From work with national institutions Somerset House and the ICA to intimate shows at Manchester’s much-loved venue The White Hotel, Iceboy Violet’s reach is expansive. The UK rapper-producer is a staple of the northwest experimental scene, with a shapeshifting sound that picks apart and reimagines grime, drill, hip hop, ambient, industrial, poetry and noise, amalgamating the lot into an abrasive yet vulnerable whole. 

With background scores that invoke the deep hues of damp streets at 2AM, their latest album Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion is their most cohesive body of work yet, combining the Manchester-based artist’s rapping with their own production, along with contributions from the likes of local artists Florence Sinclair and Orlandor. It follows on from last year’s mixtape Vanity Project, which featured production from the likes of Space Afrika and Slikback, and pulls listeners into an ambient and dreamlike fog, exploring what they describe in an accompanying statement as “fantasy as map and desire as engine”.

Speaking from a café in Manchester, Violet describes the project in equally abstract terms. “The colours I worked into it with were bone, gold, copper, burnt oranges – warm, but kind of drained. Pale,” they muse. “What I’d tried to make before was, in my mind, blue, bruised, darker.”

Below, Violet unpacks their new album, the Manchester experimental scene, and why it’s important to “keep shouting about everybody else”.

Tell us about Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion – how long has the project taken, and where is it coming from? 

Iceboy Violet: I started thinking a lot about fantasy and desire, how those forces affected me, and just thinking about them in an abstract way. Then I saw how [those themes] already linked to what I had with [my] lyrics. Then I started looking for samples to fit, pulling bits I’d made in. From really settling on it as an idea, it took about a year, eight months, to get the rest together.

Artists including yourself, Space Afrika, Rainy Miller, aya and Blackhaine have been referred to as a new experimental Manchester. What do you think of that?

Iceboy Violet: I think it’s half the truth. It’s a sexy truth – there’s this collective who sprung out of nowhere and ‘really captured the sound of Manchester’. But there are so many other people and factors around us making this happen. It feels like some sort of survivor series when the same people keep getting mentioned in that way. 

We didn’t just arrive here and make it all ourselves, there were people here, lots of really hard-working people [and parties] pushing boundaries. When what you’re talking about gets covered, it feels incomplete. When I arrived here I remember hearing about the Gesamtkunstwerk parties, Chow Down, those events. I met a lot of people, listened to music I’d never heard before. I got my first track played ever in a club, at C.I.T.S. by Hesska. She’s a fucking queen. People like Tom Boogizm, Conor Thomas, they’ve helped create beautiful infrastructure for people younger than them to grow into, or around.

Name a defining song from your childhood

Iceboy Violet: There are a few, maybe “Ante Up” by M.O.P. When I was a kid, for some reason I became obsessed with the hardest, most abrasive songs I could find, within my limits, which was music TV. So Offspring, then Good Charlotte, and Linkin Park. Then I heard “Ante Up” and had never realised hip hop could be like that before: hard. It’s just pure energy.

What about the last photo you took on your phone?

Iceboy Violet: A picture of poems that I wrote for a game of Dungeon & Dragons… Then there are loads of screenshots of clothes I will one day buy, songs I want to download.

What are you listening to at the moment?

Iceboy Violet: A lot of Adrianne Lenker – singer-songwriter stuff, beautiful lyrics about poetic things. Stuff that’s so far out of my world I don’t have to think about it, otherwise I end up analysing things. It’s all beautifully sad and lets me be beautiful and sad.

Do you believe in horoscopes?

Iceboy Violet: Yeah. No. Do I? Selectively, when they say nice things… When I was 16, 17, my auntie was really into it and had all these books and folders or whatever. At 18, I was lost and starting to make music and thinking I wasn’t supposed to do it, learning about the life stories of J Dilla or Madlib, artists with relatives in bands, people who grew up around studios, learned instruments early on. I didn’t have that. Then I read [about] the Pisces star sign, which is a natural-born poet, which was nice, it kind of gave me peace. And I occasionally read more poetic horoscopes now.

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?

Iceboy Violet: Ha. Wow, people give me so much bad advice. A lot of it I don’t agree with. You get bad comments, that’s always fun to read. A friend of mine suggested I change my name to IBV, which makes me think of IBS. 

What’s your favourite snack?

Iceboy Violet: Really it’s sauce toast – toast with two different sauces on it. Ketchup and mayo, ketchup and BBQ, BBQ and mayo. Always a combination. Either that or buttered toast and a bit of parmesan. That sort of thing.

If you could work with one dead artist, who would it be?

Iceboy Violet: Most I listen to are alive. Also, the whole back from the dead thing involves a reviving from the dead, like zombies. But I’d love to work with Daniel Johnston, that would be amazing. And I’d like to work with Ginger Baker and Fela Kuti, that would be crazy. Then Eyedea, the rapper from Minnesota. When you asked me this I knew I wanted a producer, a rapper and a wildcard. So rapper – Eyedea, wildcard Ginger Baker, and my producer either SOPHIE or Dilla.

There’s only one act you can hear for the rest of your life. Who is it?

Iceboy Violet: What I’ve been learning recently is the overwhelming, life-giving quality of one person with a guitar. And I don’t think I can live without it, even against weird electronic sounds. But it might have to be Madlib, just because there’s so much music, all those mixtapes. It’s what I listen to when I think I’m tired of music. Madlib is the guy.

Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion is out now via Fixed Abode

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