Martin Luke Brown

“Start, middle, end, start again.” Martin Luke Brown sings like it’s nothing on ‘highest high’, but after a while, we all come to realise that really, that’s all there is.

There’s life, and there’s death but in the middle, there’s everything. There’s friendship, love, good kisses, nights out you do or don’t remember, meals shared, flats rented. For Martin specifically, the “etc.” is an amalgamation of hours aimlessly jamming with housemates, new loves after lost ones, and cars breaking down like ridiculous comedic relief in the chaos of it all. In an artistic world so obsessed with the extremes on either side, his third album, life & death etc refuses to wait for a moment of grandeur, but instead finds them in the movement of it all – asking us to consider that what are maybe the most profound moments of our lives are often the simplest; conversations around dinner tables or time spent goofing around.

After leaving behind the major label world and reinventing his career into one that allows him to live and work as much as possible with friends, his artistry too exists right there. For this new release, he once again returned to working with one of his best friends Matt Zara, staying true to their partnership that is really little more than “hanging out, playing music and whatever happens, happens.”

From that room, where these two childhood friends seamlessly weave between harmonising and arguing, stress and laughter, work and play – the entire energy of life & death etc is encapsulated.

“I think two people having fun, especially being shit at something together, is actually so much more magical,” he said. Though himself and Grammy-nominated Zara are anything but “shit”, it’s all in the motivation of the studio, caring less about technicality as opposed to feel. As he’s moved through his career, witnessing the industry at basically every level, Martin finds himself becoming far less interested in proficiency.

Instead, it all lies in the energy, reuniting him with his core belief of what music is all about. Growing up in the church with hymns and a community singing them, Martin said “When people go to their first gigs people are singing along, and there’s that euphoric feeling of ‘oh, we’re all together’, I had that in church. I think I misconstrued the power of music with the power of God. Or maybe it’s always been God all along, who knows. ”

 

But there was a take away from that. Going back to the very root of what music is for, his latest work is inspired by music made by people for people. He said, “it’s service orientated – I want to make music that serves people in some way.”

It drew him to another key influence that stayed on repeat during the making of the record – the infectiously human ‘Do I Ever Cross Your Mind’ by Chet Atkins and Dolly Parton, a country ditty that collapses into laughter. “It’s goofy and silly and it makes people feel good and makes them want to dance around,” he said, ”But there’s sentimentality there, a subtle depth. I think that’s such a good example of what music can be – joyous but still meaningful. Especially in times like these, happiness or hope feel like an act of rebellion”

It hasn’t been long since we last heard from Martin. His previous record, man oh man ! arrived just over a year ago, but he’d grown sick of the strange, stunting delay musicians have to live with. “I’m always keen to keep moving. It makes it easier to be in alignment with who I really am, rather than festering in an old feeling for too long,” Martin said, rejecting the typical wait that forces artists to be promoting some old version of themselves. Deciding to simply make something new when the moment seemed to call for it, he’s realised the value of immediacy and capturing the present.

“I think if I zoom forward to when I’m like 80, and I’m looking back at all the music I’ve ever done, I would love each album to be time capsules of that time in my life,” he said, treating the records like photo albums, or fleeting snapshots to feel and let go. “It’s such a dense time, each year right now deserves an album at least”

Across all corners of his life, that’s a mindset he’s practicing. “I think holding things loosely is such an important life skill,” he said, “whenever you grip on to something tightly it doesn’t serve anything. It doesn’t serve the thing that you’re holding on to. It just strangles it, like poor fucking Lenny from of mice & men hahah”

life & death etc, despite dealing with dense themes of heartbreak, grief and purpose, practices a loose grip – hence the flippancy of the title. “Yes my heart took a beating, but it’s beating nonetheless,” he sings on ‘nonetheless’, refusing to grip white-knuckled to pain but instead surrendering to the heartache moving through him and the fact that life will move on despite it. On ‘back of my mind’, he lets past loves linger as a whisper as it does exactly that, singing, “you’re not in my life no more, but you’re still in the back of my mind.” At the album’s end, ‘unlearning everything’ serves as both an elegy and a mission statement, concluding simply “it’s right there in front of my eyes” as a devotion to simply witnessing and feeling the present as all there really is.

“I think my flow is just writing and putting it out and writing and putting it out and writing and putting it out. Not overly editing or filtering or performing, because that’s exhausting” he said. Across his three records, his diary-like lyrical tone that serves that state best has been developing, but never has it been more candid than here.

Devoted to making music that sounds like him, capturing tiny personal moments and somehow turning them into universal experiences, Martin doesn’t shy away from wanting to bring us all together “That feeling you get at a show or a rave or church or a festival – that euphoria of feeling like you belong, I want to spend my whole life in that feeling.”

BOILERPLATE:

There’s life, there’s death, but everything else exists right here, in the beautiful middle. After a while, we all come to realise that really, that’s all there is. In this new era, Martin Luke Brown is drinking it all in.

After years of navigating the industry from every angle, the artist is rejecting rules, structures and expectations to instead reunite with the community roots of what music is all about. Creating music and living life as “service orientated”, he’s making art that exists as a time capsule of his own life. Leaving the edges rough and unedited as a show of devotion to the idea that what is most human is most universal.

Asking us repeatedly to consider that perhaps the most profound moments are the ones right in front of us; the dinner table conversations, the jokes with friends, the hazy nights out, Martin Luke Brown is now at his most candid, and his most captivating.