Octo Octa: Come Closer

“When I’m out on tour or playing a show I’m dancing at every moment. And I’m dancing during every set I play.” Recent Red Bull Music Academy grad Michael Bouldry-Morrison is rhapsodising about one of his favourite pastimes. “The speech on Mood II Swing’s ‘Move Me’ does probably the best job of describing it.” He quotes: “‘When I finished [dancing] I always felt great, so now I say [it’s] a form of unconscious therapy. But all I knew was I felt raised, I felt lifted.’”

It’s no secret that, in recent years, many sectors of the US underground not previously known for getting loose on the dancefloor have begun to warm to its charms. Perhaps most emblematic of this shift is 100% Silk, the label set up by Not Not Fun co-founder Amanda Brown in 2011. Many of the label’s earliest signings, from Ital to Maria Minerva, had previously been affiliated with the retro-leaning lo-fi pop peddled by Not Not Fun. As a result, their tentative forays into dance music were brimming with infectious, wide-eyed enthusiasm for this newly discovered form.

Enthusiasm is a quality amply present in the music of Bouldry-Morrison. His releases as Octo Octa – all for Silk – outline a distinctively bright, giddy take on house music, a sensory overload of saccharine melodies, sighing divas and lissome percussion. It’s music that wears its emotion proudly on its sleeve, and music that seems to delight in the richness of its own surfaces, as if it hears itself anew with each play. In fact, unlike his label-mates, Bouldry-Morrison had been a fan of dance music for some time before signing to Silk, having spent his teenage years in New Hampshire “mainlin[ing] a lot of jungle and breakcore.” His 2011 debut release, the Let Me See You EP, marked the end of a slow descent from those dizzying syncopated heights.

He describes the record’s four tracks as his “first few attempts at making house music,” and there is a certain naivety to them, from the twinkly rave stylings of the title track through to the prim “1 Thing”-sampling “I’m Trying.” But the EP was also one of the glossiest, most refined-sounding Silk releases to date, standing apart from the scuzzy textures being explored by many of Bouldry-Morrison’s contemporaries. Partly this was down to the producer’s tools – he points out that he “was on a computer [whereas] most of the early [Silk] releases were done with hardware and computer.” But what really set Bouldry-Morrison apart was his taste for direct, poppy melodies, and the clean, lustrous synth tones with which he outlined them. “I’m a huge fan of melody in dance music,” he says. “When I’m producing I like there to be a line that you can cling to. So getting a solid lead is always important to me.”

His debut release revealed Bouldry-Morrison to be one of Silk’s brightest young talents, and he quickly established a fruitful working relationship with the West Coast label, releasing a further solo 12-inch, “Oh Love,” as well as a collaboration with Brown under her LA Vampires guise, Freedom 2K. Bouldry-Morrison has nothing but kind words for the label, and for Brown – who he says “is hyper supportive of everything I’ve done and [has] become a good friend.” But I wonder if, given that he has lived in New York for the past three years, the producer feels more drawn to the city’s resurgent house scene, around labels like L.I.E.S. and Mister Saturday Night, than to his distant patron?

“I very much operated outside of [that scene] for a while and Silk hasn’t always been looked at like a serious dance label,” he says. “But recently I’ve met more people who are involved in the current New York scene and I hope to work with them more. Nothing would make me happier than being a part of a community who is bringing New York’s talent to light.” However, being part of such a community, doesn’t come without its costs. “When money gets tight [New York] is the worst place to be and the hardship of it can get very real very fast,” Bouldry-Morrison concedes. “I don’t gain much from being stressed out about being able to pay bills. When things are going well here, though, it can be the best feeling ever and the city feels like it opens up.”

Both the good and the bad are contained on Bouldry-Morrison’s recently released debut album, Between Two Selves – a record which refines and expands on his musical concerns to date. Sure, the album sports plenty of Bouldry-Morrison’s trademark sugar-rush moments – see, in particular, the glorious UK hardcore-referencing “His Kiss.” But there’s a noticeable dark undercurrent to it too, evident in the titles – “Bad Blood,” “Please Don’t Leave” – and in a fraught, baleful quality to tracks like “Fear” and “Come Closer.” “The album was made around the time of me having a nervous breakdown and having to face a lot of realities that were present in my life to get through it,” Bouldry-Morrison explains. “So Between Two Selves is me working through who I was before and who I am after and the uncertainty of what the future holds.”

It seems fitting that the producer’s music should serve a cathartic function, given its highly expressive, emotionally forthright nature. “That should be part of the point of making music,” he states. “To show who you are, your desires, and who you’d like to be.” Still, Bouldry-Morrison maintains that such self-expression needn’t, and shouldn’t, come at the expense of dance music’s most basic tenets. “I think the foremost feeling is that [the music] needs to contain emotion of some sort and that has to translate to wanting to dance. I want to keep playing in clubs, not start doing sit down sessions with tunes that have house elements but don’t move anyone. I really only want to go out to shows, clubs or bars as long as there is dancing. So I want my music to reflect that urge.”