INTRODUCING: AKA

Fresh from the launch of AKA, which is the new solo project from The Mysterines’ Callum Thompson It Grows On Trees (Money) introduces a wiry, surreal new world of grungy guitars, hip-hop-informed production and offbeat visual storytelling. With debut shows underway and more music incoming, Callum talks identity, chaos, self-production and building the strange universe of AKA.

AKA feels like a clear shift from your work with The Mysterines — what pushed you to start this project, and what does it allow you to explore that you couldn’t before?

It wasn’t a conscious thing at all really. I'm always writing and working on tunes and I started realising over time that what I was doing was a bit different to the other stuff. I started to find my identity with my production style a lot more after years of figuring it out, so when I felt like I could get stuff done self-sufficiently I was like "ok let's keep going".

“It Grows On Trees (Money)” touches on identity and the “surreal becoming real” — can you unpack what that idea means to you in practice?

I think we live in strange times, and half the time I feel like the odd one out in thinking a lot of what we call normal these days is actually pretty messed up. The social media age is a weird place to be in, and the song just makes a joke out of all the silly things we see every day. I watched a video recently about a new jacket potato place that opened in Liverpool, and people had camped out for days just to try it out . The queue was like 4 blocks long .. I mean how good can a jacket spud be? To me that's really surreal but I’m sure all of that gang in the queue really believed in it.

The track blends grungy guitars with more playful, sample-led elements — how did you land on that sound, and what were you drawing from sonically?

I'd gotten into all the old-school hip-hop producers when making all these tunes, so I always loved the idea of making guitar music that had a kind of hip hoppy blend. I can't play the drums so had no choice other than to sample or use MIDI but that shaped my sound a lot because I can literally make a song top to bottom with just my laptop and a stylophone and a guitar. That's what most of these songs were made with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfi2Fnq1vmQ

You wrote and produced the single yourself — how does having full control shape the end result compared to working in a band setup?

Well, you can move a lot faster that's for sure. I'm erratic with my ideas and I like to move crazy quick, which is why using the MacBook mic is so good for me because I can have a full song mapped out in 10 minutes. Then I can go back and fine tune things. Ben Harper who is one of my best pals, and a talented musician and producer, helped me clean up my mess a bit with it all. He knows the all the As and Bs were as I’m still learning to put the letters together. I'd go with the song and all my produdction ideas, and he’d help me put it all together and make it all a bit less trashy.

The video leans into chaos and humour — how important is that sense of character and visual world-building to the AKA project going forward?

Something I figured out early was that I wanted to create a world around the music and one that wasn’t too serious or too sensible. The music was made in that way so it wouldn't have made sense for me to try and make a serious video. All my favourite music videos are the ones with mad ideas and that makes me laugh. Spike Jonze is my guy for that, he has done it so well, so I was kind of going for that world.

I wanted a veil away from the whole "solo project, all eyes on me, cue jazz hands" moment, so this whole project is a toy with identity. It’s like I’m trying not to be me without being anybody else and I think the video does that well.