Recently, Hudson Mohawke dropped by Red Bull Music Academy in Paris to explain his creative process, his origins in Glasgow, and working with the likes of Kanye West, Pusha T and Rick Rubin. The lecture covers a lot of ground and really is worth watching from start to finish.
HudMo told the audience about his roots in happy hardcore and turntablist hip-hop, which majorly informed the early days of LuckyMe and the club nights he grew up on. "Glasgow is somewhere where there's not really a huge amount of hip-hop culture," he explained. "It's mainly electronic music." But it was the city's world famous Optimo club night that really opened his eyes to rule-breaking in DJ sets. "They'd be playing soundtracks at the start of the night while people were coming into the club. They were also playing '50s 7"s. It was like 'how are they getting away with playing this in a club?' That was such an inspiration to see that."
When asked about LuckyMe, HudMo explained: "LuckyMe is kind of changing by the year but it was the name of the first club night we started running in 2002. It grew from a small club night to a record label to a fashion brand to having a filmmaking arm to a photography arm. It's just a group of creatives all collaborating." He also talked a little about some of his cohorts that came up with him like Rustie, a producer HudMo describes as "a sort of sparring partner" but that ultimately he's "the biggest Rustie fan ever." He continued, "he's informed my sound and I've informed his sound."
He was asked as much as was possible, given a multitude of NDAs, about his time working with Kanye West and Rick Rubin on Yeezus. He described it as a "mind-blowing experience" and that "to sit in a room with Rick Rubin and Kanye... how am I on a ranch in Malibu with Rick Rubin?" When pushed on working with big U.S. rappers more generally, HudMo remained typically unphased by all that, saying "as much as I loved working with these artists, it was the same buzz I got from finding out I was going to be working with Warp."
As for the future, he explained he's working on a collaborative album with Antony (of Antony & The Jonsons) as well as a film soundtrack. However, when pressed further on both subjects, he was sadly bound to secrecy on both topics. What he did say was that he sees soundtracks as "the next step" for him creatively, so let's hope 2016 will see at least a few films soundtracked by the Glaswegian beatsmith. Watch the lecture in full, exclusively above.
