Bullion on Collaboration, Dressing to Impress, Movies, and Hating the Music Industry

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers also receive a Baker's Dozen playlist every Friday featuring songs I've been listening to, along with some criticism written around them—and in April, I'm running a month-long 25% off sale on annual subscriptions. That's $22.50/year instead of the usual $30. Grab it here.

Speaking of paying subscribers: If you're a regular Baker's Dozen reader, you might 'memba a few installments ago when I mentioned that I wanted to have Nathan Jenkins, aka Bullion, on the newsletter at some point. Well, lo and friggin' behold! I think Nathan is probably one of the decade's most distinctive collaborators and producers at this point, I'm either seeking projects out that he's involved with or listening to something that I think is good and asking myself, "Is this a Bullion production?" and confirming it with a quick Google. He's just that good.

Nathan's got a new album out this week, Affection; I think it's his best yet, so it was a joy to get on the horn with him a few months ago and shoot the shit about all things Bullion.

What's your creative space looking like right now?
It's a studio, kind of—the first studio I've had that wasn't at home. I've always been in home studios in various forms over the years until 2020. I do take pretty good care of it. I keep it very clean and organized, and I buy stuff for it quite a bit—but with a one-in-one-out policy, so it doesn't look too busy. It's a lot of carefully chosen bits of equipment, but I try to keep it from looking too technical or -professional. I get a bit turned off by studios like that. I like to be surrounded by sort of homely things. There's sort of fabric wall hangings and pictures up, but I haven't got, like, a gamer chair. That type of studio doesn't make me want to go anywhere near music. Whatever works for people, but it's just not for me.

You started working in your studio space during the pandemic. Some people worked on music from home more during that time, whereas I've also talked to people whose practice or studio spaces ended up being a refuge from being cooped up at home.
I was living in Lisbon until the beginning of 2020, and then I came back to London—but I had a a studio here that I was sharing with someone even while I was living in Lisbon, because I was coming back quite a lot. When I moved, back I just took the studio on myself and tried to turn it into a similar space to what I had in Lisbon, because my Lisbon studio was in my apartment and it was very homely with parquet floors and a pretty noisy set of kids just above it. The kids living above was stressful for me.

Having a studio at home has always been quite a charming thing, but the reality in various places I lived in has been that it's just too close to to home. That separation, for me, is really essential. I've also started wearing smart clothes when I go to the studio—putting on a shirt just suddenly felt like the right thing to do. It changes my approach to how I treat my work day.

I started doing that recently while working from home—not often, but sometimes I'll put on a polo instead of a T-shirt and be like, "Ah, I feel a bit more serious today."
It seems like a slightly tragic thing, but I actually think it does make a big difference, depending on who you are. For me, especially when I'm working with other people, it puts me in a mode of focus and concentration that I'm not necessarily in when I'm at home.

I love this record as well as the work you've done with other people in recent years—and, I also really enjoyed your cover of David Bowie's "Where Are We Now?" that you did a few years ago, which drove home to me that you're able to take pretty much anything and re-contextualize it within the sound you work in. Tell me about the evolution of your sonic style as Bullion.
A lot of how my sound has changed over the years is due to working with other people more—understanding shortcomings and strengths, and finding better ways of working. It keeps me learning for my solo material, and for ,y production for other people as well. So much of it is a social thing as much is technique—communication, confidence, and allowing people to be comfortable enough to express themselves creatively around me. It teaches me a lot about what I want to put across in my music and sound.  

It's all just collaborative. I don't think it's possible to overstate how important that is. It's essential to work with other people to get better. I let other people in, then I also just stubbornly go my own way when I am on my own.

Tell me about what you've learned about yourself as a person through collaboration.
It's definitely quite revealing. I don't want to be too hard on myself, but it does highlight shortcomings more than anything else. It brings up insecurities and concerns that I have about I'm coming across while I'm working. I feel quite observed in how how confident I am about my ideas.

One thing I've realized is that I need to work hard to compromise. I feel pretty sure of what I want to do and say with music. I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but I know that I feel quite strongly about doing it. It takes a lot of energy to overcome just wanting to be a bit bloody-minded and and push through my own vision. Working with other people is a lesson in compromise and sacrifice.

I guess I should put across a positive side as well. My hope is that people feel that I'm working at that, and that we do reach a happy medium together. I've done enough albums with people where they haven't just walked out in the middle of it because it's been so uncompromising. I've found a way to get results out of good working relationships, and it's as exciting as it is daunting to work with people on their own songs.

I know how hard it is to let other people into your work, and I've never been produced by another person, so that must add another level of intensity for the artist, knowing that you are handing over quite a bit of autonomy to someone else. I really respect how how trusting people are with their work to me.

When I interviewed Avalon Emerson last year, she spoke highly of working with you. Her record carried a similar sonic stamp to a lot of your work that, to me, sounds like a bit of an influence: Arthur Russell. You capture his sound in a very specific way, it's uncanny. Is that a real influence, or more something that's been imposed upon you notionally?
I've had a bit of a tricky time with it, because I obviously love Arthur Russell. He's definitely, subconsciously or unconsciously, someone that that I've emulated a bit over the years. But there's so much other music that's really influential for me. I guess it's something people recognize, because it comes up up a lot. It's hard for me to really say what it is that shows up in my own music, because I'm not the best judge of of how my own music sounds.

But his attitude to songs and production, particularly in terms of groove and melody, real simple pop ideas that don't stick around for too long...I love how throwaway a lot of of his songs can be. He wears them so lightly. That's something I can really feel when i'm working on my own music.

I suppose he's a name that comes up often. It's hard not to be slightly wanting to deviate from that comparison, because there's a lot of other music that's getting channeled through a lot of people's work that probably isn't attributable to him. Not that I'd want to take away from how massive his influence obviously is. It's just hard to avoid that comparison because he was also so broad in the music he made. He covered a lot of ground, and as soon as you put a cello on something, you're in the realms—and I am drawn to the cello, so that's bound to happen.

What about reaching inside yourself to communicate emotionally through your lyrics? What's that like?
It's really hard to think about lyrics, because it's one of those things that sort of happens automatically. Lines will materialize in the shape of melodies, and then it's words to fit them quite quickly. Then I'll write lyrics around that line. A lot of it is from poems, films, or a little book that I've been reading. I'm not the best reader, but I've got a handful of books that I do go back to, and I'll just find a single line that jumps out and it'll be there. There will be experiences that I've had that can fit around that one line and feel a bit more personal to me. I try not to be so tied to music when I'm outside of the studio, so there's enough there for me to draw on.

In the last few years, when I leave the studio I actually don't really listen to music. It's kept very contained in the studio. I try and just live a pretty normal life out—not normal, but I'm just more interested in things away from music when I'm not in the studio. That makes it easier to have ideas about lyrics. That liberation of domestic life and studio life is important for the material.

Do you watch a lot of movies?
I do, quite a bit yeah. I wouldn't say I'm any kind of buff, but I do love films. I still keep up with new films as much as going back through the the archives, similar to music in a way —although I'm a bit more inclined towards contemporary music lately.

What have you seen lately?
The film that really stuck with me that I've seen in the last year or so is Cold War.

I loved that one.
Yeah, I just found it unbelievably romantic and moving. As I'm sure you know, some films, the atmosphere just stays with you. Coming back to music from that, "atmosphere" is the word that keeps coming up for me, and having finished the album, I've been reflecting a lot on what I'm trying to put into my own songs. What I love about other peoples' music, and art in general, is a sense of atmosphere. It's hard to describe exactly what that is, but there's some kind of atmosphere to that film.

As far as records, Joe Mubare is someone who I've listened to a bit over the last two or three years. He's got a record called Private Scream that sums up the kind of atmosphere that is doing it for me a lot.

Tell me about your experience in the music industry thus far.
I try to avoid the music industry as much as possible without being completely naive about my place in it. What it does for me, or for people I work with...what can I say about it that's personal?

The scenes within music are something that I've never been drawn to. I've never really wanted to be part of a scene. I've deliberately gone out of my way to make music away from any scenes. Those scenes remind me of the fact that we're part of an industry, somehow. When I'm doing music away from feeling like I'm part of something, it feels way more romantic, and I like the naivete of existing in a bit of a, a vacuum—even though I'm the sum of all these influences.

I'm not claiming massive originality here, but as I get a glimpse into the industry side of things, it makes me not want to make music. It doesn't add anything to my experience, or what I want to express. It's just a means to to get music heard. That's what it comes down to for me. I haven't even really exposed myself to conversations about the music industry apart from hearing anecdotally from people who I work with. The fact that I don't perform and tour has probably sheltered me a little bit from a big part of the music industry. I'm afforded a little bit more of a naive point of view. I can only imagine how it can be to be fully chewed up by it.