Godford's Life is a Movie
In curating experience through sound, Godford took this project a step further creating tracks to be collaged together into a short film. The resulting music videos, directed by Félix Dol Maillot, bleed into scenes giving flesh and bones, and movement to the sound.Characteristic of Godford’s shapeshifting nature and anonymity, the sound and visuals of I YOU SHE play on the surreal experience of our physical bodies. I YOU SHE continues the project laid out in Non Binary Place to explore nonspace through extremes.
Pushing listeners into a dreamlike trance with the call and return of lyrics, repetition in beats, and sampled voices that sound like fragments of an overheard conversation, Godford builds a bank of shared human experiences. These small moments are unbound from our bodies, and even identities, creating a mirrored sense of anonymity in the listener, not to mask their own features, but to see the world through the eyes of others, much like the dizzying mask Godford peers at us through.
Read our interview with the myth behind the mask below.
Tell me about your process. What comes first, the lyrics or the music? Where do you get most of your inspiration?
It always starts with a little piece of arrangement that I'm twitching, then adding the drums then a vocal melody. And the rest is trade secrets.
In “Try” you talk about trying to understand “that certain feeling” what feeling do you hope to evoke with this album?
Recently on BBC Radio 1, Clara Amfo described my song "Say My Name" as "a hug in the rave". That's exactly the feeling I was going for with this album. I want you to move with feeling to this music. I hope one feels less lonely while listening to the album.
It feels like the songs each explore complex feelings through repetition and familiar phrases, how do you aim to communicate complex feelings in music and life?
Exactly, each song in the album tastes and explores different feelings with the same approach. It's easier for me to express emotions and my mood when i'm making music but pretty hard to talk about it. Overall though, I think you just sense the complex emotions through the notes in the music. If you need to explain it in words, then so much gets lost.
Your album is entitled I YOU SHE following Non-Binary Place how do you explore gender through music?
Music in general is a nonbinary place for me where everyone can express their deepest sides of themselves. I was actually in the same mood when I made this new album I YOU SHE.
Do you feel that the genre of dance/electronic music lends itself to exploration of identity?
For me, yes, I get unlimited inspiration from electronic music because you mix different genres and it’s always changing. I wanted a sound that blends sound, texture and background and electronic music allows me to go these spaces.
I YOU SHE feels like running down a beach barefoot or going for a drive with the windows down. When was the last moment you felt a rush of life or recklessness?
I feel this emotion everytime when I’m producing music. I feel totally free and disconnected from the real world.
If your life were a movie, who would you want to make the soundtrack, and who would you want to play you?
Moby would make the soundtrack for sure and anyone could be the actor. You get that cinematic experience sonically but the lead character could be anyone.
Moby is great! Who are some of your other early influences?
I started making music in my teenage years, I used to listen to a lot of Frank Ocean, Phoenix, Moby, and Daft Punk.
Tell me about your name, what does “Godford” mean to you?
It's a little twist with my name. Nothing more than that.
