changed the sound it was like being in a sort of anxiety dream you couldn't hear anything all i could hear was like people talking and shuffling so it became like this sort of test of us the band to see if we could play these songs in the dark you know
without the audience could hear it but you guys couldn't on stage yeah it was a monitoring thing and it was nothing to do with no no issue with like the gallery or yeah yeah or the sound engineer but it was just that space no of course it's the reason why venues aren't shaped like a donut yeah with a hole in the middle yeah because all the sound just booms around it which is really cool for like recording something there yeah but to perform that's also like a test of your um your talents in terms of like you've got to get through the gig and you can't hear yourself i've had to do that in the past yeah it's so weird that because you feel so disconnected
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