Interview: LED Illusions

A few weeks ago I came across Glasgow via London based 21 year old all rounder Kid Adrift.

Somewhat of an A&R's wet dream, his dub infused pop has been a huge hit on BBC Radio 1 and 6Music, with at least four of their DJs giving his track Red, Green and Blue airtime inside a week.

Given the fact that he's a bit of an elusive character and there isn't much known about him at the moment, I decided to try and find out a little bit more.

Let's get straight to business, what, or who is Kid Adrift?
Good question! I heard a few rumours that people think I'm on a boat, or that I'm a music producer gone riot or something!? It might be a bit of a secret alter-ego I suppose.

A lot of people probably know me as this kid who appears at electro clubs around Glasgow and London and then disappears for several days at a time. But they don't know that I'm Kid Adrift. I like having some secrets.

What's the thought process behind Kid Adrift?
I started out playing a few different instruments and got pretty into harmony and orchestration and stuff. But I recently spent quite a lot of time down in London with a guy called Kulture who is on Skream's new label.

He's basically this guy my age but he's like some wise sage or something. He'd lock himself away in his house for weeks on end with philosophy books and when he mixes he closes his eyes and touches the speaker to feel what the bass will be like in a club, it was all quite intriguing as he was making sounds that no-one else even knew how to make.

Me and him and some friends would go on like 40 mile walks around the country-side and just fire ideas back and forth, it was inspiring times. Basically all that probably re-wired my classical/pop side into whatever it is I'm doing musically now...

BBC Radio 1 seems to be all over you and has been for a while now, how
did that come about?
I just handed in a CD of the single to Vic Galloway who is the Radio 1 DJ up in Scotland and he opened his show with it and soon after he tipped it to Huw Stephens and Tom Robinson, then Huw tipped it and Nick Grimshaw started playing it on his show and suddenly it started appearing all over the place.

When Record of the Day picked up on it it all went a bit mental! It was just in the space of 6 weeks or so. Apparently it's been on the Radio in America as well. BBC Introducing are great people they're really helping me out with it all, even with advice and stuff. It all took me a bit by surprise, I'm almost like whoa hold up let me actually get my first CD out everyone!

So what does the next 6-12 months hold?
The first EP will be out very shortly, I should have a release date in the next couple weeks. Then me and the band are going to hit the road with the Live show which I'm really excited about.

We got offered sets at Glastonbury and Reading only 2 months into the whole thing which feels pretty mad but we're not going to launch into anything before we've done some more warm up gigs! We've done some pretty mad shows before in previous bands using laptops and samplers etc and we want to create the same feel about it.

I hear you're working on a remix at the moment, can you divulge who it is or is it a secret?
Yes, I'm really, really excited about that. There's a couple I'm working on, just finished the first one today actually. An electro-pop band that I really like somehow heard about my stuff after Record of the Day featuring Red, Green and Blue and next thing I know I had the multi-tracks in my inbox. I've basically taken a pretty light poppy song and made it pretty dark and subversive. I feel all guilty now. All will become known soon....

Is remixing something you're going to be doing more and more of or is
the artist side of things taking precedence?
The songwriting will be the main thing for me always but I'm going to do as much remixing as possible. I like taking very poppy stuff and just adding a dark streak to it. I don't know where that comes from...

When I was a kid I ripped off Santa's beard at the local village hill in front of all the kids to let them see he was a fake. Something satisfying about taking something really twee and breaking it down in front of everyone.

Are you in to new music at all? If so, who's got your ear at the moment?
This guy Son Lux on Anticon. He's writing songs that basically just tear my whole world apart and rebuild it in the space of 3 minutes, breathtaking.

Well, I did say that I tried.

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Check out the much hyped track in the widget below, the lyrics for which can be found at his website. Also, look out for a Guest Mix from Kid Adrift in the coming weeks, it's definitely going to be something special.