George FitzGerald's Fading Love

Image: George FitzGerald

To create a full album means to nurture something with patience, to have the creative capacity and drive to ultimately go the extra mile and execute something with more depth. It is a process that George FitzGerald has implemented over the past few years with the ten track-long Fading Love, and the finished piece is soon to be revealed fully to the world. 

London born and Berlin based FitzGerald is known to most as a dancefloor tastemaker, with a diverse style when it comes to both productions and his sets. Most notably his tracks 'Child', 'Thinking Of You' and his massive remix of Close and Scuba's 'Beam Me Up', explored sides from both house, techno and bass and highlighted his profoundly assorted tastes.

Fading Love is set to showcase a whole new set of skills and develop heightened respect from audiences and fellow music peers alike. We caught up with him to talk about the album, his plans for the rest of the year and the pitfalls of cat excrement in the studio.

So the album has been a long time in the making, how does it feel to have it finally boxed off?

It's a pretty amazing feeling. I'd obviously never done an album before so everyone who had done one in my friendship circle when I started doing one said, "Are you really sure you wanna do it? It gets really dark in the middle when you think you're not going to finish it off."

And definitely at the beginning of last summer I had some thoughts about how I've been telling people for a year and a half that I've got an album nearly done and it doesn't feel anywhere near finished. So when it was finally done and it went for mastering, it was a surreal moment. There was a time when I thought it'd never be finished. 

I can imagine. I guess because of that a lot of artists stick to just putting together EPs, not many actually decide to make full albums. What is the process like in comparison, apart from the time it takes? 

I think if you're doing it properly you should have some sort of overriding concept or overarching principle behind the album and how you approach it rather than just writing ten tracks and sticking them together.

I know a lot of people do that but I think the good albums are the ones were you can tell that somebody has taken a stance on something stylistically, musically or emotionally, there's some kind of story or a statement being made.

That takes time, I ended up discarding almost six months worth of music because I knew what I wanted to get towards, but it took time to really get the concept down and realise what I was trying to achieve. With an EP there doesn't really need to be too much of a concept behind it.

One of the stand out tracks from the album for me is 'Call It Love' featuring Lawrence Hart (listen above), you also have another vocalist Boxed In featured on the album. How did you pick up on them and why did you decide to work with them? 

The album is coming out on Domino and they are two artists that are part of the Domino family, and they are really good friends with the label's A&R. When I was talking to Domino about the focus I wanted, I said I wanted it to be very British and very normal sounding, not like major label soul singer sort of stuff.

We were introduced and we clicked and had very similar ideas about what kind of music we were interested in writing, and it happened like that. We ended up working together a lot and we are writing together for other projects, so it's become a nice story behind the scenes. It's brought people together who will write more music with each other. 

There's definitely a nice balance between dancefloor worthy, big tracks and more melodic stuff on the album, how did you decide what ratio to go for? 

I knew I didn't want it to be predominantly vocal, I wanted it to be just under half with them on. It was just a case of taking the tracks that I'd written at the end and seeing which one didn't fit on the record, which ones flowed the best and which ones fitted next to each other, whilst making sure there's enough space and time to let the ear rest.

It doesn't bombard you like a pop album. There are vocal moments and there are big spaced out instrumentals. That's one of the things that takes up the most time when creating the record.

I always notice your amazing Bengal cats pottering about your studio on Instagram. Are they a help or a hindrance? 

Well for the first half of the record, the studio was in the basement of my flat and now my studio is in the east of Berlin. They're not too distracting but it's not cool when they're like, doing a shit in the corner of your studio. I had to ban one of them from the studio for quite a while because I seemed to be clearing up mess rather than making music [laughs]. 

Haha! As you just said you're back in Berlin, what drew you to living there? Do you find it influences your music?

I actually first moved here about ten years ago before I was doing music when I was studying and that's how I got into house and techno. This time round I was just a bit sick of London and I was thinking about either Bristol or Manchester but I knew more people in Berlin from the time that I had spent there.

I'll probably come back to the UK quite soon but there's loads of space and time to take the ideas that you have and develop them, there's not the same kind of pressure that there is in London all the time, especially if you're making an album.

I can't mention Berlin without mentioning Panorama Bar where you play regularly. What's your most memorable moment there, whether it be good or just weird?

There's loads of stories that I probably can't really repeat but my most memorable moment was playing at a night called Sub:Stance which Scuba used to run. It had its fifth year birthday and closing party and I ended up playing for six hours, four hours on my own and then back to back with Scuba for two, that was really special. Probably my number one DJ experience. 

Speaking of back to backs, I saw you at the Chibuku birthday event in the Abandon Silence room with Joy Orbison last month, and I know that you've got a few more dates with him over summer. He seems to play a lot heavier when I've seen him on his own, why do you think it works when you two partner up?

Well he's quite an old friend of mine and I think we bring an interesting side of each other out. When he's on his own he plays a bit more percussive and tracky and I might play more melodic records, but I think it's cool when we tease.

He has those elements in his sets as well and every so often I play pretty upfront percussive stuff, it just works. I've played back to back with other people when it doesn't work, but it's very comfortable with him.  

It was a really good set, I enjoyed it. 

Yeah I really enjoyed that one. I always trust him to put on something good and hopefully he feels the same way, well I know he feels the same way. It's just fun.

What other gigs are you looking forward to over summer?

There's this thing called Oya Festival, it's in the north of Norway where the sun never sets, which sounds pretty amazing. When I got the booking through for that I thought it'd be really cool. I think that stands out from the rest but there's so many good ones, Hideout, maybe Glastonbury but I'm not sure about that yet. It'll be a good summer. 

How have you managed to juggle running the Man Make Music label whilst creating the album?

Well I sort of co-run it with friends so while I was doing the album I kind of stepped back from the organisation of it and was more involved with A&R, I was still picking the tracks but the label has taken the back seat while I've been doing the album.

It's quite hard to juggle it but it's always fun and I treat it as a relaxation thing because releasing other people's music is a pleasure so I try not to treat it as a job. 

Last up a hypothetical question, if you could produce any track from past or present to make it onto Fading Love, what would you pick?  

That's a tricky one, I think in terms of production I'd go with 'Kid A' by Radiohead which was produced by Nigel Godrich. If you listen to what the band put together for that, I think it's nearly fifteen years old the album. That's probably the track I listen to and think, Jesus I wish I could one day produce something that good. 

For more on George Fitzgerald including his upcoming gigs, head here. 

Fading Love is out on 27th April.