The work of North London composer, musician and vocalist Harvey Causon is showered in cinema. It’s immersive, progressive and challenging, the type of sonic credo that forces boundaries to be broken. After years of lurking around the UK alternative market’s undergrowth with a series of solo releases, production credits, and a position within Sampha’s band, Causon finally makes his major breakthrough with Square Breath.

The debut album of the exceptional musician doesn’t disappoint. At times Blakeian, other times Sampha-adjacent, it’s a towering artistic spectacle both sonically and thematically; exploring futurism, masculinity, commercialism and the idea of self. We simply had to know more, and so asked Causon to delve deep into the project, track-by-track, in a Wonderland exclusive.

Listen to Square Breath…

Read the analysis…

“Square Breath”
I have always had a tendency to breathe in a square motion when I am thinking intensely about things. “Square Breath” is a documentation of my fervent responses to anxieties and inspirations of the world we live in. I have wanted to tell a larger story in album form for a long time and these songs crafted alone and with multiple collaborators in many different places offer a collection of moments that in some way or another reference a shortness or an abundance of breath. In turn I think Square Breath is about the confines of what connects us all the most; the air we breathe and the vibrations that we leave behind.

“Winded Abdomen”
“Winded Abdomen” was written at the piano in London before being scored for brass and produced with a bunch of layers of field recordings from different places. The lyrics are quite direct and essentially about encouraging myself and others to talk more to the people that mean the most and to simply tell them that you’re there for them whilst you still can. There are undercurrents of themes around masculinity. As a kid I did ballet and other creative pursuits which were deemed ‘feminine’ and I experienced a lot of homophobic remarks, questioning my sexuality and once or twice left with a winded abdomen. I also played a lot of football and rugby and I think this gave me perspective on what masculinity actually looked like and how it manifests. I think this track is saying that trying to be the ‘big man’ never really worked for me and in a still heavily patriarchal world it’s a bit of a call to arms to break down toxic male traits and communicating more in order to do so. 

“Psycho”
“Psycho” is a comment on how political and institutional systems within society uphold and encourage competition. How ego driven leaders distort reality and pit people against each other for financial gain. It’s also a rumination on whether anything we create is truly individual or more the culmination of our inspirations, references and predecessors; something hinted with the line ‘stood on shoulders’. The lyrics are about how when we as artists create something we are quickly forced to make it consumable and how people who have little understanding of what the art means prescribe its financial worth. The video created in collaboration with director and choreographer Folu Odimayo is based around a feeling of being forced to act like dogs in the UK’s creative industries, jumping through hoops and selling souls just to stay afloat. Folu articulates this animalistic and doglike physicality with the movement. Inspired by Francis Bacon paintings; we tried to create surreal dream-like vignettes, deranged humour and visceral rave-like dancing to communicate resistance and feelings of exorcism.

The visuals and lyrics draw inspiration from ancient myths associated with death and afterlife set through the gaze of a dystopian dance audition in a derelict London HMRC government office. The Greek ‘psychopomp’ (typically a shapeshifting character that escorts newly deceased souls from earth to the afterlife) is metaphorically played by a psychopathic, narcissistic boss who drains auditionees of their souls. The Egyptian test of the ’weighing of the heart’ with feathers also makes a short appearance depicting notions of peacocking and that artists drag themselves to hell and back in order to pursue creative practices. Ultimately, the track culminates with a moment of optimism breaking down the convention of the constant pursuit of validation with the message ‘it’s a blessing just to be, but it’s a curse to compete’.

“Laminar Flow”
“Laminar Flow” is a phenomenon when water can appear as though it is solid when it is flowing at a constant rate. With this track it became a metaphor for how addicted we are to our devices and that it feels sometimes as though we are completely stuck in Laminar Flow and less able to see all the beautiful complexities of the everyday. It’s a comment on how technologically-centric we have become and a pent up frustration of mine at how companies feed off of our shortening attention spans. 

“Folklore”
I wrote “Folklore” after reading another article about thousands of sea creatures washed up dead all over the North Eastern Coast of England due to pollution from over dredging which turned out to be because of conservative party corruption. The lyrics comment on how the government do little about climate change and that the way people are othered and mistreated in general is testament to how little they care about those who will be worse affected. There’s a lot of imagery of a huge fire or flood happening whilst the ‘privileged culprits’ are brazened and conditioned into tranquility in the west and not doing anything about it. The title raises a question of what we want our folklore to be. I’d argue that storytelling is one of the most powerful things that we know and the track asks the question of what kind of stories do we want to be told about us in the future if we continue on our ecologically destructive path, if any. 

“Picking up Smoke”
“Picking up Smoke” was written with Gabriel Gifford, a longtime collaborator and friend of mine. Conceptually it’s a confession or realisation about my habits, obsessions and addictions that come with ambition and making music. It’s about running myself into the ground in order to be a creative and plays around with the idea that sometimes ‘picking up steam’ and hype or momentum can be unhealthy and more akin to picking up ‘smoke’. It’s a confession that none of what I do means anything without the people I have around me and the different sections are written as an argument with my own egotism.

“Fault Lines”
“Fault Lines” was written in Deptford with the talented Rosie Lowe and Harvey Grant. It’s about the stage just before you allow yourself to fall in love with someone. To me it encapsulates the feeling of exploring a new city on a warm summer evening with someone that you are also navigating. The air tastes different and everything smells sweeter, everything feels possible. The backstreets, the abstract bokeh of lights akin to the initial dots of a blooming relationship. The mundane seems more enchanting than usual. Ultimately it’s about letting go and the feeling of wanting someone. The full live brass section and strings underneath saxophones, synths and samples of piano pedals I think give it a broodiness and a lightness at the same time.

“Nostalgia”
“Nostalgia” was formed in Berlin from an AI sample built from old 70’s records with Pnut and Erik Alcock. Initially unaware that the sample was AI-generated, the lyrics that emerged were based on ideas of recalling memories and not being able to distinguish whether memory is built from reality or formed from photographs we’ve seen. When I was informed the track loop that we were building the beat around was AI based It felt like the lyrics had added meaning and the lyrics started to reflect on the regurgitative nature of AI and the loss of interest in the nuances of human creativity.  With modern forms of hyperrealism in AI photo and music generation I found myself thinking about how much memory in the future could be based around things which aren’t reality and what this means for nostalgia. An article I read about social media graveyards suggested that for the first time there are more dead people on facebook than there are alive users. I thought this posed very interesting questions around ethics for how data is used and the currency of old social media accounts. 

The music video created with Node TV also uses generative imagery and reflects on the symptomatic fear that has been attached to the subject of technological singularity – a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilisation. Director Katie Scott aimed to convey the ‘nuance’ of the human experience and how that translates into the digital realm.

“Backburner”
“Backburner” is another track written and produced with the talented Gabriel Gifford. It’s essentially  an anxious explosion of energy about a relationship built up to a difficult point due to lack of communication. The main question in the lyrics is about whether honesty is the best policy and whether honesty is worth timing right. Sometimes lyrics like these feel like they are my subconscious and I have to painfully make sense of what I really think about something by reading them back. 

“The Hague”
The beat for “The Hague” was initially formed around some samples of noises from the underground and was called “Tube Beat” for a couple years. Eventually the track became about getting over a tough breakup. ‘No time to be lost’ feels like a bit of a self coaching session and a play on words. On one hand meaning; life is too short so get on with it and also this is not the time in your life to be lost. The second verse mentions moments finding solace riding bikes through the dunes in the Hague at night. The end of the track feels like some kind of battle with the enormity of existence against the universality of heartbreak; ’another passing piece of existence, fabricating the next’.

“Impasse”
“Impasse” was written with SALPA (Luke Bower) in one take in a hotel room on tour five years ago about an ‘impasse’ of a long distance relationship. It feels like a very raw and intimate demo of a track and I’m really happy for it finally be released as I wasn’t sure it ever would be. To me it feels like a dreamlike memory mourning the fleeting moments we have with each other. Choreographer Magnus Westwell, someone I’m constantly inspired by, directed the music video and also plays strings on the track and across the album alongside Harvey Grant on the saxophone both playing with the space, chaos and the prosody of the words. 

“Myelin”
“Myelin” is the insulating sheath layer of protection around our nerves and synapses that allow for electrical impulses (thoughts) to travel quickly and efficiently across nerve cells. Again this track is a rumination on how our brains perhaps aren’t supposed to cope with the capacity of modern digital information and the affect our shortening attention spans and phone usage has on the myelin layer. The chorus paints a picture of ‘working with too much information, myelin ain’t holding pipes down’ which I imagine as pipes bursting with too much information as a metaphor for the amount of content we see daily. Myelin was written and produced with Jack Ritchie (Bearcubs) in Berlin. We wrote it in the same session we wrote his track Damages and initially they were both one big song with a flip in the middle (I’m glad he encouraged us to take them in separate directions as it’s become a favourite).

“Torpor”
I wrote this track in Crete on the guitar whilst noticing a ton of large cicadas seemingly dead for days coming back to life. A friend of mine told me about ‘torpor’, whereby some animal species enter a state of suspended animation and have actually undergone profound physiological changes that include a dramatic drop in their body temperature. It got me thinking about the rhythms of humans and our depressions and expressions and as we get older feeling ‘out of touch’ with ourselves. The heavier end section of the track though I think has a driving sense of hope in the unknowns and that you never know when the next paradigm shift is.

“Memorabilia“
“Memorabilia” is about letting someone in. A juxtaposition of feeling overwhelmingly existential, anxious and also calmed by the presence of someone who seems to know me very well very quickly. It’s about finding it hard to commit to something despite wanting to. I think Memorabilia feels like finding someone who silences my anxieties and ‘square breaths’.