Introducing Interview: The Beautiful Fear

Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Bannister, aka The Beautiful Fear, creates atmospheric, emotion-strewn creations filled with a dreamy poignancy.

His latest album – the first cinematic part of a two part concept project – is out now, so we caught up with Matthew to talk inspirations, insomnia and ‘Punk Floyd’…

Hi Matthew, what have you been up to today?
I was up very early, as I have just got back from the UK. I am still on London time here in Brooklyn. This has advantages as I got in about three hours recording a few parts for a song called “Design Disease” before the sun came up. This song is on the next record, TWO.

Your new single ‘Never Yesterday’ is due for release next month, can you explain the inspirations behind the track?
It’s a song I started writing a very long time ago – I think around 2009. I finished the lyrics in about 2012. The song is about a relationship collapse, not isolated to just a person-to-person relationship, but my relationship with just about everything including myself and the city I live in. I fell out of love with NYC. In many ways I defined my identity around NYC. I evolved from being a British teenager to approaching a middle aged “New Yorker”. Over time everything I loved about the place had slowly changed to the point where I felt a great sense of loss. I first lived in NYC just off the Bowery on Bleeker Street in the mid ’80s.

The context for the track is not recent, it’s a highly nostalgic song. The song is also about several painful events. The City is complicit as a stage for these events. The lyrics were completed at the tail end of the recession and that exhausting, kill or be killed vibe played into my mood at the time. There is also a large amount of bitter sarcasm in the song. It’s sort of searching for excuses to explain the state in which I had finally found myself. It’s the stage I was in before ‘acceptance’ knocked on the door. File it as a “I am completely lost” song.. An appropriate way to end part one of a two-part concept album.

You’ve mentioned that you use music as a kind of ‘therapy’ – what is it about creating music that you find particularly helps?
Music for me is the most emotional art form. It’s the universal language of love, pain and loss. It’s a platform where one can turn emotion and most importantly empathy up to 11. It’s a medium where emotion is amplified. In that sense, I am able to explore my fears and expose myself in ways that I can’t in any other art form. I have gone through a lot of change in the last few years and music has helped me more than any other form of therapy. The process of creating it is also incredibly therapeutic: you slowly build an infant idea, part by part, into a complex song. That feels extremely good indeed.

And how do you normally go about the writing process of your songs – do you have a set routine, or is it a bit more random?
It’s pretty random. I have learned that ideas can come at any time. When they do I make a quick recording on my phone, otherwise it will just disappear as quickly as it came to me. I think Paul McCartney said “if it’s good, you’ll remember it” (or something to that effect)… But he writes a song like ‘Yesterday’ in his sleep and remembers it. I don’t remember ideas.

Once I have an idea I like to explore what it’s about. It’s a discovery process as it always starts with a bit of a melody and the beginnings of a lyrical idea. It’s usually a few words that gesture towards something I am feeling or dealing with. I push really hard to find what that lyric is about. Lyrics do not come easily to me. I never sit down and say to myself “I am going to write a song about X”. It can’t be that predictable. As I said above, it’s a form of therapy that costs me nothing, so I might as well spend my time getting to the bottom of it all. Recently I wrote an entire song in one go. I walked into my apartment picked up a guitar and out came an entire song, 90 percent of the lyrics, bridge and all. I grabbed my phone and made a quick recording on a second play through, and then I sat back and tried to figure out how this emotion in the form of a song had come to me. In the end I accepted it was a feeling that had been welling up inside me for decades. It just finally landed that afternoon when I walked into my apartment and picked up a guitar.

I also feel that the lyrics are only finished if they make me slightly uncomfortable. Like I have perhaps revealed too much of my private thoughts. That exposure makes it feel about right to me.

On the album there is a song called ‘My Insatiable Won’. I found this song on my server as a session. It was just my voice with several keyboard parts that made up the chords of the song. I had absolutely no recollection of recording it. I inspected the file and discovered that it was saved in the middle of the night. In the end my only conclusion is that this is a song I wrote and recorded while sleepwalking. I used to take a lot of prescriptions for insomnia. Ambien is known for causing this zombie like behaviour. Because the lyrics for that song were not written when I was awake I am left with many interpretations of what it is about and how it relates to me. It’s the closest I have come to being an audience of my own music.

Being based in Brooklyn, are there any other new artists in the area that you’d recommend?
A newish band that I have been enjoying live are called Dead Heavens. They are guys that have been in many bands over the years. My generation. I must confess that I don’t go and see as much live music as I used to. My time is somewhat limited and I prefer to be home hanging with my missus and nine beautiful guitars.

Your music’s been compared to the likes of Radiohead and Pink Floyd – who would you say is your greatest musical influence?
My influences are the timeless giants like Floyd, Bowie the Beatles. I am also inevitably influenced by numerous bands that were influenced by those same giants. Radiohead would fall into that category. I grew up on early punk and US Hardcore and I still exercise to that artful noise. I am listening to Mono’s latest as I write. They get extremely heavy in a hardcore kind of way but ultimately their DNA goes back to Floyd. All the stuff I listen to probably gets into my music somehow. A friend once described one of my tracks (‘Addictaclique’) as “David Gilmour singing for the Stone Roses with Johnny Ramone on second guitar”. I think he pretty much nailed where I come from. “Punk Floyd”.

Your latest album One is said to be the first of a two part project – what can we expect from the second installment, and how will it be different from One?
The next record is a continuation of the same narrative. Where One exhibits the symptoms, Two simultaneously develops denial and acceptance as the theme. The album is shaping up to be a long one, double in length. The music is more diverse and dare I say it….’theatrical’. The songs are longer and have more mood swings to them. I think it’s going to be a very moody and emotional piece.

And what plans do you have for ‘The Beautiful Fear’ for the near future?
I am going to be sharing some live videos. These are from a live acoustic show I did in early summer in NYC. Live it’s just me and an acoustic guitar, whereas all the recordings are created with long term collaborator Carl Negin.

Huge thanks to The Beautiful Fear for answering our questions!

One, the latest album from The Beautiful Fear, is out now. ‘Never Yesterday’, the new single, is out 9 September via Addictaclique Records.