Old Dreams – An Interview with Composer Richard Birkin

Richard Birkin is a recording artist and composer for TV & Film. His work has been recorded/performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra quartet, ISKRA Strings and Sinfonia Viva players; recorded at Abbey Road Studio 2 and Nils Frahm’s Durton Studio; featured in the Sky Atlantic/Canal+ series The Young Pope starring Jude Law; and licensed by Armani, BBC Radio 4 and NASA.

I caught up with Richard to talk about his early musical experiences, how he started writing and recording and the making of his two new songs  “Old Dreams” and “Hiddenness”. 

CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you as a kid and what artist or band did you enjoy the most?

Richard-My earliest musical memory is seeing a music video with people bouncing on a trampoline and loving the song. Until YouTube came along I would’ve said the song was ‘Everybody Wants to Rule The World’ by Tears for Fears, and not ’True Faith’ by New Order. So Tears for Fears must be the earlier musical memory that got brain-mashed together when True Faith came out.

I used to tape soundtracks off the TV using the mic on my little kid’s boom box. Quantum Leap, Jurassic Park. That kind of thing. Loved listening to the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon and taping it and highlighting my favourite songs of the week. I seem to remember Living on My Own by Freddie Mercury being highlighted.

I really adored this Romeo and Juliet Prokofiev tape that we had in the car. I was obsessed with Dance of the Knights off that.

I started taking guitar lessons at the time that Crossroads by Bon Jovi came out. Then my neighbour brought round the Some Might Say single by Oasis and that was that. Any hope of thinking about anything else but music went bye-bye that day. Then Morning Glory came out. I picked up any paper-round going so I could afford to buy Supergrass and Radiohead. Then the latter did OK Computer. Another lightning moment. These are, perhaps, very obvious. Then I got a job in a petrol station and the guy whose shift I took over from was listening to Steady Diet by Fugazi. I skipped school the next day to go and buy Red Medicine, then skipped school the day after to buy In On The Killtaker.

Sorry, this is a long answer.

Godspeed You Black Emperor were in the NME live pages and I liked the sound of that after Fugazi and Sonic Youth, so that was me off on a post-rock mission.

I caught the UK premiere of Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros on late night Channel 4, completely by accident. I think I might’ve just finished my A-levels so no skipping school was needed to go buy that.

The next most significant would be my best friend Aaron making me a mix CD with Johann Johannsson and Max Richter on it. Tracks from IBM:1401 and The Blue Notebooks. It blew my mind that people were making orchestral music for art, rather than soundtracks or recording classical music. The thought just hadn’t occurred to me.

You know how when punk came along it had never occurred to a new generation that they could just form a band and do it? Well, hearing those two records was my punk rock moment in the early 00’s. A moment that made a young punk realize he could, if he wanted, write and record music for strings.

 

CMM-When did you start playing music and writing songs?

Richard-The week that Some Might Say by Oasis came out. My neighbour heard me practicing guitar after my first lesson where I had learned three chords. He brought the CD round and basically said “I can’t play an instrument but I want to be in a band to play this music”

Needless to say after the first listen so did I. It said “All songs by N. Gallagher” on the back so we figured they must have written the songs too. So we wrote a song using the three chords that I knew. I can’t remember what it was called but I remember how it went.

First proper songs started coming around 16-years old. Influences broadened, practiced every day, wrote and wrote and wrote mostly awful songs until they stopped being completely awful.

So yeah, 13 when the Oasis thing happened…a couple of years playing mainly Oasis covers…15 formed a band and recorded a demo…16 saved up and bought a 4-track and stared recording acoustic songs.

There was always a piano in the house. I got to Grade 1 when I was about 8 or 9 but stopped taking lessons because of waning interest. But it was always there.

CMM-You recently released two new songs “Old Dreams” and “Hiddenness”. What was the writing and recording process like? What gear and instruments did you use during the sessions?

Richard-I used my piano that’s in my studio (converted garage). I only have one pair of decent microphones so I used those. They were made in Russia by Oktava. They go through my D.A.V. Electronics stereo pre-amp. That’s it.

The writing process was different for each. Old Dreams was first written around 2011, but never properly finished. It kept popping up over the years but I was never happy with it. So I just finished it really quickly and that’s what I released, pretty much the week after I finished it.

Hiddenness was really easy. It wrote itself pretty much. Again, a couple or three weeks before I released it.

There’s a bit of backstory about why I’m working this way now. For years I really burnt the mental, emotional and physical candle at both ends trying to make a living from music. After lockdown I had a really major breakdown. Complete burnout. Utter wreckage. So I basically gave up on music – became very wary of it. I knew that it was in my DNA to make music, but I made a conscious effort not to force it. And that brings us to the present day, where I’m a lot happier, pretty much recovered with a healthier relationship with music and with the world. And I felt like I just wanted to finish and share as much music as possible this year, rather than working away in solitude and secrecy until I had an album…which with me can take months or years where tracks get forgotten about along the way for no real reason.

 

CMM-If you could do a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?

Richard-Bruce Robinson. A film adaptation of his book The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman.

 

CMM-Anything coming up? New recordings or live shows?