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Music Interview: Paul Draper

Paul Draper
Images by Tina Korhonen

Paul Draper’s new record, Cult Leader Tactics, is a darkly funny and edgy concept album that’s a satire on the genre of self-help manuals – in fact, the former frontman of ‘90s indie‑art-rockers Mansun has even written one to accompany it.

The four-CD deluxe version includes a 60-page hardback book that’s a guide to getting ahead in work, life and love by acting in a Machiavellian manner and employing dirty tricks and cult leader tactics to do so – it’s a set of rules on how to be become a complete cult in the music industry.

From the ‘70s heavy rock riffing of the album’s title track, which opens the record, to the ‘80s, Tears For Fears-style synth-pop of ‘Dirty Trix’, the anthemic, Mansun-like earworm, You’ve Got No Life Skills, Baby!’, the robotic Human League-down-the-disco of ‘Everyone Becomes A Problem Eventually’, the Beatlesy ‘Annie’, and the epic closer, ‘Lyin Bout Who U Sleep With’, which features a choir of almost 300 fans, Cult Leader Tactics is a brave, adventurous and always interesting record.

Co-produced by Paul ‘P-Dub’ Walton (Massive Attack, The Cure, Björk), it even includes a collaboration with prog-popper, Steven Wilson – the moody, Depeche Mode-meets-Duran-Duran electro-pop song is called ‘Omega Man’, was inspired by lockdown, and is named after the post-apocalyptic 1971 film in which Charlton Heston plays a survivor of a biological plague that has wiped out most of humanity.

Draper is no stranger to cults – Mansun, who split up in 2003, were named after infamous convicted murderer and cult leader Charles Manson and were also known for their obsessive fans.

“We’ve still got them!” he says, speaking to me from his home studio, The Kitchen.

“We toured a lot and we put out a lot of EPs. Although we weren’t a top radio band or we didn’t sell ten million albums, we did sell millions of records and built up a hardcore fanbase. Apart from the ones who’ve died, a lot of them are still there – they have conventions and fan groups.

“Every now and then, one of them will turn up and tie a horse to your front gate! You get all sorts of stuff… There’s a lot of people out there who love that band – our first album sold a million copies.”

SH: This is your first solo album in just under five years. Did COVID hold this record up? How did the pandemic affect it?

PD: The last one, Spooky Action, came out in August 2017 – when I put that record out, I wasn’t going to do any gigs, but it went into the Top 20 in the UK, and sold pretty well abroad, in places where Mansun had a fanbase, like the States, China, Japan, and Continental Europe.

So, I got on the road and toured North America with Steven Wilson, and played in Europe, China and Japan – we did three UK and Ireland tours and sold out a lot of shows. I’d written a lot of songs on the road, so I got in the studio and blitzed it – I got nine songs done towards the end of 2019, but I was a track short. Then COVID kicked in.

It was pretty much a rock album, but I started working remotely, went back and scrapped one song, then worked on three others – ‘Everyone Becomes a Problem Eventually’, ‘Dirty Trix’ and ‘Omega Man’, which is a collaboration with Steven Wilson – in my home production room. I used all my keyboards and drum machines. The whole thing went back 18 months.

I finished the album off during 2000, for a January release in 2022, and now I’m doing a 21-date UK tour. I just want to get out and have a normal life – I’m a jobbing musician. Without that, I don’t have a purpose in life. It’s been tough, but I’ve got there.

So, Cult Leader Tactics turned out a very different record than it was first intended? It’s got some rock songs on it, but it’s also very electronic at times…

Yeah – I was originally going to make a rock record. The first two songs – ‘Cult Leader Tactics’ and ‘Internationalle’ – are both straight-ahead rock songs, but with a few blips and synth bits – that was how I envisaged the album unfolding.

But what happened was that lockdown came and I couldn’t work with my band – we had one session to do, for three or four tracks… I was stuck at home, so, out of necessity, I recorded some electronic tracks. The album does jump from rock tracks to just me on my own, playing synths.

On ‘You’ve Got No Life Skills, Baby!,’ my drummer, John Barnett, plays on it, but I did everything else over it – it’s a hybrid.

I had a look at the video for it on YouTube – I thought the song sounded like something from the ‘80s, but people had commented that it sounded like Mansun’s ‘Stripper Vicar.’ I thought, ‘oh yeah – I’ve just repeated myself again…’

You’ve only so much brain capacity and ideas…’ I just be myself.

“‘Omega Man’ was a remote collaboration between me and Steven Wilson – we were both stuck in our studios, so we decided to do a track about what was going on.

I sent it to P-Dub, who has a home studio called The Loft – it’s in his garden.

Paul Draper
Images by Tina Korhonen

I picked the best songs from the pre-COVID sessions – I went back and changed some of the lyrics, like on ‘Internationalle’, so they were a bit more COVID-related. I added some little touches. That song was about Boris Johnson using Brexit as a career move, but then it morphed and became more about COVID.

Finally, I sent some tracks to Gam [Gamaliel Traynor], who plays keyboards with me live, and is in a band from Peckham, called Sweat, and asked him to add some strings.

He recorded them and sent them back – P-Dub mixed them in. Gam also did a medley of the melodies and the root chords of the songs, so we dropped that onto the album. What started out as a straight-ahead rock record became quite an eclectic one sonically, skewed by the whole COVID experience.

Let’s talk about some of the songs in more detail. The title track, which opens the album, has a real ‘70s rock guitar riff – it sounds like Led Zeppelin…

On the demo, I had this riff that was generic rock-sounding, but when we recorded it with the band, my guitarist, Ben [Sink] played it through a 1970s Fender Bassman amp and it immediately sounded like Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple. I wasn’t keen on it – I thought it was too ‘70s rock…but it just happened. It evolved.

On ‘Dirty Trix’ and ‘Everyone Becomes A Problem Eventually’ you use vintage synths and drum machines. Do you collect old electronic gear?

Yeah. I’ve just bought a couple of things off eBay – an old Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard, which sounds amazing, and a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine. I’m always buying odd bits – I have Moogs and Oberheims.

P-Dub collects Italian synthesizers, like Siel, so there’s a lot of those on the album. He had an Italian wife once, so there must be some connection there.

The main drum machine I used on the album was a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks – I’ve always used drum machines.

Mansun was an odd band – we were a synth-pop rock outfit, but our record company wanted us to sound like a Britpop band. We were lumped in with all that. We were a guitar band from that era, but we always had lots of keyboards on the records, so we weren’t that fashionable. I’ve not been in fashion – then or now – so I’ve just kept in my own bubble and made a living from it. I still do it because I enjoy it.

When I was in Mansun, I was a gear head – I used to make lists of things I wanted to use, like specific reverbs and delays. I tried to make something sound like a David Bowie drum kit from 1972 – I like sonics, studios and recording, as well as putting the songs together. I can get involved with the mixing, the mastering and production, as well as playing.

In the box set, we’ve done a 5.1 stereo surround mix of the new album, on a DVD, with the Hi-Res audio files. I love doing that – if you’ve got the gear, the time and the inclination, it’s amazing.

I’m a huge fan of immersive audio. In the past, it never took off, but you had to have a lot of money for it – a hundred grand minimum to wire-in a stereo surround sound home cinema experience in your basement. It was the preserve of the rich, but now, throw up a few Bluetooth speakers around the lounge, have the TV as your main thing, and you’re in business.

When we’re doing our surround sound mixes and you sit in the middle, it’s phenomenal.

My co-producer, engineer and mixer, P-Dub, mixed the entire Björk catalogue into immersive sound, which took him a couple of years. It’s off the scale.

How did the cult leader concept for the album and the book come about?

On Spooky Action, I’d exorcised my demons of coming out of my rock band, so I thought I’d then go back to the start and do what I did on Mansun’s Attack of the Grey Lantern [debut album] which was a satirical, Monty Pythonesque dark comedy on my life experiences.

Whereas Attack of the Grey Lantern was my life experiences as a young person, Cult Leader Tactics is my adult life. It’s a fictitious, satirical dark look at a self-help manual – how to get on in life by being a massive cult!

It gets really sinister, but at the end of album, it says that if you live by those rules, it will be a disaster for everyone, so just go with peace and love, man – it’s the only way.

The last song on the album [‘Lyin Bout Who U Sleep With’] is the epilogue.

I wrote the book – some of it wasn’t publishable… When my manager and my record company read it, they said, ‘You can’t put that out as it is – you need to put a disclaimer in it.’ So, it says it’s satirical and isn’t intended to be taken seriously.

Cult Leader Tactics is a satirical play on the idea of a concept album – it’s a parody.

I’ve come out the other side of the COVID lockdown with a record that’s my all-encompassing story of what happened to me – it’s about getting screwed over and if you try and play it straight in this world, you’ll end up nowhere. But, at the end of the day, I say it’s better to be an idiot, meek or a fool than a Machiavellian sociopath in your chosen field or in society in general. Let there be love.

You’ve always had a thing for cult leaders, haven’t you? Mansun were named after Charles Manson…

Yeah – and we did songs about L. Ron Hubbard, although some people would argue about whether he’s a cult leader…

I was looking at Jim Jones [the Jonestown Massacre]. What he did wasn’t nice, but he looked pretty snappy, in black, with a pair of shades on, so in the video I did for ‘You’ve Got No Life Skills, Baby!’, I wore some sunglasses – I went on eBay and Googled ‘Jim Jones sunglasses’ – but when the video went live, some people said I looked like George Michael…

Maybe Mansun were a bit Jim Jones/George Michael. I should’ve stopped trying to be Johnny Rotten and embraced my inner Jim Michael… or maybe George Jones… I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of an indie George Michael – careful what you wish for.

Who’s the biggest cult in the music industry?

I’ve met a few, but they’d probably all say the same about me.

Music Interview: Paul Draper, Music Interview: Paul Draper

Paul Draper’s Cult Leader Tactics is out now on Kscope.

pauldraperofficial.com

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