The debut EP from Slow Cooked has been long in the works. Its roots lie in Huddersfield, where cellist Louis Barby found a love for his instrument playing in symphony orchestras. Fastforward a few years and Barby is plugged into the London DIY scene and in high demand, his chops being employed by acts across the capital.
Although having found firm footing as a go-to man for all things cello, the 9-5 wasn’t serving Barby as well. Disillusioned by the bizarre trappings of his corporate day job, the Slow Cooked project developed as a way to articulate the frustrations of operating in a sales driven workplace. As he puts it: “being trapped in the fires of repetition, you boil like a kettle in the kitchen of your corporate existence, attempting to wield the sexiness of small talk and jargon”. A notion all too familiar for those who have to endure this strange vernacular.
And so arrives Plastic Values: a bold showing of what can be achieved using little other than a cello and a loop pedal. Presenting wry reflections on an identity carved out by proxy, Slow Cooked combines the comedic with a darker underbelly of discontent. The EP balances a sound that is both vast and claustrophobic, with thundering bass and drums reverberating underneath the hushed taunts of Barby’s vocals. This duality runs central to the EP, as Plastic Values tells of a life split between musical passion and corporate poison.
Wax caught up with the man himself ahead of the release to dive deeper into the EP. It seemed spookily apt that the transcription app we used had kindly made up a list of ‘action items’ for us following our conversation. We shared a groan at the numbing office lingo rearing its head, helpless against the grip of actionables, deliverables and KPIs…
Plastic Values seems to show a clear idea of who you are as an artist and how you want to sound. What was the genesis of the Slow Cooked project and how do you feel about the debut EP coming out?
It’s been such a long time coming. I’ve been doing the Slow Cooked project for about four years now. For two of those, it was quite ambient as I was working out the limits of the cello with effects pedals and stuff, then over the past couple of years I’ve been developing the sound that you hear on the EP. It’s taken a while to get anywhere with it – partly my own fault because I’ve been saying yes to too many other projects.
A lot of the EP reflects on life since moving to London. How has your experience in the city informed these songs?
I moved to London straight from uni in Norwich, gagging to get into the music scene, and it took a long time to penetrate it in any way. I started putting on my own night at the Windmill called Hard Drive with my mate Emil, who’s a drag queen going by Jane Norman. I ended up meeting Hannah from Platonica Erotica and started playing with her, and other people would see me playing and I’d just keep saying yes. At that point I was a kid in a sweet shop really. I was playing loads and loads of gigs with other bands and establishing myself with this cello sound – I’ve had some amazing experiences playing with some amazing people.
How do you go about marrying your classically trained background and punk sympathies into such a unique sound?
I jumped through all the grade hoops and playing some excited gigs within the symphony orchestra of my local town Huddersfield, but I never fully felt at place within the classical setting. Reflecting back on it I probably thought I was too cool for it, (which I absolutely wasn’t).
But yes, I quit orchestra when I was 18 and a few years later after seeing Massive Attack with my best mate Nick, felt inspired to pick it back up and experiment with it though effects.
I think the punky sound developed from my own frustrations with my working life. For a while I was trying to find someone else to sing because I wasn’t confident to do it, but it wasn’t really happening. So I started putting my voice to the music, and as I wasn’t too confident in actually singing it came out more spoken word-y. I guess that’s how that happened.
The EP taps into your frustrations with your working life – what about this experience are you trying to communicate on the EP?
For me, these songs are taking the piss out of myself. It’s about moving to London and getting my first job in the sales department of a recycling company. I had the territory of Tower Hamlets, and I had to sell recycling solutions to every business in the borough. It was a shit job, but when you pick apart what it’s like to work in those environments, it is just quite funny. I was going through a little bit of an identity crisis at that time because you find yourself locked into someone else’s identity. I would be leaving my personality at the top of the escalator and having to fit into their idea of what I was – pretending to be really into hitting my targets every week and shit like that. So Slow Cooked developed more into a characterful experiment in which I could vocalise that identity crisis.
It was mainly the internal marketing in those sorts of places that got me – the execs trying to tell you how good the place is and why you should want to work there. I remember once reading a slide on why working there was so good, and one of the selling points was ‘free toast’. Then in that same meeting, the manager brought up a picture of Greta Thunberg with an inspirational quote, and a few people in the room just caught eyes – we just could not believe it, and so I re-created that moment in the ‘Free Toast’ video. It was so brazen, but you were just having to stomach it, you know? So the songs are embellishing that and becoming that character in a way, especially on ‘The Wolf of Whitechapel’. It was almost a coping mechanism at times. I don’t think they are purely humour songs as there is some deep turmoil at large within the content, but I also don’t think it’s possible to remove humour from what I do.
How did you try and balance pursuing creative side with the frustrations of the nine-to-five?
Well I’m still trying to balance it, but I’m certainly much happier at my workplace now! Moving to London was such a shock, and so much of it was trying to keep my head above water with the job. I used to drive through the city and it occurred to me that I was never seeing the horizon. The music was definitely the antidote to the identity crisis that was happening within my work life, and I think I’d have felt a lot more scared if I didn’t have my thing on the side that was actually my true passion. I think the irony of corporate lifestyle is a bit done now, and I’ve certainly moved on creatively from this subject matter, but playing these songs live always speaks to people.
Could you describe the ways in which the cello is used on the EP? It seems to play a greater role in the music than it may at first appear.
Well, there’s a tiny bit of synth in it, and there’s drums and bass, but outside of that every sound is the cello. Me and my producer Oli Barton-Wood were trying to make the sound true to the way I play the songs live, because when I’m playing I’ll make the drum beat by tapping the bridge. Most of the drumbeats you’re hearing on the EP are me tapping the cello in different ways to try and create a sound that’s sort of compressed and almost techno-like. We built the songs around that first before getting the drums and bass in (my lovely boys Barney Lister and Jack Patchett). We did loads of cello improb takes experimenting with delays and overdrives, making these nasty, crunchy sounds. It gives it a bit of a horror vibe and its loads of fun to play live, especially now with a band.
Having made a name for yourself as a go-to man for all things cello, how do you feel about your relationship to the instrument and what it has brought to so many recordings?
I love it so much – it’s a beautiful instrument. It allows me to skirt that boundary between making these quite heavy songs but then balancing it out with a little sombre melody. It’s basically a tool that allows me to be very broad with what I’m doing. I think coming from a classical background where you’re drilled on playing exactly the right notes you get taught to be a bit of a machine. It’s been liberating since picking the cello back up again, putting down that classical training and learning how to improvise. Improvising is generally not something that you’re taught at all, so to be able to sit down in people’s projects where I don’t know exactly what I’m going to end up playing is the nicest feeling.
It’s the same with the Slow Cooked stuff. We don’t get to rehearse too much as a band because we all have our own projects going on, but it does feel like every time we play we’re sort of styling out, which is really nice. I love that you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in a in a set – you’re with the audience in that sense. That’s definitely what gives me a love of playing live.
What’s the plan for the Slow Cooked project looking forward?
More music! I’m also bringing out a very exciting live video in the coming months that I worked on with some amazing friends and creatives. Other than that I’m going to see how far I can push this cello sound!
You do put the cello through all of its paces.
The poor thing. I’ve been snapping quite a few bows recently. I’m currently using this horrible £40 spare bow from Amazon with plastic hairs. I don’t deserve nice ones.
The EP launches at The George Tavern which is one my favourite venues. And it’s in Whitechapel – my former selling territory – so it’s a great full circle moment. I’d like to get something out ASAP after waiting for so long with this release. I really love the songs, but it feels like I’ve moved on creatively from them. When I play the songs live I remind myself how much I love them and how well people respond to them, but they were written at a time where I wasn’t taking myself very seriously. What I don’t want to do is hide behind any sort of humour, so with the songs I’m writing now I’m taking myself a bit more seriously. As I said before though, I could never completely remove the humour out of anything I do – it’s important!
Words: Dan Webster // Photos: Martha Treves
‘Plastic Values’ is out now. Stream and purchase the EP via Bandcamp.