Latest / Electronic Music / Mike Lindup - Level 42 And Beyond

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Mike Lindup - Level 42 And Beyond · Electronic Music

• Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast channel about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Rob Puricelli. Producing these podcasts has given me the opportunity of speaking with some hugely interesting and influential people, but my guest this time is a real personal hero of mine. Mike Lindup is best known as keyboard player for Brit Funk Legends Level 42. Musically educated at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester and London's Guildhall, he eschewed the classical path in favour of the burgeoning jazz funk scene, joining Level 42 in 1979 after meeting drummer Phil Gould at Guildhall. With a new solo album about to be released, I wanted to begin our chat by asking Mike what his musical influences were. Mike Lindup Well, I suppose I would have to start with my parents because both my parents worked in So my mom was a, the time was I was born, she was beginning her kind of career as a singer songwriter, emerging out of the folk scene, although she'd never called herself folk. So her background is, she's from what was formerly known as British Honduras, latterly Belize and she basically joined up when she was 18 years old to serve in the war. She came to the UK, served in the war, mainly in Scotland, went back to Belize and then came back in 51 enrolled in the London school of economics. And then sort of a year to find herself, you know, singing and started to make a living also training as an actor, but she was doing a lot of singing engagements and got involved in a lot of the people around the folks scene. Many of them would come to the house to rehearse with her and stuff like that. So the sitting room was kind of a rehearsal room as well as a sitting room and occasional dining room. So there were, you know, there was a piano, there was mom's guitar, there was some hand drums, there was a reel to tape recorder. And of course the radiogram with it's, Collection of records, you know, 45 and 33 curated basically by mom and dad. My dad was, came out of the jazz scene. He was a composer, arranger, orchestrator, and was very involved in writing library music and then TV themes and was a longtime collaborator with John Dankworth as a backroom arranger and film music orchestrator and, you know, deadlines and stuff like that. So I'd find records mixed up, you know, Beatles, you know, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Tchaikovsky, you know, musicals, soundtracks, South Pacific, Catch My Soul, along with sort of Beatrix Potter singles for kids. One of the first records I fell in love with though was Desafinado, which was either Jobim or Giberto. Uh, it was a Stan Getz version and, uh, I learned, my mom tells me, you know, I had my playpen in the sitting room and I'd be listening to this record and I learned it off by rote exactly what Stan played pretty much. And I got so annoyed that when mom sang along, she didn't sing it exactly as Stan played it. Apparently I threw a tantrum. Um, so. Anyway, so, uh, obviously I kind of grew up and, you know, my mum would be singing around the house and, uh, I started having piano lessons when I was six and I was allowed to use mum's reel to reel occasionally to, you know, record Beatles tunes, you know, me singing at the top of my voice along with records and, you know, That's really where a lot of my kind of grounding in music was very organic and and then later when I was 14 I went to music school I went to Cheetham School of Music in Manchester and then to Guildhall as music college and that's where level 42 kind of started One of the things that I've always kind of picked out of your performances both solo and and with level 42 There seems to be a deep affection for Stevie Wonder In in all that you do it with that would I be correct in assuming that absolutely I mean if I had to choose one dinner guest to spend an evening with or spend a day in the studio with even better would be stevie because you know he was he was a major inspiration and influence and the fact that he was such a polymath you know amazing songwriter singer arranger player you know drums harmonica keyboards and a lot of the sounds You Inner Visions was the first Stevie Wonder album that I bought. So that was my kind of in point, although I'd, you know, grown up listening to For Once in My Life and Masheria Moore and stuff like that, but really it was kind of Inner Visions that, that blew me away. And this was when I was in the sixth form at Cheetham's and I had a record player in my room and you know, that would just get played and played. And I just love all of the sounds, you know, that seems so rich and exotic, you know, the roads with the tremolo in stereo and all the amazing synth stuff that, you know, Uh, Bob Margulis and his producers helped to create and so that was, you know, that was that kind of, that's real part of my DNA. Have you ever had the chance to work with Stevie at all? No, and uh, I'm ashamed to say I've been in a room, I've been in a potential situation where I could have met him three times and three times I bottled it. Because I didn't know what to say and I rehearsed it in my head and I felt so kind of overwhelmed by My hero that I and i've ended up actually watching other people going up and saying hello to him and not doing it myself Which is you know crazy, especially as now Having had the success of level 42 and seeing how difficult it is for people to come up and just say hello I kind of know what it's like and anyway, uh, I probably missed that boat. But uh, yes No is the answer to the question So you've gone to music school and you're, you're, you're being classically trained, I guess, when did it kind of become, you know, something that was more pop orientated and therefore you started getting into music technology, uh, in terms of synthesizers and that kind of realm? Well, there was actually a pop concert at Cheetham's. We were allowed, this is in sort of 73, 74, 75. We were allowed once a year as classical musicians to sort of do a pop concert. And, uh, I remember I formed a trio with two other musicians, Julian Gregory on bass, Dave Adams on drums, and me on keyboards. And we called ourselves after our surnames LAG, which is basically trying to be ELP. Because, you know, Keith Emerson was one of our big keyboard heroes. And, uh, one of the girls at the school had, uh, her father ran a music shop in Manchester called Swans, and we were allowed to borrow a string machine for the pop concert. This was my first ever electronic I mean, my dad had a filicordia organ that he used to do his arrangements on, but this is the first time I've actually played in a concert on a, on a, you know, I just love this thing. So that was special. And then when I was at Guildhall, the, I was part of a very kind of dodgy cover band called Jawbone. And I was playing drums by then. Cause I was a first study percussionist when I went to Guildhall and playing in the orchestras, but also playing drums in this, in this band. And, um, we, we, Doing lots of covers. And so that kind of gave me a sort of, I didn't know what I was going to do when I left Guildhall, but I thought, well, I might, maybe I'll be a session drummer, or maybe I'll be a composer or maybe playing classical percussion in orchestra or something I knew I wasn't going to be a concert pianist, there were people way, way better than me, that my real kind of introduction to proper electronics and synthesizers was in the, the early days of level 42, where we were first in the studio. And especially when Wally Badu came in bringing, uh, you know, a Korg polyphonic 1000. On love meeting love. And then on the early tapes, the first album we recorded, then we had a profit five and while he was just a master at programming and I just stood there and I was just watching him work and bring sounds out of this thing. I thought that's amazing. What was Robin Scott's involvement? In all of this, he speaks very fondly of those, those times and also says exactly the same about Wally and the fact that he could conjure up, you know, such amazing things, um, in his synth programming, how did he help the level 42 story? How did he help you? Basically, the connection between WALL E and Level 42 was through Phil, because pop music came out, it was a massive hit, and then he went to Mountain Studios in Montreux to record the album, and he invited Phil Gould to Drum on that album and that was quite an experience and I was kind of corresponding by letter with Phil at the time and he, you know, wrote me a letter telling me about how it was and it was like beginning of the eight, late seventies, early eighties. And there was this thing of like, Phil would be instead of recording the kit, he'd be recording the bass drum and then he'd be recording the snare drum and then he'd be recording the hi hat and he found it very strange, but that was the way it was kind of built up while he was on the album. Um, and also Gary Barnicle on sax, who also, you know, was a part of level 42 recordings. And so when we were making our first single love meeting love, when it was me, Phil, his brother, Boone and Mark King in gateway studios in Wandsworth, Phil said, I want to bring Wally into sort of add some extra sounds. And first I kind of bristled like, you know, I'm, I'm the keyboard player. Why do we need another keyboard player? But then when Wally came in and he sort of, he did his thing and his background is very. Different to mine, you know, he's French with African parents, and he's very much a soundscaper and an atmosphere builder and an orchestrator. And so it kind of complimented perfectly. And I really saw that, you know, that the sound was kind of bigger and more interesting because of that. So it was that. And Robin, um, He really helped us in the beginning when we were looking to get that first record deal with Andy Soika. So, uh, Phil and Boone's older brother, John was working for EMI in promotions. He knew Andy and, uh, he said, my brothers have got a band. Do you want to have a listen? Because he knew Andy had a record shop and was into kind of underground jazz funk stuff that was coming up. And Robin actually paid for a rehearsal studio in Wilsdon for us to sort of have a day's rehearsal running through stuff and then the next day for Andy to come in. And, uh, you know, so he, he kind of generously created the opportunity for our first record deal to happen, you know, and then while we were doing the early tapes, Phil and Mark would sort of be bombing down to the South Coast to record. And Wally and record on Robin's second M album, um, official secrets. And, uh, some of those things that they tried out and improvised sort of, then sort of came into some of the level 42 things that we did. So the early days of level 42. 42, I seem to remember pretty much Fender roads and the profit five was your rig. Was there anything else? And mini to that and the mini mode, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So what prompted you, I mean, was it, was it the advancement of the songwriting of level 42 and that progression through those, uh, early albums to then bring in, you know, more bits of technology that culminated, I guess when I saw the 1986 live at Wembley video. You're sat atop this riser surrounded by some of the, you know, the, the most fantastic gear there was a, was it a slow transition, just building up that, or was it, you know, was it a sudden shift from just, you know, two or three very manually operated things to lots of musical technology going on around you? No, it that it was a, it was a transition because, yeah, my first keyboards were secondhand fender roads and a secondhand minimoog. And then, you know, obviously the Profit five became such a part of the sound that as soon as the funds were available, I bought one of those. And what was great was could record the programs on cassette so I could transfer the programs that Wally program or we work together on and have those live. So that was great. So it's like, you know, we had the sounds that were on the record. And because of the preset system, I could easily jump quickly, which I needed to do because effectively I was being two keyboard players on stage. I was reproducing my parts and Wally's parts and singing. Um, so I needed to jump quickly between stuff. So the profit was fantastic for that. The mini MOOC, obviously less so, you know, in the early days, sometimes I'd be getting stares from the stage as I was with my chart, trying to change the, all the knobs on the mini MOOC. Yeah, and then, uh, I suppose the next big development was, uh, the DX7 in 84. I got hold of the DX7, rich much as soon as it came out because it had such a different sound. And then I think I bought a PPG in around 85 and then we made the world machine album and, um, we started to use sequences and certainly started to. Demo stuff with with drum machines and sequences, and so I got my first Roland sequencer around sort of 8586 and then kind of changed over to a Yamaha QX1 and then a QX3. And then by the time running and family album came out, there was lots of technology involved in the studio. So, and lots more keyboard layering. So then I had to build up what you see on the live at Wembley thing with the kind of rack, because, because Wally was amazing with the TX eight one six, which was basically eight DX sevens brains in a box, and he got the most fantastic sounds out of it, some of them quite analog. And I was able again to. Take those programs and put them live on stage. And so then the, you know, the keyboard thing gradually expanded and I had to deal with the Yamaha at the time. So I had a controller cakes, 88 keyboard, and of course also needed backups because sometimes things wouldn't work or they go wrong or, or they, you know, it will forget. The memory and so often i had double things so that's why it kind of looks so vast yeah i mean it's an impressive rig i was looking at it earlier on and your main sort of front facing rig is the kx88 with a profit 5 on top of then to the right you've got uh ppg dx7 emulator 2 and then under that there's a qx1 like that i can see and then behind you there's the racks with you know the tx816 and i guess a bunch of outboard and Is it just you that's controlling all of that? Was there anybody behind that? You know, helping you out. It was just you. No, it was just me. And, uh, you know, in, in the rehearsal studios, we sort of worked through what we needed to automate and, you know, MIDI file transfers onto the floppy disk of the QX. Uh, the one thing I wasn't using then was the roads. I was actually using a Roland MKS 20 as my roads and piano. And, uh, and I think we had some D five fifties as well, but yeah, so that was all, that was all me running it. And, and, uh, had a, uh, you remember psycho systems would shop had a psychological, uh, midi sort of patch change controller so that I could sort of hit the next song and all the patches would change automatically and, you know, hit go on the sequence. And of course when it worked, it was great. Um, and when it didn't work, which it, you know, Wasn't often they happen, but when it did, it was spectacular. And, uh, you know, suddenly felt like 10 minutes of nothing that, which was probably about five seconds of nothing. I have heard a tale. I wasn't there. I mean, I've seen you guys play many times, but I have heard a tale where. A sequencer or sequencers went down but you guys carried on and the first that the audience knew about it was when either yourself or mark mentioned it at the end of the song you just carried on through it i guess which is testament to your guys perfect you know level of professionalism but you know it what happens in your head when You know, when something that you so heavily rely on just craps out, uh, well, I, I guess, you know, you either stop or you plow through it. I remember that happened on a princess trust concert. You know, we were the opening band and unfortunately I did a very, Unwise thing the disk for lessons in love that went into the emulator i'd never named so it came up as untitled so my tech loaded it in and thought it was an empty disk and uh. I didn't get the message until it was too late so i was on stage and hit play and nothing happened so we had to play lessons in love without all our backing sequences to us so to us it sounded really pony but we had to play it because we had to play the song. And it was the, it was the last song of our kind of mini set. And so there was a big stewards after that. And the other thing that would happen if something broke down is, is Mark would go into one of the sort of early tape numbers, like Mr. Pink or so on, which cause we had several songs that we didn't play with the sequences. So there was always a sort of backup in our pocket. We still have that to this day. It's like. If something goes down, we play Heathrow or Mr. Pink or Chinese Way or something like that, which gives time for the sort of tech guys to sort of come and hopefully sort out what isn't working. In terms of your, your rig today, um, it obviously looks a lot more slimmed down than it was back in 86, for example. Uh, what, what are you running today? You're, you're still using an electric piano and, uh, using a new profit at all, or? Yes. Um, so my profit five retired in 2010, it had been pretty solid around 2008, 2009. It started, you know, doing funny things. And I think it was just getting a bit long in the tooth and had been thrown on and off of one too many airplanes doing festival gigs. Cause you know, no one could hire a profit five, uh, by that time. And so Mark very generously bought me a profit. Eight Dave Smith profit eight for my 50th birthday. And so, so then I sort of managed to just sort of AB. I just sat the two instruments next to each other and just try to reproduce as close as I could the sounds of the profit five onto the, uh, the profit eight, which pretty much I was able to do. So that was great. And then I later on bought a Rev 2 version, you know, beef up the sound and give me a few more options. I've always had a Roland RD digital piano and use that and other sounds for other stuff. And I got JDXA at the moment. But a lot of the keyboard sounds now run off the, off audio tracks, off, off Logic, off the Mac. Okay. Um, we used to carry around hardware racks and run them, you know, off an MPC, but it just, it just got to the stage where the charges were punitive on airlines, you know, going out to festivals, we'd have a fly pack, but, and we'd see other bands going out with just the laptop and thinking, well, that's obviously the way to go, but we're not sure if the software is kind of reliable enough. So we probably stuck with the hardware for a bit too long, but then eventually did. And so, you know, a lot of the, the keyboards are now on the Mac and then I kind of play live the ones that I have around me more or less. What, what does Mike Lindup have at home in his writing room or studio in terms of music technology? Do you limit yourself or do you have a nice big collection of stuff? No, I mean, I, I had a garage sale, um, some years ago and sold off a lot of my stuff. I mean, Stupidly, I sold my spare profit five. I saw my, you know, core sec Oh three Oh one. I saw my PPG. I sold the core M one and wave station and all of that stuff. Um, some of which I kind of. I should really have hung on to, especially now. Uh, I just thought, no, I, I don't, I want to sort of slim down. And in fact, in the studio, I've just basically got a Roland RD 800 and my profit five and my mini Moog are normally in the studio. They've been down in London, uh, at a studio in wood green. Cause I've been recording a solo album. And so I've left them. There, because I go down there to work and, you know, if I needed to do any last minute overdubs, I thought I better have those two keyboards around, but that's, that's basically my studio setup. And I use a quite a lot of onboard, you know, the software since, because a lot of the writing is getting the ideas down and, uh, you know, not, not, I don't really do finished productions in my, in my writing studio. It's mainly, you know, writing demos in effect, but occasionally, you know, I'll do sessions and so then I'll, I'll, I'll bring out keyboards to sort of. Do that with or there might be something where I know that the profit five will do it and will nail it or the mini move will nail it and so and I know how to do that so rather than go to the sort of the soft sense then I'll kind of use the hardware stuff before we move on to what you're doing more recently I just want to sort of circle back to to wall e and sampling because. I've been, you know, I, I followed level 42 for, for many, many years and I've read many articles in many music technology magazines about, um, the technology and what you and Wally and the rest of the band were doing. And Wally was a big Sinclavia guy. I just wanted to kind of understand the process that you used in the studio with sampling mainly because there's one story that I remember Mark was talking about getting a cabasa sound and sampling a lighter. Yeah, one of those lighters that you just roll the flint round and while he was sampled that and then just kind of slowed it down, did some to and he got this great cabasa sound out of a lighter. Was that something that level 42 did a lot of back then or we did? Yeah, we did. It was all part of the orchestration. Like I say, I think we first came across Samplers when we went to record Stanley and the Light album with Larry Dunn and Verdeen White at their studio, The Complex, in L. A. And they had an emulator, the original emulator. You know, we were using some of the kind of factory samples, like the trumpet and stuff. on the machine stops and, but yeah, it was this kind of new world. And then it sort of got enhanced in the next album, True Colors, which we did with Ken Scott down in, in Hassox near Hastings. And that studio had a fair light. So of course we were going through all the samples on that and wondering how we could use them or where we could use them, or if we could use them. And then when it came to the World Machine album, by then Wally had sort of got into bed with the Sinclavia guys, and he'd done his solo album with the Sinclavia and I think he'd used it on the foreigner sessions on, I want to know where love is, which, you know, if you listen to that track, that's Wally's keyboards all over it. And so in doing the world machine album, Wally was basically sat behind the Sinclavia for, for most of it. And we were sampling stuff, but, and slowing stuff down and speeding it up, but, you know, vocals as well as, you know, looking for interesting things, you know, it was fantastic. But then of course I had to go out and reproduce that on stage. So that was why I started to get More keyboards because it was trying to cover all of these sounds. So, you know, the PPG was great because it kind of had a sort of similar ish, sort of FM ish kind of sound to it. Same with the eight one six, but yeah, Wally was really amazing with that. And, and then again, on the running the family album at some, you know, while he was using the same clavio again and, and doing fantastic things with it. Level 42, uh, not. You know, sort of known for being a band that used a lot of samples, but I think, I guess if you listen to, you know, look closely, like tracks like good man in the storm, where Mark's vocal is going up and down at the end, that I guess that was all Sinclavia. Exactly. Yes. That and some of the backing vocals on sleepwalkers, for example, where it's kind of vibratos added and stuff is speed again, speeding up and slowing down. So yeah, it was used in a, I don't know, we kind of used it as a. as a musical tool as opposed to let's make it sound like a sampler because that's kind of what's in we were never in with what's in i think you only use the orchestra stab once i think on hot water wasn't it i think We used it on hot water and on Kansas City milkman. Oh, of course. Yes, yes, you did. Yeah. But then everybody else was. Well, exactly. So now, you know, I've got an RD, Roland RD 2000. And so if we do that song, I just. Go to the orchestra stab patch and of course there it is so let's let's move forward um to to present day you've got a new solo album coming out very very soon which is i believe a sequel to your first solo album changes yeah i call it a spiritual sequel i'm calling it changes to because it feels like the successor to changes. In that it's a, you know, it's a 12 track album and there's a kind of range of styles, but also some of the things I'm addressing lyrically are probably not a million miles away. I mean, I'm in a different part of my life now and you know, life is different, but to me there's a kind of relationship. So it made sense to call it changes too. Cause it really, it really feels like that. Why, why make this album now? What, what prompted its conception? It was, it was really a bunch of ideas because I always get ideas and, and in the most unlikely times, and sometimes they're just little voice memos, either vocally on the phone or. You know, on a keyboard, sometimes their lyrical ideas, you know, I'll just get a couple of lines while I'm traveling. I mean, traveling is very much where I get lots of, of things happening. You know, you're ruminating looking out the window, especially now because I live in Scotland, I'm going down to London quite a lot. So doing that journey. And what had happened is I was thinking, I've, I think I've got another solo album here, you know, it was kind of sat in the back room as it often is. And then I did a session for a guy called Brian Power who, uh, writes kind of like house and soul music stuff or co writes, and he was working with these two co producers, Tony Economidis and Mike Pato. And I'd worked with Tony on the Dalata live stuff and then on some of the albums in the sort of early 2000s. So I knew him and I knew his background and the way that Tony and Mike worked together, Mike's Mike's a kind of keyboard player and, you know, orchestrator and they're a really great team and what they brought out to the music and what they brought, I thought out of my involvement in the session. I thought it was good and because they're kind of into more of the kind of new soul stuff as well as working in world music, but more contemporary, you know, if I was going to make an album, I get five guys in a room and we'd sort of do it old style and I thought maybe they'll give me a sort of a different take on it. And so I took my ideas to them and we sat round and they said, yeah, we can do something with this. And then we. Started to discuss how we'd record it. And there was kind of the idea of sort of hybrid. So part programming, part live, you know, layered getting different people in. And also I said, you know, I want them to push me into areas that I'm not comfortable. Uh, so I'm out of my comfort zone in places, cause I think that's what I need and what the album needs. And, and, and some of the ideas that I had were very, very basic, but, uh, We kind of pulled rabbits out of hats and we got into really good working relationship together. And, uh, I've ended up with some amazing songs that you just never would know from listening to the demo. So, you know, all, all credit to them. Of course, a couple of years ago, I think it was now that you, you reissued the first album changes, uh, on lovely orange vinyl. And I believe you sold out of that. I mean, that must have been a really nice experience to kind of go back and revisit that and, you know, kind of do it. A bit more justice. It was lovely, you know, because, you know, when changes came out, I had this whole kind of heartbreak story about the fact that it wasn't, it was under promoted at the time, I think for political reasons. I didn't never thought it was going to be a, you know, a number one album or anything like that, but it just, it's when it came out, it was, uh, it was released in a very kind of low key manner. And I was very upset about that. Carried that for years, but then I would have people coming up to me saying how much they liked the album and how it stood the test of time and the songs really still resonated and. So I kind of knew it was special. And then when I started working on changes to in March 2019, that's when I started the first kind of recording sessions with the changes in mind and then with the lockdowns happening and thinking, well, what can I do like everyone, you know, suddenly there were no gigs, half the income was gone. Rishi wasn't giving me anything. But, you know, the internet was a kind of lifeline. And so the idea was muted, but what about, you know, doing a sort of a reproduction of the changes album and re releasing it on vinyl and the idea caught on and I did it and I was really, really happy to do it and everyone seemed really happy and I sold out of the 500 run that I did. So that was, that was great. A for sort of validation of, of the music. And also, you know, some income basically when I wasn't able to work. And of course, I believe it's available again digitally as well now. Yeah, yeah, it's digital, you know, it wasn't out as a digital, but it is now. Yes. Yeah, it's just great to have that album back in my life again, because it really, it meant a lot at that time in my life. It was part of my, My soul soundtrack at that time and brings back a lot of really good memories. So, you know, it's a great album. I'm very excited to hear what the sequel sounds like. And of course, you've released a couple of tracks already. Haven't you? Yeah, I've released, well, I've released three tracks. Um, yeah, time to let go. You can't just live as an island and Atlantia. Tell us a little bit about, about those, why, why those ones have kind of risen to the top and been the ones that you put out. Was it just a case of those, the ones you finished first? Are they particularly special? It was partly because what got finished first, I mean, time to let go was the, one of the first tracks to be finished and kind of living in this new era now where, you know, in the old days, it's like. Okay. So the album had to be in the can and then there was a campaign and which is going to be the first single and blah, blah, blah. Whereas now it's, it's, it's almost like, well, you can do what you like. You can put out single tracks, you can put out an EP. The promotion period is not a sort of six week cycle. And if it. charts. Great. And if it doesn't, that's it. It's like, you can keep promoting cause then, you know, new people will hear it maybe because someone else has shared it or played it or whatever, you know, and this, this whole kind of promotion on the internet and YouTube, et cetera. So I'm still kind of adjusting to this new world. But I thought, yeah, it'd be nice to rather than wait till the album's finished, um, it to sort of drop a few tracks and let people kind of, you know, hear it and the time to let go sort of very much resonated with the sort of lockdown. Although I didn't write lyrics about lockdown, it kind of still resonated in lockdown. And then I had to make a video for it. So I thought, well, I'll do it myself then, um, you know, with, with a camera, you know, do it, do a selfie video sort of thing. But because I live in Argyle, I had some great. Scenery to sort of backdrop on and it kind of sort of fitted with the thing and basically that the release date getting pushed back and pushed back, which is why, you know, another single came out, which maybe was supposed to be before the release. And then the release got pushed back and I thought, well, it's okay. Uh, I'll just put the music out and, uh, That's, that's why it's out there. And, uh, I thought, you know, rather than basically rather than make people wait until the album's done. Is there a tour planned for you as a solo artist to promote this album? Do you, do you fancy doing something like that? I would love to do some gigs. Initially I thought I would do like a big album launch gig, but then I thought, well, I'll, I'll wait until maybe rather than do an album launch gig, why don't do a series of gigs? The problem is then. How do I translate it into live? It's the age old thing. Uh, you know, ideally I'd take an 18 piece band and do like, you know, six or seven gigs around the country. But, um, unfortunately I don't have the kind of the backing money wise to do that. So it's probably going to end up being a five piece using a laptop with, with some tracks on it. But then the question of which five musicians I use. So I'm planning, I would love to do some live gigs and I'm planning on doing a bunch of them, but probably I'll wait until the album's out and the music has been aired. And I think that will make more sense to then do gigs rather than sort of do a tour as the album is dropping, because hopefully then some of the music will be familiar. And I really want to focus on. on the launch of the album as one thing and then the gigs is a sort of another project that I can dedicate everything to and also fit it in between whatever level 42 is doing well that kind of brings me on to my next question because uh recently the band announced a series of gigs in 2023 so what what does 2023 hold for level 42 in terms of like you're just going to carry on doing your own tours and then because you occasionally pop up on these kind of legacy 80s type retro festival things so is that is that the plan for For level 42 for 2023. Yes, I think so. I mean, we're, we're lucky because we're, you know, we're, we're seen as an eighties band and so we can do those legacy festivals, but it's not like we need to sort of promote ourselves as that. So we can do standalone tours and it's, it's been going from strength to strength in the last few years. The live band is really. Has really gelled in a good way, especially since the two other brass players joined Sean on sacks when we did the siren CP. So it's a seven piece band on stage. It's very dynamic. You know, we played all over the place. I mean, we were playing in probably not very popular now, but, uh, you know, we first time in St. Petersburg in 2019, we played in Quebec, uh, the. Massive festival there in 2019, we were due to go to Australia and New Zealand for the first time in 2020, but sort of COVID put pay to that. But anyway, it means that we can do lots of festivals. You know, we regularly play in Holland where we were first successful, you know, we play Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, you know, each summer. And then every two years we'll do like a UK Europe tour. And so the 2023 tour is, is the sort of, you know, the, the next tour to do. I mean, we should have played our 40th anniversary, 2020 tour. And then in 2022, this year do our 42nd anniversary, but we kind of got nudged out by COVID. So we did the 2022 in 21. And so the next tour has to be 2023 and so on. So that's kind of set. So I know that October, November will be touring and then in the summer we'll be doing festivals and quite often they drop at the last minute so we don't exactly know what we're doing until sort of it gets towards the summer. So the big question I have and I guess many level 42 fans will also have is, can we ever expect an album of new material from the band? Uh, I don't know is the honest answer. There has to be inspiration and motivation to make new music. Um, we've had a couple of goes at it. I mean, um, apart from the stuff that came out, I mean, the last thing that came out was the Sirens EP, but prior to that, and since then we've, we've tossed around a few ideas. But there's nothing that we've done that really kind of has sort of lit us up as being yes, this is something that we really need to bring out putting out music now is is very much a kind of it's a labor of love. It's when we haven't got a record company. We haven't got anything like that. So you do it yourself, you know, which is great, but it's it's a lot of investment to do that. And perhaps we're somewhat fortunate, and this is an excuse, but I'm going to use it in that we've done about 16 albums. So every time we do a tour, apart from playing the hits, which of course we have to do, we can play tracks that we've never played before from albums or kind of rare groove stuff or, you know, stuff that we did in 83, 84, that the, you know, younger fans come along, you know, sort of tweeting of really like the new stuff. And it's like, We didn't play anything new, but we played stuff that you would never have heard because you weren't into the band then. So it kind of keeps it fresh for us. And, uh, obviously for people who love Level 42's music, it kind of is, is enjoyable for them. So it's a kind of, it's a great formula. I would like to think that we will write new stuff, but there has to be an inspiration. And I think it also has to be a kind of has to be a thematic one. You know, it's not just about the music as well. What do you sing about? What do you write about? And I think this is something that some older artists maybe do struggle with because, you know, you've kind of said the important things. You've made the big statements you want to make. And so, okay, so what do you do? You don't want to just reproduce. We don't got to do lessons in love. Two and something about you three, you know, there has to, has to be something news and, and often it's the angst, you know, the, the relationship breakups and, you know, all of that stuff is great grist for the mill. And when you're older, most, a lot of people tend to be more settled in life. So, you know. You can't write about, you know, Oh, my wife forgot to do this, or I didn't do this. Or I dunno, it's, it's, it's, you know, there, there, of course there's, there's the big stuff going on in the planet that we could write about and we've, we've done, you know, we've written about chance has begun, you know, we almost were kind of ahead of the curve with some of those. songs and lyrics. So, so we'll see. Uh, I mean, you know, I, I think that we probably do miss Phil and Boone as lyric writers being there and in the band and obviously Boone's passed away now. So, you know, tragically. Yeah. So there's, there's a few question marks as to why there's not new material out there and we certainly don't want to churn anything out. So I have to say I don't know is the honest answer right now. So I want to sort of finish on just a few little quick fire questions if I may just for just for a little bit of a laugh. Um, what is your favorite ever synthesizer of all time? If you if Desert Island synth, what would it be? A Prophet 5. Um, favorite level 42 song to play live? That's difficult. I hate, I hate picking one song out of the canon. Um, but, uh, Oh God. Probably hot water. Yeah. Still to this day. Yeah. Cause that's, I mean, that's just hot water. Yeah. Absolutely. Epic. Um, favorite artist to listen to in the car or on the train. Hmm. Well, you know, that, that does change depending on what's out. Um, what's been on Mike Lindup's iPod just recently on repeat. Where is Mike Lindup's iPod? Yeah. Okay. Let me look at my phone and just see what, uh, I listened to quite a lot. I kind of self curate playlists. So, you know, I've been listening to Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder and, uh, funny enough, I had to listen to Stormzy's new album. Oh yes. Not because I'm a Stormzy fan, really. I mean, I kind of, it's basically my son who's 18, he's been on heavy as the head was on his playlist. That was the first time I came across Stormzy. And you know, I, you know, I heard him saying F off Boris at Glastonbury as a sort of news clip. And so I didn't really know the man, but I thought, well, let me listen to his album. Just out of interest for no other reason. And I really liked it. And in fact, there's a, the third track on it. Fire, fire babe, I think it's called. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. . It just, it just hit the relationship that I'm in, right in the heart. I, I was washing up as I listened to it. I stopped and I was crying. I thought, that's unbelievable. I mean, I was expecting it to be a kind of like, Yabu sucks. I'm a number one artist, you know, production, production, anger, you know, ranting, blah, blah. I just wasn't expecting that at all. It just, it just blew me away. I thought he's got a lot of heart, that guy. So yeah, definitely. I'm always interested in hearing something unexpected. Mike, thank you ever so much for joining us today. And we look forward to hearing the new album very, very soon called changes to, it'll be out, um, in all the usual places, um, have a great 2023. And I look forward to seeing you playing live, whether it's on your own or with the band, um, in the coming months. Thanks so much, Rob. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. Before you go, make sure you visit the Sound on Sound podcast page at soundonsound. com forward slash podcasts where you can explore all the other great content playing across the other channels. I'm Rob Puricelli. And this has been a failed Muso production for Sound on Sound.