Preceding the release of My Days of 58, the Americana legend once known as Smog discusses his Yorkshire youth, why Spotify is like the mafia and the bleak state of AI We got married to [Smog’s] Our Anniversary. When you write songs, do you think about how listeners might carry them into their own lives, or do the songs stop being yours after they are done? Vanearle When I wrote [2019’s] Watch Me Get Married, I thought maybe people would have that as their wedding song. But mostly it’s inconceivable what people are gonna do with a song. I don’t think about it too much because there are 100,000 places where it’s gonna live. Have I ever heard about any inappropriate uses of songs? I think having Our Anniversary as a wedding song is a little surprising, but maybe they’re realists. As an appreciator of dub, if you could spend a week in a studio to collaborate with any dub artist at their peak, who would you go for? albertoayler I’d have to say Lee “Scratch” Perry just because he was so crazy. He was like a little kid – just infectious excitement. I think that he would have been easy to hang out with. But also, King Tubby was such a minimalist and I’d be curious about how he determined when enough was enough – investing so much power in the fewest elements. Have Fun With God [the 2014 dub remix album of 2013’s Dream River] was very traditional – all the moves were taken from 70s Jamaican records. Maybe once is enough. But I do like the idea of recycling recorded things to make something else – that’s what initially attracted me to dub. If I did [a new remix album], I may do a chopped and screwed record. Continue reading...