“Model Man is about accepting who you are,” producer Mark Brandon, aka Model Man, tells Apple Music. “You can reject certain values, but you are still the product of your upbringing and what you’ve been through.” Creating emotive house and dance-floor-focused music since his 2019 debut EP release City Songs, Pt. I, Brandon pairs the classical music of his youth with the communal kineticism of modern bass music. His eponymous first album is the most powerful manifestation of this combination to date, resulting in tracks including the piano house euphoria of “Sweet Surrender,” the ambient neoclassical piano of “Trappist-1,” and the atmospheric breaks of “Sidewinder.” “I never thought that classical and dance music could coexist, but that realization is what has spurred this album on,” Brandon says. Read on as he goes deeper into each of the record’s tracks.
“Emoclew”
“‘Emoclew’ is ‘welcome’ backwards. I began playing classical music and so I wanted to give a nod to that at the very start. I wanted the record to feel like you're going on a journey, since I'm a big fan of concept albums where you're being sucked into a world that you lose yourself in.”
“Don’t Cry" (feat. Hamzaa)
“I had this irrational fear of flying, and one time I was on a plane, trying to control my anxiety by singing melodies. This was one that came up and when I landed it stuck with me, so I wrote a chord structure around it. Hamzaa brought an amazing energy that completed the song.”
“Sweet Surrender”
“I was having a bit of a gathering at my studio in Essex with some friends, and once they eventually left at about 4 am, I was buzzing and I ended up making ‘Sweet Surrender’ alone. It was weird because I didn't have all of my equipment there, so I ended up recording the piano just on my laptop speakers, since I felt like I needed to get this idea out. It happened really quickly and it was born of the heritage that Essex and Chelmsford has with dance music.”
“Esc (Holding Back)” [feat. Rationale]
“This whole song was pretty much done and I was using cut-up vocal samples for it, but then I thought it might be interesting to explore another element with the track, so I ended up sending it to Rationale. He sent back the top line and it worked really well. He's a great lyricist and he added the key lyric, ‘Holding back the tears,’ which really rounded out the song.”
“Hurt” (feat. Arctic Lake)
“I wrote this track with Arctic Lake in mind. The chords come from my love of Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin—their ethereal qualities. I sent it to her and straight away she sent me back a rough vocal, which I thought was perfect. She then went away and rerecorded the vocal with some posh microphones, but it just didn't have the same feel or energy, so I ended up using the first one with its graininess instead. I didn't want it to sound polished. I’m still wary of music studios because I don't want to sound like everyone else.”
“Trappist-1”
“I didn't want the record to all be heavy, because I have a tendency to sometimes have too much energy. ‘Trappist’ is a step back. This feels like that moment where you can just sit and contemplate, without there being too much of an assault of sound. One of the ways that I try to write is that I'll watch a film and I'll score to it. With this, I was watching [2019 film] Bait and it led to this minimal sound, since I wanted to do something that had a different sonic palette.”
“Wait Till Tonight”
“This was a strange one because it came in two different sessions. I had the first half of the track with a 2-step feel, since I wanted to make something that was banging, and then the second part is more ambient with a lot more texture and atmosphere. I find that happens quite a lot—you’re on a high but then there's always a comedown. That second half is like what you feel on the bus on the way home from a night out, or the next day when you've just got the echoes of the evening.”
“Take Me There”
“This is another ‘journey’ song because it weaves in and out of different parts. One of the ways that I make a lot of tracks is that I'll have a dictaphone on my upright piano and each morning I'll play for about an hour and record everything. Then, I'll listen back to it later on. The middle section and the melody of this was something that I'd just jammed on one of those mornings. I then got loads of different people to sing on this to make it sound like a dense choir. I wanted it to feel like a chant.”
“Distant Memory”
“This always felt like an extension of ‘Wait Till Tonight,’ with those echoes of your memories after a night out. When I was a teenager, I was really into Joy Division, and I feel like this was influenced by the dancier side of them, without me even realizing it. I try and sample every day, and this has lots of things like train sounds and conversations I've had on it. I want there to be as much of me in my music as possible, and that means including real-life events that have been happening to me.”
“Sidewinder”
“I had these chords for quite a while and it wasn't until I played them on a borrowed Prophet synth that they suddenly felt right for this track. It was very much a cut-and-splice situation where there were a ton of vocal samples I used and then in the middle it breaks down and goes into this Beethoven section. That element is really important on the record because it harks back to the music I grew up with as a kid and then rejected—but it always comes back to haunt me.”
“Clarity”
“This piano melody is probably the first thing that I ever wrote as Model Man, but I never got around to recording it. I grew up playing in bands, but after I left them, the only thing I kept in my life was the piano because it was the thing that I was most connected to. ‘Clarity’ came from this idea of just playing the piano and keeping it as simple as possible. When the time was right, I structured the song with the vocal choir samples over that melody.”
“Impromptu No. 1 (Apogee)”
“This is a crazy track. During the early album sessions, I was improvising a lot, and this is based on a series of complete improvisations. It's called ‘Apogee’ because it reaches this peak and then comes back down again. It's like a journey in and out of madness; I'm portraying fear and anxiety initially, and then at the end there is relief. It's also classically influenced, with the middle section being like Chopin or Mozart. It's rave meets classical.”