Adem Ilhan's music doesn't seem the kind that comes from a man who only recently took to singing on record. Committing a voice that vibrates with raw emotion and restraint to his first solo outing, Homesongs, Adem has made music that has, for at least this listener, dug its heels in deep. And its all the more surprising that Adem's take on intimate, man-with-guitar songwriting comes from one-third of London post-rock trio Fridge, which suggests only the quality of musicianship we can expect from Mr. Ilhan, but nothing of Homesongs' spare, lyric, and vulnerable song craft.

After being derailed by sound checks on Adem's end and job interviews on this one, Junkmedia sat down with Adem on the second day of a short stay in New York City, before heading home to the U.K. in time to begin a stint, on both sides of the Atlantic, with Explosions in the Sky. Through the din of feedback and the persistent nag of call-waiting, Adem sorted out what went into Homesongs, arcs and intricacies alike.

How did the show last night go?

Pretty well, actually. We were all a little nervous because we wanted to represent ourselves as best we could for the New York audience. I think we were able to pull it off. It was really a lovely response from the crowd, and we played pretty well.

Is this your first time playing on your own in the U.S.?

Yes, the first time this project has come to the U.S.

My editor was at the show last night, and he told me you had a live band behind you. I was curious before about your live setup for this material and how prepared to take it out on the road?

It's interesting. When I finished the record, the first decision I had to make was whether or not I wanted to play it live, and then I've always believed that if you are going to play it live... I've always hated when people just play the record pretty much straight. I think it's a waste of time. If I just wanted to hear the record, I'd just put the record on, put headphones on. So when I started working on what I would do live, I wanted to work out versions of the tracks. I wanted to keep the essential part of the track and just try to play about with it and get a color and some excitement about it, so people can come to the show and hear something different as well as see it, and they'll still recognize all the songs. That was the first thing.

And I surrounded myself with amazing musicians. There are four of us all together, we all sing, and there are lots of different instruments. We've got double bass, two guitars, autoharp, and lots of percussion - bells, things like that - and all these other instruments lying around. We all swap them and play what we can, and we're introducing a little more harmony to what we do. That was important because the record has quite a lot of layers to it. So, instead I thought I'd use voices for that live.

Who are some of the people who are playing with you?

The band is Mark Meon - he's actually responsible for the band called Meon, which is gonna be massive, I think. Really cool electronic and acoustic, poppy stuff. And another guy from a band called Hot Chip, which is another band that's hitting the U.K. hard at the moment. They kind of do R&... R&Bedroom they call it. Imagine if Yo La Tengo were an R&B/hip-hop kind of act. Indie R&B. I can't really explain it more than that. Then another player who plays in all sorts of bands. We've got people from a lot of different projects all coming together.

I'm guessing these other projects will be making their way over here too, pretty soon.

You'll be hearing from all of them soon. You'll probably be seeing Hot Chip, or at least the DJs from Hot Chip pretty soon.

Since the material on Homesongs is such a departure from what you do with Fridge, I'm curious about when you became interested in this kind of songwriting.

Well, I've always listened to music like this all my life. That's the first thing. The music I do in Fridge is just one part of the music I listen to and want to make. It was really an accident, though. I've been making music by myself for a long time, but it was computer-based, electronic music. And then I've always had an interest in collecting instruments. I found this one instrument at a flea market on the street, and I got it home and it made such a great sound. So I decided to make a song with that.

And there was a space in it... as a producer, I always listen to music and find what's missing, and then do an extra thing, and then find what's still missing from it. That's how I build tracks a lot of times. And then I just tried to sing on it. That's how it all started, actually.

It was a bit of an accident that I ended up doing this, but as soon as I did it, most of my friends who heard it said, yeah this is really good. That's how I got quite interested in doing this. I wrote a few more songs, and the response to them was really good. It's the first project that I felt that I wanted other people to be involved, to listen and actually hear to be involved in it more than passively.

It came completely out of left field for me. Ben sent it on in a huge stack of CDs, and I've become very cynical in the way I listen to all this music. So when yours came on it really struck me, and it was really nice to have something strike me like that so unexpectedly.

That's fantastic, because I know how difficult it is to trawl through that sea of music. To find something that interests you.

How hard is it to shift into this kind of emotional mode and to feel comfortable with what you're doing artistically? What different pressures did this material put on you, as opposed to your work with Fridge?

Firstly, you've got vocals, you've got lyrics. And then with that, you've got a message. There's a real responsibility there to think about what you say and what you say to whom, and from where it comes. That's obviously different, and then performance-wise, I'm the front man. I'm the singer, and that's a weird thing, to tell myself and learn to become a singer. To perform as a leader, whereas with Fridge I'm very much one-third, and we all have equal force in that project.

Being at the front of this is really quite exciting. It's freeing and open, but it's incredibly lonely also, to be recording the music and performing the music on your own. Performing it live with a band makes a difference though, doing it with lovely people who I care about. But yeah, having the actual focus on you and what you say is a big pressure and a big responsibility that I have in the project. And I try not to think too much about it, because if I did think about the consequences of all this it wouldn't sit well on my shoulders.

What songwriting process did you take, in general? Lyrics first, or music?

I did it very strangely, I found out. I kind of just started and it just happened. I feel like I'm more of a producer than anything. And I'd be writing these songs, writing the bass line, while getting the sound of the guitars right, while getting the vocal melodies right on top of it, getting some words together, while finding the right compressor to run that through, and it all happens at once. I wouldn't have written the same songs if I'd done all this at separate times. I tend to produce the song while I write it, like you would an electronic track, I guess. So, the shape of the bass line and the percussion line really influences how the vocals are performed and how the melody will go. Normally though, I will write the lyrics first, because I take a good deal of care in how I say things and what I say, and how they fall and the meter of them. But the actual melodies I sing and what I say there comes out in the recording.

It's a bit of a weird one. Not a traditional way of writing songs, and it can only be done in modern ways, with the way I use the computer to multitrack everything and produce everything as I go along.

It sounds like when you were recording Homesongs that you tried hard to capture all the raw, stray noises from your instruments, like your fingers sliding down the guitar fretboard. Did you set out for this to feel like a bedroom recording?

Well, I didn't want to hide the fact that it was a bedroom recording. I wanted to record it well. I wanted to make it listenable. Earlier versions of these songs were much more electronic, more angular, and they had weird backwards things to them. And it was really lo-fi. But I decided I didn't want to hide behind the lo-fi charm thing that so many people get away with, and I really could have gotten away with it like that.

But I really wanted to make a record that could stand up against other records that are coming out, so that when people look back on it in the future, they can treat it as a valid record, without the excuse that it's a lo-fi, bedroom recording. I wanted to keep the character of that, I didn't want to hide it, but then equally I tried to get a nice recording, and an exciting recording.

I know that singing was something you didn't want to do early on in your career. How do you feel about having your voice recorded now?

It was strange. And it took a lot of effort to convince myself that I could do it. It was only very recently that I was able to stand up and say I'm a singer. And that was a very bizarre thing to be able to say. And it took me over a year to do that really. I'm really more confident the more I learn, and I'm constantly learning. I try to talk to other performers and other singers about what they're doing and how they do it. But I do think the fact that I'm not trained or experienced as a singer is an asset to what I do, because it allows me to do my own thing in my own way and not really worry about what I should be doing.

How do you see yourself continuing on with solo work? Do you want to settle into this mode some more?

I'm really enjoying it. I'm really excited. The response I've gotten has been wonderful. Everyone seems to be really enjoying it and wanting to hear more. I'm just about to start work on the next record. I'm working on the new Fridge record, and a new electronic project and a mass ensemble called The Assembly which will be released later this year. There's really a lot going on that's keeping me busy. I've got many different musical mouths that need feeding, so I couldn't stop doing any one of them.

And I'm quite a control freak as well. So I'm constantly checking out the sales figures, taking care of the business end, making sure the press is going well. I do that while I'm writing, while I'm replying to emails, updating the web site. I tend to keep myself busy.

Well, it's great when you get the ball rolling like that, you feel like you don't even need to sleep.

Every once in a while it hits me really hard like, alright, I know I have to sleep for a day or something and then I get back to normal and carry on. I can't quit working.

Are you able to live off music at this point?

Yeah, I've been living off of music for a while. I do music for films and things like that. That's another thing I do to keep me busy. Pays the rent.

Anything else you want to throw out there?

Well, anything that someone wants to find out they can check out www.adem.tv - that's very important to me, and I'm really pleased with it. And I'm really excited about America in general. I've been looking forward to putting the record out here for a long time. I'm really excited about the American reaction, because a lot of people say it's a quite English record, and I'm interested what the Americans make of that.

Well, on my end - and I don't have the perspective of having been to England - but on my end it translated pretty well.

Okay, brilliant. I never really saw that myself. It's all about human-ness, emotions, and how people are. And people are pretty much the same throughout the world.

I mean, just the art on the back of the packaging...we all have bathrooms, regardless of where we're at. So that's how I took it, at that level of intimacy.

Yeah, it is about intimacy. It's about being personal in a general way, in a human way. You go anywhere in the world, everyone's felt a bit lonely. Everyone's got a little happy.

Rob Albanese
August 23, 2004