Lee Bannon Wants to Be the "Stanley Kubrick of Music"

Searching Bandcamp one night last summer, I came across Lee Bannon's self-released EP, Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5. A swamp of buzzsaw riffs rising to and bursting on the surface, the EP hosted a slew of the (gulp) "experimental hip hop" motifs that have emerged robust in our post-noughties rap world. The murky soundscapes of the South remain dominant, but with the highly aestheticised, glacial stare of East Coast rap (à la A$AP Mob, most recently) and the burgeoning influence of experimental electronica within, Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5 stood tentatively between all three, in a way fit for a Louisiana-born and Cali-raised hip-hop producer, who grew up listening to Aphex Twin and Goldie.

Motifs aside, it felt on the cusp of something weirder, and that was Alternate/Endings; Bannon's debut for UK label Ninja Tune, and one of the most mental LPs from a hip hop producer I've heard in a long time. Fascinated by this transition, THUMP caught up with Bannon to talk about how he fell in love with jungle, the process that led to Alternate/Endings, and how he wants to be the next Rick Rubin.

THUMP: What may surprise people on hearing Alternate/Endings, having come to know you as a hip hop producer, is that it's got this crazy jungle sound; much more so than on Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5, or Place/Crusher. Why the stylistic leap?

Lee Bannon: Yeah, Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5 had more of a southern US vibe, and Place/Crusher felt more ambient, but a lot of the material released in the past year is actually a few years old. I just finally got the platform to release it. It was all different works from 2011-2012 that just dropped in that order.

That makes sense. It's fascinating how indebted Alternate/Endings is to jungle, though. I read a quote of yours that I'd love you to develop on, if you can: "Jungle is just really fast hip-hop". What did you mean by that?

Lee Bannon: I was really aware of jungle and drum & bass when I was growing up, and I've always thought about them during the process of pushing the production of instrumental hip hop to it's limits. I guess it's like everything else, right? "Rock 'n' roll is just fast blues", you know? For jungle and hip hop, neither need a vocalist to work because of the speed. You look at people like Outkast, with tracks like 'Bombs over Baghdad'; they pushed it so far that, eventually, it became pretty much a drum & bass song.

Jungle and hip hop have a way of marrying each other, in that sense. It's about the control and release of tension.

Lee Bannon: Oh, totally. If you go back and look at someone like Goldie and the RZA—both coming out in 1993 or 1994—there was a very fine line between what they were both doing. I think the music I'm going to be creating from now on won't necessarily be stuck in a genre. That's one of the reasons I released Place/Crusher. I wanted to obliviate any preconceived ideas of what I could sound like.  I hate to even call it electronic music, but, you have to plug it in eventually, right?

Another quote I found of yours taps into this, I feel: "That's one thing I've been asking of myself: am I capable of creating a sound, or do I only want to pick this sound, and that's what I'm going to be?" 

Lee Bannon: Yeah, I get you. Sounds kind of difficult there. What I mean by that is: say I built a house, and I use a certain type of wood. When I build the next house, I'll use different supplies to make sure it's unique. It's a construction. 

In that case, how are your supplies and construction process different on this album?

Lee Bannon: Alternate/Endings has a lot more depth to it. Everything else you've heard besides this album, I probably made in three days. I made Caligula Theme Music 2.7.5 on a flight. With this album, I had more musicians come into the studio in NYC and LA, more input from people other than myself, and I worked on it outside of my room. It took roughly five or six months before it was complete, and there was a solid 85 to 100 tracks that I narrowed down to 11 or 12—with three additional ones for the Japan release on top of that, too. They all have a common thread. This album wasn't designed to have a single. It's more of a "serious listen." I definitely look at this project as my first, developed album, especially since I made a point of going in on the drums.

I get that. In your previous solo work, I feel that you seem to be playing with the absence of drums; with the idea of space and, or against, surface. Alternate/Endings really indulges in the drums.

Lee Bannon: Yeah, this is more about textures. It's kind of like a 13th century Gregorian chant; the more layers I would add, it gave a different dimension to the entire track. I mean, this project was very important to me because, everything else? I look at it all and almost wish it wasn't out there. A lot of it was done just to have a platform to release something like Alternate/Endings. That's part of the reason I kept the artwork as simple as it is. I wanted it to be dry, no nonsense. Straightforward. I want this to be a reference point; to play it out ten years from now, and feel that it could have been played ten years before too. 

I wanted to ask you, too, about your relationship with jungle. There's a unusual connect between your rap production and your more jungle sounds; it makes me think of some of the Suburban Bass output, in a way.

Lee Bannon: On what?

Suburban Bass. It's this UK label that set up shop in LA in the mid-90s. They put out some cool jungle tracks that sample hip-hop.

Lee Bannon: Oh, cool. I'm going to write this down. 

There's a couple of Remarc tracks that, well, they don't sound like you, but I thought you might have an affinity with them.

Lee Bannon: I usually think I know a lot about music like that, but it's always good to be put on to new things. 

This one's from 1996.

Lee Bannon: Oh shit, wow. Yeah, it sounds like Dr Dre, but, with elements of DJ Muggs. It's exactly what we were describing; hip hop and jungle fused.  

It feels like an early prototype to what you're working towards, even? 

Lee Bannon: Honestly, that surprised me what you played. It's so blatant. I've got a show in San Francisco in a few days—I'm going to play that if I can find it!

There was another one I thought of, by Bizzy B.

Lee Bannon: Yeah, I've heard of him. He was more hip-hop, right?

Yeah, but there's one track I'll play to you that I thought of when I listened to Alternate/Endings. This is 1993 so, earlier than the Remarc.

Lee Bannon: Oh wow. Those breaks are insane! I get you now. I feel that this realm of music is a good bridge for me. I think I got put in a box of being a hip-hop producer so producing a record like this... it opens doors to working with people outside of hip-hop. 

What is the ultimate goal for you then?

Lee Bannon: Without jinxing it, to do more production—like a Hans Zimmer, or a Rick Rubin. I mean, what Rubin did with the first really successful Red Hot Chilli Peppers record? Crazy. Keeping in mind, he came from stuff like LL Cool J, so something had to happen to where they took him seriously as another style of producer. There is a grey area from when he transitioned from being a really popular hip-hop producer to being what he is now.

He produced the Jake Bugg album, too. Mad.

Lee Bannon: He definitely nailed transitioning to a whole other realm.

You seem like a pretty ambitious guy. You've said you want to be the "Stanley Kubrick of music," too.

Lee Bannon: Ha, well, the reason I said that is because he would take three years on one piece. If you think about it, if you do the research for three years, of any genre, you could probably execute an insane project, you know? Those kind of producers don't push buttons. Their albums are built off their wealth of knowledge. 

I know you love the film There Will Be Blood, so much so that it influenced Alternate Endings?

Lee Bannon: I referenced that because this album was meant to be a serious hard listen with no chaser. Nothing pretty.

It's very tactile.  It's about this bleak landscape; no air, no escape.

Lee Bannon: I wanted it to sound like complete darkness in the desert. Nothing's been built yet. A new platform. I was also thinking of - not that it is or will be - but of how a work can become iconic.

So, how did you get into jungle in the first place?

Lee Bannon: I moved to California around the 4th grade from Louisiana. My mum would listen to a bunch of different music whilst she was going to nursing school, and she would play Goldie a lot. As I got older I listene to drum & bass a lot and then around the 8th grade, I moved to the outskirts of the suburbs of Sacramento and everyone was into that stuff. That's how I heard about Ninja Tune and Blockhead. I remember the Source Direct album—even though it was already four or five years old when I got it—and I was exposed to producers like Aphex Twin to Venetian Snares. 

When I moved into downtown Sacramento, it was a weird scene. There was a DJ called DJ Whores who played a lot of drum & bass.  He was way older than me, and put me on to a lot of those sounds. Keep in mind though, the scene was really small, and it involved people who are currently on the rise right now. It's almost like a weird version of the Bristol scene; The Wild Bunch and Massive Attack, and now Young Echo and so on.  The best shit in Sacramento now is definitely Death Grips, Chelsea Wolfe and Trash Talk. 

So, in terms of a scene, what do you know of US jungle?

Lee Bannon: I'm not too sure. I didn't know it at the time, but some of the dudes like DJ Earl and Rashad from Chicago were doing it. I feel like recently in the last three years or so it's come up a bit.

I think the popularity of footwork has played a part.

Lee Bannon: Yeah, which is kind of jungle anyway—just with a 909 or 808 kick. I think it's got to the point in the US where people are getting tired of going to the same shoegaze-y hip hop shows; just standing around, not even nodding their heads much. With stuff like this, nobody's looking at what I'm doing. Everyone's going crazy. I'm sure they're all under the influence too, ha, but they still have crazy energy for me. 

I suppose what I'm getting at is—where do you feel you fit amongst all that?

Lee Bannon: That's one of the issues when I started creating this album. I was like, "Man, if I'm going to do it, it has to be as credible as any other." I think I know where I'd want to fit, but I don't really know where I actually fit. I'd like it to be in the top fifty jungle albums ever made.

Well, you have to be ambitious.

Lee Bannon: What do you think?

I know we're speaking in different languages here but, I think it almost, hovers over jungle? The hardest thing for an album to do is heavily reference a genre that has a very historicised aesthetic, and not sound like a pastiche.

Lee Bannon: Do you think it sits well with the core of jungle? Or do you think there's no way of doing that?

Well, there's no Amen break on the album, right? That's pretty removed from classic jungle, to not use that break.

Lee Bannon: Oh yeah. There's drums from Zach Hill on there—Zach from Death Grips—and I'm using a lot of hip-hop drums, too. All those breaks though, I'm creating them myself. Everyone is like "Yo, Amen break! Man, we love it!" but you're right, there is no Amen break on the album. Maybe there are drum sounds that were originally stems from it, but I didn't seek out the Amen because of how ubiquitous it is. If I was going to go toe-to-toe with a classic jungle album, I would have to add my own element to it. I think that will mean more down the line.

That's what I mean when I say it doesn't just sound like a pastiche.

Lee Bannon: Yeah. I mean, it's something I'm super aware of. I've already a good thirty to forty tracks done for my next album already, and I'm using a lot more 303 beats and analogue equipment. Like, software is fine and everything, but you get way more of a punch doing analogue. Even the first jungle albums had some computer involved, but they were still sampling from analogue. I'm exploring analogue to get crispier textures.

What gear did you use on Alternate/Endings?

Lee Bannon: I was using an SP404, Logic, Ableton, electric guitar, a few pedals, and I had some other people helping. The bass player for Mars Volta played on four or five tracks.  

Oh wow, I didn't know that.

Lee Bannon: He killed it on bass. He's sick. 

Now that the album is out, how do you feel about the reception so far?

Lee Bannon: Man, I hate the Google search for me. Have you seen the new movie by the Cohen Brothers, Inside Llewyn Davies? There's a scene where his sister is holding a box of his old music, and she's telling him to throw it away because it's "bad luck" to let the world hear your practice material. That's how I feel about my older work now. You Google it, and all you see is Joey Bada$$. Even at my shows, people come and they're expecting to hear hip-hop, to play some Joey songs. I only want the music to exist. There's a point where it's appropriate to just disappear. Just, drop music. I wish there was more mystery. 

I can sympathise to a point. You can remove yourself from social media and so on, but I think what's interesting is when a producer tries to be purposefully anonymous. It's a double-edged sword.

Lee Bannon: I don't know. I think there's a point where being a myth is almost necessary. Take Daft Punk's first album. They weren't wearing masks. It was just plain. Look at them now. Nobody can reach these dudes. They blur the lines of what's real and what's fake. I mean... what do you think? 

I think there's a fine line between artists who actively build their own mythology—like a Burial, Zomby or The Weeknd—and then how listeners build artists into myths through their work. Most of the people who purport to be myths... once you get that going, people demand the myth. Then the artist gets more and more extreme, until they eventually crash.

Lee Bannon: For sure. I think that's an issue. No one can live up to what they've become. Someone like a Morrissey, or even a Björk - it's just too much hype. Although, I guess that would be a good problem to have, no?

If you were to work towards something like that, how do you think you'd handle it? 

Lee Bannon: Honestly? I would stay hidden until I had an insane body of work to release. Aphex Twin is the perfect example. He hasn't released any music since, I don't know, 2004? Yet that leaves room for your imagination to run crazy about him. In becoming a myth you have to A) grow old, and B) make the appropriate content.

When Joey and I played on the Jimmy Fallon show, I was using the bathroom, and Sting was in the stall next to me. We ended up talking whilst waiting to go on, and he told me that until he was twenty-seven, he was just a teacher or something. He had nothing going on musically before The Police, but now he's walking around the building like a myth. Like, a fucking unicorn. And I'm not even a fan! Ha. But, he became an idea. All these artists—these myths—that all came from dreams. You have to dream big, man.

Lee Bannon's Alternate/Endings LP is out today on Ninja Tune. You can buy it here.

You can follow Lauren Martin on Twitter here: @codeinedrums