Alfie Templeman is one of those people that the English language has the perfect word for: ‘wunderkind’. Born in the UK in the early 2000s, Alfie began making music and demos at age 13, his new album Radiosoul proving he’s bucked the trend of the sophom*ore slump.
Primarily written by Alfie Templeman himself, in his own way, Radiosoul saw Nile Rodgers and Dan Carey involved in production, songwriting and recording, Alfie’s own influences augmented by Nile and Dan; heavy hitters in their own right.
Alfie, thanks for taking the time! You have such a big creative output across a wide breadth of stuff – how do you define yourself?
Thanks for having me! I think it’s nice to just label yourself as a ‘creative’ if you dabble in a lot of different aspects of the arts. I’m trying to get better at the visual side of things. I’ve made album covers for myself and my other project ‘Ariel Days’ a few times and enjoy the process a lot. But I’m most definitely mainly a producer-songwriter for sure.
How did writing for Radiosoul begin?
Radiosoul is quite a scatterbrain record. Some ideas came from songs that I’d recorded in my bedroom around six to seven years back when I was a teenager. But others just fell out of the sky. Sometimes, I’d have a shower or wake up from a nap with a really solid idea and dash over to my phone to voice memo it.
Radiosoul
There were also a few very spontaneous songs that happened on the spot, like “Beckham”.
In the past, all of the songs that I’ve produced have started out as demos that I thought were good enough to put out as actual songs. But this time around I didn’t want to produce an awful lot due to my lack of production skills so I wrote a lot of the material and left it slightly unfinished. This meant that when I went into the studio, there was a lot of energy and playfulness to the recordings.
Is this how songs normally begin for you? I.e. have you got a ‘regular’ process?
I don’t particularly have a process. I’m quite keen on changing how I go about creating music every time I release something, but at the same time, I’m also not overly thinking about that. It just happens. For example, I never used to write the lyrics before the melody, but this time around, I ended up doing that for “Eyes Wide Shut”, “Run To Tomorrow”, and a bunch more. I think I just happened to have more to sing about this time around.
Drums have definitely initiated many of my songs that have made it out into the world. I think having a good loop to play around with brings a kind of spontaneity and energy to recording. I try to record real drums and play quite a lot on this album.
And where did Dan Carey and Nile Rodgers come into the picture?
I reached out to Dan as his way of working and attitude to music was really exciting and quite unconventional to me. I was already a massive fan of his production from listening to Pumarosa, Fontaines DC, Wet Leg, Black Midi, etc. When working with him he brought out the most natural and comfortable version of myself. Dan takes risks. He wants to push you and what your brain is capable of in the studio – it’s very common for him to halfway do a complete 180 and change the track just like that. There’s so much excitement in the music we made. The two tracks we made together are two of my favourite songs I’ve ever created.
Nile Rodgers and Chic
Working with Nile was the best fever dream ever. We linked up as Clara Amfo once mentioned how my guitar playing on a few of my tracks had a Chic feel going on. I basically went on gushing about the guy for ages on the radio and he ended up somehow hearing it! So a year later, I got the opportunity to hang and jam with him in Miami for a while, and we did “Just a Dance”, which was a riff I’d written when I was 16 years old. Watching him play something I’d put together was insane. It’s interesting how he layers up lots of really clever guitar parts to make almost like a wall of sound. I was exceptionally lucky to spend time with him and hear many amazing stories straight from the horse’s mouth.
Is there a clear delineation between writing, demoing and producing and the final recorded takes record or does it all bleed together?
I just work until things feel finished 9 times out of 10. As I’ve gotten older, weirdly, it’s gotten harder for me to know when a track is done. I’m not exactly sure why, but I definitely hyper-focus on lyrics a lot more these days so maybe it’s that. Most of my songs are just dressed-up demos. I think it’s common nowadays, seeing that a lot of people have laptops for studios.
What can we expect from the Radiosoul live show and subsequent tours?
I’m starting to come out of my shell as a multi-instrumentalist. I was scared of playing more than just guitar for a while, even though I’ve always had the studio confidence to mess around with most things. Seeing there’s a lot of modular synthesis and drum machines scattered around this record, I’m going to be taking bits of external synth gear on the road with me. I have an amazing drum machine called the Perkons by Erika synths. I’ve rigged it up to Ableton so I can automate bits in real-time with a pre-sequenced drum pattern that gets sent to the machine from Ableton itself. Fun stuff.
Thanks again for your time. If you could distil your experience working with Dan Carey and Nile Rodgers, what would be the single biggest takeaway?
My pleasure! Honestly, just don’t overthink things too much. Nile taught me if a hook sounds good it sounds f*cking good! So run with it. And Dan taught me that I don’t need to do 200 vocal takes for every song. I love the little imperfections on this album. It’s a very human album made with very grounding people. Thanks!
Keep up with Alfie, Radiosoul and more here.
