It has been nearly nine years since the release of your last album. What have you been up to?
Well basically after my last album came out I did a lot of touring for a couple of years, did a DJ Kicks album for !K7, then I left Talkin’ Loud (my old label) and set up my own label independently. Setting up a label took a lot more time and energy than I’d anticipated, so I didn’t have much time or resources left for making music, so effectively I was trying to make my album and I did put out a single on my label, but keeping the label going really slowed down my pace of music production! And I was never the fastest to begin with!!! But in that time I did some musical collaborations as well. And I was doing a lot of my own music in fact, but most of it is only just coming out or about to come out…

Your biography on the Early Records website mentions that you grew up listening to a lot of very varied music. Is that what encouraged you to make music yourself, and do you think it played a role in your music being very varied too?
We (me and my siblings) were all born with a certain gift for music, but because we grew up in an atmosphere that encouraged and emphasised not just listening to, but making, music, there was almost no way that we weren’t going to turn out to be musicians. There was an incredible variety of music playing in our house almost all the time. I don’t remember many times from my childhood that didn’t feature music. And then my father made us learn to perform a wide variety of music, it was really a blessing that we didn’t appreciate until much later.

You were born in Scotland but moved back to Nigeria when still a child. How did that affect you?
For me, going back to Nigeria was like an incredible culture shock, Scotland/Nigeria, it’s like yin and yang! I remember this incredible heat rising from the ground as we touched down. And this incredible red earth… the whole place was so… bright, with this intense beautiful sunshine that informed everything that you saw. It created a kind of dichotomy because in Scotland, we being the only black kids around, I never felt I quite belonged, and in Nigeria, having been born abroad, and with a different accent and probably to begin with, attitude, I also felt like something of an outsider. I used this to my advantage in many ways, to become an even keener observer, to see that cultural and racial differences are actually quite superficial, and to feed my imagination when I felt lonely. I realised really quickly that deep down everyone is the same, and this has informed all my creative expression since then.

Your songs often sound like very personal stories. Do you draw from your own personal experience to write?
Yes, very much, but I use my (and other people’s) experiences as a starting point to go on to make very general points about life. What I’m trying to do, really, is to point out to myself and others how very simple and straightforward life is, despite all the preconceived ideas and layers we try to believe in.

You voice is often compared to that of Billie Holiday. What is your reaction to this?
I can see how, but it’s a partial resemblance I think. We share a certain knowing quality about life in our vocal expression, but I think my voice is more childlike. There’s no question that she probably did influence me, though, because I’ve listened to her music a lot in the past, and I’m a great admirer of her work and of her. And of course it’s a big compliment to be compared to such a great artist.

You have worked with a lot of very different people (Plaid, Shut Up & Dance, Alec Empire…). Have these people affected the way you work over the years, and if yes, how?
Yes, especially Shut Up And Dance and Plaid have been a big influence. Shut Up And Dance showed me by example that beat programming can be weird and original but still powerful and effective and beautiful. And Plaid opened me up to a whole new world of sound, a kind of quirky textural beauty. As for Alec Empire, I just really loved his work. He’s such a really complete musician, and that was inspiring too. Just really coming into contact with all these talented people was a big, big pleasure, I love them so much for that, and always will.

How did you get to work with Shut Up And Dance?
Well I was looking for a record deal, and as I usually do when I want something, I told everyone around me what I was looking for, so someone mentioned that they’d heard that SUAD were doing auditions. They told me it was for some dance tour or something, and as I was leaving to go to the audition, I said to a friend of mine: ‘I know I’ll never get it because my voice is jazzy, they won’t think it suits dance music’. She gave me a glass of wine and said; ‘Just go, try anyway’. So I went and ad-libbed to some backing tracks and they took me on straight away. And it turned out that they were making some of my favourite dance tracks at the time, although I hadn’t known that before I went.

What was the process working with them? How much say did you have on the album?
Basically they made the backing tracks and would give them to me to write lyrics/melody to. They basically left me to do whatever I wanted and I was extremely lucky to have this sort of freedom right from the beginning when I was a greenhorn, because it was what I needed creatively, and it set me on a good path. And they showed so much unconditional approval and respect for what I did, that was a really beautiful and nourishing thing for me creatively too.

Now Is Early was a very different record to anything else around at the time. Were you surprised of how well the album was received?
I hadn’t thought about how it would be received at all, until it was received! What astonished me was how the press kept saying how weird I and my music were. I had never set out to be perceived this way! And had certainly never seen myself or my self-expression this way, although of course I had been told before that I was quirky or whatever. But as for the praise, it was nice, but I didn’t feel it as such, I felt, well what else are they going to say, I did my best with this, after that I don’t care too much.... What I really loved was when, at raves, 15 year olds would come up to me and tell me how much they loved my music. That really meant a lot to me. That made it worthwhile.

Your biography mentions that when the album was released, you already had decided to change direction. Why?
For me life is about change, and never ever will I continue to do the same thing once I’ve expressed all I need to within it. That would be boring! So I always have to move on.

How did you get involved with Massive Attack and recorded two songs for Protection?
They’d heard my music with SUAD and their manager approached me to ask if I’d do it. Of course I said yes, but I never imagined the effect it would have on my career!

Do you think these songs helped you getting signed by Talkin’ Loud, and why did you only release one album with them?
Well, after I did the Massive Attack album I started getting lots of interest from record companies of course, but none of them actually offered me a deal until they’d heard the demos for my second album. Talkin’ Loud actually came in quite late in the day, and I went with them mainly because of Giles Peterson; he had such a pure-hearted approach to music. Talkin’ Loud also did my career a lot of good and I’ll always be thankful for my time with them. But in the end I had to leave because I didn’t feel comfortable in a major label situation (Talkin’ Loud was part-owned by Polygram then). They treated me really well, but there’s a way that major labels operate that didn’t leave me with as much independence as I required. Because I require a lot! So I thought it best to have my own label and maybe deal with major labels on a more autonomous basis from there, you know, licensing through my label rather than being a signed artist.

You seem to have established a very good relationship with the guys from Plaid. How did you get to meet them?
They are the sweetest guys in the world, so it would be difficult not to have a good relationship with them! I love them to bits. I met them when I was looking for producers for my second album. Someone suggested that I work with them. Before we started, I wasn’t sure whether it would work out, but it turned out amazingly. They’re my favourite collaborators - I love everything we’ve worked on together and the remixes they’ve done for me are my favourite ones. Our collaborations are always an amazing experience for me because they bring a very deep instinctive spiritual energy to their work. And it’s always big fun to work with them; they’ve got this quirky English viewpoint that just cracks me up.

I read somewhere that you got a bit of stick for No Government because some journalists thought it was an anarchic song. How did you react to that?
I don’t understand how anyone can think of this song as anarchic! Or maybe I don’t understand what anarchy really means. It was really annoying to have to keep explaining to the press that the song is about the real meaning of freedom, and them not paying the slightest bit of attention to my explanations… basically, no government is just saying that if we as human beings trusted ourselves and believed in this amazing intrinsic wisdom that we have, we wouldn’t have to be told what the right thing to do is, because we would know. And by extension the world would be different… less stressed, perhaps, less fearful. Fear is a killer.

Let No-One Live Rent Free In Your Head features an impressive list of collaborators including Plaid, Alec Empire and 4-Hero. Was it your wish to record with these people when you started working on the album?
When I started writing the album I had no idea who I wanted to work with… so as usual I asked people and amongst the many suggestions I got were the people you mentioned. Except Alec Empire. I’d heard some Atari Teenage Riot stuff and deeply wanted to work with him on something. My manager and record company spent months trying to track him down.

!K7 re-released your first album, which was originally released on Shut Up & Dance. Who’s idea was it?
It was Stefan’s idea, he works for and part owns !K7. I’ve known him for a long time and I trust him; for everything that’s involved me with !K7, he’s approached me directly.

The album was followed by a DJ Kick mix album, on which you worked with Plaid, and which kind of started a new career as DJ. What is the most interesting for you, to DJ or play your own music?
Both are really interesting to me because you can be so creative within both things, the scope is unlimited… making music I couldn’t do all the time, I have to have intense periods of making music and then not make music for a while, while DJing doesn’t demand so much of my energy I think, so I never need to take a rest from it. Although I did back off from DJing while I was making my current album.

You set up your own label, Early Records, a few years ago now. Was it a way for you to be free to work as you want to, to be free from record company pressure?
Yes in a way. Record companies don’t deliberately put pressure on artists, they’re just under so much pressure themselves, it colours their decisions… there’s a whole atmosphere of fear built into their system. It’s more just that I profoundly disagree with the philosophy of the economics of our age. I think it’s possible to be very successful without operating from fear. So I set up my label so that if anyone wanted to be part of a label like this, no pressure, well here it is available to them. I mean, there are lots of great labels out there that I respect immensely, but I felt there was room for one with this flavour…holistic, if you like.

Are you planning to release other people as well as your work? What are the plans for the label? What kind of artists are you looking for?
Yes definitely we will release other artists, would have already done so if it hadn’t taken me so long to finish my own album! We don’t have a brief where artists are concerned, but I personally would like to see more stuff out there in the mainstream from other cultures, and more female producers. But I’ll release anything I’m really into. There are some artists we will release but I don’t want to name check them yet! I’ll just add that I really like lively music, but lively in any sense, could be a slow ballad or whatever. But it’s not just down to me as to what gets released, which is a good thing. Our general policy is: innovative pop music. Which covers a lot!

The new album is once again very different from what you have done before, and this time, you produced most of it on your own. How was it to be in control for the whole album?
I didn’t feel as if I was in control, I just needed to produce the album from a creative point of view, it was a need that was almost physical; although, like most women, I foolishly wasted time doubting my own abilities before I dug into it. And then I was going to hire a mix engineer to mix it, but I ran out of funds so I mixed it myself too. And I’m so glad I did - it was one of the best and most refreshing experiences of my life. I really expressed myself to the bone! It was wicked! It was beautiful! I was like someone possessed! I produced the album because I needed very strongly to express things that were bursting to be expressed, the very essence of me (at that time) that no-one else could explain for me. And now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’m a different person and I’ll never make the same music again.

The songs on Life Loves Us are separated by little interludes, which are often bits of conversations or short songs, some involving your family. How did the idea come up and how were these recorded?
I can’t even remember exactly how I got the idea, except that at one point I felt that the songs were all interconnected in some way, they were expressing one total reality, so something to link them all together would make sense. I thought also it would make sense to have people from different cultures contribute whatever to the album interludes because I have this strong conviction about the brotherhood of peoples, how we’re all one or whatever, so cultural differences fascinate me because they’re like the colourful threads in a tapestry, differences showing the unity, the interesting aspects of this big whole. And then I love the feeling of intimacy with family and friends, I adore intimacy and closeness, and so the idea of having family and friends on this album really appealed. So I just called up various people and asked if they’d drop by to contribute an interlude. Basically I’d just leave them in the studio by themselves with the sequencer recording, and tell them to say or sing whatever they wanted, then later I might cut it down a bit for time, add a bit of reverb or whatever, or, as with my mum’s ones, add some sparse sort of backing. Some were just outtakes from studio sessions that I just thought were funny and/or apt. Oh yes and one friend recorded his and sent it to me. The ‘party’ interlude was a bunch of my friends, after they’d done the cheers on I Am Where The Party’s At, I just left the sequencer on to continue recording peoples conversations, it was a real party, and the mic was just in there in the living room, I think people just forgot about it after a while.

One of these interludes features a version of Happy Birthday sung by Andy from Plaid, with their long-time collaborators Mara and Benet. How did you manage to get them to sing?
Well that’s quite an old recording, from 1997 I think. Basically it was my birthday, and I was having a party, and Andy, Mara and Benet were late in coming to my birthday party because they had a session, so, I think to make up for it, they recorded this version of Happy Birthday after their session as a birthday present for me, and they gave me the DAT when they arrived at the party. They called it Nicolette’s Comedy Birthday Sing-A-Long, or something like that! I thought it was the best present ever, and I kept it because I wanted to put it on something, I wasn’t sure what until I was doing my third album.

You performed at the Jazz Café in London for the launch of the album. Are you planning any more live dates, and if yes, what can people expect?
Yes, we’re doing live dates in mainland Europe at the moment, and probably will be doing live dates right up till late in the year. Hopefully we’ll do some more UK dates this year. Well the set up is quite straightforward: live programming, keyboards/piano, myself, two backing vocalists (three at the jazz café), and often, bass guitar and drums. Projections, bubbles and sometimes Christmas lights too.

Do you get the time to listen to any music? What do you think of the current electronic scene, and of the music scene in general?
Yes I get to listen to music but only sometimes! Electronic music is no longer really underground, it’s now part of the mainstream. Consequently it’s established certain norms and textures that distinguish it as a genre now. Within that, there are a lot of interesting things going on. Zan Lyons is doing brilliant stuff. Electric Blanket rock quirkily and with the best hooks. Nic Endo rules – 500 layers per song! Recently (and belatedly) got to hear Four Tet – brilliant. I got to hear some of Marcus Intalex’s stuff recently, bouncy, wonderful. Ditto The Bug. I still love grime. Electro does it for me on many levels still. There’s some really amazing mad electronica coming out of two Portuguese labels – Mono”Cromatica, and Groovement Records. Music For Speakers label in Holland continues to do good stuff. Music generally – well, still with electronica, I met Lichuan Chong recently, weird abstract electronica, amazing. I have no idea what’s specifically in the charts though! Every now and again I might hear a song and I say, I like that, or, is that so and so’s new song? And someone will say, that’s been in the charts for 5 weeks! Björk of course is always on point. Amy Winehouse is interesting, has balls.

What is next in your diary?
Touring. Our next date is at the Springfive festival in Austria