MEET MICHAËL BRUN
MERDE’S UK-based contributor Matt Spratt met Haitian DJ and record producer Michaël Brun at the Standard Hotel in London on Saturday, August 26th prior to his much-anticipated Notting Hill Carnival performance. After a packed summer of festivals and new releases, from the BAYO Block Party in NYC, to collaborative hit jam “Coming Your Way” with Becky G and Anne-Marie, Michaël’s up-beat, highly-dancable tunes, not to mention stylish flare establish him as a global must-watch artist.
Matt: When approaching remixing a song, what's the thing that gets you excited, gets you in?
Michaël: I think with remixes it's about a vibe. As a producer, there’s a natural way that I listen to things, I'm always reinterpreting sounds in my mind. Sometimes I actually have to stop myself and just listen passively, which is hard. If something catches my ear enough to make my brain start working and thinking about how to re-contextualize it, then it speaks to me in some kind of way enough to want to bring it into a different world, regardless of what genre or artist it is. Sometimes that means keeping the instruments with a deep rhythm, and sometimes it means completely wiping it and doing something completely new. I've done all kinds of remixes over the course of my career.
Matt: How do you know when to stop?
Michaël: This used to be a very scary question because in the beginning, I started out being very additive and I was throwing everything at the wall thinking I should try everything I possibly could - I’d add 150 sounds and be like, ‘let’s maximum this, let's just go crazy.''
Over time, as I've gotten better at what I do and developed more influences and exposure to different processes, I’ve become more subtractive.
““I look at production as sculpture, while earlier it was more like painting, just throwing paint at the wall.””
Now it's more as though I'm sculpting away at what I believe the core of a concept is, the piece is already there underneath it all. I want to remove everything that is not directly helpful to the message that wants to come through. It’s a visual process for me to work on music, I think about it in a three dimensional way.
Matt: Do you hear sounds in colour?
Michaël: I don't know if it's synesthesia, but I definitely associate moods, energies, and emotion with colour. If something is a cool colour, in a kind of blue or purple palette, I'll hear sounds that look fit with a relaxing vibe. Or if it's more bright and colorful, it'll be warmer and more energetic. I can associate it with my eyes closed sometimes when I'm working. But more than anything, it's just a gut feeling. My natural inclination is always to make things connect when there’s a gap.
Matt: When you're producing and you hear these gaps in what you're making, do you immediately have a guest in mind to fill it, someone that you instantly ring and ask to step in?
Michaël: Sometimes I know a person would be perfect. But my approach changes depending on what I’m working on. If it’s my own project, I’ll generally be more decisive, but if I'm producing for another artist, which I’ve done equally as much as my own production, I always try to be in service of the vision of that artist.
“Sometimes that means having an idea, but sort of holding back to see where the artist that I’m working with takes it first. I believe it’s very important that when you create, you need to feel safe, and you need to feel adventurous in a way where you don’t hold yourself back. In my albums, and in my creative space, I go all in.
”
I'm not afraid to try things. I’ve even sung on some tracks, and experimented taking recordings of banging on pots and pans, or nature, or even background noise in a room or studio. I'm really open-minded, and when I collaborate, I try to work off of another artists’ energy in order to make the artist feel safe so they can be expressive enough for me to capture some kind of direct thought from their mind.
Matt: Is there anyone specific who you want to work with creatively?
Michaël: It's crazy because I’ve had such a long list of artists I wanted to collaborate with, and now I’ve worked with almost every single person on the list. I'd say the one person that I haven't yet, but we have mutual friends, is Bruno Mars. I really admire him as an artist, that he’s a producer, songwriter combo. Not only this, but to also be an incredible performer, it's rare. It's a level of understanding your craft, the hours it takes, you basically have to be a child star to be able to do that. Bruno was playing in Hawaii since he was five years old. He’s been so famous since he was a kid, which is such a complex and difficult path. That's definitely the hardest type of artist to be, yet he has the experience and understanding of his abilities, at one of the highest levels of anyone. I would love to work with him and learn from that kind of background and experience because it’s so rare and unique; you can count on your hands how many people have that kind of path.
Matt: Is there anybody that you looked at growing up that you’ve now had the chance to work with in a full circle moment?
Michaël: Yes, last year I got a chance to work with Pharell, which meant a lot to me. It was via FaceTime, and it was such a cool moment to hear his thoughts on what I had done. It was a really inspiring moment for me because he is one of those all encompassing producer / artists who does everything.
Even before I knew I wanted to do music, I remember I found a N.E.R.D. album, and I didn't understand what it was. I was so confused by the genre, but I knew I liked it. There’s a song called ‘Drill Sergeant’ on one of albums that has a marching band with R&B and indie pop infusions that I specifically remember listening to with headphones at 15 or 14 years old thinking ‘I don't know what this is at all, I can't tell you anything, I don't even know what instruments they're using, but I love it.’ That was a big moment for me.
It’s the moment I refer to that made me start defining my taste, because it wasn’t something that anybody told me to listen to. It wasn't my parents or a friend telling me to check it out. It was something I just stumbled upon that really resonated.
Matt: Is there another avenue within your creative space that you're looking to work on?
Michaël: I think in general, something physical. I love Lego. I love building things. When the time comes, I’d love to do anything along those lines, to connect with people through a physical object gives you a different kind of feeling. When you're experiencing something through a phone or your laptop, the product is the same - it can be viewed and shared, repurposed- from a video of a concert, to a spreadsheet, to a message box - all in one screen. Whereas when you're holding a physical thing, you’re able to see it’s multiple angles and even take it with you to re-contextualize it’s physicality elsewhere. I'm starting to think more about this concept with synthesizers too. I used to work completely on laptop, making all my songs on this vessel. Recently, I started getting the sense this was ‘teenage engineering.’ A music production company sent me some gear and I started messing with it. It feels much bigger than me, and it's such a cool feeling to have more tactile machinery.
Matt: There is real hard energy in your music videos, from the typography to the illustrations to the actual beat, what is your relationship between the visuals and the music?
Michaël: I’m so glad you asked about this because we spent a lot of time working on this creative exploration with a company called Fisk, who've done an incredible job with the typography in particular. We spent a lot of time on the symbolism of the type with the creative director of the label, Joel Evey. We had quite a few people in constant conversation throwing around ideas.
I really wanted traditional Haitian and Caribbean imagery incorporated, but also not too overt. We configured classic magazines, posters and flyers from shows in the seventies and eighties, all across the Caribbean and Africa, mapping the symbolism of different artists. Every artist had something that represented them. We digested these influences, aiming to incorporate their essence into our artwork. In expanding the story of the artwork, I was so grateful there was such a strong creative team to bring those ideas to life. There are many Easter eggs, nuggets of surprises, throughout the music videos as well. You’ll have to find them, little things that that we put into the videos that are very symbolic.
Matt: Is the research equally heavy in the visual aspect as well as the auditory?
Michaël: That’s definitely the nature of how I make music. History is incredibly important to preserve, also for context to the present. I try to learn as much as I can from past artists that I admire, ionic artists from where I'm from, and other places around the world. What's worked in the past and what resonates with culture today informs my creative approach to what I do. I genuinely enjoy the research process.
I was listening to a podcast yesterday that quoted Mark Twain who said, ‘history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.’ Just like music, you can hear something new, it may not be the exact same thing as an original beat, but it'll somehow come back to you in a new way that's familiar.
