Living in Phantasy Land: Connan Mockasin unveils Caramel

Connan Mockasin hails from Te Awanga, New Zealand, a sleepy coastal idyll where the sheer force of the tide is so great that it's eroding away the coastline at almost world-beating levels. As a younger man, he watched the property of one of his closest neighbours gradually fall into the sea. His own parents still live a few hundred metres further inland, but he simply remembers that his family had, in fact, “always wanted the beach house.”

A defining sense of optimism and curiosity took Mockasin and his then band, The Mockasins, to London in 2006, where, despite running out of money very quickly, their initial style of psychedelic 60s beach pop caught the attention of various indie labels. Despite prolonged courting, eventually they all demanded a creative control that was unsurprisingly rejected by a man who would soon return to New Zealand to complete a 30-minute concept LP about a man falling in love with a sea mammal, Forever Dolphin Love. Ariel Pink might be one comparison, or even Bowie at his most experimental, although crucially, it sounded like little else of the moment. 

But that was then, and this is now, with Mockasin having recently finished his beautiful, occasionally beguiling follow-up, Caramel, recorded in a nameless, faceless Japanese hotel room and released as quickly as possible at his own insistence. Far from Tokyo, New Zealand or even Shoreditch, Connan Mockasin is sat with his feet outside a patio window in his current home in Whalley Range, Manchester. Wearing a silk dressing gown and rolling a cigarette, he admits that he'd planned to do the interview upstairs in bed (it is Sunday morning after all), but the hefty, heated laptop necessary to record the whole affair might make things awkward.

It goes without saying that there's an air of otherworldliness to Mockasin and his music. As well as his unusual recording methods, he has had the incredible good fortune of an accidental career that has seen him tour with Radiohead and Grizzly Bear, work with Charlotte Gainsbourg, and make a fan out of Tyler, The Creator. A recent Guardian interview perhaps overstated an admission that he hadn't really listened to a record since Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, way back in 2003, irking several vocal readers, much to Mockasin's bewilderment. ('I'm an amateur producer and quite often come across other producers that do not listen to others' craft,' observed one commenter. 'Personally I find them to be self absorbed and full of their own creed.')

And yet, Mockasin is far from full of his own creed, and over the course of a morning in his company, it becomes clear that there's a well developed logic and direct method to what many industry-led performers might see as madness. “Maybe when I settle down, have a house, then I'll get a record collection. For now, there's just too much music; I can't be bothered,” he reasons. “Also, when you're working on a record, you can't listen to other music. You can't focus on what you're hearing in your head.” Purity of vision seems to be a major priority.

“Psychedelic? That just means drug music, doesn't it?” – Connan Mockasin

“Working out of a studio, there's almost too many options,” he explains when asked why he chose to record Caramel alone in that aforementioned Japanese hotel room. How did the management take to his unscheduled residency? “We kept it pretty quiet in the room, it's all just me really.” Occasionally throughout, chattering female voices float into the mix, as if the listener is inadvertently tapped into a strange, faintly melancholy party. The music on Caramel utilises a four-track, Mockasin's bluesy guitar, a microphone and little else. “I like to try and make it sound as good as it can with as little that I've got,” he says. “Keeps it exciting.”

But while he's unable to even remember the name of said hotel, Japanese culture, and it must be said, Japanese girls in particular, feature heavily in his oeuvre. As if to illustrate this point perfectly, Mockasin's beautiful Japanese girlfriend graces the lounge in a timely fashion.

“She's on the record actually,” he says, flashing a warm smile. “I just really felt at home in Japan. I really like the films of [Studio Ghibli founder] Hayao Miyazaki, and Japan itself has a similarly mysterious feel.” The surreal press photos for Caramel detail Connan in bed, surrounded by yet more Japanese girls. While Forever Dolphin Love was a narrative laced with fantasy, with whole songs concerning unicorns and other associated whimsy, Caramel is a much more sensual, perhaps more physical, but undoubtedly earthier release.

“It's definitely a little bit sexy-ish, a little bit flirty,” he coyly agrees. “It's quite slick, or as slick as I could make it with the little equipment I used. I find it quite difficult to be flirty in reality, so I can do it safely on the record. Also, I was around people this time, so people were a big influence.” Indeed, I'm The Man, That Will Find You is a proper, longing love song that sees Mockasin's falsetto croon sound determined, while Do I Make You Feel Shy?'s 'Take me to yours and I'll leave you / Book that hotel and I'll please you' goes some way to suggesting that Mockasin, terminally relaxed though he is, remains frustrated by the same desires as the rest of us.

After an initial opening gambit of what unexpectedly resemble three-minute pop songs, the centrepiece of Caramel unfolds: five largely instrumental pieces entitled It's Your Body. It's credit to Mockasin's soulful guitar work that the album remains compelling in the absence of his distinctive vocals, and that Why Are You Crying? confronts listeners with over a minute of unedited female weeping to get to it. “That's real crying,” he explains. “It didn't start off real, but by the end, it's real crying.”

Spontaneity apparently remains key to Mockasin. Upon his return to New Zealand, Forever Dolphin Love was only recorded at the request of his mum, and wasn't intended to be shared with anyone in particular, nevermind with the likes of club DJ Erol Alkan, indulging his more offbeat tastes when releasing Mockasin on his carefully curated label, Phantasy. Nonetheless, he regards his continuing success as something of a fluke. “It's just a sort of hobby that's turned into a job,” he shrugs. Alkan is hugely attracted to Mockasin's recording methods, not to mention his minimal record collection. Does Mockasin ever fear he'll falter, or transpire to contrive something supposedly curious? “If I get bored or it feels like a chore, I'll just move on and do something else,” he concludes. A brief divergence from the topic of Caramel reveals a glimpse at the potential of 'something else.' Right now, it could be illustration, it could even be stand-up comedy, but it might be neither.

The sheer, understated confidence of Mockasin's vision is easy to underestimate, and it's similarly easy – not to mention frustrating – for the occasional Guardian commenter to wonder from where he draws such conviction. “My dad was very intelligent, he could have done much more, but he's really quite safe,” he recalls. “Both he and my mum were very supportive of me and my brothers.” When his dad fell seriously ill earlier this year, Mockasin flew home immediately, which inadvertently allowed him the time and situation in which to record Caramel. “It was at least a well-timed illness,” he acknowledges.

Given his general unfamiliarity towards most aspects of popular culture, it proves fruitless to ask Mockasin where he feels he fits among the emerging roster of psychedelic acts such as Hookworms or Melody's Echo Chamber. In fact, he's not sure how to feel about the 'psychedelic' tag in general. “I just say sensitive rock,” he stresses. “Is this new record that psychedelic? It just means drug music, doesn't it?”

On the subject of the music industry and any surrounding expectations, Mockasin seems savvy to his options, understandably keen to let little outside influence interfere with his work. However, he describes his art and creative process with such charming light-footedness that probing his methods feels somehow like asking a child how he thought a magician managed to hide a whole, living rabbit within a man's hat.

"It's neat that people make music that can achieve a good feeling or a good mood, or a great atmosphere, that's really nice," he offers. "But the amount of seriousness around it, it is funny, it is a bit of a joke. And because people take it so seriously, people take things I say out of context. But I don't even write much, I just hear things in my head and then I'll write it down. If I think it's good enough, I'll record it.”