Julia Biel Interview

It’s been quite a year for singer-songwriter and multi musician, Julia Biel. Returning with her second album ‘Love Letters and Other Missiles’ and remix EP ‘License to be Cruel’ she has earned both MOBO and Urban Music Award nominations this year. The British 39-year-old has previously enjoyed success with her 2005 album ‘Not Alone’ and winning the prestigious Perrier vocalist of the year. Keeping busy between solo releases, Julia has gifted her honeyed vocals to Mercury Prize nominee Polar Bear and is a core member of the afrobeat/dub/reggae group, Soothsayers. We caught up with the musician for a few questions.

Hi Julia, Thanks for chatting to us today. Where are you right now?
Right now, I’m at home on the sofa.

Congratulations on your MOBO nomination and Urban Music Award nomination. How do you feel being in such a strong category alongside Courtney Pine, David Lyttle, Polar Bear and Binker & Moses?
Thank you! It’s great to be included in that exclusive little club – we all make completely different kinds of music I’d say so it’s just lovely to see so many styles representing.

It’s been a decade since your last solo album. Is it good to be back in the driving seat?
Yes absolutely – such a long break from releases under my own name was not a planned thing, but was just the way it worked out for loads of reasons. Things take their own sweet time to come to fruition, meeting the right people, developing the right skills – it’s all a part of the process.

What has been the creative process on this album? Have you felt pressure to bring out a second album?
I felt some pressure immediately after the first album to bring out a second and there’s no doubt that that would have been a good idea, but I wasn’t into just bringing out an album for the sake of it and I’d always intended my second album to be an album of self-penned songs (my first album ‘Not Alone’ was an album of songs written in collaboration) and so that opened a chapter into some deep explorations of what my songwriting voice sounded like on its own, bringing it out into the open and examining it and then working out how I wanted it to sound as a produced bit of music, how I was going to produce it and who was going to play what and loads of other little decisions about every aspect of the journey to this point. As time went on, there was no pressure from anyone but myself as I think everyone else kinda assumed I’d retired! So the creative process was long and involved a lot of learning curves but I feel like I’ve grown a lot through the making of this album as a musician and as a songwriter and as a producer. [‘Love Letters and Other Missiles’ was co-produced by Julia and Idris Rahman].

Your forthcoming EP ‘Licence To Be Cruel’ features remixes from your second album ‘Love Letters and Other Missiles’. What were your initial feelings when you first heard your songs remixed?
I love hearing my songs remixed – it’s a real window into how else my voice could exist in different sound worlds that I would never conjure myself and it’s really refreshing to hear your stuff completely transformed by producers so adept at creating strong vibes. Every single one of the remixes on the EP was included because I loved them instantly and because they were each completely convincing to me as totally separate pieces of music from the originals they sprang from.

Titles such as ‘You Do My Head In’, ‘Licence to be Cruel’, ‘Love Letters And Other Missiles’ follow a similar theme. Your lyrics appear quite personal, do you write about your own experiences?
The way we interact with each other as people is a constant source of inspiration to my song-writing. On the album as in life, I was struck by how much violence we do to each other emotionally on a daily basis often without even realising. We’re all impacted by things that are said and done to us and we also have an impact on others that we all too often know nothing about. And then there’s all this stuff that we feel that doesn’t have a place in normal conversation and for me that’s where music is magic, expressing so much that is unsayable. I always write from real experiences of real emotions but hopefully in a way that allows people to identify with the feeling behind it – the universal from the personal.

The lead track from your EP, ‘You Do My Head In’ remixed by Triptyc is a sultry late night burner. So what ‘does your head in’? What was your thinking behind the track?
The original version of the song is a claustrophobic little number as well but in a different way. I was going for trying to put music to the concept of a person being driven crazy – there’s backwards piano, a humungous string arrangement with loads of twisted close harmony and a backing vocal outro that was meant to sound like a load of voices in your head chattering at once.

You’re a self-taught musician and self produced your debut album ‘Not Alone’; is this something you would recommend to aspiring musicians?
Mainly I would just recommend keeping going and adopting a mindset that says that things that show up in our lives as obstacles are actually signposts to the things we need to learn – I generally think that if that wasn’t the path we were meant to take then we wouldn’t see any obstacles because we wouldn’t be looking in that direction. So whether it’d be right for someone else would really depend on what they’re going for musically and who they know and what other options they have. I was always interested in the overall sound as much as everything else but as a pretty untechnical person, self-producing wasn’t the easy option but I had really limited resources and it was the only really viable way for me to make a record at all. So I spent the little money I had on hardware and threw myself into the challenge whilst not having a clue about anything really but just being guided by what I liked the sound of and having other musicians with more experience than me to turn to with my questions. Looking back, I can see that self-producing and then co-producing has taught me loads and especially about quickly recognising what I like the sound of and what precisely needs to change about the things I might hear that I don’t like the sound of and how to explain that in words to someone else – in terms of the playing, the delivery, the recording, the mix, the mastering. It’s a great way to learn at your own pace and really useful to be able to have some self-sufficiency.

You recently returned to the Royal Albert Hall and reunited with the red piano. Is it always a special occasion to play at the venue?
The red piano is apparently on loan to the venue by Elton John. It’s certainly eye-catching! The Royal Albert Hall is stunning and it’s always exciting to play there and soak up the history and the rarified atmosphere. I’ve played The Elgar Room twice now and I’ve totally loved it both times.

With your EP and album coming out are you planning on a new tour and featuring on the festival circuit in the summer next year?
It’s been an amazing year of touring this year and some tasty looking dates are popping up already for next year so hopefully I’ll be out and about.

Any big plans for 2016?
Just giving birth to album number 3!

Buy ‘Love Letters and Other Missiles’ and ‘License to be Cruel’ from juliabiel.bandcamp.com

By Jo Gerrard