Sohn to play a sold out show at Botanique

"I would recommend getting married and having a child to anybody," producer and singer-songwriter Sohn tells us. He has just birthed his second album, Rennen. "It has tamed the neurotic in me."

"Is it you? Is this the real Sohn?" Actress and supermodel Milla Jovovich was delighted when Chris Taylor, alias Sohn, took to Twitter to thank her for some effusive tweets she had written about his music. And she is certainly not the only person to rave about the poignant, penetrating mix of delicate vocals and crackling electronica with which the Brit has been making his global breakthrough since the release of Tremors.

This success made him a sought-after producer, with a series of collaborations with artists like Kwabs and Banks, and credits on records by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera. And Jovovich ended up directing "Signal", the first track released off Rennen. "I'm not really interested in most music videos. I don't like storylines, like: 'androgynous, 18-year-old boy wanders around a French country house and then dances a bit at the end.' When Milla suggested to film herself in one shot, without emphasising the storyline at all, I immediately realised that the message would be much more powerful. A straight performance without a storyline is so much more effective. Why am I suddenly reminded of Donald Trump?" [Laughs]

After peregrinations from London to Vienna, you ended up in Los Angeles, the capital of the entertainment industry. How?
SOHN: I understand that that description sounds like a good reason not to go and live there. But I had just moved to a new apartment in Vienna and I didn't feel at home there. Over a four-month period, I only spent about four days there: the fate of every touring musician. It was no more than a storage space for my stuff, especially since I had just ended a relationship there. My debut album was mostly about that break-up, even though I hadn't actually realised that yet when it was released.

The chance to record an album in Los Angeles, which came about thanks to collaborations with other artists, and a new love took me on this crazy trip. I understood that my time in Vienna had come to an end and that I had to be open to new things…and a few weeks later, I woke up in Los Angeles and it turned out that I was not only married, but a father as well. [Laughs] I had just let everything happen at the right time.

This crazy trip, both personally and professionally, is expressed explicitly on your second album Rennen.
SOHN: Yes, and that could only happen because I was so busy saying yes to everything. The last three years were one long race, hence the name Rennen. During the recording, I was much less focused than I had been with Tremors, but at that time I didn't know if I would ever make another album, so I stuffed it as full as possible. I don't have to do that anymore. I realised that this would be "only" the second album of many. The pressure was off.

I don't expect fans to love the album from the get-go. I am like that too. I didn't immediately love all of Björk's albums, and she is my favourite artist. Like Medúlla, for example. But I probably wasn't ready for it yet. I only really started appreciating Radiohead's King of Limbs after I heard it performed live. Incidentally, I have spent the last three months immersed in Tom Waits's work. Music comes when you are ready for it.

You are self-confident and you clearly feel more relaxed. Is that why the new songs sound a bit looser?
SOHN: Yes, and I also consciously kept my distance during the recordings, as though I were the external producer of my own album. By observing myself as an outsider, I realised that I shouldn't make my songs too complicated. In the past, I would simply have gone on and on. Apparently, getting married and having a child have tempered my neuroses.

The vocals had to be direct and to retain their raw side. So instead of stacking them with a hundred layers, I decided to settle for ten. While I made Tremors in orchestra mode, Rennen only had a rhythm section. The demos that I had recorded sounded too clean, so I started experimenting with things like moving the microphone two and a half metres away. I wanted the listeners to be able to feel the space.

There are also a few political tracks on the new record, like "Primary". Was that just inevitable?
SOHN: No, I wrote most of the songs in the run-up to the presidential elections. My sense then was already that we are living in a kind of pre-war situation. As a young father, that worries me. Everybody may think that nothing will happen to us, but because so many people are justifiably angry, figures are popping up who will exploit those frustrations.

When the government in countries like the UK tells the working population that they'll have to tighten their belts even more, while the financial crisis was not their fault, the reactions are not surprisingly extreme. People want a real alternative. I think that we can only turn the tide by becoming more engaged. Singing a song for Hillary Clinton is not enough. The problem is that a lot of people live lives without really living. We're too busy looking in the mirror.

On the one hand, we use Facebook to share our outrage about, for example, the motives of Texan lawmakers who have decided that foetuses have to be buried, in an attempt to prevent abortions among people who cannot afford 2,000 dollars for a burial, but three and a half seconds later, we post another selfie and the outrage evaporates.

I recently discovered a project in which you can become the mentor of a child growing up in bad parts of LA. I think these kinds of community-building initiatives can be much more effective in a time when we simply block the things that we don't want to see, and never interact with people who are different than us.

> Sohn (+ William Doyle). 26/02, 20.00, Botanique, Sint-Joost-ten-Node