Real Sounds Feature
Ned Ashcroft - Video Interview
By Real Sounds
We were honoured to receive Ned Ashcroft before his upcoming January show with us at The Victoria Dalston! Hot off of releasing 3 EPs and...
We were honoured to receive Ned Ashcroft before his upcoming January show with us at The Victoria Dalston!
Hot off of releasing 3 EPs and a Live Album in 2023, in 2024 Ned Ashcroft is releasing his full debut album, along with a follow up EP "Sleeping With My Ex" and his first studio album "Baby Steps". Played on JazzFM and supported by the likes of The Roundhouse, REAL EVENTS, VierLive and Barknoise Promotions, Ned has been incredibly busy, building a fanbase in London through extensive tour and with his fusion of a "Singer-Songwritery, Jazzy Spoken-Word kinda vibe". Major influences are Bill Withers and Loyle Carner, and Ned has recently sold out venues such as Two Palms Hackney, The Gladstone London Bridge and Dalston Temple of Arts.
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Transcript
Hi, my name's Ned and welcome to Real.
Thank you so much for being here today. First question for you is, in 2023 you released three EPs and a live album which is like really impressive, that's so much. Where do you find all that inspiration? Have you dealt with an artist's block before?
So actually there's also a Lost Tapes album coming out in December.
Oh wow, okay, so that's even more than that.
All of the songs except for a few are about one person, so I guess that's where the inspiration comes from. We were just together and it was pretty intense, and then we weren't together and it was also pretty intense.
Okay, so it's totally around this story then.
Yeah, there's a few songs that people might know, like Burn and Baby, Make Me Feel. Those are the main two on the album that aren't about this person. When I was doing it, I flirted with the idea of it being more broadly about lots of different people. By about halfway through number two I felt like number two was the least successful of the three, and that's just being honest. I think that's because I tried to broaden it out and talk about other feelings, but then it made more sense to own up to the fact that really they were all about one person and just commit to that.
Okay and do you find do you find it's easier to create music when you're putting it into your real life situation or do you prefer do you think it's like easier for you to put that?
At the start definitely yeah because when I started writing stuff it was because I was really sad okay and so it was like a way of dealing with that and then it was then it was more about like love things but recently it's become a little bit more fictional or like I've just started yeah just like increasingly getting a lot of joy out of like kind of writing about other people's lives.
Okay yeah do you find it easier then to do that?
It's just fun it's just yeah it's just different.
Okay yeah what exactly about love do you want the listener to know about like what's the message?
I don't know I'm further down the line I've got an album called Internet Society and if there was to be like a political message to what I'm trying to do that would be that really.
So is it about like the whole?
Yeah it's just about screens and algorithms and I just find them really repulsive so I'd like to yeah I guess three things I'd like to die having tried to do something where I change or like challenge the system that we're living in like and encourage people to or yeah encourage people to kind of try and get back in touch with life and not this artificial thing that we're trapped in. And then I have another album called Not Scared of Summer which is about like mental health because when I was 20 and 21 and 22 my mental health was fucked. So I'd really like to make that for all the young people in the world who are also feeling that. And then I guess the love thing is just like it's just kind of fun and nice. There's no like message. It's good to have sometimes music just for the sake of music.
Yeah, I totally feel that. Sometimes you just want to stand up and sing a song, and there's so much in the world already happening that you just want to listen to something and not think about anything.
Yeah, because sometimes it's nice for it to just be a bit of escapism really, and other times it can be more like fuck the world.
Do you want to share a memorable a memorable experience from one of your live show that maybe stands out to you maybe there's a crazy drunk guy in the crowd or something?
Yeah actually yeah so I'm currently like touring at the moment so like I mean touring like playing it's just in London but the idea is to play is to play like 30 gigs in November so that's this is the 20th I think or the 21st maybe and tonight will be gig number 18 so then I've got to catch up a bit but basically by the time my last gig which is the 1st of December for this tour I would have done like 31 gigs basically and that's been really cool and on Friday night I was playing in Finsbury Park literally just busking outside the tube and first of all my flatmate came and it's so funny my flatmate came and she was just meeting her friend so that was funny in itself because you're busking and then like your mates just standing there and that's funny but then I'm midway through this song called Closing Time and it's like quite an intense one and I'm like going for it and stuff and then and then this girl and this boy out of nowhere just like start shouting each other and like just like outside the tube and she's like honestly she's like crying she's like hitting him he starts shouting back basically I think the story that I got from it was that she had like he'd lost her bag which had all of her stuff in it and then I think potentially like the relationship was also a bit and she was saying like you're always late and so on and it seemed a bit messy and stuff and it was crazy everybody who like had been watching me just stopped and like stared at like these two people like really young they must have been like my age and like just like ostensibly like I don't know it was just mad they just like totally flipped out she was crying she was screaming hitting him and then they like stormed off and then and I was just like I just didn't know what to do I was just like do I
Were they like right next to you
Literally like I don't know five meters away oh and everybody was cracking it was so funny honestly so yeah I would say that was pretty memorable If I can add another one, this is even more nuts so again I think like at the beginning of the month I was playing outside of the Lidl and Walthamstow high street genuinely this is I hope I never I will never forget this so finished playing and it's like two o'clock on a Monday or something and I literally just wrap up start putting my stuff away and this guy comes out of Lidl I don't know if anyone's ever been to Lidl you get like this like freshly squeezed orange juice that you can buy put into like a plastic bottle yeah I believe it all next to mine yeah so he he walked out with like a big one of these and he's sipping it away and a security guy comes up to him and he's like bro you can't take that you haven't paid for that and immediately he flips out he like shouts at him he's like leave me alone and then another security guard comes and like he's much bigger and he like kind of puts his hands on him he's he likes like pushing him back towards the shop being like put that back you can't have that and he flips out even more throws a bottle on the floor runs over to like a bin rips off the plastic casing empties the contents and throws the metal bin at the security guard you guys like what the they like square up to each other the thief throws a punch the guy dodges it blah blah blah then escalation number one this bloke comes up with one of those like really big dogs on a metal lead and he starts like he starts getting up in his face basically being like what the fuck you doing mate chill out and then he like starts like antagonizing his dog like talking to his dog being like get like get him get again this woman kind of crosses the street being like let the dog on him let the dog on him I'm not joking and the guy does and he like goes like go and get him and he lets the dog off the lead and the dog goes for the thief thief starts running around anyway the thief starts running around the circles he picks up one of those like plastic like concrete bollards and tries to hit the dog and then I left the scene and that was happening
But you were like playing this whole time
I just stopped so I was just kind of like sheltering in my kit that's so it's a crazy thing yeah I was like I was just like processing it yeah no I've told that so many times
We talked about death just before do you want to be buried with or without your guitar
Without. I'm not that intense. I'm more of a piano player, really.
What do you want to like just like the piano on
No, it's not that deep. Well, it is that deep, but not like that.
If you could gain a new skill or ability instantly, what would you want?
I'd really like to be more ambidextrous. I'd like to be able to use my left hand more for stuff. I have been tossing up for about a year: only use my left hand like Nadal did
What would you want that for?
I don't know, just life. Maybe I'd be a better human if I could use my left hand more. Maybe one day someone will be falling off a cliff and I can save them with my left hand because my right hand is stuck. There is going to be a time when it would be useful. Or if you lose your right arm.
What's the best piece of advice you heard or from your experience that you think would help other musicians
I think about this a lot and I feel like I've thought about this recently like don't take yourself too seriously oh and like recently I was reading this Ron Carter interview and he was like it's not about you or like you got Smokey Robinson said the same thing it's not about you it's not it's not your music you're just servicing the music so I think it's important like to just yeah just like don't take yourself too seriously like in my opinion like I don't really buy into the whole like I'm an artist thing because I think as soon as you do that you separate yourself from life and normal people and then you kind of you lose something in doing that so I would just say like just try and I mean I don't know anything I don't really think I'm in a position to give advice at this point but yeah a combination of those three sentiments like don't take yourself too seriously service the music not yourself and yeah maybe to those two
Really how would you go on about being a more established like having a bigger show how would you go on about still relating to the people because you said yeah you don't want to take yourself too seriously as a musician or like that how do you think you want to like move on forward
I guess I'll just cross that bridge when I come to it right yeah if if that if I'm lucky enough for that to happen then yeah then I guess I just I don't know really I guess I'll see how I deal with that if that happens I guess just like stay in touch with all the things that have I don't know I don't know oh well something to think about yeah I guess that'd be a nice problem to have
Stereotypically dating a musician is quite not really recommended understood would you agree to that and what do you have to say to defend yourself
That's funny I know a lot of really good musicians like who are nice people and stuff yeah I mean the downside is that they're not it's quite unsociable hours really soon that's an obvious downside and sometimes they are pricks but I guess everybody sometimes is like that
Would you would you feel weird if somebody made a whole song about you like how would you feel about that
Well, I do that about people all the time, so I think I'd be really hypocritical.
If somebody did it to you, you wouldn't really like it?
No, I'd be like, great.
Oh, you would like it? Okay, good. Hungover You: can you dive a bit deeper into how you wrote that?
Totally. It was in June because the cho…