“I’ve Been Making Selfish Music”: An Interview with Lee Bannon

Photograph by Mich Chiu

"Have you ever seen that interview where Beck throws his shoe at the guy?" asks Lee Bannon. The Sacramento-born, New York-based producer is sitting on the rooftop terrace of Montreal's Museum of Contemporary Art, where he'll later perform a set of relentless drum and bass, jungle breaks, and his warped rework of Kanye West's "Bound 2" (unfortunately no longer available on his SoundCloud), as part of the city's MUTEK Festival.

He first tasted success making beats for rapper Joey Bada$$ and touring with the Pro Era crew, a talking point since brought up by interviewers ad nauseam, to the point where you couldn't blame Bannon for wanting to toss his footwear like Beck did during a 1994 120 Minutes interview with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. More than anything, the secondhand anecdote proves that the producer is a music scholar ("I've got a crazy YouTube playlist of like 180 documentaries and music performances," he says), and an artist who holds his music up to incredibly high standards.

Despite Alternate/Ending, his first release on well-respected independent label Ninja Tune only coming out in January, he's already looking to the future and admits to frequently thinking about his legacy. We spoke about his prolific output, what motivates his music, and his experiences touring with the late DJ Rashad. We're also premiering "Deep/Future," Bannon's collaboration with Chicago footwork trailblazer and Teklife member DJ Earl, which samples a Nina Simone cover and came together as a result of the two emailing ideas back and forth.

THUMP: You're no stranger to playing Montreal, having performed here last fall for Pop Montreal. What sets crowds here apart from crowds in other cities that you've played?
Lee: The three best ones that I've experienced are the Japanese crowds, the Low End crowds (Brainfeeder's Los Angeles parties) and Montreal. The thing that they all have in common is they know what they're coming to see, they're not just ending up there because they were looking at various blogs or whatever, they did their research. They get amped and enjoy the music.

You've moved away from hip-hop to drum and bass and jungle-oriented music, where do you go from Alternate/Endings?
Honestly I've been putting off a lot of hip-hop offers and opportunities with people. Recently I've been making music for myself rather selfishly. I have a new project that I just wrapped up that's the strongest piece of music that I've ever done. It's a genre that I've been dabbling in since Alternate/Endings, kind of drone, ambient music, in a way almost post-rock vibes. It's not necessarily coming out this year, but I'm working on stuff for the end of summer and fall.

How much unreleased material do you have?
I have content for days. One of my computers probably has like a thousand beats and pieces of music on there. In my room there's a notebook of ideas for certain albums that I don't want to release until I'm 27, certain albums that I don't want to come out until I'm 32, just because it makes more sense order-wise.

Do you ever anticipate a time where jungle could be co-opted by more mainstream acts?
I feel like the people that are really into it, it's exactly the people I want to be into it, whether it's drum and bass or jungle or IDM. They're hardcore fans and they're not going anywhere, they're there for the long haul and they're not fickle. It's a loyal fan base and I'd rather have 50 loyal fans that are going to go buy the album every time it comes out or go to the shows than have 100 fickle ones.

What inspires you right now musically?
The Talk Talk album Spirit of Eden, it's amazing, it's definitely in my top five albums ever. Newer stuff… I like B L A C K I E, Sd Laika, Ben Frost's new album is great.

You were on tour with DJ Rashad before he passed away. What was your first introduction to Teklife and where were you when you found out the news?
I got an email that said they'd been listening to Alternate/Ending and members of Teklife started following me on Twitter. I think DJ Earl was the first one who started talking to me and we connected on Gchat. I think we were just like-minded people and we both had the same influences. All of them, they know their history when it comes to the music that they're doing, techno, footwork, jungle, they know their shit inside and out. They're definitely not fake. I'd heard their music and names a couple years before, but when "Let It Go" dropped from Rashad, that was the one that really stuck with me.

When he passed, that was a shock to everybody, nobody saw it coming. One minute you're with him and the next minute… We were in Denver and he had left one of his pieces of luggage at the hotel room, we were already running late for the flight, so he told me and Spinn to start moving towards the terminal while he waits for the driver. The weirdest thing happened, the driver sends us all a picture of a Shakespeare parade, there's people dressed like Shakespeare everywhere and he can't get through traffic to get his luggage. So Rashad misses the flight and it ended up being me and Spinn at the Toronto show. We had breakfast and I caught my flight back, but my phone was off and I had messages, so I found out right when I landed which was crazy.

What was your favourite memory of him?
We were eating pancakes and talking about good shit, Aphex Twin, I asked questions, smoked a lot of weed, got drunk, and just had fun. To have that happen especially at the beginning of the tour, what he was doing for the sound was very important, he's the reason it worked for me. I know we sound completely different, but he was making a bigger platform for it. I took a lot from that and I'm applying what I learned to the new material.

Max Mertens is a writer who lives in Toronto. He's on Twitter: @Max_Mertens.