The sun’s not even up and my alarm is already pulling me out of bed. It’s 5am. At 6am I have a transcontinental, transatlantic phone interview with Vincent Frank, the mastermind producer, singer- songwriter behind FrankMusik. He’s a young 20-something, based out of South London. He signed with Island Records, and is working on his first LP “Complete Me” with producer Stuart Price (Madonna, The Killers, Keane, Gwen Stefani).

FrankMusik – 3 Little Words

I sit myself at my desk put on “3 Little Words” and pull up some research material and interview questions, I can see the light grey sunrise trying to shine through my blinds. I pull up some information on FrankMusik and see that he self-describes his music as “Blade Runner Pop”, his take on the music of 80’s with an infusion of modern pop and electro. He also provides all his own vocals; in a time when most Electro/Digital acts just want to be in the shadows and hide behind their equipment, FrankMusik wants to be upfront, poppy, accessible and is not afraid to admit as much.

Its 6am now. Using Skype I call his phone. I forgot that some mobile phone companies let you choose a song instead of a typical phone ringer.

I hear “hit me on my beeper, hit me on my beeper, beeper, beeper, beeper, beeper…”
I can’t help but laugh just a bit. He’s now on a major label, working with a major producer on his first album and it seems he still doesn’t take himself too seriously.

He answers.

“Hello,” he says with a definite, though not heavy, London accent.

I give him my name and information, and he asks me to hold on. He’s in the middle of helping out his mom with something. I figure it’s just the typical stuff a son would help a mom with. I picture this guy with this fashionably forward haircut in slim jeans and some bright shirt just standing there helping his mom with some groceries. He starts talking, I realize I’m not recording the conversation, so I cut him off, and ask if I can call back. He says yes.

I call back, but this time he asks me to call back in 2 minutes. He’s still helping his mom. There must be a lot of groceries.

I call back in 6 minutes and after the initial introductions we get the interview started:

I was very surprised from when I first heard your music; to me it seems like something we out here (fakeRICH is based out of LA/OC) needed to hear.

I’ve been to LA a lot. LA is the only place I’ve been to in America and I’ve got my business partner who lives out there. He lives off Santa Monica and Fairfax, so I know LA really well, and the music scene over there is quite influential in what I do. There’s a lot of good parties and the people are not so stuck up like they are in New York… the Westcoast is a little bit more laidback, and the Hispanic crowd is just completely nuts when it comes to parties as well, so yeah, LA is a good place for me.

They just don’t care. They just don’t have any hang ups and it’s just the best thing. It’s absolutely so refreshing. Like in London, everyone is kind of just looking at everyone else. You can just go anywhere in LA to a party, apart from like near Hollywood and stuff—there’s still a few pretentious parts you can get anywhere, but on the whole, people just have it much better, looks like they are having much more fun out there. One of the best nights of my life I actually had in LA at this club called Heist, which is down in Lincoln Heights, not far from the Staples Center, and that was awesome, absolutely awesome.

It’s funny that you mention Heist; we just did a party there for Halloween. I was surprised. They packed this place called Florentine Gardens, its a huge venue and they packed it. There was a line just wrapped around the building and I thought it was amazing.

That’s what I’m talking about man. Its just one of the most exciting things. I couldn’t live there but I can just go there and party for two weeks, like I did last year. I could do it for the rest of my life and it will always feel as good I think, just like the first time.

What about you, you were born and raised out there correct?

Yep, that’s right. I’m still living in the house that I’ve lived all my life, and my studio is here and everything so… South London. Yeah it’s in the Suburbs, its good here though because it’s quite a good place to kind of escape from the bustle that is London and the general idiots that inhabit London as well.

How much of the music that you play is really influenced from where you’re from?

I’m kind of influenced by the sort of music that came to my life at an early age. A lot of my mom’s 80’s 7-inch records had a big influence now kind of thing, I didn’t really appreciate them at the time, but I’ve gone back to similar sounds to what was going on in the 80’s and stuff, but I wouldn’t say it’s the only influence—I’ve got a lot of influences… mostly from electronic based music. I’m not really into guitar based music. So it’s anything from drum and bass to electronic music really. Sort of Daft Punk and stuff like that, so varying tempos and varying sorts of technologies to use. I just love electronic music really. It’s in everything nowadays anyways; boundaries are limitless to what isn’t and is electronic music.

Yeah, every band or group these days needs to have at least some understanding of electronic music.

I mean you look at Nine-Inch Nails, they are like techno freaks, I mean their studio is one of the most tech studios in the world. It’s not about having a band anymore. The only reason you can make it in this industry—major label or indie—is about having everything locked down on every front. I mean if you have a computer, you’ve got no excuse not to be able to do that.

What about vocally though? Not a lot of people in the electronic music genre really do a lot of vocals, and your music is awesome in the vocals that you use.

That’s the thing. Without sounding like a prick, most electro acts are just happy to be in the background kind of thing, you know getting singers in or whatever because there’s really good programs or something, but tell me how many electronic acts you know and you can put a face to them. Daft punk goes complete opposite and they hide their identity.

Most electronic acts don’t want to be the front person, they just want to make music and that’s that. But I make pop music really and I want to be the front man, and I want to be the performer and entertainer. Because I do everything and the only way I can really prove to be people that I do this is because I’m at the front and singing my heart out kind of thing. I don’t want to be the face of this project. I want to shine through really.

You do have people like Daft Punk. Actually Daft Punk was at this club called Cinespace in LA a couple of weeks ago. Even if you got into the VIP room to see them, you still don’t know who they are because there’s no face to them and a lot of other electronic acts are the same way…

Yeah it’s just very odd, but whatever. That’s just what comes with the scenery generally, I like try my hardest in everything I do to oppose most things… the norm if it were.

Your vocal style is not the typical male vocal style you hear anymore.

The way I sing, yeah I sing quite high, I think that’s sort of shock factor for some people, that I can sing this high. I think I do it within reason. I think I don’t want to sing everything high but I’d like to show there’s a range to what I do. [Coughs] I’m losing my voice right because I’ve been singing so much today. [Clears throat] What’s crucial in anything that anyone tries to do in pop music is to be different, and I try to be different in a sort of selfless way. I don’t want to prove to be different. I just want to naturally do things in a different way instead of forcing it, and that vocal style is something that just came out naturally.

I know FrankMusik is pretty recent, about a year to two years max.

Year and half pretty much.

What were you doing before that?

I was bumming around University. And then I quit University and I got job in my local town, selling jeans, which is lame. While I was doing that I was trying to really make sure that I was writing and producing for myself and going to any night club to meet people who would also wanted to work and I would work with them, and network. Then the myspace kind of started going crazy and people started taking interest.

I went to your myspace. You’re even connected, even with your website.

Yeah the thing is I haven’t gotten that many fans. I’ve got about 13,887 fans at the moment, but the proportion to how many plays I have to how many people I have actually in my friend network is really good you know. I don’t have thousands and thousands of fans compared to other bands. The thing is, the fans I do have, they get it. There’s plenty of people who check out my page and they don’t get it, but anyone that’s a fan on a page… I highly recommend adding anyone that’s friends with me because they have good taste in music. They can see past the normal shit you hear and they’re willing to embrace something that is pop that is still new.

I saw you recently posted the vocal track for “3 Little Words” and asked anyone to make a remix and send it to you. How is that going?

We have about ten in so far which has been great, so it’s just a matter about getting in a few more in, I know there’s a deadline soon, but hopefully we’ll just get some good ones. I know we got a few good ones already. Yeah it’s awesome!

You’re working with Stewart Price in the new LP correct?

Yep, I was. We’re finished now.

Oh you are? When do you plan on getting that out?

I think it’s going to come out in March. Depends on what the single’s going to be because we have a few ideas. Depending on what the single is, it either will be released a month after March or the month before… for reasons I cant go into… more marketing reasons than anything else. It’s just choosing the right time to release whatever single it is going to be. There’s reasons; [there’s] multiple reasons to why certain singles to be release at certain points. It’s all crappy label stuff… [Laughs] but it makes sense once you’re sitting in the middle of the situation.

How was it working with a producer rather than being the producer yourself?

Well he didn’t really get in the way and that what was crucial if anything in working with anyone else—that I’d still have free reign over everything in creating and it was nearly Stewarts job to come in and pick up the bits that he thought would fit with a pop record that we’re trying to create rather than saying “we’re going to do it my way,” he said “were going to do it your way and I’m going to say whether it works or not.” And that’s pretty much how the whole thing went.

Is the LP going to sound similar to what you have already or is it going to be a big change?

It’s going to sound a lot more pleasing to the ear. It’s shinier, but it needs to be able to hit broader audience… I mean I could have kept it really low-fi and sort of “cool.” I think “cool” is a really dangerous word. “Cool” is the kind of word that actually ruins people’s career. People strive so hard to be cool that they actually forget why they are doing it in the first place. The reason why I’m doing this is to get as many people in the world to hear it as possible, and if that means I have to embrace making the record not sound so ‘cool’ and more ‘pop’, I don’t mind doing that. Because if it means that people are going to listen to it, that’s good to me, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.

That’s awesome to hear. So many people are too worried about “not selling out” as they put it, but I don’t see anything wrong–

Hipsters… Whenever anyone says to me that “You’re selling out,” I just say, “No I’m getting ahead…”
You’re doing what you’re planning to do, that’s what it sounds like. Not a lot of people get that opportunity, or when they do, they just pretty much go squander it.
Yeah I’ve got plenty of mistakes to make, but for now while I have as much as control as I do, I’m going to try to make sure I’ll make as little mistakes as possible.

The way I heard about you, my friend sent me videos via YouTube.

Yeah, which particular videos?

“When You’re Around”, [See Video Here] that’s the first video I saw. I was wondering how much input you have on the videos.

Yeah I created it. I got the director. I got the film crew, I got the venue. I got the makeup artists. I got the hair. I got sponsorships from clothing designers. I got the people and I coordinated everything… And it was one of the most stressful points in my life. [Laughs] And I did it all for nothing.

The video seems to go perfectly with the music. Did you do the same thing for “3 Little Words” and “In Step”?

“In Step” had a different director as did “3 Little Words”. You can see with “3 Little Words” there was budget thrown at it, but I chose the video treatment as most artists do, but I like that idea the most because of its relevance to the movie Big—and of course that was of the time when a lot of my musical influence was coming out. The “In Step” video was another video treatment I chose but it was so minimal and so stripped back I thought it was perfect. I just like keeping the videos quite simple and saving as much money as possible too. “3 Little Words” was quite expensive but it looks great.

It’s great. “3 Little Words” is probably my favorite out of the ones you put out so far. When I saw “In Step”, it was so ridiculously simple, how can you not like it.

It was quite genius because it was done in one take. I mean we did six takes but it was all done in one go. There was no edits—that’s what the most awesome thing about it was for me.

Remixes—did you start off doing remixes?

No, remixes is something I started getting into while I started producing. I used to do mashups where I used to put up random tracks like Moby or Beastie Boys or something… and it was quite an easy way to learn how to edit and time stretch and things like that. But what remixes have become for me is a way in which to explore different production techniques without worrying about the record label thinking that I’m being too avant-garde with my production. I can remix something and go nuts and it won’t make a difference or harm what I do. From that, I can take certain ideas and sort of hone them down and tame them slightly. Yeah remixes is a great way for me to experiment and get away with murder.

[Laughing]

I’ve read in other places that you describe your music as “blade-runner pop.”

Yeah that’s right.

Do you still plan to keep describing it that way once the new LP comes out?

Yeah, definitely, I mean Blade Runner was filmed in LA… and it’s supposed to be Downtown LA in the future and LA is a huge influence. You know “Blade Runner Pop”, the idea with that is that it’s supposed to be the future. It was a futuristic film but it was made in the eighties. And all I’m doing is trying to make futuristic sounding pop music but massively looking back at the decade that I was born in. But not selling out on nostalgia but rather embracing the best parts of it and exploiting them in its full potential.

When do you plan to tour again?

Not sure yet. I’ve been trying to get a supporting tour for next year, I think, but there’s nothing concrete as it were.

So there’s no chance you’ll be out in LA anytime soon?

I’m not sure at the moment. It’s such a fucking trip, but I’d love to come out there. I’d really like to spend more time in San Fran as well when I do come out. So hopefully soon. I think I’ll do a round trip. What I’ll do is start in New York and then I’ll jet to LA and then I’ll fly back.

I don’t think I’ve been able to find any live videos of you yet.

No, we’re holding back. But the live show is amazing.

[At this point we talk over each other, but I went on about his music could be hard to replicate live and how he planned to showcase it live]

I think what you’re going to ask me is “How are you doing that,” and the answer is that we got these things called receptors where you can actually sample things from tracks and assign them to keys on keyboards or drum pads. It’s like a really advance sampler. Instead of having to recreate them, we can actually use the original parts from the record. All you’re hearing is the record that played live… and we got a live bassist and we got some decent crew guys. A lot of keyboards stuff is live. All the drums are live. And you can give the vibe that it’s live. So yeah it’s all great, and it’s really good. We did a couple of shows and it’s been really well received.

How do you like working with the session guys?

Whenever I work with anyone in the live realm, I always avoid the word “session” because I like to think that they are my band as well, rather than I paid them to be there type of thing. I always make sure they get people in who I thoroughly get along with and like the music because I think it’s quite bad for us to get people who get paid to show type of thing because you’ll never get the right spirit or the right delivery from them if they are in it for the wrong reasons.

If you had the opportunity to perform with any 5 artists, who would you perform with and where would you perform it?

The venue would have to be different with each artist…

Okay, if you don’t mind explaining…

Right okay… I’d love to do a gig with Busta Rhymes. That would be amazing. I’d love to do a gig with Busta Rhymes in the most gritty, New York hip hop night club there is and just completely blow people away with something completely different and get Busta Rhymes to do a cameo appearance during my set. [Laughs] That would be awesome… Actually, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do other than that. I don’t think there’s anyone else I’d rather work with other than him. I think he’s amazing. He’s like the best rapper in the world.

Really?

Oh yeah. [Laughs] Never mind those Little Wayne bullocks.

That’s funny. [Laughing] I’ve never heard of anybody say that about Busta Rhymes.

Yeah, “Extinction Level Event” was like the album of my teens when it came to urban music. I was never into Eminem and stuff… I always thought he was a bit of fraud the fact that he was white. But Busta Rhymes, he’s just gritty.

There’s one thing that I like about him the most is the fact that he never seems to really take himself that seriously. He’s like a nutter. He’s a complete crazy bun. In all his videos, he’s weird, you know. He’s never just upfront nasty. He’s nasty, but it’s like he’ll just pull out an inflatable hammer and hit you in the head with this inflatable hammer. [Laughs]

Exactly! Like if you saw him in the street, you’d be afraid of him for a second. He’d come up and he’d pull out a gun and pull the trigger, like the Joker or somebody, and it’ll just say “bang,” and a little flag comes out and that’s it. And he’ll just laugh at you, slap you on the back and keep on walking.

[Laughs] Exactly! It’s like you just don’t get that kind of amazing sort of thing anymore in urban music. I think urban music is dying. It’s died over here quite badly. So yeah, I think it’s good to keep things quite playful.

Do you have a favorite artist? Like someone you’d absolutely…

Yeah this is always a weird because people never know who this is. There’s only one singer I want to work with in the near future and it’s this woman called Julia Fordham. No one knows of her but she is one of the best singers I’ve ever heard. She’s kind of old school, like early nineties… But yes, Julia Fordham.

With that we ended the interview. We said our goodbyes and then I remembered one more question. Where did the name FrankMusik come from?

My grandfather, who’s passed away, his name was Frank. FrankMusik is kind of an homage to him. It keeps me in check if things ever get too wild.
==================================
His new EP “3 Little Words” comes out today.

Here is the tracklist:
1. 3 Little Words
2. 3 Little Words (Paper Faces Mix)
3. 3 Little Words (Blackstrobe Mix)
4. Run Away From Trouble
5. 3 Little Words (Black Gardenia Version)

You can pick it up on iTunes or Amazon

Here are a few more tracks to listen to:
FrankMusik – Fall From It All
FrankMusik – Flatliner

And you can catch up with more FrankMusik info on his MySpace or his Website.

And check out his videos HERE