Labrinth is making sense of the noise

“I think that's gone over the UK's head, especially because I haven't been in the same place that I met them,” he laughs. Talking amid rehearsals ahead of his performance for Choose Love at London’s Royal Albert Hall, he’s in an upbeat mood, looking over his fifteen-year career with rationale and humble self-deprecation. “When I kind of disappeared from the UK - like radio and the usual places to be - a lot of things just started kicking off for me in terms of writing for massive artists or just having success. So when I would come back to the UK, people would be like, ‘So, what are you up to? Are you still singing?’ I've had multi-platinum records all over the world and no one knows in the UK.”

After signing with Syco Music in 2010 and collaborating with Tinie Tempah, Labrinth, real name Timothy McKenzie, released his debut album Electronic Earth in 2012. It peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and was home to both singles “Beneath Your Beautiful” featuring Emilie Sande which scored him a UK number one, and “Jealous,” which was later certified platinum in the UK, US and three other countries.

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And then he seemed to disappear, not releasing another record until 2019’s Imagination & the Misfit Kid. Out of sight but focused, he was busy working in the States and writing for some of music’s biggest stars including The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé.

In 2018 he joined forces with Sia and Diplo to create the supergroup LSD, while a year later he composed the score for groundbreaking TV show Euphoria. His score for the second season earned him two Emmy nominations for the songs “Elliot’s Song” and “I’m Tired.”

Most recently, he performed a cover of “Where Love Lies” for the John Lewis Christmas ad. “I've had moments where I’ve felt a bit like, man, I don't think people get what I do,” he says. “I came into the music industry through the pop infrastructure, so it instantly makes people think like, you're a pop artist that sings on songs. I was studying jazz theory. I was learning all these things because I was preparing myself to become an artist because I thought you needed to learn all this stuff to be an artist. Then once I went into the music industry, it was like, guys don't even know chords. They're just pressing buttons and making songs and becoming big time producers. All of this stuff I had learned, it felt like it wasn't necessary. But then as I progressed in the music industry and I got work scoring Euphoria and I had challenges thrown at me, it felt like I was weirdly prepared for them because I overprepared.”

Currently beginning work on the score for season three, he’s collaborating with one of his lifelong heroes, Hans Zimmer. “He's been my north star of composition. A lot of the compositions I've fallen in love with have been his, so it's weird that I get to even just be in the presence of this scoring god,” he laughs.

McKenzie is one of a growing number of commercially successful artists choosing to compose for film and TV, following the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never, Sufjan Stevens and Jonny Greenwood. “Son Lux - I remember them doing Everything Everywhere All At Once and you're like, OK! There's a lot of artists that I feel cross over really well and I guess maybe film wanted more, and they wanted more exploration instead of a practice,” he says. “I think with John Williams and I would go as far back as John Barry and stuff like that, it was a practice and a skill and a style that they all followed, and it felt like their world communicated in a certain type of way. I feel like we're in a time where there are other ways to look at all types of genres and other ways to look at all types of technology. I can make an orchestra on my laptop, and that's what I've been able to do on multiple records.”

On his new record, Cosmic Opera Act 1, McKenzie brings together his pop sensibilities with his compositional chops to create an album that’s sonically rich in melody, ideas and nuance. Bringing classical composition into the fold, he’s following a recent trend - think Rosalía, Charli xcx with John Cale - where orchestration takes centre stage in contemporary releases. “I felt this maybe three or four years ago. I was just like, nobody messes around with classical. They incorporate it, but what irritated me is that it was like, now I'm going to get a bunch of strings on my song, but it would be like this electronic song - there's no space for this sound or this experience,” he says. “I was excited by the idea where the song incorporates an orchestra in a way that it's part of the song. It's singing and it has its own moment and it has its own area.”

While the joy of play and innovation fuelled part of his creativity, the other side of the record for McKenzie was processing his own internalised emotions and self-doubt. “I wanted to deal with my insecurities and my fears and I feel like that is the opera part of it for me,” he says. “For me, operas feel deeply emotional and they pull out the darkest or the most intense experiences in a scene or in storytelling. So for me, emotions feel like that inside my head. I wanted to explore my joy, but also it can help me let go of some of the things that I've been carrying for a long time - people pleasing, impostor syndrome, just falling out of the joy of creating music. Being in a business that constantly asks you to make an exchange with your joy of creativity to gain something, it feels like you're basically bleeding your joy dry instead of contributing to your joy. I think a lot of artists get taught into thinking that way because they're like, ‘How do I get more streams? How do I get more engagement? How do I make what I'm creating important?’ And then it kind of feels like you're telling this beautiful thing that was gifted to you to just deliver. They're like cows in a factory. You're just squeezing the udders - give us more milk. We need more milk. And then that's not a real relationship with your creative gift.”

As the music industry becomes more data-driven and streaming numbers the main measure of success, it puts a burden on artists to create something that works for a very specific platform and set of requirements, rather than making something that’s true to their artistic vision. “That really hurts personally because if I'm writing music for a reaction, then I'm not writing music. I'm not connecting with anything. I'm telling my internal world to deliver for me instead of saying, ‘I honor you for even being here with me because I don't deserve this if I'm just going to use you to gain whatever I need to gain,’” says McKenzie. “Not all the lyrics are pointing directly at that, but the energy for me was like, how do I let go of all these things? A desperate need is created inside of you when you start in this music industry and it doesn't mean to do it, but you've got salesmen right next to creative wizards and the language gets diluted or distorted based on the way they communicate with each other.”

The need for validation is a basic human desire, but as an artist in the public sphere that hunger gets magnified. “I remember I was watching a thing with Hans Zimmer and I think I watched something with Scorsese, and they said write the stories you know, not the things you think are out there,” he says. “The story that I keep returning to internally is why is my validation for what I do external? Why is it based on how many records I sold? Why is it based on whether the UK knows me or not, or whether I'm on the radio? Why do I need my mum to come to me and say, ‘Everybody's telling me that you're doing well’ for me to feel that I'm creating something that's of value? A lot of the themes in my life or internally were like, how do I let go of the need for a resolve from the world? That's a really hard thing because your financial life is connected to it. This feeds my children. So I'm like, how do you actually rip yourself from that experience? On this album, I feel like it's a step towards what I want to do. I don't think it's the perfect version of what I wanted to do, but it's a step in the direction of letting go of those things.”

Cosmic Opera Act 1 is a captivating listen that’s bursting with ideas, innovation and at its heart, strong and informed songwriting ready to tell a story. The production is alive, bringing together the worlds and experience of McKenzie’s decade-and-a-half strong career. Dramatic hip-hop beats clash with commanding brass refrains, raw strings hold a melody against shock electronic orchestration, while the dynamic song constructions really give the feel of an opera/musical as different tones and deliveries act like different voices.

Written, composed and produced almost entirely by McKenzie, it has the energy of someone trying to work through an idea, playing and inventing across the songs. “I did it because I read somewhere there are as many connections in the brain as there are stars in our universe. So for me, the cosmic opera - this is the opera of my internal self. That's literally what it is,” he says. “It was kind of like, I just want to write all these parts because this is the mess that's going on internally, and it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to be the greatest thing anyone's ever heard or whatever, but this is how it is. This is what's going on. I collected samples and then I was like, how do I make it sound the way it's going on in my head? All of the stuff you're hearing is just me basically synthesizing these sounds.”

Album opener “Something Like An Opera” acts like a mission statement, with McKenzie offering as introduction; “They say, in order to heal, you’ve got to sit with that internal chaos. Got to suffer your demons - speak on it, verbalise it too. For me that internal dance is something like an opera.”

At times the album is giddy with ideas, a reflection of McKenzie’s internal noise. “I got diagnosed with ADHD and ADD two years ago or something, and that was really eye opening to me in terms of the need for stimulation and novelty. I think maybe the difference between me and some other artists is that the novelty is more exciting to me than the award at the end,” he says. “I remember Korg, the company, sent me a synthesiser. If people want to know where I've been, I basically ended up getting distracted by this synthesiser for the last couple of years. That's me.”

On “Debris” McKenzie’s vocal intro is a haunting refrain before a sonic onslaught whips from choral stabs to a driving RnB bassline and explosive brass. “I think my manager said at the time, ‘It's very maximalist,’ and I was like, ‘That's how my head sounds,’” he laughs. “It may be confusing or over the top for some people, but for me it was like, this is what's going on right now. I feel like the music is definitely exemplary of where I was and I feel like that's the way of getting over it is letting it go. The music I do after may be simplified or it might be much more beautiful, but I was like, just be honest.”

Recent single “Implosion” is a creeping rush of dark hip-hop delivery, thudding bass and pounding brass that breaks into cathartic confession. With the great majority of the record written solely by McKenzie, there’s one other name on the credits for this song that jumps out - Nula Zemar-McKenzie. “My daughter!” he laughs. “She came in and I was saying something on the record and she was like, ‘You're saying go rumor go.’ So I wrote down the lyrics that she said. Then she just walked out. That's my daughter. I give my kids writing credits - I call them my gurus. They just come and say these things or they kind of inspire me. They'll be like, ‘This song sounds like you're sad,’ or, ‘You need more happiness in this song,’ and they'll just leave. They come around every so often and just spout these little bits of wisdom.”

For McKenzie, the song’s subject matter marks an important statement, focusing on the constant need for quantifiable success. It’s one that’s echoed across his opera in various forms. “We're in an industry where you constantly have to be great all the time. Even the way we started [the interview] is like - the UK hasn't seen me, but I have had platinum records and I've written with all these big people,” he says. “But they don't know that in the process of that I've nearly lost my mind or I felt like I wanted to die at times, or I felt like I was an imposter faking it. These are the bits that happen in between your super moments. I guess the music industry is not far from the way Instagram is. I've met those influencers and a good few of them are very unwell, sick, sad, and they're not promoting the full life that they live.”

Drawing on his past where promo was a tour of local radio stations and social media hadn’t yet become another marketing platform, McKenzie was taught to smile and entertain. Navigating between providing escape for his audience and tackling difficult subjects is a balance that it was important for him to strike on Cosmic Opera Act 1. “You want these environments to take you away from your experience, but I feel like for us to pretend that we don't experience darkness or experience sadness, I think that's unhealthy,” he says. “A lot of these records are for me to just be like, I don't mind being there. I feel like it's transformative when you can meet your sadness and then let it go instead of pretending that it doesn't exist.”

A moment of bright reprieve comes in the gospel of “Godspoke.” A stark departure from the orchestration-heavy production that surrounds it, its soulful vocals make for a short intermission. “I'm from a Christian background - my granddad's a reverend. I don’t believe in religion, personally. I believe in God, and when I say God, it's not like a bearded man in the sky. I think God is the source of all existence. Whatever the seed of existence is, I believe in that,” he says. “I wrote it because I grew up in this and it was the easiest way for me to explain or express that experience of wanting salvation from your pain. Sometimes you feel like you've woken up and you get it and you feel like there's a knowing in you that is so clear. And then there's another day where you're like, I don't know - I need money. I need somebody to tell me I'm fucking amazing. I need someone to tell me I'm special. And you can be those two people even in a day. I feel like those challenges happen internally and you almost learn how to get back on the horse from that experience of falling into a pit every time. That's what I feel like most people are managing.”

Taking from the same inspirations, “Still In Love with the Pains” uses call-and-response to tell an intimate story, rewarding those moments of open vulnerability with a huge soulful chorus. “It’s super churchy,” he says. “We're all addicts on social media. Everyone's like, ‘Oh, I hate Instagram,’ but they still check to see how many follows they got when they post something. I wrote it because I found myself feeling like I've arrived at a place and I'm free from all of those things that were clouding me or distracting me. But it's like, go on social media and instantly you're going, ‘How many likes we get on that? Do we need to change our content because the engagement's gone down?’ Like, I'm a drug addict again. I need it again.”