The Mix 080: Leon Vynehall

Whether intentional or not, inner affliction has always been at the heart of Leon Vynehall’s music. On his 2018 breakout record ‘Nothing Is Still’, brought to pass by the emotional toll of his grandfather’s death, Leon sonically documents the seven-day journey of emigration from the UK to New York that his grandparents took via boat in the 1960s. His second record, ‘Rare, Forever’, which was released just a few years later in 2021, came to fruition at the crux of a “spiritual identity crisis”, and a moment of inner reflection after turning 30.

Four years on, there’s still a sentimental depth to the music Leon Vynehall is putting out into the world. Earlier this month, the London-based DJ and producer released his third studio album, ‘In Daytona Yellow’, on his newly-launched imprint Ooze Inc – and while it marks a slight development of his sound from luscious chords and droning synths to fuller-bodied vocal tracks that span R&B, hip hop, and ambient, the biggest shift is his use of his own voice.

"Something about it felt right,” he tells Mixmag when he calls in from New York amidst a “celebratory” US tour after the album’s release. “I remember playing early versions of a few songs on the record to a friend. He was like, ‘These are great, but there's something about ‘Slow Devotion’ where you’re using your vocals, and that's way more interesting’. Without wanting external factors or other people's opinions to influence me, there was something in that interaction that encouraged me to explore that.”

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This time unpicking the aftermath of the feelings he was working through on ‘Rare, Forever’, ‘In Daytona Yellow’ sees him open up emotionally as well as vocally. It’s a hopeful rejection of perfectionism, with tracks exploring themes of “self-loathing, self-love, ego sex and ego death”, and a marker for where Leon Vynehall is currently at creatively. The 10-track record also includes his first collaborations with other artists, an area he’d never previously explored when making music.

Following the release of his third record ‘In Daytona Yellow’, we caught up with Leon Vynehall to talk about the vulnerability of using his own vocals, the “spiritual identity crisis” which informed his sound, and why a Leonard Cohen quote kept him grounded while writing the album. Check it out below alongside a mix packed with new and unreleased music.

Talk to me about Ooze Inc, your label – how’s it going and what are your future plans for it?

I had an itch to scratch, and I wanted to try something on my own and have full creative control and a bit more freedom, especially with my new record. The long and short of it is that I wanted an outlet to put my own stuff out when I wanted to, rather than being at the mercy of a schedule that I have to fit into. But the irony is that I had to move the record two or three times anyway!

I'm not sure what I'll do going forward, the process of putting out a record and doing an album campaign on my own label, albeit by a really great distributor, has been a lot of work. It's something that I was curious about and wanted to explore, but I don't know if I'm necessarily cut out for it. I never set out to be a label manager, more just a desire to have a bit more control.

‘In Daytona Yellow’ is your third album to date, how did you approach this one differently to your breakout records? What was the process like?

The main thing that differs from the other albums is that there's collaborations with other artists on there, which I've not done before. I’m also using my own voice, albeit in the processed kind of way. There's lyricism across the record, whereas my previous albums are basically instrumentals, apart from some sort of chopped up vocal samples that make their way into them. I like to learn new things, so I put myself in positions where I have a chance to expand my knowledge or garner new information. Working on my own music with other people and using my voice was something that I hadn't considered before – it never felt like the right thing to do. ‘Nothing Is Still’ was about my grandparents’ emigration to New York in the ‘60s, which would have felt odd having someone else's voice across. Then ‘Rare, Forever’ was about me battling with my own ego, and again, having other people's voices on there wasn’t necessarily something that felt fitting at the time.

On this one, something about it felt right. I'd spent so much time in previous years, even around those last records, doing production work for other artists. I’m a producer in the more traditional sense of the word, working with them on their music and helping them to write and record their albums. I enjoy that process so much, the collaborative element to it, and having this shared experience with someone else. In doing those things, you learn a lot about the person that you're working with, but you also learn so much about yourself and what you're capable of. I really wanted to bring that into what I was doing on my own stuff. Everyone featured on the record are people I've worked with before on their music, or maybe we’ve just been fans of each other's, so we already had a rapport. 

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I suppose it feels more personal adding your own vocals in there. Did it feel vulnerable doing that for the first time?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm not a singer, and I’m also not trying to be! But the great thing about the collaborative process is that we would speak about the shared values of an experience for hours before we would even play a note of music. I compare it to when you’re making a meal, you have to get all the right ingredients and prepare them in the right way before you start cooking, rather than throwing everything in the dish immediately.

There's a song called ‘Slow Devotion’ on there, which is basically me saying goodbye to a past version of myself that I was perhaps unkind to, and ushering in a new one that I can be slightly more compassionate with. That felt way too close to have someone else sing on. With all the songs that have vocals on, I was singing the ideas on my own in the studio before showing them to TYSON or Jeshi or whoever. Then they'd come in and hear it, and they'd be like, ‘Oh, that's cool. Let me try it like this’. It was vulnerable, but I think it was that exact feeling that made me know I had to do it. Making music and presenting it to the world is quite a vulnerable process, and it's quite an ego-driven process. No one's asking you to do it!

You mentioned that you’re already friends with the collaborators on this album, are there any connecting threads in the artists you chose to work with?

Great question. First of all, I'm just a fan of all of them as artists, but I think the common thread between all of them is that there's an expressiveness to all of their music in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. I feel akin to them in a way that I know we’d go through the same process when writing. Jeshi, Kenzie, and Chartreuse specifically – their lyricism and storytelling within music is something that I'm very drawn to. There’s an element to everyone's work that feels intriguing, but also familiar.

You said that you experienced a sort of ‘spiritual identity crisis’ when you turned 30, which has informed your music in places. Can you tell us about that?

When I was making my last album ‘Rare, Forever’, I was trying to figure out what it was that I was doing in my life, or what I was trying to say with my music. I feel like everyone goes through that phase as they turn 30, I don't know anyone that hasn't been like, ‘Wait, what the fuck is going on?’. That experience, and that time in my life, informed the record, but in a roundabout way, I suppose it informed this one too. It's a very linear process between each one – I was doing a lot of questioning, and I was letting my ego run with it in the sense that I was thinking about how I viewed myself, and, in turn, how others viewed me. I’d get really into the minutia of the music on that record, but not in a considerate way. It was self conscious, and I found that really exhausting. After that, I was like, ‘I can't do that again’. It’s so mentally and emotionally taxing, because you're so hyper-aware of yourself and what you're doing.

When it came to this record, I knew I didn’t want to do that again. Rather than trying for everything to be perfect, I wanted to make sure it had shape and space, and embrace honesty rather than perfection. Even if that means using my voice – and I'm not the strongest singer – but I do everything in my own way. I enjoy writing lyrics, and I've never done it before. But fuck it, this feels like the right thing to do, so that needs to be the thing that I follow. That experience when I was 30 did influence this record, but it kind of bounces off of where I was.

You also said that you kept a verse from Leonard Cohen's 'Anthem' as a sort of mantra when making this record, talk to me about that…

I can't quite remember when I came across it, but I do remember the feeling that I had from it. 'Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in'. I kept reading it over and over again, trying to understand it. There's a Groucho Marx quote that says, ‘Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light’. Then I wondered if the Cohen verse was informed by that – I've thought about it a lot. It gave me pause, but it also made me feel a little bit lighter. I've always been a very self-conscious person, and there was something about it – I was sort of relieved of that self-consciousness for a short period. It usually comes back again not long afterwards, but it gave me a little respite and made me sit back and sort of ponder. I wanted to keep going back to that feeling, and keep reminding myself of that verse. It became my manifesto, and it kept encouraging me to stay on the path that I was wanting to go down with this record. I think about that verse, and I know that this is where the interesting stuff lies.

It comes back to what you were saying about perfectionism – almost a way of saying not to seek it, because nothing is going to be perfect…

Yeah! There were two other things that enforced that latter passage, the Cohen one. I learned about this Japanese practice called Kintsugi. It's basically the practice of mending broken pottery, but with gold leaf. The meaning behind it is that, because it's been broken and put back together, it's more beautiful than it was before. There was another idiom, ‘Don't gild the lily’, which basically means, ‘Don't make something that's already excellent, more beautiful than what it is’. It reminded me of being in that headspace where I was making ‘Rare, Forever’, and I was trying to carve and sculpt everything to perfection.

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I know you just held a couple of listening parties for the new album. How did those go?

Yeah, really fun. There's something to be said about having a group of people all sit in a room to listen to an album from front to back – it's a really engaging experience. It made me happy, just seeing people take in music without any distractions. No one had their phones out, and people were really locked in and engulfed by the music. The two places that we did it had amazing soundsystems. One was Night Moves in New York, and the other JUMBI in London. My experience of listening to music is mainly in solitude, I put my headphones in while I do other activities. But this just felt special, to be able to put something like that on and have people be engaged with it.

What’s next for you? What's on the cards after this?

I'm on tour in the US at the moment, playing shows to celebrate the album. I've got a big show at EartH in London in November where I'm playing all night in the hall downstairs, and Jeshi and TYSON are going to come out to do some live PA performances. And I've already started on the next record, which I'd really love to have out in spring next year. 

I've also just started scoring my first feature film. Scoring for TV and film is something that I've been working towards for a really long time, it's not something you can just jump into. It's been a process of gaining trust with people and proving myself. I've been writing and releasing music and DJing since 2012, and I feel like I've planted my flag. I'm always trying to evolve and do new things - scoring for film is a brutally collaborative process, and like many things that I've learned working with other artists and doing this album, working on my own music is now helping me and informing me in this place. Because it's not my name up in lights, you know – you're there in service of something else, which is great because you learn how to work in different environments with other people. It's also just so interesting and exciting! I’m creatively greedy, and this is a whole other area where I get to feel like an experienced newbie. 

Can you tell us about your mix?

There’s new music from me, as well as forthcoming bits from a couple of friends, alongside music I've been playing out a lot recently.

'In Daytona Yellow' is out now. Buy it here.

Tracklist: 
Club Moral - Oorlog 
K-Lone - ??? 
Dwele - Truth (Crackazat Edit) 
Los Hermanos Detroit - Search For Jaguar 
Rødig - Carpet Cig 
Jurango - Waiting For Trelawny 
Burnski - Sleeping 
TSVI - ??? 
Brendan James - Relax 
Mark Henning - Trojan 
Architectural - Bad-Tempered Drumming 
Leon Vynehall - ??? 
DJ Debug - Bubblegum 
Braga Circuit - Fall 
Leon Vynehall - ??? 
Dylan Fogharty - Untitled A1 
Tony Quattro - Tony Tokes 
Elbarto - Grip Clip 
Calibre - Special 
HIJINX - Darling