"Ableton is great for making tracks, Pro Tools is great for mixing. For me, Logic is great when you do both": Emma-Jean Thackray on the making of new album Weirdo

“Making music is my obsession. Every day I need to do something really creative or I will die,” says musical artist Emma-Jean Thackray.

“That sounds dramatic but it is kind of true. Early in my music career, I found myself sitting on all these ideas but not showing them to anyone. The realisation forced me to do something about it.”

As a producer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Emma has been a powerful and collaborative creative force, both in the studio and on the stage. Since the release of her 2021 debut album, Yellow, she has taken her music around the world, working with the London Symphony Orchestra and post-punkers Squid while DJing and hosting shows on Worldwide FM and the BBC.

The follow-up album, ‘Weirdo’, was originally conceived as a meditation on neurodivergence and mental health but evolved after the unexpected loss of her long-term partner in January 2023. It’s a record that is richly diverse in sonic textures, but both deeply personal and universal.

“I wanted it to be uncompromisingly me,” she says from her studio. “I had this really difficult personal time and needed to lock myself in this room for a year, tell everyone to fuck off and work on my music. I told my label that they would get the record when it was ready and just to leave me alone.”

Early creations

The genesis of Emma’s music is a mix of juxtapositions, bringing disparate strands together through mixing up the classical with the contemporary, electronic beats with brass.

“As a kid, I played the cornet in brass bands and jazz ensembles,” she says on her initial explorations. “As a producer, J Dilla kicked it off for me. Then I heard Miguel Atwood-Ferguson perform the orchestral tribute to J Dilla, Suite for Ma Dukes, and it became a real favourite.”

A music obsessive in her teens, Emma’s love saw her getting under the fingernails of the records she listened to. By picking apart the production approach and samples of acts like A Tribe Called Quest, she was able to trace their inspirations and make fresh discoveries. Simultaneously, Emma’s classical training fed into her own approach to music and creativity too.

“I was into jazz, prog, orchestral sounds, then hip hop and the beats came later,” she explains. “Then I studied, which really enhanced my arrangement and composition style. I wanted to be the next [US composer and bandleader] Carla Bley but it was only afterwards that I realised that rather than being confined to one thing, I could bring all these influences together.”

Breakthroughs

Emma has been making and writing music in various ways since she was a teenager. Her formative creative years were spent on commissions and projects for others but all the while, she harboured a desire to release music under her own name.

“Playing, producing and writing music is as important to me as breathing air,” she says. “Going it as a solo artist was about me giving myself the push to release music. I realised that maybe it might inspire others as well. I can do all these things, be a woman who can produce, play and write.”

Weirdo is the latest chapter of her artistic career, a record that, aside from collaborations with artists Kassa Overall and Reggie Watts, is completely Emma. It’s a renewed way of working for someone who is used to leading and inspiring others to create her vision.

“With Yellow, there were contributions from different musicians and it can sometimes be complicated to organise that kind of project,” she says. “I’m really great at directing others and it’s something I’ve done by leading bands my whole life. But with Weirdo, I wanted to be in total control.”

The record’s sonic world is an eclectic mix-up and a step forward from previous releases. Featuring more guitar, it draws on grunge, pop, soul, P-funk, and jazz and was established during the making of Yellow.

“I knew when I came upon it that I wanted to save this sound for later,” she says. “It’s more jazz-rock fusion, with more guitar than ever before. I didn’t want too many horns. I’d established this palette, then my life fell apart and I couldn’t think about anything.”

The loss of Emma’s partner in 2023 was obviously a deeply traumatic point in her life - but making ‘Weirdo’ in her own studio was a way of establishing some control, of reclaiming who she was and gaining what she describes as “agency over life” when she felt like there was none.

“I was just doing what I wanted to do to express myself,” she says. “I wanted to get all the feelings that were inside of me and make a visceral, tangible thing for other people to hold.”

“It was painful but good to work, layering and tracking all these instruments, finding this sense of control again,” Emma continues. “I could play something exactly as it needed to be in my head. There are moments of chaos on the record but it’s actually very purposeful. Making this record saved my life - that’s not a heavy thing to say, it’s just real.”

Gear and instruments

Written and recorded in her home studio, the size of the space meant Emma’s creative palette, at least in terms of hardware, was limited. Speaking from the room for our interview, it’s bursting with records and instruments and she could only use what could fit in.

The Rhodes Mark II is at the root of much of the music on the record, as part of the skeleton of many of the album’s tracks. It was a key tool during the early writing stages and helped Emma focus on her creative process. Every track was subsequently recorded through a preamp that’s a clone of the classic Neve 1073, with the rhythm section instrumentation additionally passed through a Pultec EQP1A.

“I’m so in the zone that I forget to drink or eat, it’s just completely locked in focus,” she states on her process. “I have everything ready to go, all my keyboards are plugged in and I have a patch bay so I can just go for it. Logic is my preferred DAW. Ableton is great for making tracks, Pro Tools is great for mixing. For me, Logic is great when you do both, and I’ve customised it to hell to look as much like Logic 9 as possible.”

“My Minimoog is on most of the tracks too as either a lead sound or bass, perhaps obvious or perhaps hidden; it’s all across the album,” she adds. “Moogs sound so characterful and undeniably Moog-ish, yet are so versatile that you can make them do anything. I love this juxtaposition.”

Emma used a Coles 4038 ribbon microphone for much of the recording, including a ELA M251E tube microphone for the vocals. With the record constructed in her studio, she also utilizes reverbs to add a consistent sense of space and depth to the recordings.

“Everything is put through a wooden chamber for room sound (additional to the room sound of my actual studio of course) to help orientate everything in the ‘space’ in front of the listener like it’s a live performance,” she says. “It warms everything up and is really nice to listen to. The more active reverb that’s giving the actual reverberant sound is the reverb of a space echo. It’s the best delay reverb ever in my opinion as it adds a touch of chaos and spacey woo.”

Highlights

One of the most surprising tracks for Emma during the process of making the record was Maybe Nowhere, a song born out of a drum groove and distorted bass riff.

“I really wanted a nineties British rock band kind of vibe, like a grungy Radiohead with this guitar riff,” says Emma. “Then in the second half I wanted it to be orchestral. When I played it to some people at the label, they were like ‘What’?” The track is a great example of Emma embracing her individual creativity to the full, with only her vision lending clarity to what she wanted to achieve.

“No one quite knew what I was aiming for, but I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound,” she states. “I wanted it to be bathed in reverb and delays - to the point where what we were listening to was becoming unintelligible, this airy huge cavern that swallows you up.”

“The idea was to capture what it would sound like to die, with all this space around the music everything feels really open, and the sound will pull you up and away from yourself until you become part of the universe again. I recorded and mixed the track, got everything finished, then at the end I fed the entire stereo output into a Valhalla Supermassive and a space echo, and then fed it all back in again, creating a huge feedback kinda sound.”

If you’ve an appetite for a slice of contemporary P-funk, then Black Hole with American comedian and artist Reggie Watts is both satisfying and addictive. Known for his improvisational approach to words and stories, Emma has been a long-time fan of Reggie’s work and was keen to creatively spar.

“I was really leaning into the joy of P-funk, and found this song needed extra silliness to balance out the darkness of the lyrics,” Emma says. “I love this kind of juxtaposition of mood and thought Reggie would be a perfect fit. He’s a great singer who gets the funk world so much, he lifted it off the page and I got to know him through the process, he’s a wonderful person as well as being a shit-hot musician.”

Elsewhere on Weirdo, fellow Brownswood artist Kassa Overall adorns ‘It’s Okay’ and brings something special with a playful jazz rap delivery and performance. “I know how sick he is and what he could bring to this,” she says.

“I’m a producer-drummer and thought it could be elevated by someone else playing. It made sense to a creative who is an outsider who doesn’t fit into any boxes - Kassa perfectly aligned with what I wanted to make. Both him and Reggie felt really good to include, to provide some relief from me!”

“Don’t just sit in a room and wait for the muse to take you”

Emma’s creativity is always on, meaning her phone has hundreds of voice notes with ideas and riffs sung into it. By collating these sketches, she’s never short of inspiration when writing and recording.

“Don’t just sit in a room and wait for the muse to take you,” she advises aspiring creatives and producers. “Instead, dig into this diary of ideas, there will be something there for you to use. Sit with it, make a loop, and the sound world will come to you. If you are struggling, then listen to some of your favourite albums, pick them apart as much as you can, and understand why you like them. If you’re constantly doing this creative work, you should never be starved of inspiration.”

Trust is a big thing for Emma in how she has navigated the challenges and opportunities of the music industry over the course of her career. For creatives, each journey can be different and she has been careful to build a reliable team around her.

“I’ve leaned into what makes me who I am, and looked to work with good people,” she says. “By doing so, I think this is a way of getting the best out of yourself and your music. If you’re working in art and suspicious of people taking advantage of you, you won’t produce your best music and it won’t be released in the best way either.”

With Weirdo due for release in April, Emma is currently looking at a diary of live gigs and festivals, something she has had time out from during the last few years. We Out Here, End of the Road and Worldwide will all feature alongside some of her own dates.

“I’ve only had one live show in the past two years - so I’m really excited to be getting out there with the new material,” she says. “In November last year, I played the whole of Weirdo to a crowd at Supersonic Jazz in Amsterdam. I’m excited to do that, looking people in the eyes and sharing music - performing is a huge part of me and who I am.”