Martin Craft sprinkles some musical magic.

listen to m craft interview

Martin Craft is a singer/songwriter. Sort of. He writes (and sings) songs that have a timeless quality, songs that could easily be performed alone with a beat-up acoustic guitar. But it’s the clever production twists, the layers of warm, fuzzy instruments, loops and vocal harmonies that make him stand out from the boring coffee-table crowd.

“It’s a real mixed bag,” he says, trying to describe his debut six-track mini album, I Can See It All Tonight. “It’s like a thrift shop record stand: little hints of disco and bossa nova. Bits of folk, bits of country, everything really. Songs. When people ask me what kind of music I do I say I just write songs.”

Martin began making music in his native Australia, playing gigs in a rock’n’roll band, but soon progressed to creating his own bedroom recordings. “You start becoming more yourself and stop being cobbled together clichés,” he explains. “Being in a rock band you find yourself following a well-trodden path, and you have those Spinal Tap moments actually going on in your life.

“Then you look in the mirror and think, god, there are so many little idiosyncrasies that we all have. Maybe as a musician you want to get a bit more serious and express that rather than just ‘rocking’. Get a little bit more subtlety and humanity into your music.” Something that M Craft’s music has in large quantities.

So what inspires him to make music? “Mostly I write songs on the bus or planes. I love planes. I always write songs on planes, or on… (laughs) trains. Various modes of transport seem to be inspiring. But bicycles tend to be a bit distracting.” What, then, is it about public transport? “I think it’s one place in life when you have to give up your control. You just have to sit back and look out of the window. You can’t make it go any faster or slower, you can’t get up and make yourself a cup of tea. You relax because there’s nothing else you can do.”

I Can See It All Tonight is his first release, a melange of late-night tales, fuzzy beats and warm melodies that creep into your mind in a thoroughly satisfying way. So is there a theme that binds the collection? “I think there’s a certain kind of idealism that makes the songs hang together,” he says. “But then there are little bits of darkness reflecting what real life is. I like the kind of magical aspect of music, the way it can sprinkle a kind of happy dust or sad dust on the world.” He reprimands himself for saying something that sounds so stupid, but in a funny way he’s right - it’s exactly what M Craft’s music does. Matt Walton 20 February 04

M Craft – I Can See It All Tonight, released 16 February 04 on 679 Recordings.

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