Ian Mathias-Baker’s music unfolds like a serene stroll through an avant-garde gallery, each song a subtle revelation. His latest work, “Specific Gravity,” explores layers of complexity, weaving together the grandeur of classical music with the innovation of electronic soundscapes. The result is a brooding masterpiece that challenges the boundaries of musical genres.

Known for his eclectic musical tastes, Mathias-Baker has previously flirted with a range of styles—from the moody strains of Sungrazers to the raw energy of Jemma Willard. However, “Specific Gravity” emerges as his most unpredictable album yet, drawing heavily from classical influences while embedding them within a modern context.

photo by @ian.mathiasbaker.official

This album serves as a profound meditation on loss, crafted with a precision that belies its emotional intensity. The central theme of grief is the core around which the entire album revolves, particularly through the poignant narratives of the ‘Mythic Texts.’ These central pieces are interspersed with settings of poetry by Charles Bukowski and T.S. Eliot, whose stark and bleak visions complement the album’s overarching mood. The choice of Bukowski’s and Eliot’s texts enhances the album’s somber narrative. During our conversation, I gained a clearer understanding of how “Specific Gravity” was created. We discussed the intricate process of blending diverse musical elements, the challenges of capturing such intense themes in sound, and the personal motivations behind Mathias-Baker’s artistic choices.

Hello Ian, and welcome to Indie Boulevard! It’s truly a pleasure to have you here. The title of your new EP “Specific Gravity” is intriguing and loaded with meaning. What’s the story behind this choice?

The term ‘Specific Gravity’ has always struck me as one of those terms that is loaded with a  deeper meaning than its intended one. It’s actually a scientific expression meaning the density of  one material relative to another, but it sounds much more interesting than that. I’ve recently spent far too much time looking at climate graphs and all the data seems to be  pointing to the fact that things are really serious and have already got out of control, so it seems  like there is this ‘specific gravity’ to our predicament which we are not really addressing. 

The way you’ve mixed classical orchestration with modern electronic beats in “Specific Gravity” is genuinely captivating. I’m curious, what hurdles did you encounter while merging these contrasting musical styles? 

That’s an interesting question. I don’t really think about genres too much, or instrumentation. I  grew up listening to and performing classical music, but equally was drawn to pop and rock  music as a teenager, and later to things like hip hop. All of these influences just somehow seem to  come together as I strive to create something meaningful. In the case of blending the beats with orchestrated sections in ‘This is the Way the World Ends’ it  was really the poetry that led to that. Certain lines of Eliot’s poem I felt were calling out to be  repeated and treated more like conventional pop music refrains, and that took the music in that  direction. 

I’m fascinated by how you’ve woven influences from classical maestros like Mahler and early 20th-century modernism into your latest work. How have these classical roots shaped the emotional layers and overall structure of “Specific Gravity”? 

It really started out as two completely different projects. I had a series of abstract instrumental  pieces – the four Mythic Texts – which weren’t conceived of as programmatic in any sense. They  were just instrumental pieces that, for one reason or another, bear their classical influences quite  overtly. The idea of combining those instrumental pieces with the two poetic tracks only came about later.  I was working on those pieces separately and started to get a feeling for the fact that the musical  material felt complementary, and could be combined to create a pleasing form in its own right. The idea of using the fourth Mythic Text as an outro to the whole collection came very late on –  and with that, the addition of the theatre organ which wasn’t part of the original composition. 

“Specific Gravity” really plunges into some deep waters with its exploration of grief and existential dread. What inspired you to tackle these intense emotions in your music? 

Fundamentally I feel the need to create something more meaningful than just entertainment or  background music. I’m not sure where that drive comes from. It feels a bit anachronistic in today’s  entertainment-led culture. I’m less interested in trying to ‘tackle intense emotions’ or ‘explore grief’ as you put it, so much as to create a space where listeners can explore those things within  themselves. That to me is what Art should aspire do: it should lead us to reflect internally. 

How did you approach setting the poetry of Charles Bukowski and T.S. Eliot to music, especially given the existential themes of their poems? 

Poetry is essentially musical in that it has metre, pace, rhythm and formal shape, so it actually  combines quite naturally with other musical material, whether that be pitched or percussive or  whatever. It’s difficult to describe how I went about the process of combining the words with the music  without unpacking my working methods which I’m not even sure I can. Suffice to say, I’m always  listening to poetry, and writing it myself, and I’m always composing and recording music, and  somewhere along the line, the resonance between a particular poem and some musical ideas I’ve  got going seems to crystallise. Given the sombre mood of the music I was coming up with, these two poems kept coming back  to me. They aren’t literally about the climate crisis of course, but more generally about the darker  aspects of the human condition, but that was more interesting to me than a literal reference. 

Once I start taking the lines of poems I literally think of them as auditory element in the same way as any  other aspect of the musical composition. They have their own logic and they contribute to the  musico-logic of the whole piece. I should point out that I didn’t really set the poems to music starting with the texts, the way one  would if one was creating a song from a poem. Purists would take issue with the fact that I’ve  taken liberties with the the poetic works – for example, I haven’t used all the lines, and I’ve  repeated lines as refrain in a way that doesn’t happen in the originals. I certainly don’t mean to  abase the original works by doing so, but if anything allow them to be viewed through a different  lens. 

Listening to “Specific Gravity” feels almost like a cinematic experience—it’s so vivid and immersive. If your album were to be adapted into a film, what kind of movie do you imagine it would be?  

That’s interesting. When I was writing the Mythic Texts I had a working title of ‘Music Cues In  Search of a Movie’, so I was obviously aware at some level that there was a cinematic aspect to  it. It would have to be be quite a dark movie wouldn’t it – possible with sci-fi overtones. I’m thinking  of ‘The Peripheral’ TV series at this point, which I’ve just watched. Maybe something like that? I’m a big fan of David Lynch, which I think comes out in my work in terms of its themes and  aesthetic, as well as in aspects of the sound design. Maybe if he were to tackle the theme of  human induced climate change that would be a good fit. 

The final moments of the album hint at a dystopian future with the sound of a discordant theatre organ. What message or feeling were you aiming to convey with this closing? 

As I said in response to your earlier question about the meaning behind the title, it does feel to me  like that we as a species are facing this really grave danger, and yet nothing is being done at  anything like the scale required to avert disaster. Lots of really good people have tried to bring it to  the world’s attention, but since what it required is a fundamental rethink of the way we organise ourselves and our relationship with the earth’s resources, their warnings fall on deaf ears. Or  worse, they go to jail for their efforts. The billionaire class who basically hold the political power at this point are not prepared to do  what it takes since that would mean relinquishing their power, so we grimly continue with  ‘business as usual’ – even when that business is literally going to make the earth uninhabitable in  less than a century. It’s like they’re saying to the masses “Party now because none of us know what is around the  corner, and what we do know is that we have all the ingredients to hand for a great party so let’s  enjoy it!” That discordant theatre organ is the sound of that spectacle grimly continuing ad nauseam and  the masses revelling in the ‘bread and circuses’ that the oligarch class provide them with,  blissfully unaware of how the game is going to play out. 

The sound of “Specific Gravity” carries a distinct melancholy, reminiscent of the grayness of a rainy day. Given this somber mood, could you talk about how you see the relationship between music, melancholy, and deeper emotional states like depression?  

I don’t really think about specific emotions or concrete mental conditions such as depression or  melancholy. I definitely see a relationship between Art/the aesthetic and what you might call the ‘spiritual  realm’ or metaphysics. For me that is the purpose of creating Art in the first place. When we look  at an abstract painting, for example, we’re not literally thinking about the blobs of paint on a  canvas, but are led to think more deeply about the nature of things – our reality, the human  condition, our place in the universe, the divine and so on. When I create music I am trying to create that kind of ‘aesthetic moment’ in the listener. I love the  fact that music is essentially an abstract art form that lends itself to that project. I write poetry as  well, and have to really fight to achieve the same contextual ambiguity that music naturally  provides given that words have a tendency to express definite meanings. 

Throughout your career, you’ve resisted being categorized into any single genre. How important is this versatility to your creative process? 

I’m certainly a bit of maverick in life as in art, resistant to being pinned down or hemmed in, and  relishing my personal freedom. I don’t think I could create at all without having that freedom. I  generally don’t really think too much about genres, I just sense a musical thread and follow it to  see where it leads. At times that can lead to juxtaposing what I would call ‘rhyming’ elements from  different musical cultures within the same piece in what can end up in unexpected ways. To me,  it’s vital to have the artistic freedom to be able to do that kind of thing. 

Now that “Specific Gravity” has been released, are you currently working on any new music projects?  

I’ve always got loads of different ideas on the go at once – from dance music to songs to  instrumental pieces. The question really is whether any of them get to the point that I’m happy  releasing them. And there’s always that David Lynch collaboration…

*This interview was made possible by Quite Great PR