Art School Girlfriend

Photo Credit: Zak Watson

London-based, Wrexham-raised artist and producer Art School Girlfriend (Polly Louise Mackey) recently released her third album ‘Lean In’ via Fiction Records. Armed with the freedom and space to experiment, ‘Lean In’ was self-produced in her own East London studio and sees Art School Girlfriend set to move from cult bedroom artist to one of the UK’s most vital artist/producers. Last year, Art School Girlfriend shared ‘L.Y.A.T.T.’, a shoegaze and techno-tinged meditation on love quickly followed by ‘The Peaks’, which was recently added to the BBC Radio 6 Music playlist.

We chatted with Polly on how Sequential and Oberheim are used in the music of Art School Girlfriend:

You’ve used a few Sequential and Oberheim instruments over your career. What was your introduction to both brands?

Ten years ago, my self-produced demos found their way into the hands of Paul Epworth through one of his engineers, JHJ. I had never used an analogue synth before, I was making everything in the box in my bedroom. Paul had recently set up The Church Studios and his record label Wolf Tone. He invited me to use the studio on downtime and finish self-producing the demos. He was the first person who told me I could properly produce and those demos turned into my first EP. I got to use those studios for around 7 years in total, and during that time I graduated from bedroom producer to studio producer. There’s a whole section of Studio 1 called ‘synth city’ where all these incredibly historical synths are stacked up ready to go. There was an Oberheim Matrix 12 that I used all over my second EP, Into The Blue Hour. I also fell in love with the Dave Smith / Roger Linn collaboration drum synth Tempest, which I used for all the rhythms on my self-remixed EP. There was a Prophet 12 around for a while that was used heavily on my first album.

Tell us about the new album. What was the process like?

This is my third album, and I hadn’t fully self-produced anything since my first EPs, preferring to collaborate on the production for my first two albums. I’ve grown so much since my first EPs as a producer and engineer, so I wanted to see what would happen without anyone else to bounce off. I built myself a small studio that was designed to facilitate a certain workflow: everything set up, plugged in, mic’d up and ready to go so I could just get into flow state and play. It felt like a really private process and afforded pure creativity. It meant I ended up down real rabbit warrens both sonically and emotionally, I could really dig into quite nerdy avenues of production within Ableton, as well as explore some lyrical themes I hadn’t yet before. It was the most amount of music I’ve ever created in a year, I think there was about forty tracks in different stages of completion, but the ten that made the album all just crystallized in form and emotion at the same time. I have a process that is both computer-based but also live studio-based. I use a lot of organic sounds and instruments, and I often re-amp electronic elements in physical spaces and use field recordings. The final recordings of elements were often the first takes, they’re not perfect but they capture something extra.

You’ve been using the Prophet ’08 on the album. What is one of your favorite things about this synth?

It’s my workhorse synth, I never get a bad sound out of it. It has spawned whole songs just from sitting down and playing around with some chords. The complex timbres and interaction of the LFOs can create a sonic world that leads me down a path that has a full song at the end of it. The LFOs are so powerful, that it can often feel like an FM synth – creating these broken, dusty textures due to some quickly and heavily modulating oscillators or filters. The main thing I love from a piece of gear is when it just does one thing, really well. I like that I have everything out in front of me – the knobs are all single function. When you’re in a creative flow you need to be able to chase the sound you can hear in your head quite quickly, and the Prophet ’08 really allows for that. Lots of small changes across all the parameters can take you in so many different directions with some surprises, but still with a very cohesive aesthetic.

What does it give you that other synths might not?

It doesn’t sound too clean. I make electronic music but I’m from a very band-based background and I’m chasing things that sound human and imperfect. The noise oscillator and the type of filter are key for me, I like everything to feel a little dusty and broken.

Any interesting tricks or techniques you would like to share?

It’s pretty simple, but just turning up the depth of the LFOs right up and syncing the internal bpm with your DAW session, then seeing what interesting patterns and rhythms come out. That’s what I did for my song The Field. It’s a super simple keys part but it self-syncopates every time I hit a new key which creates this really interesting and beautiful cyclical sound.