Music, Style & Culture

Ben Lovett & Kev Jones: Now That’s What I Call Communion

Mumford's Ben Lovett and Kev Jones talk Communion Records.

Sipping a cider in the ever-so-lovely High Street Kensington, Mumford & Sons' Ben Lovett and Kev Jones are two thirds of Communion Records. Greeting me with a cheeky grin, they settle down to chat club nights and compilations ahead of the release of their latest effort 'The Flowerpot Sessions LP'.

So you started up the Communion Club nights a couple of years ago around these parts?
Ben: Yeah, in Notting Hill in 2006. It was kind of just a club night like there are many of in some respects except that it was on a Sunday and there were about five or six live acts, which is a lot more than most people were putting on. It seemed to work, people seemed up for it. Sunday night seemed to encourage a lot more listening from the crowds and it was also a bit easier to book bands because most people don't play Sunday nights so we were able to get some good artists to come and play for us. It went really well and it continues to do well each month, first Sunday. After a couple of years of doing that, we expanded to Brighton, doing the same thing and then started a record label after that, whilst continuing to expand the club nights. There are now ten nights all over the world. It's gone as far as Sydney for a couple of months. It's crazy after it started as something so simple, such a innocent idea.

What made you decide to start a record label?
Kev: Just wanting to reach more people is one reason. When you're putting nights on, you see a lot of bands that are bloody amazing and there's only so far you can go at little venues. I think one of the reasons certainly is that we wanted to champion bands further than Notting Hill.
B: Yeah, it's always good to get things recorded. Everyone loves records, don't they? We kind of stuck to vinyls. This is one of the first releases we've done that isn't on vinyl. Certainly last year all of the records were on vinyl. And digital.
K: It's still on vinyl, it's just we bowed down to CD with this one as well.
B: We found out about this thing called DVD. It's like a film.
K: Compact disk.
B: Sounds all a bit weird. We're going to give it a go. It's what the kids are doing these days.

You do a lot of the label's production side of things in house. Whose album has been the most difficult to produce?
B: We just finished the Marcus Foster album. We did that in Wales at Rockfield, which is a famous, heritage studio. That was the first time that we've all been involved in making a Communion album. We've done a handful of EPs, mini albums and singles and demos.
K: Compilations too. But as a full body of work, that's the first one. It was a challenge but not because of Marcus.
B: He was just a fucking nightmare.
K: God, honestly. But no, it was like a rites of passage for us as a label to have gotten through that. And I'm so happy with the results. Such an intense time - really, really fun.
B: It's really hard to find, as a writer or musician, a studio and a producer that aline with what you want to create. A lot of people spend a lot of money and a lot of time wasted on going to the wrong studios and working with producers that have different ideas than their own. Once people get to know us as people, and know the things that we've done, they know that we can team up with them and make the record that they want to make, which, ultimately, is all you want any sort of production house to do. But it's not the main component of what Communion is; it's something that we felt was a necessary arm of our family.

This is the second compilation that you've released. What made you decide to make one in the first place?
B: I love compilations. I've always loved compilations. The Camden Crawl 2006 compilation was in my car for three years. It's big. Got any favourite compilations?
K: Well, it's funny that you should mention that one because that dictated about six months of my life, didn't it? There are different ways of doing compilations, it's not like Now That's What I Call Communion but you can kind of curate. We wanted to curate the first one, and experiment, try stuff out with the second one and just have a bit of a different angle to it.
B: A compilation is like an ultimate recorded club night. We love putting line ups together and bands together and song writers together. The only difference with 'The Flowerpot Sessions' is that it was a club night. There were actual live gigs. In the midst of those recordings, every day was a gig. There was a studio upstairs where there were some other recordings made so it was a bit like the highlights of that week. The first compilation was the highlights of everyone we'd met and got to know and worked with. It's just a fun thing to do.

How did you choose who to invite to participate?
B: I guess we started with bands and songwriters who'd be worked with and who'd played the nights. We thought about reaching out to some people who we hadn't worked with yet. We tried one or two recommendations. Whoever wanted to collaborate with different artists, we tried to make that happen.
K: A bit like building a festival line up, really. It was a bit like "Ohhhh, that would work really well with that." Then you just link things up because they know each other or because their music would go well together or their primary reference is the same or all sorts of reasons. Start with one and build it out, I guess.

Were there any big surprises? Did anything turn out better than you expected?
B: Lissie and Mount Desolation worked out better than we expected. Lissie was straight off the road. She was pretty hungover and worn down. It's hard to collaborate, especially with people you haven't met before. And then late afternoon, she just pulled it out of the bag and they created something that was absolutely brilliant and everyone that was playing and watching it would've thought that they'd been in rehearsal for weeks writing the music. Sometimes the artist is brilliant, there's only so much we can do.
K: But ultimately, we didn't have any expectations. We just tried to create an environment where people could work together so it was just day by day seeing how it all went. It's not really about single tracks. It's about the whole collaborative experience and what all those tracks make up.
B: Yeah, I really hope people don't buy or illegally download a couple of the tracks and think that they've got it. You have to listen to the whole thing on one drive one day. I'd get confused if anyone didn't understand what it was all about. It's a week's work done by a whole bunch of people.

And you're working on putting on a big festival in West London later this year but it's been pushed back. What's happening there?
B: To June 4th due to the very wonderful promotion of QPR to the premier league. We seem to have a clash between where we wanted to celebrate Communion and where they wanted to celebrate QPR in May, which is fine.
K: We were a little out numbered.
B: Yep, so on June 4th we're going to make a West London inner-city festival where one wristband gets you access to a bunch of different festivals, in a similar vein to what they've done at SXSW and Camden Crawl, Dot to Dot, Great Escape.
K: The idea is that it felt like there's a lot of great musicians and there's a really nice musical vibe in West London that just wasn't being represented. There's not as much going on in West London as there should be. East London's got it's thing; North London's got it's thing and we wanted to put a flag in the ground and show that West London's pretty cool too.
B: It's based in Shepherd's Bush and it's got the world famous Shepherd's Bush Empire looking over all these little venues this year. We have dreams that maybe one day it'll grow to be something big and more than four venues but it really depends on how much people support it, support the musicians playing and support the area. We're more than willing to facilitate a fun Saturday festival in June, year in year out it just depends on whether or not people want it there. I'm pretty sure they do. They just need to know about it I guess.

'The Flowerpot Sessions LP' will be released on 30th May via Communion and Island Records.