“A musician and a poet” -20 minutes with Marie Davidson
At the Mira festival in Barcelona, Marie Davison returned to Line Noise for the third time, proving once again that she is one of the sharpest, funniest people in dance music today. In the interview - which you can listen to here, watch here or read, in edited form, below - we talked about Clown bangers, Surveillance Capitalism, squaring dystopia with humour and much more.
Ben Cardew: Your most recent album, City of Clowns is a brilliant work, apparently inspired by reading Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism?
Marie Davidson: Partly but, yeah, it contributed a lot to the record.
Ben Cardew: I haven't read that book. What is it about and why did it inspire you?
Marie Davidson: It's a big book. It's a scholarly book. So it's hard to explain a book in a very short interview but it talks about the impact of technology and especially surveillance and all the economy around it - the market around it.
It talks about a lot of things: power, knowledge, education. How this technology is like a third revolution, as we had the Industrial Revolution. The tech revolution is changing us as a species and the future of our humanity. And who we are and what we are becoming within the evolution of tech and our private lives, our personal lives and the data and the market around it.
Ben Cardew: It has been called a dystopian album. Do you agree?
Marie Davidson: It was not my intent but I could agree. I'm not against saying that. There's a lot of humour, though, I hope.
Ben Cardew: Very few people do humour well in music and I think you do.
Marie Davidson: Thank you.
Ben Cardew: But how does it come out? How do you make music that is funny and sharp?
Marie Davidson: It's my response to the world. It's just the world we live in. I personally find it completely absurd. So it's my response, trying to make sense of what's going on within myself and the world.
Ben Cardew: Are you quite optimistic or are you more pessimistic?
Marie Davidson: I'm definitely not optimistic. I don't want to be pessimistic, so I guess I'm trying to be in between. It depends - what are we talking about? Optimistic of what and pessimistic of what?
Ben Cardew: I guess we're talking about optimistic about life in general, "Okay, good, it's good." And about electronic music, dance music.
Marie Davidson: I'm optimistic enough. I don't know that I don't really care about electronic dance music. I care about music, right? I'm optimistic about music.
Ben Cardew: What makes you optimistic?
Marie Davidson: Sound. To me, music is a language. I'm optimistic about sounds. Working with sounds, listening to other people - but not only people. Music is everywhere. Sound, just the sound of whatever, some reverb in a room - or birds.
Ben Cardew: Push Me F*ckhead has the line: "Stir up the squares. What do you see? How many buses? How many trees?" Is that the first CAPTCHA song? The "prove you're a human" CAPTCHA?
Marie Davidson: No, no. I would love it if I could own that. Yeah, it would be great. I don't know other songs that talk about it but I know that personally, I find it super f*cking annoying when I have to get online to access some of my private things and I have to testify that I'm not a robot. And look at those squares and be like, "Oh, yes," you know? "How many railroads? How many bikes?" And sometimes you fail because the picture is blurry. I'm like, "What?"
Ben Cardew: You fail. You're not a human.
Marie Davidson: Yeah, exactly. It's so absurd, I had to make a joke about it.
Ben Cardew: I don't know how you went from that to making a song. Were you looking at a CAPTCHA one day and you're like, "This pisses me off"?
Marie Davidson: It doesn't work like that. I take note of everything that happens to me or thoughts. It takes a lot to make a song. It's a process, you know? It's just life, living life, and I try to gather things.
Ben Cardew: I want to talk about "Y.A.A.M." You wrote it after receiving a very condescending email about the business side of music. Could you tell us a bit more about that? What happened?
Marie Davidson: It's all in the song.
Ben Cardew: Do you think the music industry has a tendency to treat artists as disposable? I was going to say “idiots”…
Marie Davidson: Disposable. Okay, no, I don't think the music industry treats artists as idiots but I do think that a lot of people within the music industry - and the way it is organised - treat people and artists and employees as disposable. And this is what I'm talking about in [the song] among other things.
Ben Cardew: Why do you think the music industry does that?
Marie Davidson: Maybe because a lot of people within the music industry are not artists themselves and they don't relate to the position of being an artist. I don't know.
Ben Cardew: What should they understand?
Marie Davidson: I don't know. It's not for you to say. I'm not a music industry employee therapist. I’m a musician and a poet. I'm just someone who is trying to make things out of what happens to me and the storytelling. I do write for myself and for people but I write for people as individuals. I'm not really interested in organisations and scenes and cliques and cults. I really write for me and for people, you know, humans.
Ben Cardew: You write songs in English and French. How does that happen? Do some things come out of you in English and some in French?
Marie Davidson: I think it's a rhythm thing. English and French have different rhythms.
Ben Cardew: So how might it happen? You're writing a song and you're like, "Okay, that rhythm works better in French,”?
Marie Davidson: Kind of, yeah. It’s the music that dictates the lyrics and the language, the tone. I need to hear some music in general before making a song. Otherwise, if I'm not hearing music, I'm just writing words.
Ben Cardew: French is your first language.
Marie Davidson: Yeah, it's mine. That's why I have an accent. I think in French.
Ben Cardew: So do you think you're almost a different person in English?
Marie Davidson: Almost, but not. It's a good question. English brings out parts of my personality that are already in me but it brings out other traits compared to French. But in the end, it's the same person.
Ben Cardew: The reason I asked this is because, English is my mother tongue, but I speak other languages and I find sometimes it's easier to be honest in another language.
Marie Davidson: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that because you have, like, no filter. Maybe you're not a master of the language, so the limitations push you to go straight to the bottom of it. And also, English is a very straightforward language. French is more emotional, more poetic, more other things.
Ben Cardew: On City of Clowns, you have a song called Sexy Clown. I find the idea of a "sexy clown" particularly horrifying.
Marie Davidson: Okay? Why?
Ben Cardew: I don't know, clowns are a bit weird, right?
Marie Davidson: They are.
Ben Cardew: And I don't want them to be sexy.
Marie Davidson: I think for me, clowns are just the manifestation of the outsiders - the thing that is there to question the status quo. Whether it's the happy clown that makes you laugh or the sad clown that makes you sad, or the scary clown that is creepy. But the clown is like that person, or that concept - that outcast that comes within a scene and is like, "Hey, you know, what about this? Did you think of that?" And I really am very happily endorsing this position right now in life. I find that this is my... this is what I should be doing.
Ben Cardew: There's a new series about IT. Have you seen it?
Marie Davidson: The film? No. I know what it is but I've never seen it. But maybe I should. I heard it was good. When I was a kid, it would really creep me out, so I didn't watch it.
Ben Cardew: I think your view of clowns might change somewhat if you were to watch it.
Marie Davidson: But I know what a scary clown is. It was part of the thing. I saw Joker. But after I finished the album, a lot of people asked me, "Oh, did you see Joker?" and I said no. Then right before the album came out, I looked at Joker. I watched Joker with Joaquin Phoenix. I didn't want to watch it while I was writing the album, right? But I have to say that, wow - to me, it's a masterpiece and I was so happy and touched by the movie. And I was also really glad I didn't watch it while I was making my album, because it's not about that.
But there is a link to this thing about... I think the movie really touches on alienation and mental health and isolation. And it's a theme that's very present in the times we live in. And somehow it links with my album, because I'm talking about technology or I'm questioning the space of technology within my lyrics, but I'm also talking about this alienation: how people really feel alienated and isolated and broken and I feel it too.
If we go down to the bottom of it... I just find that people need to be seen for what they are. I think that most people right now feel helpless and they're just dying to be looked at as a human being. You know, the human condition is very complex right now. What is being human? You know, what is your experience, or my experience?
Some listening
Calibre feat. Sun Ra Arkestra - Chopin (Calibre Mix)
A few months ago I was raving over Calibre’s ultra-elegant remix of Brooklyn Funk Essentials’ Take The L Train. But he might have even topped that with the classical grace of his remix of the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Chopin, a song that seems to glide above the trees, shorn of all worry and ill, to a better place, where free jazz and drum & bass can explore their natural connection in peace. This song is both 100% Sun Ra Arkestra and 100% Calibre, which, surely, is the mark of a perfect remix. (And, yes, I know: maths. So sue me.)
2026 Squarepusher proves that you can, perhaps, teach an old IDM dog new tricks, with his new album Kammerkonzert being written for a chamber orchestra. You can hear this on K2 Central, with its classically-leaning and very mournful orchestral melodies, which remind me of Henry Purcell, to which he adds some outrageous bass show-off-ery and a sparse drum machine rhythm, a risky and perhaps unlikely fusion that instead strolls to victory.
Shabaka isn’t a name you usually associate with dancing (at least recently), with his last solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, being relaxed to the point of nap time. Rhythm, however, “sits at the core” of his new album Of The Earth, as the artist looks to reconnect with the physicality of the music he grew up around, including “the communal energy of Caribbean street processions”.
I don’t, honestly, know very much about Caribbean street processions. But, to me at least, Dance In Praise sounds vey much the kind of song you might hear at one, as night turns into day and the booze kicks in. It’s frantic, like staring into a well-stocked fish pond when someone tips a load of dried bread in, drums turning in tight, centrifugal spirals as the scraps of melody try to hang on. There’s almost too much going on in Dance of Praise for the listener to grasp and you can either worry about that or frantically cling on, teeth chattering with excitement.
Badalona’s best, Maria Arnal, is solo now, with her debut album AMA coming out on Atlantic last week. The rumours were that a major label deal had soothed all those gnarled edges off her music in search of “the new Rosalía”.
Luckily, rumour is an ass: AMA is a work of profoundly odd pop music, all obtuse angles and elbows, that feels more at home in an art gallery than a Zara. And Madrigal might be the strangest song of all, taking the Renaissance influences of the title, setting them ablaze and running it all down a street of the finest electronic production, to create the best madrigal gabber song you will hear all year.
AKA how to cram a whole load of weird sh*t into your perfect three-minute pop song and make it even better. Right from the off, Stupid Bitches goes for the sonic jugular, with a wonderful stuttering, pained synth lead that provides one of those perfectly un-musical, messed-up hooks we all love. I’d happily spend the next few minutes just waiting for that hook to come around again - and eventually it does - but the song also adds heavy synth bass (hoover adjacent, if not quite Beltram spectrum), a cathartic chorus and backing vocals that ping pong around the back of the mix like the the eyeballs on stalks of a late-night raver.
Asra3 - Hospitalet (feat. azombike)
Barcelona producer Asra3 has more ideas before he gets out of bed in the morning than I will have all year. Not all of these are good. But his decision to go all soft, loving and gooey on Cançons d’Amor, his new album, is one of his best. That he manages to make Hospitalet, a perfectly decent but not exactly stunning city just to the side of Barcelona, sound like a spring day in Paris, is a tribute to his brilliant songwriting skills, to which he adds just the slightest touch of weirdness, like a dream brought on by eating too many rose petals.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise podcast - With elsas
This week we welcome elsas, a young producer from Cardedeu, onto the Line Noise podcast to speak about her new EP APORIAMOR, love’s contradiction, well-kneaded dough, Medieval music and touring with Sampha.
I love Mitski deeply - those songs! - and Nothing’s About to Happen to Me is absolutely stunning. You can watch my (rather too close up) face review it here in just one minute.
Things other people have done
Industry Got Darker. So Did Its Score
Like any sentient being, I’ve been obsessed with the series finale of Industry this week - obsessed and revolted, obviously, and looking for any kind of Industry-related content to read - so Kiana Mickles interview with Nathan Micay, who writes the absolutely excellent music for Industry, for Pitchfork, was an absolute must read. And it doesn’t disappoint. “Heavy and formidable, the percussion builds up to the unsettling climax of the character’s suicidal depression. There’s also ‘deep, deep sub bass, like Dooon! every time Henry points at Yasmin or his uncle,’ Micay noted. ‘That was also kind of a callback like, “Yeah, I used to do club stuff.”’”
The playlists
How much inspiration
Is required
To tell you of my playlists?
I have two
Or technically four.
Across two platforms
Things multiply
Out of my control
Two are for 2026
On Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026.
On Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026.
Two are forever
And ever
And a day.
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest.
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