The New Cue #410 September 2: Ezra Collective's Femi Koleoso
"Me and the boys in Vogue, blaaaady hell!"
Happy Monday morning to all who celebrate,
Welcome to your weekly free edition of The New Cue. Come in, have a snoop around, make yourself at home. Today we’ve got a chat with Ezra Collective chief Femi Koleoso as he tells Niall all about the band’s new record and explains the tightrope act of being a successful DIY operation holding onto their roots who also sometimes love getting stuck into the high-life of a Vogue photoshoot. A tricky balance but they pull it off.
Enjoy the edition (and if you do – spread the word by pressing that funky little Share button below)
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso
At the end of the month, Ezra Collective will release their excellent third album Dance, No One’s Watching. It’s a record that captures the freewheeling euphoria of the London crew’s live shows, honing their fusion of jazz, Afrobeat, hip-hop, soul, samba and more as well as delivering some of their poppiest moments yet. As drummer and band leader Femi Koleoso explains below, it was an effort freed from the pressures of following up their award-winning second because they already had it in the bag by the time they won the Mercury Prize in 2023. That’s the spirit. Femi likes to get his interviews done nice and early, so a few weeks ago Niall joined him on Zoom at 9am to chat all things the new Ezra Collective album.
Hi Femi, how's it going?
Good. What's up?
All fine here, cheers, I’ve been getting mentally prepped for a 9am interview. Where are at the moment?
I'm at home in Enfield, north London. What about yourself?
I’m in Southend, not too far away.
Oh, you’ve got the beach seconds away?
Yeah, the Essex Riviera.
I’m into that. Are you gonna go to the beach today?
Yeah, I might have a little stroll later.
It’s a whole thing now isn’t it, seaside towns. Southend is not one of the ones being destroyed, is it, all the Londoners come into your ends and ruining it?
Nah, it’s OK here. All the hipsters went to Kent instead.
They’re coming! You’ll see a vegan pop-up and then you’ll see someone else wearing a Brownswood T-shirt and then you’re finished. Before you know it, you’ll have a festival there and your rent will be three grand a week.
Haha, on that cheery note, thanks for doing this.
It’s all good.
I spoke to you early in the morning for the last record too.
In Dalston, yeah? That was just before Where I’m Meant To Be.
It was, there’s a lot to catch up on. Where did this one start?
I spent the entirety of 2022 with Damon and Gorillaz, I did their world tour and I saw Damon write The Ballad Of Darren whilst on tour with Gorillaz and I found that really inspirational, his attitude towards keep making, keep making, keep making. 2023 with Ezra Collective, I was like, ‘Let's make another record whilst we're touring the other one’ and that was where the beginning stages came. First gig of 2023 was in Madrid on 1st February and then we went to Barcelona. After that, we just kept on trotting through Europe, ended up in the UK at Hammersmith Apollo. After that, it was America, Blue Note six nights in a row.
So you’d chosen to document this moment in the band where one big thing was being topped by the next big thing.
Exactly. Lockdown was so beautiful in that I was sat opposite Ife (Ogunjobi, trumpeter) for two weeks, just making songs. Then this record, we were sat all over planes and countries, making songs looking at the audience of Ezra Collective, and going, ‘What is the sound for this moment in the crowd? What is the sound of everyone together? What is the sound of people?’.
The album is called Dance, No One’s Watching. Can you remember the first time you saw people dancing at an Ezra show?
I can. I'm gonna give you some dotted moments that were particularly special. In 2014 kind of time, we played at the Queen Elizabeth front room in the Southbank Centre, which is where Tomorrow's Warriors, our youth group, was run and we played what was called the Friday Tonic, which was a Friday evening, 5pm, one hour and they'd let a band play for free. We were playing Fela Kuti's Zombie. People were sat down, but there was a lot of people there, people were stood all around where people sat and people that were stood started to give it a little shake and a vibe. I remembered that, we were on the cusp of a dance floor. I remember thinking if we got rid of those seats, we might have got somewhere.
Another moment that sticks out in my head is Glastonbury 2016, the West Holts Bar stage. We were playing and there was no one in the tent, because it have been like 11pm, the headliners are playing, Shangri-La has just opened, no one was going to the West Holts Bar tent kind of thing, and there were these two dudes completely naked, just dancing to us. Initially, I thought they were black people but they were actually white people covered in mud, completely naked. How Glastonbury is that? Those are the moments where it kind of went there. But everything changed in 2019, that tour. Before that point, we were converting audiences, it was people sat down ready to watch jazz and then they would stand up. In 2019, people turned up to dance. That was the difference. But it's been a very gradual process.
You recorded the new album at Abbey Road, didn’t you?
Yeah, it was done in three days. One day to set up and two days recording. There's that Beatles record where they recorded the whole record in the studio and then afterwards, they went on the roof and played it to all their fans outside and the actual recordings released for some of the songs were from the performance on the roof, not the one in the studio. I found really inspiring because nothing is a substitute for playing and getting people dancing. And then the other one is that Fela Kuti's London Scene was recorded at Abbey Road. I was trying to merge the two.
At what point did the Mercury win come in the process?
I love that question so much, because I think the answer is great. The album was finished before we won the Mercury Prize.
Ah really, that’s cool.
It’s great, innit? Everyone assumes you won the Mercury Prize so you're like, 'Let's write and make and blah blah' but I was very, very intentional. Suddenly, you'd be creating in the direction of the Mercury Prize, like, ‘OK, we put strings on that album and it won the Mercury prize, let's put strings on this album’, rather than having no idea you're gonna win anything. At that point, Where I'm Meant To Be had done well, we were really proud of it, but it was done. It was packaged, it was in a box, it was gone. It got another lease of life because of the Mercury, but not for us. I was over it by that point. I was excited about the new record. I think it's really positive that we made this record before we got that prize. I don't believe in things like ‘The curse of the Mercury Prize’, I don't believe in that at all, but I do believe in being distracted from the deeper mission because of success. I do think that is possible.
What did you do to celebrate the win?
Exactly what I told everyone we were gonna do. We went partying for a bit, because we were like, 'Oh, my gosh, we won, let's dance'. We went to a club in London and as we were walking in, they were playing Hard by Newham Generals and for about two minutes, I felt like a rapper, I had champagne, trophies… and then we ended up in McDonald's and Krispy Kremes. The next day, I was surprised how quickly it just went back to normal. I went to the Emirates to have a walk around, went to the merch shop, bought myself a little T-shirt and then had some noodles. It was a very normal day. But the night was great.
How hard is it to keep holding on to your DIY roots when everything is getting bigger and more successful?
All of this success and the heights and New Music Friday and All Points East main stage and blah, blah, blah, it will end at some point. One day, we might put an album out and you might be the only person that wants to interview us about it and that's totally fine. That's actually a beautiful thing, because it means we've probably given the space for someone else to have it. But the thing that actually lasts the longest is, when you did have the platform, who did you help? And what did you achieve in that help? Like, what primary school did you go to? What child in a secondary school feels like playing the trumpet because of Ife? The way you keep yourself integral is by never forgetting that's what it's about. We all run the risk at times of drifting away from what is most important, but it's your managers, it's your label, your PR, your radio plugger, it is that whole team that drift away from that importance, not just the band, because it's easily done. What are you meant to do when you get email saying, ‘ Blah blah blah wants you to play a special performance at their blah blah blah’ and the money is this and it's like, 'Oh my gosh, that's got to take priority!' No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to take priority. The other day, we did a photo shoot for Vogue. How incredible is that? Me and the boys in Vogue, blaaaady hell! But you can't lose track. It was never about Vogue.
But you are allowed to enjoy the moment in Vogue.
Mate, I loved it! I was in Burberry shorts, the sun was out, we looked great, people did our nails, hair and makeup. I loved every second. But at the same time, it’s not the end goal. It's not what we're aiming for. It's a beautiful moment. But we've got to go back to what is most important - where's the next workshop with a bunch of teenagers? That's where we're at with it.
How did Ian Wright end up on the record?
Rock'n'roll innit, we're mates with football players now! He came to Abbey Road, he watched us record it. He’s an Ezra fan and then found out me and TJ (Koleoso, bassist) support Arsenal, but Ian Wright is beyond Arsenal, we all love him. We invited him to Abbey Road and he was in the room when we were recording it and he sent a voice note to someone being like, ‘I love this band, they’re amazing, we’re dancing, I’m loving it’ and I kept that voice note and put it on the record. So I never got to play football with Ian Wright but at least I got to put a song out with him, it’s the next best thing.
Thanks for your time Femi.
Thank you. Let’s do this again on the next album.
Yeah, speak to you in a couple of years.
Couple of years?! Have you not seen the trend, man, we’ll have another record for you next year mate! Take care!
ND