FEATURE:
Spotlight
Wu-Lu
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THIS time out…
PHOTO CREDIT: Guy Gooch for The Line of Best Fit
I am spotlighting the remarkable Wu-Lu. Real name Miles Romans-Hopcraft, he released his album, LOGGERHEAD, on Friday. It is a fantastic work from a rising South London artist. I cannot see interviews from this year around the album and its release. Because of that, I am dipping into older interviews. I will come to a couple of good examples from last year. First, gal-dem introduced us to Wu-Lu in 2019. This was to coincide with the release of his E.P., Save Us from Ourselves:
“Based in South London, Miles Romans-Hopcraft aka Wu-Lu is a producer and multi instrumentalist who makes music that swims effortlessly between genres – scuzzy lo-fi, meandering jazz, sweet soul and strange rock all intermingle over everything from boom-bap beats to grungy drums. Wu-Lu has worked with some of our faves as both a producer and collaborator: he can count Poppy Ajudha, Ego Ella May, Nubya Garcia among his past musical colleagues, to name a few.
Wu-Lu is also one of the original members of Touching Bass, South London’s self-described “soulstranauts” collective, also featuring the likes of Shy One, and he’s got a track on Untitled, a forthcoming music project about Basquiat that’s dropping next month.
We caught up with Wu-Lu about family, genres, and the release of his second EP, S.U.F.O.S – which stands for “Save Us From Ourselves”.
gal-dem: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? I read you’ve been into music since you were a kid?
Wu-Lu: I have been around music and the arts my whole life, my dad being a touring musician and my mum a travelling contemporary dancer. I’ve grown up always knowing I would be involved in it, one way or the other.
What does “Wu-Lu” mean?
A while ago I was following the Rastafarian movement and at that time I started to learn Amharic, the language of Ethiopia.I came across the word for water: “wu-ha”. I liked it – but thought people would make the reference between me and Busta Rhymes [who has the song, ‘Woo-Ha’]. So I changed the end so that it would flow better and sound more like a word that represented water to me – so in short it means water, in my own description
One of your songs is called ‘Habesha’, which is a term for Ethiopian and Eritrean people. Is bringing your heritage into your work something you actively try and do? How does that connection manifest for you?
‘Habesha’ is about someone from that part of the world. When I am writing I’m always writing from a place that reflects my surroundings, and I guess culture falls into that category.
Why is the EP called ‘Save Us From Ourselves’?
I think throughout time the human race has made decisions where they haven’t necessarily thought about the future damage of their actions. So, with that in mind, when I’m speaking about relationships it’s just a constant reminder to think before you speak and take time before you act”.
I think Wu-Lu’s upbringing and background explains his choice of career and affects his music. He does have a fascinating story that one can feel blended into his songs. He is someone who will progress and release a series of brilliant albums. Last year, The Quietus interviewed Wu-Lu. It is interesting reading about his parents’ careers and how that impacted him:
“Growing up, Romans-Hopcraft says he was “on two sides of the coin.” His white father and his Black mother were amicably separated, and although they both started out in council housing, “life choices and opportunities” meant his father, a jazz trumpeter, was able to move on to the property ladder while his mother, a dancer, “stayed where she was. It was two different worlds”. Both had an influence on him artistically. When DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing and the 2001 hip hop DJ documentary Scratch emerged as early inspirations, his mother, who herself worked with the charity Youth Music, nurtured a love of turntablism by supplying him with trance and jungle records brought home from work.
“My dad, being ‘the musician’ out of the two, was always saying to me, ‘Music’s really, really hard you know, so get another skill,’ where my mum was more like, ‘Do whatever you want, be creative,” Romans-Hopcraft says. “She was always told when she was growing up, trying to dance, ‘You ain’t gonna be able to do this’ because she was a Black woman in London. With that she was saying you can fucking do it.’ I guess my dad didn’t have as many people saying to him, ‘You can’t do that.’” He recalls an early trio he formed with his brother and a friend. “We were in the front room of my dad’s house and he came in, he must have been pissed off about something [that happened] earlier in the day, and he was like, ‘Listen guys, music’s really hard,’ and gave us this whole long speech. But then when he left the room my brother turned to me and was like, ‘But we’re gonna do it though. We’re gonna be on [the cover of] Kerrang!’”
As well as turntablism, Kerrang!-backed early-2000’s metal, grunge and pop punk bands like Korn, The Offspring, Limp Bizkit, Blink-182 and Slipknot were key influences growing up, as was the soundtrack to the video game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Papa Roach, Rage Against The Machine, Consumed and more). Skate culture was another key strand – the first shows he saw were local punk bands at Stockwell skate park – as was UK hip hop, introduced to him in a chance mention of Rodney P on a graffiti-focussed episode of Channel 4 reality show Faking It, and grime. Then he discovered Gorillaz, who united a number of different strands. “Through the years I realised why that was such a moment in my life, because it had no genre. It had a bit of dub, a bit garage, a bit of hip hop. It spun me. The animation, the punky stuff and the hip hop and baggy clothes. I was like, 'Sick! Sick! This is it!'” Later he drew the links between the afro jazz inspired work of his father with the hip hop he was listening to.
Romans-Hopcraft’s ambition means that any trappings of tradition or genre are secondary concerns at best. “I’m just about trying to keep you on your toes. I’ve got tunes that have a straight up orchestral vibe.” Since he witnessed a Connan Mockasin gig so powerful that he left “feeling different,” more than anything else his aim is to deliver maximum immersion. “I’m trying to make people feel something, good or bad.” Were budget no object, he imagines his work reinterpreted as a Secret Cinema style physical installation”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Guy Gooch for The Line of Best Fit
I want to finish off with an interview from The Line of Best Fit. Putting together his debut album (which we now have in the world), it is exciting reading press from last year. This promising and very talented artist being covered and tipped for big things! If he is not on your radar, then you need to get involved and check out LOGGERHEAD:
“As we speak, Romans-Hopcraft is in the midst of creating his debut album, which he'll release via his new label - the legendary Warp, home of Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus and Kelela. He struggles to articulate, at first, exactly what it is because everything he writes about is so intrinsic to who he is. “I think I’m just going through an exfoliation of my thoughts and experiences,” he says. “Things I’ve never really spoken about. It’s one giant life puzzle, and this album is about building the first section of it, and all the left-over pieces will set the tone for the future. It’s more of a coming of age thing, with me talking peripherally about my life as person of colour growing up in London, looking back on my younger self. All of my music is just drawn from nostalgia – I mean, you’ve seen my room. It’s like going onto your old iPod and remembering where you were in life when you first heard a particular song. It’s about intangible stuff that brings you back to that space. I’m trying not to forget. I guess it’s about hoarding memories, innit.”
Youth, and the hard-won scars that come with it, has, in many ways, been his muse and motivator. As someone who has worked with kids in everything from youth centres to pupil referral units and community studios, Romans-Hopcraft feels that the essence of his work is about paying it forward. “There was always some older in a space like that who would talk to me on my level, or gave me life advice,” he remembers. “I took more of a liking to that. All of that is worth its weight in gold. Working with young people, you can kind of see a little image of yourself reflected back at you.” He recalls a quote he heard in a documentary. “There was a guy going around close to my age, and he was like: ‘When we were growing up, we thought we were invincible, but now, the kids today are trying to prove it.’”
Now, after a few, cluttered hours, Romans-Hopcraft is lying on his stomach as the tattoo artist is inking Goku onto his lower leg. I sit on the floor and slide my Dictaphone next to him on the table. Considering he’s somewhat hungover as the needle carves out shapes in his skin, he’s only slightly absent-minded as we talk, prone to protracted silences as he forgets a question. I ask if it’s painful. “Yeah. I’m just firming it,” he says. “There have been worse pains. I’ve broken so many bones in my body, man, but it’s calm.” Wrist, finger, arm, leg, toe, he lists them off – most of them from when he got hit by a car, but the rest: “That’s all from too much skating or just being a dumb kid, basically.”
Does he ever wish, sometimes, that he’d chosen an easier life? A life without sleepless nights from the precarity of scraping together a living? A life a little less exhausting from trying to strike the balance between work and play as they merge into one? “Bare times! Bare times!” he laughs. “But I’ve gone way too far. It’s like I chose the picture, I showed it to the tattoo artist, and I’ve started the tattoo. I’ve got to complete it. My dad always said to me when I was younger: ‘Being a musician is hard, man. It’s really, really hard – so find a plan B.’ He gave us this big lecture, but then my brother turned to me and said, ‘But we’ve obviously got to do music, innit?’”.
One of our most remarkable young artists, Wu-Lu is someone who will definitely make a huge mark on the music industry. He is a brilliant talent! Many eyes are on him. I have only recently found his music, but I love what I hear. The future is going to be very bright for the London-based artist. With a growing fanbase and attention from big radio stations, there is no denying this is someone…
WE should all know.
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