Name: mmeadows
Members: Kristin Slipp, Cole Kamen-Green
Interviewee: Kristin Slipp

Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, songwriter, producer, trumpet player, electronic musician (Cole Kamen-Green), Singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist (Kristin Slipp)
Current release: mmeadows's By Design EP is out now. The duo's full-length debut Light Moves Around You will follow on February 3, 2023.

If you enjoyed this interview with mmeadows and would like to find out more about the band, visit their official website. They're also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud. To find out more about his work as a session musician, read our Cole Kamen-Green interview.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

The impulse to create - and it is an impluse - is deep and inexplicable. There was not a lot of music in my household growing up, so I found my way to music on my own, first through singing.

When I learned that it felt good to express myself through my singing voice, I wanted to hold onto that feeling, so I threw myself into as mand musical situations as possible, ultimately ending up at a music conservatory for college. There I was exposed to so much music and met like minds, and it’s that community that propels me forward, pushing me to continue to refine my creative voice.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Maybe sometimes I’ll say to myself, “I want to write an upbeat song with tons of major chords,” or “I want to use only my voice to make this track,” and it’s often helpful to start with a parameter like that. But staying within those boundaries is something else - sometimes that doesn’t serve the music best.

So at a point usually early in the process, the song develops a mind of its own, and ends up getting what it needs, which is not always what I originally imagined, and that’s more than ok.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I’m not too particular about my physical work space. More important is what my frame of mind is like.

Something that we’ve participated in that really kicks my ass in the best possible way is these song-a-day groups that our friends lead, in which each participant writes and records one song, every day, for one week. Working under that kind of pressure has illicted some of my best
songs yet, imo.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

A song most often begins for me with a melody fragment. I record little vocal melody ideas into my phone when they strike, and when it’s time to write, I’ll go into the folder and pull out one of those snapshots to use as the basis of a new song.

If I’m working totally from scratch, I like to start a song on one of my trusty Juno synths, which have some of my favorite sounds in the world, and mess around there until I find a chord structure that feels nice to sing on top of.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

When I’m working on a melody, vowel sounds often come along as part of the package. With those vowels present, certain words are suggested. Sometimes it feels to me like a melody is simply begging for a certain lyric.

I am working to become a stronger editor, but for better or worse, the lyrical approach I employ most often is “first thought best thought.”

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

There really is a kind of alchemy - magic? - that happens in the process of writing music. If someone asks what influences me and I say “Betty Carter” or whatever, they might say, “yeah I really don’t hear Betty Carter in your music - who is Betty Carter?” and that’s the magic of making music - you have all your influences, musical and non-musical, and you yourself synthesize all that information you’ve taken in over the course of your life, and you spit out a song.

Where did these ideas come from? I really can’t say, but I do think it’s magic.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Yes, often! I think the best way to honor something you’re making is to go where it leads you. If it takes you down a rabbit hole to nowhere, retrace your steps and take another route.

You don’t know if something will work till you try it. Always try it!

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

Sometimes it feels flowing and free, sometimes it feels like a rush of frantic energy. I’m most succesfful working under some sort of pressure like a deadline, because it allows much less time to second-guess what I’m doing and instead run on instinct. I think my best ideas come out under these circumstances.

At the same time, this way of working can feel unhinged. After a day of working like this I’m so wound up I’ll often have a hard time falling asleep. I hope to someday find more of a balance in this respect.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

That is a question I’m still trying to answer.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

A song can be tweaked infinitely, which is why, again, having deadlines is great! If we have a mixing session set up, the song simply has to be finished and fully recorded ahead of that.

Deadlines = very good for the perfectionists among us.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

We were both present for the mixing of the entirety of our record Light Moves Around You. It’s a tedious process to sit and witness each of your creative choices be painstakinly scrutinized. But it also feels necessary.

We both have a lot of input in the mixing process. We’ve also learned so much from watching our friend Mat, who mixed the record, work. Since we’re both producers, and this record was wholly self-produced, we feel pretty precious about the sounds and treatments of each part, each instrument, and the arrangements.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

What we’re learning is that releasing an album happens over time - singles come out slowly, and in between you’re working on making videos, art, doing press (15 questions!), and much more. When our debut album as a whole finally emerges (Feb. 3, 2023!), we’ll be on tour.

When that’s finished and we’re back home, there might be some melancholy, maybe a bit of an “empty” feeling, yes. But we won’t languish there for long, because in honesty, we’re really excited about making our next album.

To me, the most fun thing about making a record is making the record. So we’re gonna do that.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

There is creativity involved in the making of most things, I’d say. Who am I to judge whether a barista is more or less “creative” than a musician? (Musicians are often baristas too, of course.) The noble (or whatever) thing isn’t what you do, but how you approach it.

It may be flawed to romanticize a culture that has a notoriously dubious work culture, but on a recent trip to Japan, we got to see how seriously people take their work there - from the taxi drivers to the noodle pullers to the onsen keepers.

As someone who’s grappled with the “validity” of being an artist, this was incredibly inspiring and made me want to double down on my dedication as a musician.