This article is an instalment of the Songcards Spotlight series where we interview the humans that make it all possible. We recommend you start by clicking the play button above and reading whilst enjoying the artist's music.
Who is the Love Process?
Love Process is, in its present form, a creative space for writing songs about unusual topics. Releases to date have explored varied themes including isolation, mental health issues, obsession, substance abuse and deteriorating health.
The dearth of unreleased material shines as an example of my own personal struggle with perfectionism, possibly masquerading as procrastination. I can’t release anything that isn’t really amazing and I won’t work a song through to its conclusion unless called upon to do so by a power inside me that cannot be denied or silenced.
It roars through my daily life, ripping apart the usual flow of activity, depriving me of sleep, ruining my social life and creating problems in the home.
That is my own creative process; fully immersive and highly toxic. I didn’t ask for this but it is my lifelong challenge to harness this creative energy and turn it into a force for good.
What is your origin story?
I wanted to write a song about my dad. I missed him so much and owed him so much and desperately wanted to work through the massive hole he left in my life when he died after 12 years of struggle, following a stroke that almost killed him.
I’d written songs for my school band as a teenager but this was the first one I had written as a grown up. It was dark, emotional and obscure. I couldn’t finish it for months, let alone imagine anyone listening to it.
It was the tallest of orders; write a song worthy of your stoic and valiant father. I floundered but persisted until finally, metaphorically struck gold with a chorus worthy of Bowie and childlike verses reminiscent of Madness, wrapped in a zeitgeisty synth pop style. Every time I sang the final playout I broke down in tears but that was okay. I knew it was powerful.
I called on session guys within my local network to record a rushed demo for an industry meetup here on the island (I’ve been a Majorcan resident for 22 years now).
They listened and liked what they heard, offered me lots of encouragement but none of these industry types ever contacted me again.
The single, “The Heart was Saved” was released on Valentine's day 2023. It wasn’t playlisted, it didn’t go viral, it wasn’t featured on any music blogs but it was mine and it was out there and a very select few were digging it.
I asked folk what they thought of it and published their comments on social media to create some excitement then set to writing and recording two more songs that would be released the same year.
The psychedelic and experimental “Mouth of Love” came first. It told of an adventure inside the mouth of the entity called love. Yes, really.
“Drown out my Sorrows”, a baggy anthem on letting your life go to pieces in favour of serious drinking in a shitty flat in Gypsy Hill in the late 1990’s, completed the trio of songs and ended the first incarnation of Love Process.
The original line up of Phil on vocals, James Gambold on drums, Adria Acker on keyboards and Wojtek Sobolewski on bass, slowly drifted apart as folk left the island to begin other projects.
This is indie, bands break up, it’s to be expected but it still smarts a little when it happens.
Wojtek and I continued to work together on a few singles while I repurposed all our previous material for electronic duo and a date was set for our first live show.
The micro brewery named “La Velo” can be found after the last of a series of rundown windmills that line the start of Calle Industria in Palma. We were all set to perform our unique blend of hard to understand tragi-synth pop nostalgia, when Wojtek’s back went and we had to cancel.
I did get some posters made and one still hangs on the wall of the venue, testament to a happening that perhaps was a raging success in an alternative dimension.
I still have four posters and they are priceless but send me an offer and I might part with one or two.
When did you realise you wanted to make music?
I don’t want to make music.
It gets made or I can’t think clearly.
It’s my way of coping, making sense of my life, documenting events, dumping feelings and emotions and clearing muck out of my psyche.
I already mentioned that mine is a particularly painful creative process.
When I work on a song it quite literally drives me to despair but I’ve got to answer the call, the muse won’t wait, the moment is fleeting and time is short.
The hope that this might all add up to something and make some kind of sense in the future is what drives me to keep creating in world full of twerking tanned backsides, internet porn, Reggaeton, recreational drug use, endless IG beach bliss feeds, fake friends, creativity quotes, smart business hacks, money, exuberance, gluttony, famine, environmental disasters, ground warfare, trade wars, global pandemics, A.I. takeover fear, smartphone addiction, class war, sex war, cyber war, etc, etc…
How can any of us make sense of any of this?
The short answer is to write songs, poetry, articles, documentaries, something to show we are still feeling, still biological and still value fine art culture.
Who are your long-standing influences?
Time marks us. Music reminds us of a specific time.
“The Amityville Horror” and “Tommy” by the Who were two films I watched through a crack in the door at a cottage in Norfolk our family had rented for a week one summer. I must have been about six years old.
The scene with the vicar and the flies froze me to the spot, as did Tina Turner’s rendition of the Acid Queen and Uncle Ernie’s “Fiddling About”. Budget Hollywood horror and English filmmaking at its best, planted in me a love for all things terrifying, mystical and drug related.
“Vienna” by Ultravox, “Ashes to Ashes” by Bowie and “Planet Earth” by Duran Duran, all remind me of the compilation tapes I would make of the Top 40 show on Radio One on Sunday evenings, when I was seven and living in our first house in Maidstone. I got pretty good at it and managed to edit out all the smarmy disk jockey prattle.
We had a Spanish lodger and my Gramps lived on the middle floor. We watched Dallas, drank weak tea and ate crumpets and my dad made cheese on toast with Worcestershire sauce for tea after number one had been announced, making wonderful distant memories…
“Heartbreak City” by the Cars was Dan’s dad’s best album. Dan was my best mate for years when we moved to Tonbridge so my Dad could have a shorter commute to his office in Stewart House in London. Dan’s dad played it over the speaker in the garden while we dived in the pool and snuck swigs of Dan’s mum’s Pimms and lemonade when she wasn't looking.
The Stone Roses’ eponymous album will always remind me of a summer I spent at my uncle Brian's house in Lympstone, Devon, walking in the sand at high tide and meeting up at sunset for a pint of bitter and some Scampi Fries. RIP UB!
Few girls have ever gifted me music. “Substance” by Joy Division and the 1979 -1983 compilation by Bauhaus were received into my lost vinyl collection and played to death in the two years prior to starting Uni, thanks to Louise.
About the same time, Sarah, the hippy art student with goldilocks and flares, gave me a compilation tape with “Rude Bootleg” by Cardiacs on one side and “Pungent - Effulgent” by Ozric Tentacles on the other. I played them till the cassette came unspooled out of the Renault 11 tape machine.
University meant partying, recreational drug experimentation and girls. Studying was there for us when money dried up.
Chris, my flatmate and best buddy to this day, introduced me to “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” by the Beatles and “Violator” by Depeche Mode. In turn I introduced him to “Camembert Electrique” by Gong and “Protection” by Massive Attack and we saw both of them live in Birmingham during our Uni years.
We influenced each other's musical taste for years to come and are very lucky to still be working together on new material.
“Rhythm and Stealth” by Leftfield, “Echoes” by Pink Floyd and “Kid A” by Radiohead all deserve a special mention for without them life in South London in 2001 would have been a bore.
We are the sum of our parts; the scratched records, the broken tapes, the CD’s used for coasters, those wonderful and horrific moments lost in time but preserved in our musical memory forever.
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a musician?
I’ve been taught many lessons over the years.
I began playing piano at age 5, the old bat of a teacher used to rap my wrists with a ruler when they sagged.
At age six, local competitions put an end to my brief career as a violinist - I just wasn’t good enough.
Rockabilly, especially the Guana Batz made the double bass seem edgy and at 17 I hunkered down and got good enough to be accepted into Britain's top music schools. I opted for Birmingham Conservatoire as it was far away from Kent on many levels.
After six years of practice and training I emerged from the Royal Academy of Music, just good enough to get employment on the London scene as a freelance bassist.
Touring and studio work was cool. We used to squeeze two basses into a VW Golf to avoid paying double Congestion Charge, had muso house parties and danced at the Redstar.
The financial highpoint of my time in London was getting booked to record all three Lord of the Rings movies with the London Philharmonic, conducted by the composer Howard Shore.
For the first and last time I made some good money from music, so good in fact that it pushed me up into the next tax bracket and I was still paying off the debt to the taxman even when I’d been living and working in Spain for a few years.
Life in a provincial Spanish symphony orchestra is okay. I have plenty of time off to pursue many hobbies; music production, jazz singing and motorcycling are the current faves, stand up paddle, mountaineering and wine tasting are close seconds.
I think the lesson is this; be flexible.
If you are fated to have a career in music it might not be the one you had in mind when you started out. Keep yourself open as everyone you meet, make music with, rip off, cheat and lie to will teach you something about the craft and yourself.
My advice to anyone just starting to find their way in the music industry is to stay humble, nurture relationships with folk that matter to you, ignore the allure of fame and bring forth into the world deeply personal art, that only you could make.
This is a long distance race and what you will get in the end is a great body of work. Ignore schemes that may offer you overnight success and like The Stranglers said, “Watch out for the skin deep”.
What are you working on at the moment?
Man, I am so glad you asked me that because I’m right into a new project that marks a new direction for me in this crazy world of music.
The story goes like this…
A few years ago, when I first started publishing music online, Nick Hersey, a friend from school days, gave me a huge head start when he made some artwork for a single I was putting out. He also made stickers, banners and the whole branding pack.
Nick’s career has continued to grow and he frequently shows at top galleries in the Far East and is a present all set to debut in the Big Apple. His work is really eye-catching and as an artist he is way out of my price range!
So when I cheekily asked him if he wouldn't mind throwing me some scraps for my next planned release he struck a deal;
“I’ll make some artwork for your release if you’ll help my son’s band, Evil Giant, make a few records”.
“Sweet”, I said.
After meeting in the virtual realm, we all felt that this was a good match and great things would come from this fortuitous arrangement.
I asked the band, Iggy and Olivia, to go really deep on song ideas and had them make a virtual scrapbook using Trello to pull it all together. We worked remotely on themes, lyrics, art ideas, finally coming up with ingredients for a single.
The first demo showed promise so I asked them to go around their student hall flat and record anything that made a cool noise. After editing the raw sound files, Evil Giant now had their own personalized percussion sound pack.
I really believe in hyper personalisation - make your thing your thing and your thing only.
The sound pack was one way to really put their stamp on their own music and afterwards the creativity just flowed…
Easter break stopped production for a few weeks but gave me time to start tinkering around with some audio stems Iggy had sent and I’m presently on my way to creating a tasty remix of the song we’re working on.
It’s called Miles Away and it’s been a joy to see them making it and I’m honoured and proud to have had a little hand in its creation. It might even find a home here on Songcards in the near future, so look out!
Very shortly I will be releasing a solo track under the moniker Kent Boy but more about that when it comes out!
What would you tell your younger self?
Don’t be a twat.
Which band or artist are you really excited about at the moment?
Last Easter Monday, my son and I went to the Wizink Centre in Madrid to see the Clancy World Tour by Twenty One Pilots.
Even though we weren’t the biggest fans there (after the Skeleton Clique, who is??) and only really knew the Blurryface and Clancy albums, we sang our throats out to songs we knew and danced to the others.
After breaking down a little to the anthemic track, Paladin Strait, I found my composure again and revelled in the slick professionalism of the show, its artists and their team.
First rate entertainment that showed me anything was possible if you had a vision and determination and I’m still hyped and can’t wait to get making songs again because as we all know, art comes from art.
(While writing this I’m working through Granddaddy’s back catalogue. They still excite me. Try listening to He’s Simple, he’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot without welling up…)
Where can people find your music?
This is the thing.
Like every independent artist out there, streaming has done me no favours whatsoever. For me it is an irrelevant income stream that one day soon I will get rid of completely.
After taking a marketing course a popular distributor had made available, I reached out to the creator of the course, a certain Christopher Carvalho, who was at that very moment putting the finishing lines of code to his baby before his real baby, the digital collectors app, Songcards.
We became fast friends and because we’re both from the South of England, we instantly got each other's jokes and outlook even though I’ve 10 years on him.
Christopher asked me for my input during various phases of the app’s development and I think I beta tested the forerunner of the current version of the mobile app that’s available now.
The Songcards app makes sense for many reasons. It’s a realistic income stream. You can make over $2 on each card with no middle men.
The extra content feature is the perfect way to give something back to your fans and reward them with bonus content. For example, No One Gets Me, a Songcard I released over a year ago, includes high quality artwork, a lyric card and an in depth analysis of the meaning behind the song.
Whereas in turn the Drown out my Sorrows Songcard features a game called Guïscazo that puts you in control of Guy, the song’s anti hero, as he jumps, dodges and drinks his way through three levels of pissed-up mayhem.
I firmly believe that in time many more artists will be using Songcards to build deeper connections with their top fans.
What’s next for the Love Process?
My dear reader, you have no idea but I’ve just taken a 45 day hiatus in the writing of this tome.
Over complication seems to be a recurring motif in my lifestyle and in the interim period we painted the apartment and had it professionally cleaned. I spent too much time riding in the Sierra Tramuntana on my retro 125cc and most recently have begun to stand up paddle again, now the fine weather has returned. All the while helping Evil Giant produce a live version of their single for the upcoming Uni talent show this weekend. This afternoon I finally get to watch a film called Arthur made by my buddy Roger (aka The Viscount) leaving me Saturday to start working on generative patches for my Crave and Edge synths before another week comes around again begging for attention…
Please forgive my leaving you hanging but we shall now continue with more long form content.
What is next for the Love Process? That is a key question and demands a simple answer.
Like the swifts that delight my morning coffee on the balcony with their precision aerial acrobatics, I will be migrating our entire back catalogue to Songcards, all two remaining singles of it.
Expect exclusive artwork, in-depth musical and lyrical analysis mixed with arty musings and behind the scenes keepsakes.
Love Process started as a four piece band which after 18 months slimmed down to a duo, whose two parts have decided to take a short break for the moment due to lifestyle changes.
I feel confident that we may, in time, join the star-studded ranks of many indie bands before us who flared briefly then flickered and fizzled out, later to be consigned to obscure, cult playlists and only heard at the most progressive musical meet ups.
In the meantime, please enjoy playing these moments of tonal adventure, captured for your infinite delight on digital, high quality audio format, available now on Songcards.
FIN
Be patient, my friends, I will return as Kent Boy in the next episode.
Love Phil.
