![]() “I set myself up for that,” Weatherall laughs. “Who’s Joey?” quips the Mixmag photographer. “It’s not about my music at all – we’re all an equal part of it. But it would all be weird as hell if it wasn’t with these boys,” he says, gesturing toward his bandmates. “My dad is definitely a huge part of why I do what I do, so that was special. Weatherall has already followed in his father’s footsteps and played that same venue twice (so far), supporting Bicep and Little Dragon. “My sister would be in a little stroller behind the speakers at parties,” he says fondly. They settled for being crowned victors of their school’s Battle of the Bands, but his affection for weirdo electronica never left him.Īs he traversed his teens his dad, a casual DJ back in the day, would recount tales of trips to Goa, producing early-90s rave tapes and DJ sets at Camden’s Roundhouse back when it was a crumbling squat. “We always wanted to be hugely popular and successful,” he says with an ironic smile. He learned guitar, formed a band called Broken Heads, and dreamed big. He found solace in indie bands and early-00s glitch and IDM, obsessing over Arctic Monkeys while hunting for Telefon Tel Aviv torrents on his dad’s computer. “There’s one road in, one road out – it’s literally a dead-end town,” he shrugs, tapping the ash from his roll-up and describing it as full of chippies and fishing boats rather than record shops and clubs. Weatherall grew up in Brightlingsea, near Colchester. “Now, it’s a large part of everything that’s happened.” “At no point was I disheartened – I knew everybody was wrong,” he recalls. Eventually it found its way to Lobster Theremin, which snapped it up. Calling bullshit on record label tastes, he uploaded the track to SoundCloud where it was almost immediately ripped to YouTube. Eventually, impatience got the better of him. “I was dancing around my room to it for ages, knowing I had something special,” he says, proudly. The track had lain dormant for years as label after label turned it down. He counts his blessings, though, for ‘Talk To Me You’ll Understand’ almost never happened. “Everything’s blown up so fast that I’m constantly learning how to manage it all,” he admits, the tension finally dropping from his shoulders as we relax at a picnic table. Australian tours, Panorama Bar sunrise sets and Maida Vale sessions all chart his trajectory, but with a Brainfeeder album on the way, he’s going beyond dance music’s hype machine. In 2016, ‘Talk To Me You’ll Understand’ turned him from a student of popular music at Goldsmiths, where he, Jed (guitar) and John (sax and microKORG) met five years ago, into a producer on the cusp of a seismic shift. ![]() Nearly four million hits on your breakout track will do that to you. It’s fair to say the 24-year-old is still navigating his remarkable rise – and not always getting it right. “I’m so, so sorry,” Weatherall repeats over and over, but with a cheeky grin that suggests the day’s woes are easily forgotten. Turning the corner he’s greeted by a communal ‘Weyyyy!’ from bandmates Jed and John, who are sitting outside the hotel and sipping from comically large goblets of beer. The Londoner is set to appear at the Belgian music and tech festival known as and&, but right now, after missing his Eurostar connection, he’s alone, has no bank card and has spent the whole day in near-meltdown.Ī series of frantic texts and rescheduled trains later he arrives in Leuven in a well-worn baseball cap advertising Australia’s favourite beer, flannel shirt and jeans. Felix Clary Weatherall is having a bad day. ![]()
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