Interview: BBC Music Magazine

Interview with Michael Beek from BBC Music Magazine. We talked about early musical influences, writing process, Japanese identity and my piece for the first night of the Proms, Hallelujah Sim. From May 2024.

Read the full interview here.

Excerpt

'I was listening to a lot of Coltrane, free jazz and electronic producers. I had quite a segregated view of those things, like they were separate things that I wasn’t allowed to mix. But gradually I let myself do whatever I wanted, and it felt more natural. It’s like I was allowing myself to lean in to all those sides of me that I felt I had to surpress. It was a nice process to go through.

. . .

A lot of my writing method is based around my fingers and what feels good. Sometimes it’s nice to start off by improvising and lock into a groove that feels right, and then that’s the basis for something you refine later. I prefer to go from moment to moment and ask myself, ‘Is this interesting to listen to?’ So it’s a moment-to-moment feeling, deciding whether it’s enjoyable to listen to, as if I was an audience member, not knowing anything about it but experiencing it on a purely sensory level.

. . .

'I have this weird insecurity about the Japanese side of my identity, but it’s interesting to use in music. Japanese words sound more like sound objects to me; I really like singing in Japanese, because you have that layer of ambiguity – you’re saying something, but it’s not clear what you’re saying. Japanese Pop is an aesthetic I got interested in and lean into – that kind of sparkly, flashy, hyper-consumerist landscape of internet memes and saturation and the dazzling quality of it all. 

. . .

Having my music in the First Night of the Proms is a bit surreal. They asked if I wanted to write a short-ish piece for the BBC Symphony Chorus and said I could add other elements, like electronics, percussion or strings if I wanted. I like the idea of applying structures from videogames or films, narrative ideas, onto the music. So in Hallelujah Sim. there’s a voice in the electronics part, sort of like a narrator, telling the chorus to do certain things, like stages of a videogame, and they can only progress through the piece once they’ve completed that task. There are different types of ‘Hallelujah’ and each one is like a different level in the game.