Tomorrow’s People

Tomorrow’s People

As Chris Davids was in the throes of recording Maribou State’s jubilant second album, 2018’s Kingdoms in Colour, he began staying late in the studio after bandmate Liam Ivory had gone home. “I’d still have a little bit left in the tank, and I’d stick around into the evening and start working on stuff that was completely the opposite end of the spectrum to the stuff we were making,” Davids tells Apple Music. “It was almost a way of countering the stuff we’d been working on in the day, purging a different side of my writing.” Davids started sliding some of the tracks into DJ sets and, after writing more tunes in that darker, club-friendly vein for a [iconic UK club] Fabric mix, he threw himself into the project during lockdown. “I was like, ‘Here are four or five tracks that aren’t Maribou records. Let’s knuckle down and make something out of them,’” he recalls. His resultant debut as Shire T, Tomorrow’s People, is a record that salutes the very best of British dance culture, utilizing an array of vintage synths and drum machines as it takes in ’90s rave, techno bangers, pulsing house, and ambient beats. “I don’t like the idea of the spotlight being totally on me, but with lockdown, collaborating was totally impossible anyway—my hand was forced,” he says. “I’m glad I ended up sticking with it. It’s been pretty important in going back to the Maribou stuff with a new lease of confidence.” Here, Davids takes us through his Shire T solo journey, track by track. “Full Attention” “This started from a session I had with Roots Manuva back in 2016 or something. Nothing came of it in the end, but I had these recordings left on my computer, so I went back to them—I always like the idea of making everything count that you’ve done in the studio. I ended up going back and just chopping through the recording and getting the main sample from that. In the past, I’ve always been drawn to things that ease you into an album and slowly build and set the tone of the record. But I liked the fact that this was in your face from the start.” “Under the Sun” “This actually almost got left off the album. It was only at the very last minute it got put back in. I think it was a friend in the end that was like, ‘What are you doing? You need to get that track back on the record.’ A lot of inspiration for the record came from British dance music culture, and Glastonbury was one of the main things that inspires me. Going through lockdown and COVID, it was in the forefront of my mind at the time, and I just feel this track captures the feeling of Glastonbury; my connection with the festival got channeled into this track. It heavily uses this old synth called a 101, an old rave synth from the ’90s.” “Blue Kiss” “‘Blue Kiss’ was one of the last tracks I made for the record. It was written in June [2020], when everyone was allowed to leave their houses for the first time to go down to the beach for the day. I ended up coming back from that, and I’d been locked in the house for three months and I felt quite inspired. I sat down and that was the track that ended up coming out. It came out fairly quickly, in a day, which is pretty rare for me. Most of the tracks were of that ilk—nothing was really slaved over, bar one of them. As soon as there was a spark, I got it out within a few days and then put it to one side.” “L.D.R.A” (feat. Wish & Fonda Rae) “This was the first track that was written for the record, just after I’d done the Fabric mix. It’s the track that captures the essence of the album: It sounds kind of modern and it has its own unique sound to it, but also it has the whole kind of vintage, rave-y, ’90s sound. I guess it was almost like the template track for the rest of the album. At that point, I didn’t know I was making an album, but once I’d committed to it, I used it as the sort of placeholder for the record.” “Over You” “This was slotted in right at the end. I’d finished the record and, listening back to it, it felt like there was quite a lot of dark undertones, so I wanted to put something in there that felt a bit more uplifting and brought the energy up a bit. It’s the first time I’ve done anything like that. Usually everything is made and you make it fit afterwards. This is just very much the opposite of that—it was made specifically for a point in the record.” “Burnin’ Jungle” “This was made after I discovered this band called Ofege, a Nigerian band from back in the 1970s. It initially started as me just wanting to make an edit of their track ‘Burning Jungle,’ but I made this loop of it, turned it into an edit, and then whilst I was writing the album, I felt like it had a place amongst the other tracks. So, I went back and added some extra parts and some of the same instrumentation that was used for the rest of the record, and then played guitar in it. It’s the only track that has a big guitar part in it. I ended up turning it into more of a song rather than just an edit, but it’s mainly based around that sample of Ofege.” “London. Paris. Berlin.” “This was the only track that took quite a while to end up finishing. It was written on my mum’s piano, me just playing around with the main part and just looping that round. I felt like something that was a bit more melancholy had a place on the record. Because it’s so disparate from the rest of the record, it took a long time to make it gel with it. I like the fact that it’s on its own and feels kind of worlds apart from the other tracks. It’s something that was necessary to give everything else a little bit of that balance.” “Mind Games” “I’ve always had this image in my head of this being played in the main room at [Berlin nightclub] Berghain, and it’s the only track I’ve ever made where I thought I would work in that room. I finished it with that in mind. It was the thing that kept me going with it. It was originally written back in February 2020, just after the Fabric mix.” “Serve No Tea” “Again, this was written on the piano in my parents’ house. It was done totally on the piano, until at the end I ran it through this Moog synth to make it feel a bit more electronic. It wasn’t written ever with the intention of being on the album, but once the record was finished, it felt like something like that right on the end would just ease you out of the listening experience, instead of just finishing with this intense techno tune. The title comes from this quote by Shunryu Suzuki: ‘Leave your back and front door open, let your thoughts come and go, but serve them no tea.’ At the time, it really resonated with me and seemed to fit with the song, of feeling like you were getting a bit of head space when you listened to it.”

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