“It'll be pretty defining”: Best Fit speaks to Becoming Real

The last couple of years have been busy for Toby Ridler, also known as Becoming Real. Since we last sat down with the self-proclaimed “ghost-step” artist, he’s dropped several well-received EPs, played a range of festivals from Dublin’s Meteor Camden Crawl to Brighton’s Great Escape and toured with the likes of SBTRKT, Salem and, most recently, Grimes. With his latest single ‘Slow Memory” recently released, we took the opportunity to catch up with one of UK’s most promising young talents.

“It was great,” Ridler recalls of supporting Grimes, an artist with whom he considers himself to share various similarities. “I think music is not that far apart. I mean, she’s a producer and singer, but aesthetically I think both our sounds have similarities. The audiences seemed to be pretty into it; I think we both have a similar energy on stage.”

Like Grimes, Becoming Real is a project that takes in a lot more than just music. The video for ‘Slow Memory’, directed by long-time collaborator Matthew Reed, continues a trend of murky and dream-like promos that show an auteur’s interest in coining a distinct look, something in which Ridler takes a committed interest. “More than anything the visual side is just another way to explore similar ideas in a different medium, or even to visualize the music.” And looking to the future Ridler’s excited, if vague, about the possibilities. “Of course, it’ll develop, but into what I don’t really know,” he says. “I don’t really think about where it’s gonna go until I start working on it, though.”

This spontaneous experimentation is evident in his latest EP. Solar Dreams / Neon Decay swings from ambient sketches, like the smudged ‘Anthropology’ to full-on dance numbers such as the fleet-footed ‘Work Out’. On the subject of his future full-length LP, Ridler reveals it’ll be “a serious departure everything I’ve already done.” Leaving behind his sample and loop-based beginnings, he expands that the project will be “all made on hardware,” moving away from the fussy productions he’s known for. “It’s practically straight-up techno,” he adds, before going on to cite techno don Wolfgang Voigt, co-founder of the seminal Kompakt label, home to artists such as The Orb and The Field, as “a true creative pioneer” and influence.

Where does the desire to keep moving come from? The common complaint of rising artists today is often that their sound is too complete, ready-made, so sometimes the wandering sound of Becoming Real feels like a self-foiling strategy, a way of avoiding being put into a neat box by pesky journalists. “I guess it’s just sonic experimentation, as an artist I’m always becoming and developing,” he says. Unlike most of his contemporaries Ridler holds a BA in Fine Art; given the blurry, impressionistic tone of some of his more ambient tracks it seems plausible that it might bleed into his work, but when asked if – like a John Maus character – that experience informs his creative process, he’s dismissive, insisting it’s a curatorial influence at most. “I don’t think my degree into putting the tracks on the CD. It might have made me feel certain things about the tracklisting once it was done, but not really beforehand.”

But there are a great deal of other influences outside of music that feed into his work’s sense of otherness. A keen flâneur drawing inspiration from the city, he highlights the Lea Valley as a “pretty beautiful walking area” before praising the extra-terrestrial strangeness of some of the capital’s Brutalist architecture. “Thamesmead always sticks in my mind as somewhere that is like being in a sci-fi film. That, or the Trellick tower, at night time, that really is like docking with a portal to mars or some other world”. On a similar modernist and sci-fi tip, he highlights the films of Soviet sci-fi don Andrei Tarkovsky, director of films such as Stalker, Solaris and Mirror, claiming that they “always strike a chord with me”. Dennis Potter’s BBC mini series The Singing Detective also receives praise as a notable influence for Ridler. ” a weird patchwork of past, present and future that for me seemed to have a similar form or (non) structure to some of the songs I’ve produced.”

But what comes through more than that fondness for Soviet sci-fi or alien cityscapes as an influence is Ridler’s affection for post-punk bands, in and the ethos rather than style they’re associated with (as varied as his sound is, roaring guitar riffs might be some way off ). Talking of his teenage fandom he notes, “I think a lot more of a punk ethic to approaching making music with technology”. To me, the spirit of punk DIY ethics is always putting your own reasons for doing something first, and never wavering on that – be true to your original vision. Fuck listening to what other people wanna see or hear.”

That head-strong attitude bleeds into his own characterisation of his work. Asked if his move away from working with grime MCs was from a desire to make music on his own terms, Ridler confesses, “I don’t really think of music or creating in “terms” at all”. Similarly he shirks at the capitalistic connotations of the term “producer”. “Music for me isn’t just “producing” – what a weird way to describe someone being creative, as a producer, y’know? Sounds so business-like.” When asked if the place of London and some recognisable cues in his music gives him any sense of being a part of a movement, he’s characteristically non-committal, elusive. “I don’t see myself as ‘post-whatever’. I about London a lot because I lived there so long. To be honest the majority of the UK music I listen to these days is mainly from Manchester or Sheffield”.

But like all things Becoming Real, the influence of London is provisional, easily abandoned. “I don’t actually live in London anymore. I moved out like a week ago, on the day the Grimes tour started,” he notes. Savvier and more clinically minded artists might look to build on gains already made, build up a mythology on their home ground. Even the identity of his project, Becoming Real, is up for grabs. Asked more widely about where he sees the project in the future he admits it might grow bigger than his current project. “I feel like with the music I’m working on right now I’m kinda really arriving somewhere. I don’t know whether I should call myself Becoming Real anymore as I’m kinda getting there”. Where ‘there’ is doesn’t seem to be immediately clear even to Ridler, but he’s quietly confident about the eventual results. “It’ll be pretty defining,” he reckons.

Solar Dreams / Neon Decay is available now through Not Even.