FAMOUS VOCAL APPEARANCES:
LUCA C & BRIGANTE ‘Different Morals’
HOT NATURED ‘Forward Motion’
INFINITY INK ‘Games’, ‘Infinity’...
ALI LOVE didn’t start singing until he was in his early twenties, following his brother and father into the world of music by starting out as a session musician. A (Labour government training initiative) New Deal course pushed him into singing and he soon cultivated his own inimitable style, which has seen him feature on tracks by The Chemical Brothers, Hot Natured, Luca C & Brigante and his own solo album, ‘Love Harder’, which was released in 2010. He is currently gigging around the world as part of Infinity Ink (with Luca C), while also squeezing in as much studio time as he can.
INSPIRATIONS? “I never really thought about being a vocalist,” shrugs Ali. “I was a session musician before I started singing. I was 21/22 when I started singing. When I was younger, my mum used to listen to Al Green and Marvin Gaye, that kind of stuff, so it must have filtered through into my subconscious in some way. When I was 21, I was on the dole and they put me on a New Deal course. I went on a music course, and part of it included singing on a gospel course in Hackney, so that’s where I learnt about harmony. That got me over my shyness with singing. From then on, I taught myself to sing by recording my voice in a 12-track recorder and double tracking, and getting it really tight. From there, I got my own technique. The main guy there, Clive Brown, was quite inspirational. If you’re talking about house music, I recently became friends with Robert Owens — he’s inspirational for where I’m at, at the moment, with how I’m making tunes. That freeform style is really, really inspirational; what I like about the house style is that a lot of it is down to how you’re feeling in the moment. Some of the best parts are things that you don’t even re- member doing, writing a song as you’re going and recording it — it’s very
020 ALILOVE
spontaneous. Going back to Robert, I’m really inspired when I hear songs like ‘Tears’ and that kind of thing. I’ve worked a lot with Kenny Glasgow recently as well, he’s a real inspiration — we’ve got the same view on things and work in the same way, too.
CURRENT PROJECTS? “I’m working on a solo record for Crosstown Rebels — there’s going to be a lot of stuff I’ve done on my own. Half of it’s vocals, the rest is all productions I’ve done over the last few years. Just late-night weirdness, mainly recorded during the 12-8am shift. Then, obviously I’ve got a lot of gigs and running around with Infinity Ink, and I’m also working on the Hot Natured record, plus Luca C & Brigante’s Invisible Cities project. So there’s a lot going on.”
WHY ARE VOCALS BACK? “With dance music, I stopped going to clubs when it got too minimal and I think a lot of people felt the same way. It almost became too serious and too boring and bookish, it was like, ‘How minimal can you go?’ The musical pendulum always swings both ways, I guess it will go minimal again at some point. In clubland, you need a happy medium of the two things. When you hear a good hooky song that isn’t too overdone, it uplifts you — it’s like a marker to your night, it’s a moment that you’ll remember, rather than a load of tracks. You might hear it a few years later and remember the time you heard it. Some of the tracks that I’ve been involved with, it feels like they cemented a place in time for a whole group of people, that’s been one of the most humbling things of the last year — being part of a movement.”
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