7 questions with Martin luke brown
Table 7 | 08.05.25
Oh, man. So big, so big. It’s a big question. I mean I love, I love Dodie and Orla and Greta so much they're like family. I think I loved them already before we did Fizz and then it kind of like deepened. It was a real pressure cooker of a year, I think it was a lot on all of us emotionally, but, um, good and bad both can be true. I think we know each other so deeply and intimately in a way that was really amazing. I think for the project and understanding each other and communicating and when we did shows it was like we all knew how to get the best outta each other and that was amazing.
But then also, I think there's been a lot of grief in the fall out of it. Our world’s sort of shrank from the time where we were in Fizz, where I think we were kind of each other's universe and then when Fizz ended, as it was always gonna really, it was only ever a chapter and we all were gonna go back to our own projects. In different ways we're all kind of grieving that because we've left that really like strong family unit and then kind of got dissipated and gone our own ways and tapped into our other friendship groups and wider community, its funny man.
It's been an adjustment period, bittersweet for sure. They're my family man, it feels a little bit like leaving home, like when I left my mom when I was like 19 to move to London and my mom was crying and it was like, its still my mom, I'm still gonna see you and we're gonna hang out. It's a bit like that. There was this like real deep like family..like we love each other so much. It was really hard in a way that it kind of is like when you're like growing up at home and you argue or have your little tiffs and your moments, but, you all still love each other. We're all still in each other's lives, they'd all be here tonight if they could. It's the classic, like Do is doing a music video, Orla is touring the world. Yeah, yeah, It’s just one of those.
How was the experience of being in the band FIZZ alongside Dodie, Orla and Greta? What did you learn from each member?
How was the transition back to being a solo act?
Well, good and bad. It feels like a breakup in a lot of ways. When we finished there was a grieving and like a sadness for it, but also a reinventing. I think with Fizz I was definitely finding it hard, well all of us were, but I think especially for me as the only guy in the band, I didn't really have a reference point. I was always a bit jealous of their sisterhood within the band and they were, you know, just got each other intrinsically.
I think for me, I've definitely plugged way more back into my community of guys and that's been really nourishing in a way that I actually didn't know I missed as much as I did for the whole time that I was with Fizz. There’s been lots of new experiences and I always love writing my own music, that’s always my favourite thing to do. I loved creating this album with Matt, who's sadly not here, he’s in America as well. All my friends are rock stars! So it's been invigorating and amazing and stimulating, kind of like a new birth in many ways.
Everyone asks about the best parts of touring, but what’s one of the worst parts for you?
I think the older I get, the more and more I love and appreciate analog in all senses. I think especially with music. I worked with Matt Zara, he's the same guy that I worked with on the last album, he is like my bro from back home and we've always been similar about this kind of stuff, but his production style has gotten more and more vintage. He’s just recently bought these tape machines and like old seventies preamps and these like old cool ribbon microphones, so like in terms of actual gear for making the album that was already in that world.
For me personally, my day-to-day life, I'm trying to just like use my phone less and less. I’ve got a little film camera and I just take pictures of my life just out and about and find it serves more of a purpose, there’s just something about it that feels more real. And you take, you know, you're like, oh, let's get a picture of this moment. You take one picture and that's it. You don't scroll through and pick the best one and filter it or whatever you're doing. I just wanted it all to just feel real like it is so real, ultimately where it's come from, or the content of the album is just like my life. I got the Super eight camera as well to sort of capture little bits and bobs on the way and that’s very tangible and none of this phone shit.
It definitely gets a bit hipster where I think people are using it solely for how it looks and it does look cool, films wicked, but I think for me it's way more the process of it and the sort of slowing down and quirks of it all especially with recording to tape. It makes you really lock in and be really mindful whenever you're doing a take, whether it’s a recording, vocal, guitar, or playing piano piece you just lock right in. Because you know it's gonna be a real inconvenience for you to have to do another take. There's something about that make it process driven rather than results orientated and all of the hard work tends to happen on the front end. So you are like, oh, I need to make sure that I do a good vocal and that I perform well and then the back end will be really easy. Whereas I feel in a digital format, you're like, oh, picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. Or you record a thousand vocal takes and then it makes your life hell on the back end. I much prefer it the other way around, I think it's so much more innate.
Um, food. Yeah. No, actually that's kind of a lie. The food’s kind of delicious, but I'm at a point in my life now where I'm not a 21-year-old where after a show I can smash a load of beers and like a pizza or a burger or whatever and keep that up. I'm very intrinsically aware of the impact that my diet and exercise and routine and all of that stuff has on my health and mental health especially. I think touring is just wildly unnatural man, the peak of adrenaline that you get, especially if you've been doing a long run of shows, your body gets used to that peak of adrenaline at that point every day then you sort of come off from tour and people talk about post tour blues. That's a real thing!
I think the food part does annoys me though. I make a real conscious effort when I'm on tour to try and eat well and exercise and do all those things cause I think it really helps the post tour dip that is so inevitable. It's almost like you've been on one giant night out, you know? And the hangover lasts a while. Yeah, that's a couple of things that suck. Keeping yourself fit and ready for the shows is hard man, here in the UK it’s not that bad. In the States and around Europe, well hard. The food slaps though, it is delicious, but you come back a lot heavier.
The new album ‘man oh man !’, which is fantastic by the way, has a vintage and nostalgic feel to it, is this something you plan and know going into to making it or something that comes out naturally and organically whilst making the album?
There’s a sense of freedom to how you hold yourself in and out of music, how much does your style & fashion influence who you are and the music you make?
It's funny you say that, man, like I think the word free has been like such a hot word in my life the last couple years. It creeps up everywhere. I think freedom is very much at the absolute core of who I am. I have this game with my friends where we try and condense each other down to just one word and it’s obviously really hard to do. And my word is free or like freedom and I think there's a lot to be said for that, I like feeling of being able to just like change and like get up and go.
I love the freedom to wear something colourful and not traditionally masculine. On the flip side I think if someone told me you have to wear this particular set of clothes and you have to be colourful and big and baggy, then that wouldn't feel right either. I literally just do whatever I want when I want. That’s the core of who I am and feels really important to me. It has made having ongoing artist projects hard, 'cause I think you're really rewarded for consistency and it's something that I think has taken me a long time to get too. It's been at least 10 years of me going away at it.
How much do your fans mean to you? What’s the reaction like when you see so many of them at your shows?
I actually sometimes forget I even have fans. There’s a really fine line and it feels like a little bit complicated and I don't wanna offend any fans. I’m close with artists that have like a really close intimate relationship with their fans and they're really present online, they’ll reply to everything and they have these communities online and it has really worked for them which is great. But, I'm quite a private person, which is a weird thing to say 'cause I think all the songs that I write are incredibly real, I’m not really dicing with the truth lyrically. I think in terms of what I share online and how much I wanna let people in on my creative process and all of that stuff, it's really sacred to me. I find that balance quite hard sometimes. I can't tell you how grateful I am that there are fans and people that listen to me and wanna be at shows and all of those things, I’m trying to work out what the right sort of balance is of sharing and allowing people into like the process.
I think we live in a world where the access to everyone at any time is so constant and I personally, as a fan of music, I enjoy mystery. I think there's a lot of value in what you don't share. It’s hard to get the balance right, because you wanna support the songs and be able to talk about that, but I also wanna protect my own life and my privacy and the people I care about and that's how you keep your freedom.
What’s one thing that you could tell fans that they probably wouldn't know about you?
I grew up in church. I feel like a lot of people don't really know that. But I don't think I’ve ever really spoke about it much when I was younger or growing up, like within music. I was a little bit ashamed of it. Why is that? That's what church does to you man, everything's shameful. I think when I was really young and in school, it was like, oh God, I hope people don’t find out. I'm not like a religious person now really. I'm not Christian, my parents are. I wouldn't say I’ve been religious since I was maybe like 13, 14. So I wouldn't identify as Christian, perhaps that's why I didn't talk about it so much because I didn't really wanna be painted with that brush.
That's very much my upbringing and I think like a lot of the stuff that comes through in my songs is that, I dunno. I think my personality, a big archetypal part of it is like Christian guilt and, you know, uh, lots of complicated stuff. Like, especially when I was a teenager, some stuff that I'm still unraveling as an adult, still weaves its way into everyday life really. Like everything I write about.
