Below, you can read our interview with Ian Brown of DIB Digital and listen to his album It Is What It Is. Check out our full music review of It Is What It Is here.
Q: Great to be speaking with you, Ian! You’ve lived, studied, and worked all over the world, but “Solid Ground” reflects your return to Edinburgh. How has coming home shaped your music and creativity?
A: Coming home has given me time to think and reflect about my life and to use music and art to express myself in a more soulful and articulate way. Whether it has helped to shape my music and creativity I’m not sure.
Q: Each song on “It Is What It Is” is paired with a painting you created. Can you walk us through how the visual and musical elements of your art speak to each other?
A: With my music taking shape, I thought it was the perfect time to start painting again and to see if I could connect the two art forms. I had studied Computer Art in San Francisco and worked on several digital art projects – with some including musical soundtracks. But I had never used oils in painting. Oil is such an organic medium – like music. For each song, I created promotional covers using different paintings (for Distrokid and Spotify), and then short animations of the paintings using the AI video platform, Kaiber, to promote the songs on social media. That was a great way to see the paintings come alive with the music. For example, the “Get Away” track is linked with a painting based on a photograph taken in a traditional “blackhouse” on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Highlands. It was the perfect fit for a song about a refugee trying to escape from war and conflict.
Q: You’ve described your genre influences as intentionally wide-ranging, from bossa nova to glam rock, Hot Chip to Harry Styles. What draws you to such a broad palette, and how do you make it feel cohesive as a single album?
A: When you’re young you want to be cool and go along with whatever is in fashion. When I was growing up musical trends changed so quickly. One minute you were into glam and then punk and then new wave and then indie and then dance….And then when I got older I started to explore jazz (like Bossa nova) and the great songwriters from the past (like Cole Porter). I think the connecting factors are the song and melody. I just love a good song. And if the song makes me happy and want to dance even better! Hopefully, the quality of the songs on the album help to create a feeling of cohesion – along with the production and arrangement.
Q: One of the standout aspects of your story is that you stepped away from music for a long time. What pulled you back in, and why now?
A: I never really stepped away from music entirely. I worked part-time for a music company in Jakarta, Indonesia, for several years which included making a successful DJ album based on the American Billboard charts. In Mongolia I co-hosted a successful Saturday night live radio show for 18 months. For a while I thought I could be part of the music scene by playing other people’s music. I also attempted on many occasions to improve my own musical ability on guitar and piano but I never felt I was good enough. It was only when I came back to Edinburgh around 5 years ago when things started to change. Firstly, I reconnected with an old Japanese friend who I knew in Jakarta. He had started to compose again after a lengthy break and asked if I wanted to write English lyrics and sing on his tracks. I did the vocals in GarageBand here in Edinburgh. He then did the final mixing and arrangements using Logic in Japan. The results were received favourably by our friends so we ended up doing around 4 or 5 songs in total. During this time I started taking piano lessons in order to learn music theory. It was during this period that I began to think I could write my own songs – without necessarily having to be a brilliant musician myself!
Q: You collaborated with artists like Kyle Falconer and Callum Beattie during your time at La Sierra Casa songwriting camp. What was that experience like, and how did it push your songwriting forward?
A: It was a great experience being able to meet and collaborate with Kyle and Callum in the warmth of southern Spain – along with many other talented musicians and producers. It was the perfect place to write music. Normally, it takes me quite a long time to finish one song but there I managed to come up with four (which are included on the album). Callum is from Edinburgh and has lived and travelled around the world. We talked about our hometown and reasons why we would always come back. He talked about how he starts composing on his guitar and how the lyrics start to flow around the same time. This is how Solid Ground evolved. Kyle helped on the Imposter Syndrome track. It was fascinating watching him use his guitar to improve the chorus and make it more dynamic. I took these inputs from Callum and Kyle back to Edinburgh where I was able to complete the songs.
Q: From “Golden Glow” to “Get Away,” you use very different styles and sounds. Do you start with a concept, a melody, or a feeling? What does your songwriting process usually look like?
A: It usually starts with a reference track based on a feeling or concept. I think the first one was Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. I took it to my teacher and said I wanted to create that type of dance vibe – with its strong bass line. That eventually led to two more reference tracks – Hot Chip’s Over and Over, and Shirley Bassey’s History Always Repeating Itself. This resulted in the first track on the album, Feedback. The reference track for Golden Glow was Harry Styles ‘ As It Was. This time I focused more on the melody but it also has a dance feel to it. Get Away was a bit different. I had already come up with the concept of a refugee and wanted to create drama in the song by exploring the Ukrainian and Russian scales. (I think they are called the octatonic scales.) Again my teacher helped me with those and to arrange the orchestration. I also wanted to see if I could write something which moved from 4/4 common time to 3/4 waltz. For Cupboards I came up with the lyrics first and then wrote the melody around them. This was probably the one that took the longest to complete. For Scotlandia I wanted to write a Scottish anthem for the 21st century! The concept was clear but for this song I wanted to use a gypsy jazz style as reference rather than a specific song. Smiling was the easiest song to write. It only took 30 minutes while relaxing near the pool at La Sierra Casa. We had had a session in the morning focusing on the Roy Orbison song, Crying. For some reason this then quickly turned into Smiling with a Bossa Nova beat. One of the producers then quickly put it all together as a demo with a Spanish guitar instrumental. For Class, the concept was to use a Thomas Hardy novel and a Stevie Nicks style (like Rhiannon) to focus on how people use the word “class” in different ways in the UK.
Q: What was your first instrument? Do you still have/play it?
A: My mother gave me a guitar when I was about 14 or 15. It had steel strings so it was very difficult to play and actually put me off playing. I had to wait another 8 years or so before I picked up another guitar – a very simple guitar when I was living in Indonesia. Some Indonesian friends then encouraged me to learn chords and some classic rock songs, and so the journey started then I suppose. A couple of years later I bought a Roland keyboard – which I still play today. I have around 5 or 6 guitars including the very first one. My major musical frustration is with my guitar and piano ability or lack of….
Q: Perhaps in some unspecified amount of time, your musical career explodes in the best of ways. What does that look like for you?
A: If my songs could be recognised as good songs used in some way to promote my hometown or country that would be cool; or used as a soundtrack in a movie or ad. Or if Taylor Swift would like to record them….Or if I could play Bossa Nova somewhere in Brazil….Or write the definitive history of popular music!!!
Q: You get to collaborate with anyone of your choosing. Who is it?
A: If I had to choose one perhaps it would be Sparks. I love their use of humour within their amazing variety of styles – from This Town Ain’t Big Enough to When Do I Get To Sing My Way to iPhone… Plus I think they would be cool to hang out with…
Q: Your favorite album of all time? (Yup, you gotta choose one.)
A: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. Still relevant today.
Q: Your favorite song of all time? (Again, only one!)
A: Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself. For me the perfect pop song.
Q: What would you like fans to know about you that they’re most likely unaware of?
A: I am a keen photographer.
Q: Any shout-outs you wanna make?
A: To my music teacher and producer in Edinburgh, Robert Lucas. And my old friend/musical collaborator in Japan, Nobuyo Sugiura, who helped me get started again around 5 years ago.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
A: Everything is so fragmented now which makes it difficult for new/younger musicians to reach a large audience despite all the new ways to make music. It would be great to be part of something that could help bring music to more people of all ages and nationalities and make it play a bigger part in their lives again – as it did for about 80 years from the start of major music recordings in the 1920s to the Napster/streaming revolution in the late 1990s.
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