“It was my Mum that told me to make a record”: Best Fit meets Connan Mockasin

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Connan Mockasin has had quite a year so far.

In March, he released the stunning Forever Dolphin Love on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound label, he’s just about to embark on a tour supporting Warpaint and two days before our interview, played what he describes as his “favourite ever” gig to a sold-out crowd in Paris. Since its release, Forever Dolphin Love, his debut album, has completely enchanted listeners with its other worldly, beautifully off kilter compositions.

Connan moved to London in 2006 with his blues-pop outfit, Connan and the Mockasins. Not too long after, however, he decided to put an end to the project in order to follow his own musical aspirations more closely, “it felt like I was in a band rather than leader of my own project – I felt like I couldn’t do what I wanted so I just finished it.”

Now in a position to pursue his own musical desires and intentions, Connan embarked upon making his first album. “It was finished about 2 years ago. But nobody wanted to listen to it while I was working on it, so it was really easy to just do whatever I felt like without having any pressure from a label wanting me to do certain things.” Once the project was underway, friend and collaborator Sam Eastgate of Late of the Pier introduced Connan to Erol Alkan, who was eventually persuaded that Connan’s record should be the first full length to be released on his label, Phantasy Sound. “He said he really wanted to release some of the tracks – an EP or something small, and I said that I had this idea of a whole record, but I knew that he didn’t release full albums so I didn’t really fancy my chances. So I said, if it’s all right, I’d just go back to New Zealand and finish it. I came back with the album and went to his house – he had all his label there – and played it in his lounge. I was really, really nervous, but he was really excited, so I was a bit shocked!”

The album was recorded in Connan’s native New Zealand and is a home-made affair in every sense of the word. Written, recorded and mixed in his parents’ house, Connan engineered every element of the project himself, with a ‘learning as you go’ approach to the record. “My parents’ house is really high, an A-frame sort of structure and it’s all open, or half of the house is. It was so hot, I was sleeping in a tent out in the garden, but I’d have everything set up and I’d go inside and record for a while when they were at work…It sounds really nice in there, it’s almost like a small church or something. I didn’t know how to do anything, so I just mixed it. I just liked the idea of trying. I think if you’ve got an idea of what you want to hear, you figure out how to get the sounds.”

The structure, format and feel of what would eventually become Forever Dolphin Love had been decided long before the album was recorded, and long before any of the songs on the album had even been written. “I knew I wanted the whole thing to be 36 minutes long, and like a soundtrack with songs popping in and out. So I had the idea of, not exactly what I wanted to do, but what I wanted it to be like. It was written and recorded at the same time, and the actual process didn’t take that long. The only reason it took as long as it did was because I kept flying back over here to do tours. I should’ve just stayed in New Zealand, but something would pop up in England and I’d be like ‘yeah, that’d be really cool’ so I spent a year doing that, travelling. It was really silly.”

Aside from his delicate, childlike vocal tone, one of the most striking elements of Mockasin’s performance is the apparently effortless manner in which he plays his guitar. A lot of musicians relay stories of close relationships with their guitars, which for many of them, is their main tool of expression. For Connan Mockasin, this isn’t quite the case. As a nine year old, he practised his guitar playing intensely, learning how to play blues and emulate the sounds of his favourite guitarists. Nowadays, it’s a bit of a different story. “I never play the guitar. I only ever play it live, or if I have to for some reason. It just doesn’t really interest me. I like to play it live because it’s something I know, I can just play it on the spot because I’m comfortable enough with it. But I don’t write on guitar or anything. I just have ideas, I put it down, split it into all the different bits. The guitar’s a good expressive instrument, but I think there needs to be another invention, something that’s expressive like a guitar, and that you can carry around.”

Despite his current disenchantment with the instrument, there was a time when Connan was extremely interested by guitars. “It was in a Steven Seagal film, Under Seige. I heard one little part and I asked my parents, ‘what’s that?’. My parents said, ‘yeah, that’s a guy called Jimi Hendrix’. ‘Jimi Hendrix? Who’s that?’ So they put on this old Band of Gypsys record and I thought that it was the most amazing guitar playing. I put it onto tape and kept rewinding little bits and trying to copy it. He was really inspiring. When I hear his stuff now, I still think it’s amazing.”

Another feature of Connan’s work that’s highly discussed is his art, and especially his videos. The most prominent of these is undoubtedly the video accompanying the 10 minute musical journey which is title track, ‘Forever Dolphin Love‘. So does he find that the creation of art and music have an equal effect on him? “I used to draw and paint before I did music, but then I got to a level with music where I got the same feeling from it as I did from drawing. You know how people talk about using a certain part of your brain? I understand what that means. I feel like all of a sudden, I get the feeling where you can just go for it without thinking about what you’re doing. But you can’t just turn it on, so it can be a bit scary that it won’t happen. A lot of the time, I just won’t start something because I’m not sure if it’s going to turn into anything. It was my Mum that told me to make a record, I wouldn’t have made it if not.”

In conversation, Connan Mockasin comes across as a warm, humble, inspiring character who is making music that is very honest, and very natural to his own taste and senses. He’s an unfathomably talented musician and artist, and a quirky lyricist who adds colour and life to his creations. If the rapturous reactions towards his album are anything to go by, Connan Mockasin is in for a very busy year indeed. And deservedly so.

Forever Dolphin Love is available through Phantasy Sound.