Exploring The Infinite: Doldrums in interview

Doldrums is the brainchild of Canadian Airick Woodhead, an itinerant musician and visual artist who has been in and out of bands his whole life, most notably alongside brother Daniel Woodhead, as a member of Spiral Beach. After a period of wandering, both in bands and in splendid isolation, Woodhead returned to Canada, eventually moving from his native Toronto to Montreal. He embedded himself in the city's emergent musical scene. Befriended by Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, Woodhead began working on tracks under the name Doldrums, and quickly gained recognition both locally and internationally. In 2011, when Woodhead was just 21, his remix/cover of Portishead's Chase The Tear caught the attention of the band online, and the Doldrums version was included as the flipside of a charity single by Portishead on XL Recordings.

Since then, anticipation for Doldrums’ debut album has been building to fever pitch, with Woodhead whetting the world’s appetite for his skewed, restlessly inventive electronic pop through the Egypt EP, released via Souterrain Transmissions in May last year. Lesser Evil finally arrives in the UK this month. The Skinny caught up with Woodhead on the eve of the final date of a massive European tour, where Doldrums supported fellow rising stars of Canadian electronica, Purity Ring.

In person, Woodhead is animated and engaging, despite tour fatigue – his arms are covered from wrist to elbow with brightly coloured wristbands from festivals and gigs. He speaks in a quiet, almost androgynous falsetto, and gives off the confident air of a young man living out his dream of being a touring musician. “We’ve been really spoiled, playing through these amazing European sound systems,” he enthuses. “Most of the people are new to Doldrums, we’ve definitely been well received. Especially in Europe, people are really listening. I love playing in the UK, because there’s so much energy, and everyone’s fucked.” He clearly enjoys touring on its own terms: “I’m addicted to travelling. It’s always positive for me.”

Woodhead has spent time in Europe before: “I came to Berlin when I first started travelling, as a potential home for myself, but didn’t really click in with any group of people there.” He eventually found a suitable home in Montreal: “I guess the best thing about it is that it’s just very humble and chilled out. There's not a lot of what I see as ‘social bullshit.’” What does he mean by that? “Like... I get excited when I see cheese is on sale. I play boardgames with my friends.”

One of the turning points for Doldrums was when Woodhead moved into a complex in Toronto occupied by two collectives of experimental musicians. “The complex had DIY venues for shows. It was a lot of noise music, a good community.” The experience “reinvigorated” Woodhead. Moving away from big rock shows and concentrating on composition and visual art, he found the inspiration to start Doldrums. “And now I’m back to playing in fucking 3,000 capacity raves!” he laughs.

Doldrums have been rounded out live on this tour by collaborators Kyle Bennett (also a producer in his own right, under the alias Flow Child), and drummer Steve Foster. Bennett and Foster played on Lesser Evil as well: “Doldrums is basically just a big umbrella that I carry around with me, and I’m happy to be able to still do whatever the fuck I want without being piegonholed, or feeling trapped by circumstance. My focus is always on just making the band as organic, and as much about the players as possible. There is a lot of improvisation, and they each bring their own sonic element.”

Watching the band live, there is a real sense of unpredictability. As Woodhead sings and jams away on a KAOSS pad, a turntable and various bits of analogue gear, Bennett responds, bringing out the house and techno elements from Woodhead’s often fragile, sometimes strident and anthemic songs. Foster meanwhile taps out intricate, complex polyrhythms. How much of the live show is improvised? “Kyle and I are very influenced by people like Black Dice – when you listen to them you think that it’s completely improvised and free, but then you see them a few times and you see that they actually wrote songs,” says Woodhead. He admires Black Dice because they have “created their own language” – something Doldrums try to replicate. “We've been developing a language between us, just by jamming every weekend for years, and getting into our own kinds of gear, our own kinds of expression. Even though it might seem improvised – and some of it still is – I think that if you try and understand what we are doing as a band on our own terms, rather than by comparing it to what someone else is doing, then you'll have an easier time just getting into it and enjoying yourself.”

What does Woodhead make of the fact that Grimes, now a hugely well-known and successful artist, is tipping Doldrums for similar success this year? “She's a good friend of mine, she's doing her job!” Woodhead laughs. And what of the rumour that he borrowed Boucher's laptop to record his early work as Doldrums? “I've never played music with a laptop before, I've always had analogue gear... I didn't have a computer when I started the record. I actually just took it from her,” he confesses.

Doldrums are a band who have had their fair share of hype on the internet, getting a lot of love from blogs and websites in 2012. Does Woodhead feel that the band embody the current wave of internet-based musicians? “No. It's anti-internet music,” he states emphatically. “I mean, that's super hypocritical, because I'm only able to do what I've been doing because of the internet. But like, I was the last person to get on Facebook. I still don't have a cellphone. I'm very much a recluse in Montreal, off the grid. I guess just because I'm a workaholic.”

An iconoclast from a young age, Woodhead's resistance to net culture is deeply held, and is to do with not wishing to conform. “I'd say if anything, I want to encourage people not to feel they have to live in this very small rut of lifestyle that's been laid out in front of everybody, which leaves you feeling left out if you don't participate in it,” he says. “When I was a kid, I stopped watching TV when I was ten. I was like, 'I'm not gonna watch TV any more.' I didn't want to be a part of that. I feel the same way about the internet – I want to fucking smash my computer every time I open it.”

Responding to the notion that Lesser Evil might be that most dreaded of things – a kind of concept album – rooted in science fiction themes, Woodhead''s on the defensive. “I know there's been some propaganda going around that it's a concept album, but I'd just like to debunk that!” he insists. The theme tying it all together is: “Feeling like you've lost yourself in an organism that is not something you understand.”

This suggestion that his debut carries a sci-fi narrative stems from an interview where Woodhead freely discussed ideas he had for an epic science fiction narrative about dreams, consciousness and the nature of reality. “That's the propaganda!” he exclaims. “That's actually a science fiction plot that I'm working on, and it has no connection with my album, other than the fact they are both by me, and are about how I perceive the world.” He namechecks the SF-influenced works of Derrick May and George Clinton as influences: “That's totally what rave culture's all about – future shock. Feeling like you're so ahead of your time that it doesn't feel real to you.”

Woodhead describes his work as “pretty self-conscious music,” quoting from the lyrics of Anomaly: “It says ‘Call me an anomaly, whatever that’s supposed to mean / Are you living out your fantasies, or stuck in someone else’s dream.’ It's all kind of about my personal struggles to live the life that I want to live.” For Woodhead that means creative fulfilment, and regular travel. “I guess I’m happy to be doing that now, and if there's any lesson that people can take, or that I can impart with my music, it’s to do that – do whatever you want to do.”