'Billy TK's my brother ... I'll always have a lot of love for him'
A full, frank interview with 'spiritual sonic shaman' Mara TK...
Mara TK is a humble stalwart of the New Zealand music scene, beloved by Teeks, Ladi6, Tom Scott and Troy Kingi. Early one drizzly morning, I interrupted his school run in Otaki to ask why the Electric Wire Hustle front man went solo, how he recorded his album, and what he thinks about his big bro Billy. Let’s go…
You released your debut solo album Bad Meditation last Friday. It’s a fantastic record, receiving industry-wide acclaim. Did you have time to soak up the reaction?
The day the record came out, I had no time to reflect - I just went straight into the next thing. It's funny, I get home from that project at the end of the day and send people messages saying, ‘Thank you’. I haven't had a lot of time to reflect yet.
How long did you spend working on it?
Apparently it's five years. I'd sent Troy (Kingi) some of the demos. He'd held onto them. He was looking at the dates on the messages and it was five years ago. But I didn't necessarily put a peg in the ground and say, ‘I'm starting a solo album’. At some point it looked like it would make sense to become a solo record. So it came together like that. I started thinking, ‘Now I'm a solo artist’. It became a bit clearer.
Was there something holding you back from becoming a solo artist until now?
It's a bit scary, mostly because the buck stops with you in every way that you can think of, including financially, and admin things, even after the record's done. I'm self-managed so there's a lot of pressure to come up with visual content. I've literally shot and edited my own music videos, stuff like that. There's no job that you can pass on to someone else easily. When you're in a band, you can say, ‘Hey man, it's your turn to do this, I'm out. It's your turn, bro.’ It certainly lets you know what you've got in the tank.
The album’s full of subtle production flourishes. Did you spend a lot of time adding and subtracting elements until it felt right?
Absolutely, but I tried not to change the mixing of the (songs) too much. It's quite tempting to completely overhaul tracks. In the past I've done this. I tried not to do this too much.
Your press release is full of these incredible quotes from your peers, acclaimed artists like Teeks, Ladi6, Troy King, Tom Scott and Julian Dynes. They all rave about your music. Did you know they felt the way they do?
I half-read them. My girlfriend read them to me and I sort of blocked my ears. I felt embarrassed more than anything. I felt bad because they'd gone to the effort … I feel like putting a disclaimer out: I didn't ask for this! It's funny because some think Teeks and Troy (Kingi) are my direct competitors but they're some of the most important people in my life, because I can have them as a sounding board and we actually support each other a lot. In Ladi6 and Parks' case, I've known them for 20 years now. We've got a lot of love for each other … Musically, I think I've been a bit of an outlier, quite niche. I didn't realise exactly how they felt. It's amazing.
You’re incredibly humble. Why is it so hard to hear people rave about you and your music?
I just feel like there are a lot of other people in the world who deserve praise for the little things they do every day, nurses, teachers. I'm sitting outside a school watching a whole classroom in the rain. Sometimes I feel … spoiled that I put these songs out into the world and complete strangers hit me back with the most amazing messages. I feel so lucky. It's just something I'm obsessed with and do in my fucking garage and people are moved by it and I'm just blown away.
Is that true? Did you really make this album in your garage?
This record got made between the shed, the spare room, and the lounge. The whole album was just made at home. It's a pretty good home studio. It's kind of Frankenstein-looking gear. Some of it’s pretty steampunk. That's why it sounds quite raw and that maybe for some of the record you'd be unsure if it was recorded in the '70s. It's largely to do with the German gear. Shout out to German broadcasters.
How did you make the album sound so good from a home studio?
I had a piano given to me by one of the university's here - that was in the lounge. If we needed drums we'd bring them over and put them in a larger space - either the shed or the lounge. We'd put guitars in the spare room that was off the lounge and try and isolate things. We'd sandwich the drummer between two bookshelves or mattresses, turn the amp towards the bookshelf. They're great little sound mufflers. There's a bit of method in the madness. I'm just a self-taught engineer. I mixed and mastered the whole thing myself. I wanted it to sound like some of our favourite records from the 70s, mostly soul records like stuff from Motown, also a lot of psychedelic influences, Parliament, Funkadelic, (Jimi) Hendrix of course, Hirini Melbourne, D'Angelo, Marvin Gaye. It sort of roams a bit.
How did the recording process make you feel about your decision to go solo?
I'm into it. Music's a bunch of things for me. It's something that I would do whether it was my profession or not. I'll be whittling away at songs whether there's someone to listen to me or not. But I'm already thinking about the next record. We've started it. We started it on the day this one came out. We're all like that. You start thinking about the next one before the current one is anywhere near (finished). There will be another solo record.
You have a pretty infamous older sibling (conspiracy theorist and New Zealand Public Party co-found Billy TK). Did you think about his public profile and how it might affect your career when you decided to release music under your own name?
My brother? Yeah it has come into the equation in the last year, and that's just part of our family's story now. I don't agree with many of my brother's viewpoints, especially when it comes to vaccinations. I think vaccination is very important, especially because a lot of his followers are from disadvantaged communities who already have bad access to health services. I believe some of his rhetoric … might be one more reason why a family doesn't get to a clinic to get vaccinated. It's a line in the sand that I have to stand behind.
How is your relationship with him?
We'll always be brothers. I'm here for him. I've realised this for myself recently, you have to humble yourself as a man. Especially when you've got kids, you need to learn how to be in service to others, truly. It feels a bit more like my brothers' latest venture. I talk about it with my dad because, as you do, you want to support your kids as much as you can. He's kind of in the middle of us. I've got a lot of love for him and … I've still got time for him. I just think he needs to humble himself and realise that he's speaking with (fire).
This must be difficult to talk about and I’m sorry for bringing it up, but, now that you’re solo, it feels like people might start seeing your last name and asking if he’s a relative. Is that the case?
I’m happy to talk about it because I think it's important to talk about why people might be anti-vaccers. Especially for Maori they have very little trust and faith in our medical system already. We're basically ripe for any kind of alternative narratives that you can give us from the status quo, and I want to include the working poor, they're the same way, bad access and bad experience in the public health system and other systemic things who might lead people who may not have had the privilege of higher education or even travel, travel is such a huge educator. I remember when we were younger, we never went away because we never had any money to go anywhere. Why wouldn't people be looking for an alternative? Unfortunately, my brother's not it, and some of the things he's talking about are (not) in the public's best interests.
I was at your Auckland showcase a couple of weeks ago and you mentioned that you, like me, grew up in Whanganui. It’s a crazy city and it sounds like you have some stories…
We were there for about two years and my dad owned a house there for maybe four or five years. His partner, my step-mother, was a Sannyasa. They had the idea to try and have it as a sort of meditation centre. It had been a working farm in the years previously. All of a sudden it was overrun by this pretty interesting bunch of hippies. The (men) dressed like Black Panthers. My step-mother, the (women) all dressed in monotone one-colour pastel reds.
There’s something about that city that attracts that kind of stuff. I hear these stories about Whanganui all of the time.
I remember the vocalist in dad’s group, he’d managed to buy a limo from somebody. It still had a phone in the back. I don’t think he had any money to have a plan on it. I remember him picking me up from the school down the road, it had like 60 kids, and for my birthday they picked me up in this fucking limo. Just another strange Whanganui happening, man!
Mara TK’s new album Bad Meditation is out now.
The binge-list: Chris Philpott
Welcome to a new section I’m introducing to my newsletters. Instead of me waffling on about all the cool shit you should be bingeing, I’m going to out-source it to my friends. I’ve known Chris Philpott for more than 10 years, back when he used to comment on a blog I wrote at Stuff.co.nz. We became friends, I persuaded him to start his own blog, and it quickly became one of the most popular on the site. These days, he’s Content Planning Lead at Sky TV, but, as you can tell from his selections below, he’s just as opinionated as ever…
I’m really enjoying Kate Winslet’s turn in Mare Of Easttown. Dare I say it, I’m enjoying it even more after SNL’s Murdur Durdur sketch from last week. By the way, I would watch a serious crime drama fronted by Kate McKinnon doing a weird, over-the-top rural accent. (Stream Mare Of Easttown on Neon)
Manchester Orchestra’s latest album, The Million Masks Of God, is a work of sheer beauty. On their sixth album, singer and chief songwriter Andy Hull has gone for intimacy over broad strokes with a collection of songs that experiment with form while being more personal than ever. The recent music video for Telepath encapsulates that feeling perfectly. (Stream the album here)
We’re now three episodes in on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and all three Kiwi contestants – Kita Mean, Anita Wigl’it and Electra Shock – are still in the running for the crown. I feel sorry for Electra Shock: she was easily the best performer in the main challenge, and still ended up lip-syncing for her life again. Hopefully she gets some respect this week. (Stream it here)
Frankie Adams does some of her best work to date (and I say that as a fan of The Expanse, in which she stars as a Martian super-soldier) playing multiple roles in Teine Sā: The Ancient Ones, a horror anthology series based on legends from around the Pacific, which is available on Neon from Thursday. Between this and Creamerie (on TVNZ On Demand), its been a good year for local content.
Lastly, I caught Neil Gaiman's session at the Auckland Writers Festival last weekend, and picked up his book Norse Mythology, his take on the old Norse myths that was released in 2017. I read a big chunk of it waiting in line to get him to sign it. A rare take on an old text that manages to feel fresh, as if you’d never heard it before. Fortunately for me, it’s about three kilos lighter than The Neil Gaiman Reader, his latest hardcover book/concrete block, which was on sale at the festival. I have weak arms so I’ll likely pick that one up as an e-book.
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