Dan Carey can trace his good fortune back to one experience. Ten years ago, the London-born producer was in the studio with his childhood hero, Lee “Scratch” Perry, who told Carey he wanted to give him a blessing. “He went and got some incense and waved it around and said that I’d have good luck from now on,” smiles Carey. “Which has been fairly true!”
Since then, Carey has become one of the UK’s most in-demand producers. There’s a whole scene in south London defined by his work. His name on a record implies a certain level of credibility – the Carey stamp of approval. It’s partly down to his impressive back catalogue: Fontaines DC, MIA, Wet Leg, Foals, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and Black Midi. He’s even made a single for Kylie. Not for nothing has Carey twice been nominated simultaneously for two Mercury Prizes (in 2014 for Everybody Down by Kae Tempest and First Mind by Nick Mulvey; in 2019 for Schlagenheim by Black Midi and Dogrel by Fontaines DC). That he’s drawn such acclaim also comes down to his unique and uncompromising style of production. In a world of soulless auto-tune and artificial TikTok sound bites, Carey captures consciousness. He bottles a feeling, injecting a live element into a record to showcase the beauty of “mistakes”. In other words, Carey makes music that feels distinctly human.
It’s a sunny afternoon when I arrive at Carey’s south London home studio. Poppy, his curly-haired dog, is delighted and jumps on me as I crouch to greet her. We sit surrounded by small flashing buttons and synthesisers. Wires crawl out of every direction. Of course, there’s guitars. Lots of them. I have to clamber over a couple to get to the loo.
Conversation with Carey roams freely as he shares some of his best anecdotes. During a trip with his longtime collaborator, the poet-rapper Kae Tempest, he ended up in Rick Rubin’s studio. “Jay-Z was asking us if it was OK if he played us some of his wife’s demos!” He laughs at the insanity of what he’s saying. “The funny thing was that we couldn’t get his phone jack to work. Everyday problems that you’d have thought that have been solved in Malibu, they haven’t. No one’s got an aux cable!”
Carey himself is understated, quiet and gracious. He’s wearing brown velour tracksuit bottoms, a black shirt and some old Adidas trainers. It’s fairly dark in the studio, but a small window behind him lets in enough of the May day to cast some light on to his face. I can just about make out a pair of pale blue eyes. “As a baby I used to stand up in my cot and demand more-sick [as in music],” he recalls.
His relationship with music has always been visceral. “Different songs had different textures or colours,” he says of listening to great loves Jimi Hendrix, J Dilla, Tribe Called Quest – and Perry. It was Carey’s uncle that fed his thirst for musical discovery. He lived next door and had a home studio. “We often had this plan to make it look like I was ill.” Carey recalls how he would hold a thermometer up to a lamp to trick his mum into letting him stay home. After she’d left, he would skip next door and learn about fuzzboxes and Fender strats. “It seemed to me that he had the best life. He spent the whole day just playing with electric guitars and turning synthesiser knobs and I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do.’”
Guitar was Carey’s first instrument. He began his career in bands during the Nineties, before making his own record in his spare time. After “randomly” sending it out to a few labels, Carey was signed as a producer by Virgin who enlisted various artists to feature. He had been working with Sia at the time, who suggested that Carey flip his approach: producing for artists instead of artists performing for him. Carey was dropped as an artist after that first album anyway, which he attributes to overcomplicating the songs. “I spent months on it saying, ‘This is my big moment, I’m gonna make this the best thing ever at highest production value.’ But when I listen to it now, I know it was better before – they were raw demos, but they were so much more interesting and characterful, and I’d just made it completely bland. Getting dropped and then realising what I’d done [wrong] was the best thing.”
This experience has shaped everything Carey has done since, and defined his approach to the independent label Speedy Wunderground – which released the first singles of buzzy south London bands such as Black Country, New Road, Black Midi and Squid. This September, Speedy will celebrate their 10th anniversary with a chaotic multiband extravaganza. More than a label, Speedy (co-founded with engineer Alexis Smith and label manager and A&R Pierre Hall) has morphed into a movement, enmeshed in the cultural fabric of its south London home.
Adhering to Carey’s formula for authenticity, every single produced by Speedy must abide by the same rules. These state that records must be created within one day in the studio, with live takes at the core of the songs. No lunch breaks can be had, and songs should be mixed the following day to “prevent overcooking and faff”. Carey says, “When you cut down the number of options, it frees up your mind. When I listen to the Speedy catalogue, I can see everyone’s faces in those moments. It comes through the music. The first time it clicks into place is so beautiful and it’s just really cool setting up the process so that moment is happening while it’s being recorded.”
Over the years, Carey has become an inextricable part of Fontaines DC, having produced the Mercury Prize-nominated band’s three albums. “At the beginning, there was this kind of fearlessness that came from there not really being any expectations.” He describes recording the first Fontaines album as “easy and buzzy”. “It was so immediate and raw,” he says, pointing my gaze to a room full of instruments where they all stood to listen to the first takes of 2019’s “Sha Sha Sha”. Since then, the demand for Carey has grown exponentially. He has his pick of who he wants to work with next. “If I feel moved but I can’t work out why, then I’m a lot more inclined to want to do it.” Carey used to be “turned off” by radio-friendly music. “I definitely used to be associated with music that wasn’t very in demand," he says. “I haven’t really changed my point of view, but everything else has aligned.”
The feeling that you get when you play music with someone is very particular. It’s different from trying to create something.
When Carey speaks about music, he comes to life. It’s physical. He uses his mouth to make clicking bass sounds or reaches for the nearest guitar to scratch his hand on the strings. The excitement is palpable as he chats about his latest endeavour, Miss Tiny, the band he formed with his longtime friend Benjamin Romans-Hopcraft (also in alt bands Childhood and Warmduscher). Carey plays guitar, while Romans-Hopcraft is on drums and vocals. “Everything has been back to front,” he laughs. “Just at the point where most people my age have had it with touring and want to become a producer and I’m like, ‘Let’s start a band!’” Miss Tiny’s new EP, DEN7 will be released this July. It’s “angular, beautiful, dark, bat music”.
Starting a band had never been the plan. Carey and Romans-Hopcraft were just two friends who enjoyed making music together. Ironically, given Carey’s job, recording was the enemy in the process of making DEN7. “There’s a famous experiment in quantum mechanics, that if particles are being observed they behave differently than if they’re not being observed,” he says. “Maybe it’s like that with recording. If you’re playing something, even if there’s a secret microphone in the corner of the room trying to get it, maybe you play differently.” With this in mind, the pair sought to create purely for pleasure. “The feeling that you get when you play music with someone is very particular. It’s different from trying to create something. If you’re just playing for the sake of it, then you’re not really trying to get it right, because it doesn’t exist.”
To the relief of music fans everywhere, they eventually decided it would be a waste not to share their work. But like everything Carey does, there was a procedure to adhere to. The duo began by separating their jam sessions into parts, recording only on phones to get ideas down. Usually this would be done after a party or a night out, or sometimes, Carey tells me, after attempting to make a very elaborate salad. “There’s safety in the process,” he says. “It’s easy to do, because we just follow the instructions step-by-step.” It strikes me that Carey has a formula for everything he does – and even if he was blessed with good luck, he alone is responsible for that.
“Inventing that is one of the creative steps,” he decides. If that’s true, Carey’s art on a record is not in the outcome, but in the process itself. The result is simply a beautiful byproduct.
Miss Tiny’s debut EP ‘DEN7’ will be released on 21 July via Speedy Wunderground
