Julia Biel: MOBOs, Writing, & Memories [Interview]

One of the keys to creativity is a generous attitude. You can’t be stingy when it comes to putting something out there – you have to give it all you’ve got, holding as little back as possible. This interview reflects Julia Biel’s adoption of said attitude.

With a fantastic album (Love Letters And Other Missiles) behind her, a MOBO nomination in the present, and the MOBO Awards and an awesome remix EP on the horizon, TMMP caught up with Julia Biel to discuss writing, memories, and more…

You’ve been nominated for a MOBO Award, and you have a new remix EP out next month. Sounds like a busy time! What thoughts and feelings are going through your head right now?

It’s been a really busy year, yeah! Loads of touring abroad to lots of new places, and then the MOBO nomination and now getting to release the remix EP feels like the icing on the cake.

At the moment, I’m mainly feeling really grateful for all of it. I feel very privileged to be getting these opportunities.

While you were writing and recording Love Letters And Other Missiles, what was your creative process like? What did you have to do to make your ideas a reality?

I was writing songs at the piano late at night without really having an album in mind, but just letting the songs emerge as and when they did.

There was no pressure, no label to hurry me, no one telling me how they had to sound, just total freedom to write how and what I wanted. It was a great time as it was also the first time I was writing in this way – my previous songs had all been collaborations, so this period was all about me finding my own songwriting voice and learning about it, accepting it and sometimes being quite shocked at what was coming out.

For me, songwriting is about tapping into the subconscious – and it’s not all pretty in there. But music is a great way to express any emotion and that’s something I really love about it.

I had a strong aesthetic in mind for the sound of what I was writing, but it was in my head [and] I didn’t really know what was involved in creating that sound, and I didn’t know how to articulate a lot of what I imagined.  So there were huge learning curves there.

Once I felt I had an album in mind, things really got going when my producer Idris Rahman came on board. He was able to help me translate my abstract descriptions of how I wanted things to sound into a reality that musicians could interpret.

I’d say things like “…this bit needs to sound like the horizon is melting,” so you definitely need people around you who can make some sense of that kind of statement musically.

I was very lucky to work with Idris Rahman – he gets what I’m trying to bring together musically better than anyone. And he was just so patient. My reaction to music has always instinctively been on a purely emotional level, and that totally governed how the songs ended up being produced, so everything we were considering adding needed to be assessed for how it was working or not working on an emotional response level to decide if it was in or out.

Yeah…not quick.

What challenges did you encounter during the making of that album? How did you get around them?

One initial block was that I realised I needed an electric guitarist and despite trying the material with loads of people, nothing was clicking, and that literally went on for years.

Then eventually my boyfriend bought me an electric guitar for Christmas. I had never considered playing the guitar, but once I had it, I discovered I loved it and threw myself into the challenge of trying to play it.

It’s a tough instrument, and I still consider myself a novice – but despite that, it wasn’t long before it proved to be a massive help. Just getting a few little rhythm parts together to underpin the songs provided something for other musicians to bounce off, and a whole load of other songs came out as well, so that was an exciting time.

I began doing little gigs on the guitar/voice with just a double bass player and then, one time, a now legendary meeting took place.

An electric guitarist newly arrived in London at that time, Marco Piccioni, came to one of these little gigs and came to introduce himself to me afterwards announcing “I am your guitarist!” in his strongest of Italian accents.

It turned out to be a self-fulfilling, prophetic statement, and he patiently worked with me for months so we could decipher what was in my head and what was going to work.

He played most of the lead guitar on the album.

Aside from that, you know, I just set out to make the album that was in my head without giving any thought to the challenges – and it turned out there were going to be loads of challenges on every front, psychologically, emotionally, musically, financially, spiritually.

Navigating it all to come out at the end of it with a tangible album definitely required me to dig deep.

There were times I began to seriously wonder how it could ever come good, but I had my goal in sight and it was such a hugely important album to me in so many ways that I just kept on going until I thought it was done. And eventually it was.

What’s your earliest musical memory?

When I was about seven, I had a keyboard in my bedroom for a short while. I remember making up stuff on it in the privacy of my room and losing myself in playing any old thing.

I remember absolutely loving it, and actively thinking I wanted to write music always.

I think I must have been spending too much time on my own in my bedroom doing that – and so the keyboard was moved to a more sociable part of the house, but I was too shy to play any old stuff in front of the whole family. So it was years before I rediscovered that feeling and reconnected with that memory.

Is there a spiritual aspect to what you do?

Music is in itself a spiritual thing, I think. There’s a mythical, magical power in music that stirs and connects people on such a deep level.

It’s hard to find a different word for describing it other than spiritual. I am not religious, but I do believe in a higher power, and I know that when I’m performing I often feel like I have no idea what I’m actually doing and that it’s not really me making it all happen how it does.

What’s the most difficult thing about being a musician today?

Seeing so many talented friends having to stop making the music they were put on this earth to make because music has lost so much of its value in today’s world, and the sums just don’t add up any more for so many.

Please, if you like an act and you want to hear more music from them, even if you think they’re “massive”, forget streaming and support them by making that little investment to buy their albums – because that’s the vital resources they need to make the next album with.

Beyond the MOBO Awards and the remix EP, what does the future hold?

We shall see what we shall see, as my drummer Saleem Raman always says!  But right now I’m working with producer Idris Rahman again, producing a new album which should hopefully be out next year – and an exciting tour schedule is beginning to form too, so it’s looking good at the moment!

Links / Listen

Check out TMMP’s review of Licence To Be Cruel (Julia Biel’s five-track remix EP) here.

Julia Biel official website.

Follow TMMP via Twitter and my brand new Facebook page for more from the world of world-class music! If you’re a regular reader, thanks for the support! Don’t stop, and keep going!

Image © Jenna Foxton.

Posted on 31 October 2015