Wu-Lu favors Fender guitars for their bolt-on necks, and runs them through a thick layer of fuzz before they’re channeled through various amps, including a Roland JC-120.
South London artist Miles Romans-Hopcraft works under the moniker Wu-Lu. His pseudonym is a play on the Amharic word for water, wuha, but modified to avoid confusion with the Busta Rhymes track, “Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check.” It’s a fitting handle, too, in that, like water, it’s indicative of Wu-Lu’s form-fitting, genre-fluid adaptability.
Romans-Hopcraft lives at the intersection of hip-hop, free improv, and grunge—imagine a Frankensteinian mashup of DJ Shadow and Slipknot, but looser—and crafts songs built from the lo-fi samples he rips from his extensive personal archive of tapes, mostly of open-ended jam sessions, that he then uploads to an Akai MPC sampler and drum machine.
South London—the triangle of Brixton, New Cross, and Lewisham, which sits south of the touristy city center along the River Thames—looms large in Romans-Hopcraft’s world. Owing, in part, its musical pedigree to the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance located a stone’s throw from the New Cross Gate tube station, the neighborhood is the epicenter of the city’s vibrant and bustling new music scene. It’s also Romans-Hopcraft’s home turf.
Wu-Lu - South (Official Video) ft. Lex Amor
“It just happened that everyone happened to be in Lewisham somehow,” he says, marveling at the near miracle of growing up in the right place at the right time. “I went to the studio, and I saw Nubya Garcia [critically acclaimed saxophonist and bandleader], Joe Armon-Jones [keyboardist for Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia], and Oscar Jerome [solo artist] up there, and I was like, ‘What are you lot doing up here? My grandma lives here, and my auntie lives around the corner. That’s why I’m here.’ Lewisham is a far part of South London to be in, but people are here because it’s cheap to live. Before my generation came through, there was a whole instrumental scene in South London with bands like United Vibrations, Polar Bear, and Acoustic Ladyland. A lot of people outside of South London started taking notice of what was going on and a lot of it gets coined as the ‘South London Jazz Scene,’ but the way I see it, it’s just instrumental music: people using their talent to be able to improvise in a feeling that they have.”
Romans-Hopcraft’s rich musical background is more than a matter of just living in the right neighborhood. His father is trumpeter Robin Hopcraft (most recently a member of Soothsayers, but with an extensive history playing Afrobeat, reggae, and jazz), and he’s also got an identical twin brother, Ben, who’s an accomplished artist as well (formerly Childhood, and now Insecure Men, Warmduscher, and something in the works under Sean Lennon’s direction). Plus, he’s closely associated with a coterie of artists like songwriter and guitarist Lianne La Havas, saxophonist Garcia, Black Midi drummer Morgan Simpson, and many others.
“A lot of people outside of South London started taking notice of what was going on and a lot of it gets coined as the ‘South London Jazz Scene,’ but the way I see it, it’s just instrumental music: people using their talent to be able to improvise in a feeling that they have.”
LOGGERHEAD, Romans-Hopcraft’s full-length debut, is an amalgamation of his experiences and aesthetic. “South,” the album’s lead single, is a slow crescendo that layers an acoustic guitar, raw hip-hop groove, and dub-style vocals before finally exploding at the chorus with a bloodcurdling scream (and featuring an outro rap from Lex Amor). “Times,” featuring Simpson, could, at points—both texturally and, maybe, because the Big Muff features so prominent—be at home on a Dinosaur Jr. record, if not for the tight, groove-centric drumming. And the eerie and melodic “Broken Homes” is a nuanced showcase for Wu-Lu’s songcraft, although, again, buried under layers of feedback and noise.
The whole album is like that. Intense, overwhelming, and constructed from scratch through an arduous process of scrolling through files and tapes, finding bits—be those inspired jams or someone dropping a cymbal—and then, slowly, honing those into complete, evocative, emotional masterworks.
“It might not even be part of a song,” Romans-Hopcraft elaborates about his crate-digging approach to samples. “It might be a drum break, or it might be something that was recorded on the wrong mic. It might be that I was playing guitar, ran into the control room, fiddled around, and when I listened to it later, discovered that when I put down my guitar, I was touching the guitar mic—and that would then become a whole inspiration for a completely different song. I can probably still go back into all those jams and pick out different stuff and make different music from that.”
Wu-Lu’s debut album isintense, overwhelming, and constructed from scratch through an arduous process of scrolling through files and tapes, finding bits—be those inspired jams or someone dropping a cymbal—and then, slowly, honing those into complete, evocative, emotional masterworks.
For example, the aforementioned “Times” started out as a birthday jam session with Simpson. “We were playing some beats—I was playing along with him—and someone in another room was filming us on their phone and sent me the video,” he says. “I heard this little ‘weee-weee’ sound and I was like, ‘That would be a sick idea.’ Morgan was playing something similar to what that was. I listened to that video intently. I programmed a drum beat on my MPC that I thought would work, built up a whole track, and eventually decided to re-record it [with Morgan]. On that tune I played all the guitars, the bass, all the synthesizers, and everything apart from the drums. But I programmed that beat beforehand. I told Morgan, ‘This is what I want you to play, but obviously add your feel to it.’”
Sampling your personal archives has other benefits as well. “Like avoiding royalties,” Romans-Hopcraft says, maybe slightly tongue-in-cheek … but only slightly. “I once asked about using a sample for something on a mixtape and they quoted some crazy, crazy price. I was like, ‘No more of this,’ and I started sampling myself. Plus, I like being able to look through stuff. The track ‘Blame’ came from being in the studio, doing long late-night jam sessions, and then having a few hours of jams I needed to look through to see what I could pick out. I sampled things, pulled stuff out of it, and then started remixing and overdubbing.”
Wu-Lu’s Gear List
Wu-Lu often builds his compositions around an initial sample from his own jam sessions, but the feeling from that original jam session is key to the song’s final form—even live.
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi
- JOYO JF-01 Vintage Overdrive
- Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai
- Electro-Harmonix The Worm (wah/phaser/vibrato/tremolo)
- Boss RV-6 Reverb
Strings & Picks
- Rotosound Strings (.011–.048)
- Dunlop Tortex Green Picks .88 mm
But that freeform, loose, experimental approach ends once the song is completed. When it comes to reinterpreting those tracks live, Romans-Hopcraft plays what’s on the record. “I stick pretty loyal to the recording,” he says. “The live band setup is drums, bass, two guitars, and vocals—everyone’s on vocals—and also another drummer, but his kit isn’t a traditional drum kit. It’s like an MPC with loads of samples taken from the songs. For example, if we’re playing ‘Blame,’ that’ll be a drum break from the original track that I sliced into pieces where he can play the samples like a drum kit. It’s the original sounds, but he can play it.”
Romans-Hopcraft’s production techniques may be sample-centric and high tech, but he creates his music with inexpensive instruments and tools. “All my stuff is basically from car boot sales,” he says. A car boot sale is an English yard sale (“car boot” is British slang for “trunk”), and he’s amassed a bevy of inexpensive amps, old-school synths, and multitrack tape machines.
“All my stuff is basically from car boot sales.”
He favors Fender-style guitars, and their bolt-on necks and distinctive jangle is central to Wu-Lu’s sound. He runs them through a thick layer of fuzz, and, at times, will divvy that up between multiple amps. “I got a headphone splitter and plugged my output into that and then split my signal into like three different amps,” he says. “But the main thing I use is the Big Muff and this mini green pedal—a JOYO Tube Screamer-like pedal—that I got on Amazon for £15, which is like a high-gain pedal.”
But, more than anything, Romans-Hopcraft’s music is about the vibe. A composition may be a studio creation built up from an initial sample, but, even many iterations later, the mood from that original jam session is key.
“It might be that I was playing guitar, ran into the control room, fiddled around, and when I listened to it later, discovered that when I put down my guitar, I was touching the guitar mic—and that would then become a whole inspiration for a completely different song,” Wu-Lu says.
Photo by Machine Operated
“‘Broken Homes,’ the last song on LOGGERHEAD, is a real special one,” he says, reflecting on the song’s mood and origins. “We made that in lockdown, and it was just me, my boy Jae [Jaega Francis McKenna-Gordon] on the drums, and my boy Tag [Tagara Mhiza] on bass. We went to jam in this pub that was empty—because it was Covid lockdown—and it was half six in the morning and we were about to go to bed. But my friend Jae was like, ‘Let’s just play one more time—one more time—let’s have a vibe one more time.’ That was the beginnings of ‘Broken Homes.’ We recorded the whole thing to tape. It was a 20-minute thing that I edited down and reworked. My twin brother, Ben, helped me finish it—there were moments in it where I thought, ‘These are really good moments, but something’s not hitting’—and my brother, being a songwriter, suggested adding little ideas in how to change the arrangement to make it feel full. I was like, ‘Alright,’ and it was finished.”
That commitment to a song’s emotional, somewhat mystical, origins, coupled with a hyper-focused work ethic, is definitive of how Romans-Hopcraft operates. And, like most of his story, he also attributes that to his South London neighborhood.“
A lot of what I got from a lot of the people that I’ve met along the way is the thing I think they got out of college, which is learning how to practice,” he says about the many local graduates of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire he knows. “It’s learning how to be productive with your practicing, and that’s what I’ve applied to my own stuff, too. I’m like, ‘I’m not the greatest guitar player or bass player—I can hold my own for my own thing—but I’m going to learn how to make the MPC groove or take bits and create that into something.’ I took that and applied it to my own craft. And I had the support of all the other people around me as well.”
Wu-Lu - live from The Room
Wu-Lu and his band perform live versions of “Ten” and “Broken Homes” from LOGGERHEAD at the Room Studios in South London.
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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