We welcome newcomer, Max Rad to the mag off the back of his soul-baring new single ?Old Toy?.
Having been on the alternative London electronic music scene for just over a year, singer/songwriter/producer Max has become a sought-after vocalist and multi-instrumentalist with a steady flow of exceptional releases including debut ?Carousel?, and follow up tracks ?Rumours? ?Flesh & Blood?, ?String on Me? ?Play Dead? and most recent release ?Oh My Brother?.
Brought up in Stroud in Gloucestershire, the peaceful countryside enabled Max to channel his creativity and write music. Now living in London, Max spends his time trying to recreate that tranquillity of his past, having to escape the city and write most of his material in a small coastal fisherman?s cottage in Devon.
Max said:
?Old Toy is about missing someone, the passing of time making it worse. It is about nostalgia. Being stuck in a sadness from missing the person and the issues it causes.?
Where are you from?
I’m from a place called Stroud, it’s a small countryside town near Gloucester.
How can you best describe your sound?
Not sure really….I guess you could say ‘soulful electronic music’.
Who are your biggest musical influences?
I have a vivid memory of listening to Queen when I was very young and that’s what made me want to play guitar, along with Jimi Hendrix – his music blew my mind how he uses the studio as an instrument. I’m really in to lyrics so Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, David Bowie. I loved 90’s Hip-Hop growing up as well, and then later on I got in to Dance music – producers like Burial, Four Tet and Dan Snaith. A bit of a melting pot..
You’re now living in London? If someone was visiting London for the first time, where should they check out?
I live down in South London so spend a lot of time between Camberwell and Peckham. There’s a lot of good pubs round there. Any kind of old man pub that serves ale tbh, I’m into it. There are some decent clubs around there as well. For a day out, I’d say go to the South Bank and just wonder about – watch some people skateboard, maybe go to Borough Market. That’s a great area. I like the area around London Fields as well, or round the canal up by Victoria Park.
Tell us a bit more about what inspired ?Old Toy?…
I wrote Old Toy at the same time as ‘String On Me’ – an earlier single I put out. I was down in Devon at the time, on a little writing trip by myself.
I love it when you have a song that the chords can only work for that specific song, so I was trying to do something like that. I was feeling very nostalgic at the time, and the lyrics explore that, but the music kind of mirrors that as well – to me the changes in the chorus feel like something from an old soul record (or least that was what I was going for at the time). I’m not sure quite how they happened to be like they are, but it seemed to work alright.
Beach club, sweaty rave or acoustic night?
Sweaty rave.
What can we expect from you next?
A lot more music.
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