Social media has repopularised your song Headlock, but how did it feel 20 years ago when you had to create, advertise and market the Speak For Yourself album almost entirely solo? Samgams
Back then if you were lucky you got into NME or i-D magazine. The only real coverage I got was in the techie music mags, but then Hide and Seek was in The OC, Headlock got on the radio and I started getting recognition. If only we could have had TikTok and all this free promotion 20 years ago … but if I’d received then the kind of attention I get now, I might have made different life choices, so I wouldn’t have changed anything.
Did you really remortgage your flat to finance Speak For Yourself? AD2023
I spent four years making an album in [the electronic duo] Frou Frou on Island Records, but it never recouped so I never saw a penny. Making another album with that label would have felt like taking your best dress back to the dry cleaners after they burned it. After I got out of that deal, no bank would lend me any money. Then I realised that my two-bedroom flat in Waterloo I’d bought for £120,000 was worth a hundred grand more a year later. I remortgaged it to make the album and never looked back. Funnily enough, after all the attention on TikTok recently I’ve just received my first royalties from Frou Frou after 25 years.
