Ahead of his new folk-flavoured album Temporary, XL Recordings impresario Richard Russell talks to Liam Inscoe-Jones about Tyler the Creator, George Michael, and songs which have soundtracked his extraordinary career.
Richard Russell has done it all. Nearly every profile of the man begins with words to that effect and with good reason.
Raised in a strict Jewish household in North London, when his teenage years dawned he swapped school for record shops and pirate radio stations, finding himself on the front-lines of a thrilling cross-Atlantic cultural exchange which smashed together American disco, electro with the British mongrel music of garage, jungle and D&B.
Playing gigs across the city, Russell was at the frontlines of a fertile cultural moment and, in 1992, his own single ‘The Bouncer’ sent him to Top of the Pops. His love for hip-hop, dance music and The Simpsons inspired him to up sticks and move to the Bronx when he was still a teenager. There he tried to flog his demo tape to a fledging young rave label called XL Recordings. He quickly became an A&R for them instead, and soon signed a rowdy young band from Essex called The Prodigy.
Russell eventually took control of XL in 1994 and - in keeping with his own omnivorous tastes - used the international success of The Prodigy to expand the purview of the label. Inspired by Island Records - the Jamaican reggae imprint who eventually signed everyone from John Martyn to Eric B & Rakim - he signed indie folk project Badly Drawn Boy in 2000, followed by The White Stripes in 2003.
By 2007 Russell was half-owner of the label, and they were shaping the sounded of 21s Century Britain, becoming the label home for Thom Yorke, Dizzee Rascal and M.I.A. In 2008, after an A&R stumbled upon her MySpace page, Russell signed Adele, and XL Recordings quickly became the most successful tinpot rave label in history.
Despite becoming one of most iconic names in the British music industry - the label is now the home to Arca, Yaeji and Fontaines D.C. - Russell always struggled think of himself as a label executive. He had begun his career, after all, as an artist himself. In 2009 he personally produced Gil Scott-Heron’s swan-song album I’m New Here, followed by Bobby Womack’s final record The Bravest Man in the Universe, which he co-produced with Damon Albarn. In 2013, after his life was very nearly cut short by Guillain-Barré syndrome, he started to step away from his label duties and began to make music instead.
Russell is about to release his third album under the name Everything Is Recorded, his own musical project and one every bit as communal and eclectic as XL Recordings. Rather than his own voice, Russell packs the albums with the voices of his many signees and collaborators, the music spanning everything from sample-based grime to contemplative neo-soul.
The new album - Temporary - is his most tender to date, an album-long exploration of digitised folk which features everyone from Bill Callahan to Noah Cyrus, from Sampha to Kamasi Washington and trumpeter Yazz Ahmed.
When we meet to talk through his Nine Songs selections, Russell is in Copper House, a studio he set about constructing around a West London townhouse soon after he recovered from Guillain-Barré. A building he describes as his sacred space, Copper House functions as a revolving-door rehearsal place, jam space and hangout spot, and when we speak, the studios are dedicated to rehearsals for the expansive, improvisational live shows which are to accompany Temporary.
Russell had appeared to have been a little slow to send over his song selections in advance of our conversation, which I put down to a busy schedule - but no, he had just been giving his choices a great deal of deliberation.
“It’s a fiendish idea!”, he proclaims, shortly after hopping on a video call, “because it’s a really small amount of songs! At first I got out my phone and quickly made a playlist on my phone”, he imitates scrolling, “‘boom boom boom, that’ll do’, real quick. But I had sixteen songs. Then I put them on while I was making some dinner, and I found myself cursing you for making me choose between Can and Wham! How can you make a person choose between Can and Wham!??”
Russell went for Wham! in the end, but of course he found a way to sneak Can in there too. In fact, over the course of a conversion that stretched for twice our allotted slot, he enthused for 90 full minutes about songs which provide only a cursory overview of a life absolutely filled with, and defined by, music.
His passion for songs as wide as weirdo British folk-rock to modern rap classics was infectious, and he showed no distinction between high-brow conceptual rock and pure, blissful pop. “Originally I had some Prefab Sprout in there; some Dylan, some Miles Davis too…” he tells me. I was left with the impression that we could have asked for ninety songs, and he’d have still felt a little cheated.
“Hell of a Ride” by Nourished By Time
RICHARD RUSSELL: Firstly, it’s an absolute tune. It’s a new modern classic and Marcus [Brown, the man behind the moniker] is very exciting and doing something completely different to anyone else. He’s in his own lane, and this is the best song of his I’ve heard so far.
There are echoes of soul and pop from the 1980s which I hear in his music very strongly; to me he very acutely carries that spirit and that magic. The soul and pop music of the '80s is very special music for me, because the ‘80s contained my teenage years. There’s so much music from that era which is close to my heart and in my DNA, and this song has that greatness.
I was in a pub having lunch and I was flicking around on my phone, I started reading an interview with Oneohtrix Point Never, who was saying that there there’s not a lot of originality around, but somebody who is totally original is Nourished By Time, and I thought… ‘Who is Nourished By Time??’
So I listened to his latest album walking from the pub and it blew my mind. When I got back to XL offices later, I spoke to Ben [Beardsworth, now XL Recordings MD] and asked whether he’d heard of him, because I’m a massive fan, and he said “Well that’s a relief”, because they were already speaking to him!
The final song on my new album, Temporary, is Marcus covering his own song, under the name ‘Goodbye’. I’d been wanting to write a song to complete my record, then I heard “Hell Of A Ride” and I thought… well, he’s written it. He’s written that song, and I don’t want to compete with his.
He’s a really good producer, I love the production on his record, and my album is a production-based record, so I thought to do it without the production, in a kind of demo form, which he recorded in his parent’s basement in Baltimore. I paired it with a little bit of spoken-word Gil Scott-Heron, and that was it.
I think that song will be around forever, and many people will cover that song, so I think it's nice that the first cover is by him.
“Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road” by Robert Wyatt
BEST FIT: I was excited to see this, because this is from my Dad’s favourite album Rock Bottom, and I grew up listening to this record. How were you introduced to Robert’s music?
RICHARD RUSSELL: Well, I was aware of him - and had always loved “Shipbuilding”, his cover of the Elvis Costello song - but I was no expert. I knew there was something in it which appealed to me, but I didn’t discover Rock Bottom until the last few years, and it blew my mind.
It wasn’t something I listened to when I was younger; I wasn’t ready for music like this then. It’s too complicated, and I wouldn’t have been able to access it, because it’s incredibly emotional. I’d have just found it too complex.
It’s so experimental. This song is a mind-blowing work of genius. It’s cryptic, and chaotic, and it’s still revealing itself to me after a huge amount of listens. The repeated piano sample at the start feels familiar because it seems like a sample, even though it’s not one, and I love the fact it starts going backwards, and has the spoken word part from Ivor Cutler too.
Then, later on, I found out the circumstances of the song. Like me, he made it after he’d had this incredible accident and period of ill health in his life, which I didn’t know that when I first heard it. [In 1973 Wyatt fell from a window and was paraplegic for the rest of his life].
There is no other piece of music like this. For me, discovering music this experimental has been a special part of ageing as a music fan. I feel like my horizons keep getting broader and broader. There used to be a theory that the opposite happens, but it hasn’t been the case for me. Some people can absorb highly experimental music when they’re young.
Mind you, I was absorbing highly experimental music when I was young, but it just didn’t sound it to me. I was listening to hip-hop right at its genesis, but I understood every note and every hi-hat from first listen.
I had the same thing finding out about Can. I’ve been working with Morgan Simpson from Black Midi recently, and he went to the BRIT School. He told me that they had a great teacher there who would play mind-expanding music to start every lesson.
Of course, I had to ask what they played him, and he said the teacher would always play them ‘Halleluwah’ by Can. I just thought: ‘What a teacher. What a teacher!’ I can’t think of a more inspirational thing you could possibly learn at school than Can.
“Nightclubbing” by Grace Jones
RICHARD RUSSELL: I’ve been a lifelong Grace Jones fan, but I wasn’t yet when “Nightclubbing” came out. I think I found her through “Slave To The Rhythm” which came out in 1985, when I was around 14, and I worked my way back to this.
The song is underpinned by a reggae rhythm section, but it’s got this New Wave quality to it, and they cover these mad songs, because “Nightclubbing” is obviously a David Bowie and Iggy Pop tune. To me, Iggy Pop has quite a lot in common with Grace Jones; these really physical, electric figures who were doing different to anyone else.
It was produced by Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin at Compass Point for Island Records. They put together the Compass Point All Stars, with Sly & Robbie, Wally Badarou and Barry Reynolds, these incredible musicians in an incredible place.
Grace made three disco albums before this which were good, but they weren’t quite her, and they weren’t very Jamaican. On this album, the Jamaican came back in. When I discovered this song and album, and learned how it was made, there was something which felt incredibly romantic for me, the notion of putting together this team. It became an ideal of record making, and it’s how I’ve done things ever since.
There’s a rap record from 2000 by Shyne called “Bad Boyz” with a big sample of ‘Nightclubbing’, which is an amazing tune too. You got to hear the rhythm in a modern context, and it sounded even better. I think that happened because Grace Jones’ music got better and better with age.
She’s so clearly an original - there is nobody else like her. To come from a conservative Christian background and become the most bohemian, fearless, boundary-breaking, barrier obliterating human - she's a total inspiration.
BEST FIT: You mentioned Sly & Robbie - was Grace the artist to get you into dub and reggae music too, or were you already down that path?
I was working in the warehouse of Island Records listening to pirate radio and starting to DJ, so I was already around a lot of reggae. Dancehall, Wayne Smith and Gregory Isaacs. I went to Jamaica in the ‘80s and saw Shabba Ranks and Yellowman live, so yes, I was a fan [laughs]. London too! There’s reggae everywhere in London.
At the same time as ‘Nightclubbing’, which wasn’t mainstream, you had Two-tone, which was in the playgrounds when I was growing up. They were fusing reggae with rock, punk and new wave, and it was everything. The Specials were everything. A multi-cultural vision of the UK, and we had it with rave too - it echoed that.
“Lessons 1-3” by Double Dee and Steinski
BEST FIT: I can tell that you’re a true music fan, because you cheated when you made the list. This is three songs!
RICHARD RUSSELL: [Laughs] Of course. Of course!
I don’t know how I would have first accessed this music because it felt like it was everywhere. Another one is “Top Billing” by Audio Two… It’s funny with these records, because to me they were huge - I know every note and every sound - but someone I worked with recently referring to ‘Top Billing’ as an ‘obscure hip-hop record’. I was like, ‘You can’t call that obscure!’ But it all depends on whether you were into the scene or not, because in some ways it was.
This was big in London anyway. We had the pirate radio shows, and every hop-hop artist used to come through the UK. The UK has always loved Black American music, from blues, to soul and jazz. Those artists were often even more appreciated in the UK than the US, especially with techno; those records crossed over in a way they never did over there.
With Double Dee and Steinski, I had the 12”’s. It’s possible that I first heard them in the record shop I bought them in, either Groove Records in Soho or Disco Centre on Rayner’s Lane. I got them on import, they were kind of bootleg-y looking. When I put my playlist on to try and cull it down, I just couldn’t believe how I was singing along to them like they were pop songs, when they’re really colleges; one sample after another.
They were very funny songs, and they were very educational, because there was so much music in there. They were meaningful too. “Lesson 2” starts with “a torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” - which I think was JFK - then, at the end of the song, the sample is “and say children, what does it all mean?”
Prince Paul from De La Soul, Bomb Squad of Public Enemy, I think that was all influenced by Double Dee and Steinski. There was something I got from that which has stayed with me ever since. I love Robert Rauschenberg’s visual work; I love collage as an art form, and I think it formed part of my outlook and worldview. William S. Burroughs said, “the world comes at you in fragments”, so collage is the most accurate way of capturing the world in art.
In the UK we had all of these DJs who made their own sampled cut-up records inspired by these songs. We had Coldcut with “Beats & Pieces”, M|A|R|R|S with “Pump Up The Volume”, “Theme from S-Express” by S’Express, and all of those songs were hits; pop hits in the UK. “Lessons 1-3” are my favourite of those records, but it’s crazy how many different people did that in the UK and how successful those records were as pure collage, pure cut-and-paste, smash-and-grab.
I went to Japan in 1992 with Prodigy and SL2 to play some gigs out there, and I picked up a CD called No Rights Given Or Implied which was a compilation of everything Double Dee and Steinski had ever done. It was fucking incredible.
“Everything She Wants” by Wham!
BEST FIT: As far as Wham! songs go, “Everything She Wants” tends to be a little overlooked because it first appeared on the flip-side of “Last Christmas”. Why this one?
RICHARD RUSSELL: Well, because I think it’s a mind-blowing work of genius.
My understanding is that George Michael played everything on this, much in the same way that Prince made a lot of his music and Stevie Wonder made his. George Michael was thought of at the time as a big lightweight, and that was a million miles wide of the mark.
I always loved Wham!. We were allowed to put posters up at school. I put a Wham! one up and I got a lot of abuse for it, because they weren’t seen as music that boys were meant to be into.
“Everything She Wants” is an incredibly soulful, brilliantly crafted, electronic soul record. It’s one person’s vision; and it’s inspiring that he was able to deliver something like this from start to finish. I’d like to think that now people could see George Michael for what he is - what a great producer, writer and singer he is. He was extremely sensitive with an extraordinary decency about him. He obviously struggled with fame. I find I quite gratifying and encouraging that people take him more seriously now, because they should.
A lot of his songs are about economic pressures. I think he was political; he wrote social realism. It was close to the kind of thing Paul Weller was doing at the same time - soulful music, moving towards electronics with left wing politics - but Weller was taken incredibly seriously, in a way Wham! weren’t.
George Michael is from exactly the same suburbs of London as I’m from, we worked on the same street; Edgware High Street - me in a record shop, him at his Dad’s restaurant - and so he’s just recognisable to me as someone from North London who loved soul music.
It’s amazing that he dreamed of that and ended up duetting with Aretha Franklin and giving Aretha her biggest ever hit single. He achieved the ultimate dream of any musician in that regard, getting recognition from your peers, and if critics didn’t really get it at the time… I hope he wasn’t taking too much notice.
“Won’t You Be My Baby, Baby” by Leila
RICHARD RUSSELL: The album which this is from, Like Weather, was released on Aphex Twin’s label Rephlex. It came out when XL was moving away from rave and into an uncertain future, and I found what Leila [Arab] was doing to be very exciting.
I got in touch with her when I heard it, and she responded by saying “That’s not really a proper record label you’ve got there”. So far XL had been rave, and then The Prodigy, but I told her, “I just want to work with great people”, and she was like “We’ll see if that happens!”. She told me years later that she thought I was just some joker… But when it actually happened, she said “fair play”.
Her second record came out on XL. She’s done albums with Warp since too, but this one – “Won’t You Be My Baby, Baby” - is just an incredible slice of electronic pop music. It’s hard to believe, listening to it now, that was seen as so experimental at the time!
She was perceived as being very much on the fringes, but it’s just a great pop song. I still think that Leila is a maverick genius. She has quite a confrontational approach and is quite unfiltered in how she talks, but that’s because she’s completely honest, and very insightful about music and people.
This song was an early glimpse of what she was capable of, and quite a lot of the electronic pop which came after it sounds like this, to me.
“Love Is All We Need” by Peter Bouncer
This one was on the Shut Up and Dance label. When XL was a rave label, it was one of a whole bunch of rave labels - the likes of Reinforced, Suburban Base, Formation, Moving Shadow - all of which were excellent, but Shut Up and Dance were my favourite. They were from Hackney, they didn’t tend to clear their samples, and their music was incredibly raw and exciting.
I don’t know much about Peter Bouncer… I think he was a bouncer, that’s it! [laughs]
They recorded this song with a sample of “Love Is All That Matters” by The Human League - that’s where the synth-y riff came from. That song was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, so it was The Human League making a record with two people who were - at the time - America’s greatest R&B producers.
Essentially you have a synth-pop group from Sheffield making a record with some Prince protégées from Minneapolis, all being sampled by a Hardcore producer in Hackney.
You’ve just got to love that dialogue. That’s the history of music, that kind of dialogue. But all of that would count for nothing if this wasn’t such a tune.
“LUMBERJACK” by Tyler, The Creator
BEST FIT: When I was a teenager I saw a clip of Tyler making his TV debut on Jimmy Fallon. He was with Hodgy Beats; they showed up in balaclavas, performed ‘Sandwitches’, jumped on Fallon’s back and generally tore the set apart. Mos Def was there too, and you can tell he’s loving the energy of these kids. It was a wild, punk performance, and when I began researching that night for my book, I found out that you were there!
RICHARD RUSSELL: Yes, we were already working with him! He’d come to London for the first ever Odd Future performance. I DJ’d it with Jamie xx, there were queues around the block.
He’s miles ahead, isn’t he? Tyler is miles ahead. I think he’s a total inspiration. He’s done it all, and he did it his way 100%, with zero dilution. I suppose if people are bemoaning the state of culture or music, I would probably point them in his direction and go, “but look at this”.
How come, if everything’s so fucked - because people think it is - how come he can do this? It’s never been easy. It’s never been easy to be truly original and be an outsider like him, but people have always done it. It takes a lot of focus and force of will.
When he put out those very first Odd Future mixtapes, he’d treat his mates like they were already signed to record labels. He made all of the album artwork, designed the visual identity, the lot, even though it might have only got a hundred people listening on MySpace.
Yes, and that speaks to something very important for right now, because people are not listening to albums with nearly the attention that they were listening to them in the past. We know that because we’re all guilty of it. We know we’re getting served up another album on our phone a minute later, so we don’t need to.
But I’ve just made an album which took four years to make, with more attention to detail than I’ve ever put in. In some ways, that’s madness, but in another way, I think that’s the only conceivable response. To say, ‘fuck it’, and double down.
Artists still love making albums and it’s still the best medium for music making, so you just keep making great work. I don’t sense that artists are less motivated about music making than they used to be. You’ve got to be defiant and, once you decide to do that, nothing changes. Make music. Make it really good. Maybe it even helps, to know there are these challenges against you.
How has it been for you watching Tyler grow over the last fourteen years? Watching that ‘Sadwitches’ performance, as great as it was, I still think few people expected him to go to all the different places he’s gone to since. Were you surprised by it too?
I wasn’t. I think he was always great, and he was always extraordinarily special and original. It was unmistakable how great he was. It’s been really inspirational to see what he’s done, but I’d have been more surprised if he didn’t.
I think Call Me If You Get Lost is the one where he really captures ‘90s and even ‘80s hip-hop energy, with the mixtape feel of it all. He’s got a Gravediggaz sample in there, and he just captures the excitement of it. “LUMBERJACK” is such a tune. He’s talking about selling out Madison Square Garden and having a Rolls Royce, but he’s pulling it off with such charm and aplomb.
He’s so likeable and loveable and I think we’re very lucky to have him.
“Slow Jam” by Four Tet
RICHARD RUSSELL: This is going back twenty something years now. At the time I’d recently got back into making music again, laptop based, using Reason. I heard this and the album, Rounds, and I thought it sounded DIY and homemade, with a hip-hop influence, but with something very British about it too.
There was humour in it - I think you can hear the puppet Sooty on this song, squeaking away - but the song is full of emotion too. It’s very moving.
This was a point in time when I’d spent a few years encouraging people to do stuff which I hadn’t been doing myself. At the very start I’d been making rave records, but I’d stopped when the label took off. I was just getting going on the laptop again when I heard this and I thought “Ah, here’s someone doing the exact same thing”.
It felt inspirational in the same way that hearing Can was inspirational: it was someone’s original expression. It’s been great to see Keiran become a really big star, it’s fantastic. Like Tyler, he does it absolutely his way, outside of any system, and still sees huge success. It feels like he’s got his own little music industry somehow.
BEST FIT: Something about “Slow Jam” reminds me of the Peter Bouncer song, and “Hell Of A Ride” too. They have these hip-hop drums, but the vibe is melancholic and bittersweet. Do you find yourself increasingly attracted to music which works in that way?
I think so. I think there’s a combination of humour and sadness in music which is often more present than people would think. Paradoxical things and juxtaposition are a big part of music. ‘Bittersweet’ is a good word for it. You’ve got those hard drums, but the emotion in the chords. I think that’s a wonderful thing to hear.
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