South London's Punk Voice in Disguise
Words: Emily Murphy
I speak to Liam Ramsden, perhaps known better as the multi-instrumentalist Mellah, on a sunny Monday morning - over the phone for those concerned about the correct social distancing practices. Having recently signed to Columbia Records for his upcoming EP, lockdown has slightly put his creative pursuits on ice, so instead he is spending time redecorating his flat.
Ramsden's talent as an instrumentalist and songwriter has not always been his main focus, having worked for 10 years building sets for feature films and TV shows. For those curious, Black Mirror was among the productions he worked on, something which he clearly gets asked about a lot ‘I don’t know why Black Mirror always gets picked up, I worked on lots of stuff’. He worked mostly on feature films, enjoying the trade but not so much his colleagues. He describes an atmosphere of ‘casual racism, sexism, homophobia’ that was common around production sets, and how his refusal to participate made him a pariah among the crew. ‘[I] do a film, then after 3 months feel like the bad guy because I wouldn’t join in, and then wouldn’t be asked back’. It was clear he was among the few members of the crew unwilling to engage with racists and homophobes, commenting ‘it’s really not casual, it's quite extreme but treated very casually’. After a decade in set building he committed fully to music, releasing music under the mononym Mellah for 3 years now.
Mellah has used the skills of his previous career to uplift other musicians - the talents of Nilufer Yanya, Mica Levi, and Alaskalaska to name a few. After building a single studio in Peckham for his own use, eight years later it has grown into a 6-studio-strong hub of collaboration, with purposely cheap rent and a strong communal spirit. ‘After I built 3 the landlord liked it, [I] ended up filling the whole corridor with studios… lots of musicians and producers, a really strong community.’ Due to lockdown he hasn’t been able to access this space, instead writing in his bedroom again – ‘I didn’t spend any time at home before I just sat in the studio, so it’s given me and everyone time to breathe a bit.’
Mellah has always been a project with clear intentions. Close attention to his lyrics clearly shows his world view and how it informs much of his work, in his self-professed mission ‘to make accessible, poppy, catchy music with a point to it’. His latest single, Family Fun, is catchy and entertaining, something that doesn’t at first strike you as a vector for social commentary. However, both Family Fun’s lyrics and self-directed music video quickly contrast the poppy tune against deeper ideas. Keen to know how he approaches the process of combining the pop genre with genuine messages, I ask him about the way he approaches song writing. Quite understandably he responds ‘[that’s] quite a hard question to answer, asking how do you create anything?’. ‘Frustratingly I think pop is vapid, if I’m honest most music is vapid… The stuff that doesn’t fall into that category is quite angry, punky. [I] want to slip it in the back door, whilst still finding it fun and happy.’ He has certainly achieved that with Family Fun, a perfect example of the intention behind Mellah - the band is not just Liam Ramsden and his incredible talent, but a pop sound combined with both tongue-in-cheek and quietly eviscerating lyrics. ‘That’s how I see the world… Capitalism is a pretty dark beast, and the only bit of it that we see is a shiny advertised façade of it.’ The music video features a galling reinvention of a classic family quiz show, using the comforting format to ask questions about UK poverty statistics instead of Royal babies or celebrity birthdays – all for a grand prize of a vat of Botox or a lifetime supply of crude oil. Mellah hadn’t intended to direct the video, but when time to produce it arrived, he was disappointed by the ideas presented to him. ‘Nothing quite came back as succinct in the message… My aim with the video was to make a very clear point.’ One watch and there's no doubt he succeeded.
With a debut album on the horizon and his headline show at Scala in October, the future is exciting for Mellah. Scala will be his biggest show to date, and I’m curious to know how he’s approaching it. ‘It’s daunting, it’s a big place, but it’s exciting.’ It won’t be his first time performing in the venue, but it will be his biggest headline venue. ‘[I’ve] played there a couple of times supporting other people and it sounded really good. I’m in the process now of building the show so it should be good.’ I don’t need convincing of that fact, and with the unintentional break-up with live gigs that lockdown has enforced, I’m sure Mellah’s return will be one to remember.