Start Listening To: Saint Leonard
The paradoxes and puzzles that fuel Saint Leonard's music.
Saint Leonard's name may not be familiar on your playlist yet, but don't be surprised if it's on the tip of your tongue soon enough. With each note he conjures, a collage of impressions forms in listeners' minds. Some whisper of 'genre bending' while others muse on 'jazz-techno Jacques Brel vibes' and there's even talk of 'sex fiend Depeche Mode music narrated by Jeremy Irons.' But, as he humbly points out, when it comes to categorizing his art, your guess is as good as his.
For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
I’m Kieran ‘Saint’ Leonard and I am, I suppose, a kind of a musical expeditionary. My first record was a slightly sideways, singer-songwriter, confessional, lyrical affair. My second was a Los Angeles-Kubrickian odyssey of self-discovery, maximal hedonism and jaws of death revelation. My new record is well…even I am not sure what it is. I’ve heard people muttering ‘genre bending’ under their breath and there’s talk of a jazz-techno Jacques Brel vibe and one person even placed it as ‘sex fiend depeche mode music narrated by Jeremy Irons’, so at this stage, your guess is absolutely as good as mine.
Congratulations on the release of your new track 'Tell Me The Truth' Can you tell us more about the creative process behind the song and the spontaneous recording session in Berlin?
Thank you. 'Tell Me the Truth' is the second song that was spontaneously written and recorded at the Funkhaus studio one foreboding November evening in Berlin. Nathan (Fat white Family) slammed his Portasound Pro into a decrepit East German PA system and dialled up a grizzly Techno-infused beat distilled from the speed-seeping subterranean chambers of the Berghain nightclub as Alex was fingering away at a Mike Garson-esque chord figure on a dusty Weimar Republic piano. We had just been necking hot gluhwein on the twilight banks of the river spree, discussing social politics, quantum mechanics and gentlemen's fine tailoring so I sang the first words that sprang to mind. The song avalanched out and 5 unusual minutes later we had the master track of 'Tell me the Truth' recorded - quick, clean and effortless, all that Germanic engineering had rubbed off on us. I remember laughing and yelling 'Next!' and we cracked on with another song, well, half a dozen more songs for at least another ten hours.
We're intrigued by the concept of the 'Full Moon Singles.' What inspired you to release these singles on consecutive full moons, and how do they tie into your upcoming album The Golden Hour?
I liked the idea of linking the releases to a bio-rhythmic schedule transcendent of terrestrial calendars. I knew I wanted to release three singles in rapid succession over the summer and I was drawn to the idea of there being a global, universal measure of time that I could tie each song to. I also liked how it felt ancient and completely opposite to the mundane, quotidien regimen of the music industry (what’s left of it) Finally, it seemed to capture people’s imagination and of course was easy to remember: Just look up at the night sky, if the moon is full there’s a new Saint Leonard track on the loose
The collaboration with members of the Fat White Family seems to have had a significant impact on your new music. Can you share how this partnership came about and how it influenced the sound of your upcoming album?
That truly was fate, or kismet, manifest destiny, amori fati: call it what you will. I had started recording this album at Paul Epworth’s Church studios just a couple of weeks before the pandemic struck. As things began to shut down I was talking to the engineer Luke and the rest of the crew about how I was inspired by certain Berlin records, one of them flippantly pointed out that Berlin was still open and free of Covid restrictions and this stuck in my mind. Later that evening by pure coincidence I was contacted by a writer who was putting on an event at Berlin’s Neurotitan gallery. She invited me to read from my forthcoming Novel ‘A Muse’ alongside one of my favourite contemporary authors. I jumped at the chance, and on a whim I took it as a sign to move to Berlin and continue working on the album.
The book reading took place on my first night in town, and just as we were sitting down in the gallery the fellow author mentioned to me that he knew ‘The Fat White’ family lads were attending that night. After the reading Alex White and Nathan Sauodi of the band approached me asking about the record I was planning to make. Over several glasses of wine and an intense, wide ranging conversation we agreed to collaborate on this new album. A week later with no artistic preconceptions and having just become fast new friends, I booked a studio in Friedrichshain and we went in for our first fated writing session. We wrote about 11 songs that first night, certainly half of the album in one go. It was a staggering experience, one from which none of us have ever fully recovered.
Working with Alex and Nathan was almost exactly what I had been looking for without knowing what I was really looking for. They both have extremely different tastes and approaches to making music and hugely diverse influences. Somehow though, this convergence of almost diametrically opposed aesthetic sensibilities worked like a charm. Something just clicked and it felt like everyone was bringing their very best to the table. Everytime a song needed something or a change in direction or a new approach one of us seemed to know just the right move, it was actually quite frightening the intensity of the creative simpatico we conjured between us. You can hear it in the tracks like ‘Tell me the truth’ or ‘Bells & Ecstasy’ it was almost as if we couldn’t get the songs recorded as quickly as they were manifesting to us. Eerie business.
Your album The Golden Hour is said to be informed by your travels to India and encounters with spiritual leaders. How did these experiences shape the themes and sound of the album?
After finishing touring my last album I took a long sojourn away from music. I was working on my novel and some of the weirder things I had got caught up with in Los Angeles were still troubling me and so I set out, for want of a better phrase, on a kind of spiritual quest. I did this, tongue in cheek, I thought it was funny to tell my friends I was travelling to the far east to uncover esoteric secrets, and to find the elusive ‘new sound’. The thing is though, what began as a joke turned into a totally transformative reality. I went to the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh and studied with some yogis and fakirs, after a while I became intrigued by the practice of Transcendental meditation. I was recommended by one of these yogis to travel to the remote village of Kesar Devi, which was a 27 hour drive away high up in the foothills of the himalayas. Here I met with a truly remarkable man, a monk who has not left the tiny mountaintop for over thirty years. He imparted to me teachings on philosophy, mediation, art, and a kind of ancient science, but really very, very strange science, and yes, yes, there was even talk of extraterrestrials. It was an intense few months.
We're excited about your upcoming performance at The Windmill Brixton. What can fans expect from this show, and will you be unveiling more songs from The Golden Hour?
I am still very much figuring out how to present this music to an audience and every performance so far has been in essence extremely experimental. The range of styles on the album make it mentally and physically quite demanding as a live event for me and the band. The great thing is everyone in the lineup is a multiinstrumentalist so that enables us to cover almost every possible quantum sonic eventuality. Alex alone plays about six instruments during the set, and the drummer Todd and the Synth-man Steff often switch over roles or jump on the bass alternately. It’s fucking frenetic. I am also really challenging myself vocally to summon the quiddity of these new songs and… I’ve also been studying avant garde dance, so yes, there will be dancing at the Windmill that night.
Your previous album Good Luck Everybody received rave reviews and allowed you to share the stage with iconic artists like Patti Smith and Nick Cave. How did those experiences impact your growth as an artist and influence your current work?
Yes, it was startling and delightful how well received ‘Good Luck Everybody’ was, especially given the intensity and downright weirdness of the recording process…we can get into more of that later. To answer your question about touring, getting the opportunity to play shows with artists who you have adored, studied and lauded for years is a humbling and profoundly educational experience, it is also incredibly fun. With both those artists you mentioned it felt a little like being on a human safari, getting up close to apex specimens of musicianship, - to see them performing at the apotheosis of the form, and to get to ask them questions, things you’ve dreamt of asking for years, details about songs, specifics, the nuts and bolts, the minutiae, it was in a word: pure catnip.
What do you love right now?
Miley Cyrus and the Voynich manuscript.
What do you hate right now?
The Voynich manuscript and Miley Cyrus.
Your connection to Stanley Kubrick's private estate is intriguing. Can you share how this unique recording environment influenced your previous album and if it has left any lasting inspiration for your current work?
God almighty, that is a big question. I can’t go into too much detail here, but suffice to say those weeks of recording at the Kubrick estate were profoundly affecting. The actual environment itself, the bizarreness of the situation, the isolation, the otherworldliness, all radically changed the music, for the better in my opinion.
I had recorded the first version of ‘Good Luck Everybody’ over the course of a year in Los Angeles, working at a variety of different studios and with a range of producers and some extremely gifted musicians. However I was ultimately dissatisfied with the recordings, (there are lots of reasons for that which I won’t go into here) but when the opportunity arose to record in such an auspicious, well let’s face it, such a mythological place as Kubrick’s gaff, well of course it changed the entire outlook of the record, not just sonically but emotionally too. I also committed to recording the whole band live in the room (it was actually the room adjacent to Stanley’s study) with me even doing my vocals live in the room with them… it just… well it brought the songs to life, it felt like they found their own legs, their own automata and just started running around all over the place, behaving as they wished on a whim, misbehaving, altering in unexpected ways, changing guise, shifting identity, just sort of being odd. Yeah, it’s hard to explain, but something was definitely happening in that session, a ritual of sorts.
In terms of its lasting effect on my work? Well that remains to be seen, it’s hard to know the answer to that myself. I know that I was very keen to find a totally new approach to both writing and recording on this new album, and to get away from the traditional band arrangement of Good Luck Everybody, - I didn’t really want to write on a guitar for a start. I also wanted to try and find a sound that wasn’t generated in an orthodox way, and well I certainly found that with Alex and Nathan in Berlin.
If your music could be the soundtrack to any classic movie, which one would you choose, and why?
Casablanca. I am obsessed by that film for many, many reasons. I mean, the way it explores love and the passage of time, and how precariously contingent our lives are, how everything in our lives can turn on a dime, how existence is just a dance to the music of chance. I also love the idea that it is a musical motif that haunts Rick throughout the film too, it is as if the bad guy in the movie is the song itself….the use of diegetic music ‘As time goes by’ - it’s not a soundtrack: the music is actually happening to the characters in the film, it’s so subtle and so affecting. The locations, the lifestyles, the glamour and the jeopardy. Another thing that I find just impossible to get my head around is that movie was actually filmed in 1942, right in the middle of the second world war, when they were filming they had no idea who was going to win… and the Nazi’s could easily have won, that makes the film take on a whole other dimension, and how strange it must have been to film at that time…oh and the performances from Bogart and Bergman: the film is just full of these huge archetypal characters and they reach these almost Homeric depths in the storytelling with the myth of sacrifice that runs throughout the entire film, it is just perfection.
Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for The Golden Hour? How do you envision the album resonating with your audience, and what impact do you hope it will have on your artistic journey?
Well, your hope is always that it connects with people, you spend so long slaving away in the studio, hundreds and hundreds of hours in Berlin and London, and your always just following a hunch, a suspicion, that what you are doing is good and will have a transcendent meaning that will reach the listener. There was no ideology or genre or style that I was aspiring to or abiding with, the only question I kept asking myself was ‘have I ever heard anything like this before, is this new, and is this good?’ - With every song I was trying to make something that I had never heard anything like it before, - of course, as in any artform that is almost impossible because of the nature of influence, and intertextuality, but there was a hope that not a single note we recorded would be in anyway ‘derivative’, and I ‘think’ we’ve achieved that. I also made the decision that I wanted the songwriting to feel very crafted, as in to ensure that the listener would get a sense that consideration and expression of meaning had been carved into every aspect of the song, buried deep in its foundations in the hope that the record rewards repeated and close listening. I cannot wait to see what people make of it, so far, it’s certainly seemed to surprise and excite people. That is good, seeing people get physically excited or shocked when they are listening for the first time, yes that has been immensely gratifying.
This album has been very freeing, by getting as far away as possible from what I was doing on my previous records, in terms of instrumentation and approach to the actual process of musicality. It has also challenged me in sublime ways, which has in turn made me a better musician, and of course the journey is just beginning in terms of presenting this music to the world in the live arena. I think special and unexpected things are going to happen when we are playing this music live. It is so infused with magic, mania, love, excess and aspiration that it can’t not unleash those primal energies on the audience. We shall see, we shall see, as William Blake would say, ‘all things begin and end in eternity’. We are only just finishing mixing the album now, and the other day I was thinking, hmm I am almost ready to start making another record…
