Interview w/ Naked Flames
By Nick Caceres
Published 11/13/2025
Against the odds, the London Electronic soloist dipped himself back into the limelight with the “Wall I Was,” filled with nearly seven hours of material. Fans welcomed the rascal back with open arms. These various catacombs of standout tracks and abandoned projects show a transition from the Naked Flames people knew and loved in the last five years onwards to something more or less the same, but free from any past work binding Anton to the days of making “Miracle in Transit.”
Growing up in the pinnacle of boredom, the UK suburb of Waterlooville, little Anton had enough time to himself to begin making music as Naked Flames at just 10 years old, enveloping a rich taste in music resulting from a love of Brian Wilson and Boards of Canada. After discovering and falling in a deep admiration with Basic Channel and DJ Seinfeld, Anton would switch gears in music, burying such early projects to make way for a style in Techno still evolving and thriving in his most recent offering, airy grooves that create cascades of solitude.
The following interview took place on the late afternoon of October 21 and covers the grand return of Naked Flames with the colossal “Wall I Was.” The splendid Anton also goes into great detail regarding past projects like “It Is What It Is” and “Miracle In Transit,” plus a promise of new music on the regular locked and loaded for next year. If 2025 was the return, then 2026 will be the harvest.
Photo of Anton as Naked Flames
Photo Courtesy of Naked Flames
Nick: Hey Anton, how's it going?
Anton: Hello. I'm doing really good. I've had a very normal day today. I'm a man of routine so that sits very well with me. I'm having a good time.
Nick: How's it been basking under the sun of your comeback?
Anton: That's a very interesting phrase isn't it? Because I haven't thought about it as a comeback at all in the sense that I've always just made music, right? And it just so happens that a side effect is that some people like to listen to it. So obviously when I released “Wall I Was,” it was like, “oh, people are gonna pay attention to me in some way again.” But when it comes to what makes me feel proud of myself is just the sustained making music and just making albums as a product of that. So the main reason I feel really good right now is just 'cause I'm making new stuff that feels really really good. It feels nice to know that like I had a seven hour-ish long album that is enough for people to chew on until I eventually release something else. So I feel good in general. It's nice.
Nick: Eight hours if you include those bonus tracks.
Anton: Sure. I forgot about those. I had the idea to just release everything about two days before I released it. It was super impulsive, but it worked out really well. These other tracks were like, “eh, they're kind of okay. I've been listening to them from time to time and they're good, but I don't know if I'd put them on a main release.” But the reception from “Wall I Was” was so good that it gave me enough fortitude to realize that like, “okay, tunes from this time period, people are gonna find something in them that's good, and only the fans are gonna buy the CDs to get the bonus tracks.” So win-win, right?
Nick: Yeah. Real ones are gonna pay attention to the main album and also the bonus tracks. I feel like you understand that.
Anton: Yeah. The time surrounding it is very important. I feel if someone makes an album that you deeply respect, you don't care what the quality of the stuff made around that time period is, you just wanna hear it because it puts you in the mind of the artist. That's extremely valuable in my opinion.
Nick: Before we jump into the main contents of your latest full-length, and by full-length I mean FULL…LENGTH, I want to hone in on the term itself, “Wall I Was.” What does it mean to you?
Anton: There's two answers to this in the sense that the concrete answer to that is that the title was lifted directly from, I'm guessing, that you know who Bill Wurtz is. He made the “History of Japan” and “The History of the Entire World, I Guess” videos. This is someone who I have deeply revered for a very very long time and my work ethic has been enhanced based around accounts of his work ethic. So I have spent many many hours watching, listening and studying his diary videos in which he talks about his process in real time as it's happening. So that means as a result anything that he's done in that time period, because we know in the current that he's become a massive success, whereas at that time, he was just viewed as this weird eccentric guy who was making stuff. He had a song on an album that was never released called “Wall I Was.” The moment that I saw that in one of his videos, I was just–I write down a lot of song names on my phone, just on the notes app for things that could be used in the future–I was immediately like, “that has to be used for something big. I dunno what it is, but it sticks with me.” It has a ring to it, “Wall I Was,” it's incongruous, but it flows off the tongue at the same time. It's beautiful. I love it and so that's basically it, right? It's funny because some of my best friends after I released the album were theorizing around what it meant. One of my friends literally said, “Wall I Was’ is such a good title because it implies that you were a wall.” And it's like, what does that even mean? It's good because that could mean anything to anyone, but if they apply it to their own experience, then they've, for me, taken it further than I could. So having something that is abstract but also simple at the same time resonates with people in a way that wasn't my first line of thought. I just liked it because I liked it, but it worked out in a secondary way because it's so open for interpretation, it stays with people I like to think.
Nick: Before this interview you were talking about the timeframe of making this album, so I would like to ask again, what was the timeframe of when most of these tracks, if not all of them, were created?
Anton: Sure thing. Most of these tracks are a good qualifier because there were a very small number of tracks that were made as early as 2020, right? Then I would say that most of the tracks actually happened around very late 2021 and early 2022. At that time I was working on the previous album, which was “Miracle in Transit.” When I'm working on something that I know is going to be a mainline release, I'm gonna pour all my effort into that. When I procrastinate, it means that I want to work on stuff for fun. So I make tons upon tons of demos that I never intend anyone to hear and so they just accrue over time. Some of them would get cannibalized into other songs or live mixes, but most of them would just sit on the shelf. That was a recurring theme through late 2021 until about early 2024, where I would be working on the main project and then to unwind. I would just record something really quickly in a night to feel like I'd made progress when I knew that progress was actually working on the album itself, but I didn't wanna do that 'cause that's scary. There's that thought of, “oh, it has to be really good” and then if it's not good, you are wearing too many emotions on your sleeve and it feels like I failed. But if you make something new, like a new demo track, you can at least feel like you've done something. So over that many years, from 2020 up until there's a song on “Wall I Was” called “Bambi.” I made that one in 2025. All of the other ones, there's like three or four from 2024 I wanna say, but the vast majority of them were made in early 2022 when I knew that “Miracle in Transit” was closing so I could make whatever the hell I wanted. I didn't care about who heard it. I just wanted to make stuff carefree because the feeling was so liberating to not work over every detail, which I despised. So many rough mixes. So I'd say the 2022 period is what's most prevalent on “Wall I Was.”
Nick: Did any of those tracks make previous appearances in different forms or were they all put on the shelf until the release?
Anton: There were a few that come to mind. There's one track that's really late into the album called “Got Milk.” That one appeared on a DJ mix that I made for an online festival, but in a much more lo-fi crazed form. I had this mix lying around and I just thought, “yeah, that would work on the album.” I'm trying to think how many other tracks were released in some capacity there, there have to be some. I don't think that many of them are original to the listener in the sense that they wouldn't have heard it before in any sort of form. I think most of it's new stuff in that sense, new in that it's new to the ears of listeners. It's old stuff to me. It's funny because it's all stuff that I've sort of listened to on my phone again and again through the years. It's such an interesting feeling when you hear something that is just for you and then you hear that same thing, knowing that other people are hearing it, it sounds completely different. The audio has not changed in the slightest, but the context has shifted so much that it's a bit of a mind fuck. Other people are hearing this now. They're hearing all of the different mistakes that I've made in that mix. They're hearing the fact that it's so rough. They're hearing the fact that it's clearly undercooked. They're hearing all of that stuff, but since it's so new to them, they're not thinking any of that. They think it's just a track that you've made and it rewires your brain around all these tracks that they're now out. That was one of the best parts of “Wall I Was,” the fact that I exercised this for me.
Nick: With that, the first ever appearance of this album would be you uploading the entire thing to YouTube on March 13th of this year. What made this initial version super intriguing was the use of visuals and typography over just a single stagnant cover that would move downwards every track. In fact, I'm pretty sure the album cover materialized from a visual that appeared around the fourth hour, right?
Anton: Yeah, absolutely.
Nick: What was the functionality that those visuals served and how did you create or source them?
Anton: So I sourced them from Google Street Images simply in the sense that I'm someone who–I like to get out on the train to random places as much as possible. I love just walking around and drinking up the atmosphere of different places. Those Google Street images were from different places that I'd visited. It's interesting when you visit a place, for instance, Rockbourne. You don't have to have heard of that, but it's a place in Hertfordshire that I like to visit. When you visit it, that's always gonna be different to the Google Maps version of that place because Google images are gonna specifically show the images that showcase its beauty the most, the most appealing to the eye of the person who's not seen it before, to incentivize 'em to visit it.
Nick: Or outdated.
Anton: Absolutely. So I thought of going through and image search all of these places that I've been to, just to see what it looks like and pair it against my experience of those places. And so the images clicked with me straight away and I thought, “well, I need to save these so that I can use them later at some point.” I can't remember exactly why I made that large scrolling image that just goes through for seven hours, but that's most of my artistic process. It's just–I can't really explain it–it just felt right in the moment. Let's put this random name on this image and see what people think about it, you know? I didn't do that on purpose in the sense that there was no greater meaning to it. It was just, “oh, let's see what happens if I do this. Oh that looks cool. Oh that will work for a video.” So I have a visual component because obviously when I upload to YouTube, I don't just wanna have a static image for all of it. I've done that sometimes, but I like to have some sort of, you know, food for thought. Even if it doesn't really mean anything, people are going to find meaning in it because it will strike them in a way that I couldn't have predicted myself.
Nick: What are some interesting thoughts that you saw from other people regarding that visual?
Anton: So you know how each location has a name in the middle? Most people thought that either that was the track list, which was just completely wrong, or they thought that it was a real place that I just labeled and 90% of people were like, “what does that mean?” Right? And so you split right down the divide with people who immediately wanna find meaning in things without equating it to their own experience and the people who just ride with the wave and just think, “oh, so this one is called ‘hacha.’ I don't know what that means to naked flames, but to me it might remind me of a certain thing” and there's no way that I could get that person to be reminded of that thought that they attach to something that I've made, right? So I like to just leave it a completely open playing field for people to cast their own opinion on.
Nick: How did you name those visuals, if you're able to explain it?
Anton: I'm glad you qualified that with, “if you're able to explain it,” 'cause it really is just syllables that sound cool to me. I dunno if I can explain it. None of them relate to anything in real life that I've clicked with. It's all just like, “oh, there's this image. It feels like a ‘senning,’ it feels like a ‘Ewemouth.” There's nothing there that's cognitive, it's just whatever.
Nick: Is it like words you're just spouting out that aren't really words?
Anton: Yes.
Nick: So like pig Latin.
Anton: Yeah, pig Latin, sure…something like that.
[naked flames]. (2025, March 13). wall i was [Video].
Nick: When I listened to this thing, I had to do it in one to two hour chunks, because, for those who don’t know, this is your longest project to date, clocking in at nearly seven hours, nearly eight if you include the bonus tracks. Did the idea to split this into multiple albums ever come about or were you wanting to pull a “Kesto” from the start?
Anton: “Kesto” never came to mind. I love that album, I haven't thought of “Kesto” in a very long time. That's interesting that you bring up “Kesto,” implying that you think that I know what it is. Panasonic, right? You're talking about Panasonic?
Nick: Yep.
Anton: No. It was born almost entirely out of necessity in the sense of back when I was making stuff in 2023, when I already knew that I had this huge bank of stuff, I thought that after I have this album that I've been working on, what I call the 2023 album that never got released. So you've got this album that I'm working on that I think is better than “Miracle in Transit,” personally speaking, but I was working on that and I had a huge backlog of stuff that I knew that at some point I would release in EP form, single form, compilation form, stuff that’s very low key in the sense that I always knew that I had my outlet for things that were released on labels that I properly worked over for months. Then you had the more lowkey stuff, which would just be for the fans. So building all of this stuff up, I thought, “I'm gonna make this stuff better” because they're all demos to me, they're all live mixes. I've not thought, “I'm gonna make this better now because it's gonna be on an album.” I've just made it and moved on. That's essentially all of “Wall I Was,” because I thought I was gonna make all of this stuff better for EPs and releases after this 2023 album is made. So the fact that it didn't get made meant that I had unfinished business with these songs. I can definitely point to various tracks in that album that would've been released as standalone things. There have been people on my questions page who have theorized about, “oh is that run of tracks from ‘Wall I Was’ a release that got shelved and never made?” Most of the time they're correct because I would have released it in a different capacity. I would've improved the tracks. But the fact that I knew I was never gonna get around to that and I didn't want these tracks just eating me up. I have to move on. If I wanna keep making music, which is what I love, I have to get rid of these first. So that was that.
Nick: I was looking through the questions page. I will say that most of it wasn't too helpful in research because it was very unrelated to your music. A lot of it was very personal. No offense, I don't really want to hear about antidepressants. I don't know how that would contribute to this interview. Regardless, I thought it was interesting how I could tell you were kind of annoyed because someone was like,” can we still get the 2023 album?” and you're like, “I just gave you seven hours of music!”
Anton: Yeah. Someone said that, “we're starving here!” I’m like, “how are you starving?”
Nick: I think this was May.
Anton: So very soon after, like less than two months of just like, “I've just given you a mother load of material.” There are so many huge artists that don't have discographies that stretch up to seven hours. I don't mean to say that I've made seven hours of pure quality 'cause I know that there's stuff on that album that's shit basically, but that did throw me for a loop. The fact that there were multiple people saying like, “okay, one more thing after this please!” Clearly you haven't digested this at this point. Surely if you're already asking for more. I can't just pump out albums like that. I can only make so many tracks a day.
Nick: Because this is such a massive body of work, I do want to give you the floor and ask what some of your favorite tracks are on “Wall I Was” and why you personally favor them if you can.
Anton: I think I can. I'll have to think for a moment. I'll see if there's anything that comes to me immediately. Actually this is a hard question. Okay, “One Can Only Hope,” I like that track a lot because that was a demo that I had made a very long time ago, like late 2021, and I made an ambient version of it for a YouTube video that I made. But the mix of it that I made, that I truncated for the YouTube video, the entire mix, I kept listening to it back again and again and again. I thought, “I know that I really like this but I can't imagine this being a hit in any capacity with anyone.” There were just so many boxes that ticked for me in the sense that it came to me so easily and it sounded so good at the time and it still sounds good. Those are the tracks on “Wall I Was” that I appreciate the most. Those are the projects that I've made that I appreciate the most, the ones that I've made so fast that I've known that I would like more than anyone else just because they tie into a certain sound that's linked to a history of music that I have been through and liked the most. What else is there on “Wall I Was” that I really like. I like the “Fridge Raider I” and “Fridge Raider II” tracks a lot, just the little motifs and stuff. Are you aware of the Boards Of Canada tapes? Like “A Few Old Tunes?”
Nick: I've been meaning to listen to that, but I’m backlogged.
Anton: That's a shame because “A Few Old Tunes” as well as “Old Tunes Vol. 2” shaped so much of my artistic outlook on everything really. Those small vignette tracks that on the surface don't really mean anything 'cause they get overshadowed by everything else, but the more that you listen, you start to find a little bit of an oasis in the silly tracks, the tracks that don't have to be as grandiose. I've always adored that when it comes to albums of a large scale. So the small vignette tracks like the two “Fridge Raider” tracks and “One Can Only Hope.” I really have a much stronger tie to those than I do something like–I don't really know too much about what are the tracks on that album that people resonate with the most. I would imagine that it's the early tracks on the album, so “Undisputed Altitude” and “Pen Gwyn” and stuff like that. I would imagine that those are the ones that people like the most.
Nick: I do like “No Wildcard.”
Anton: Sure yeah, “No Wildcard.” I'm happy I made those, they were really nice. They were quick live mixes and they just happened to work out as full tracks. People thought that they were the full track as opposed to just a demo that I spat out knowing that there were so many potholes in them. But to me it’s the much smaller tracks like, “Fade From Black” for instance, which is really just an ambient interlude with a vocal sample. That's the stuff that, for me, is the glue of the album, the small stuff. That's what I really like.
Nick: Are you willing to share how you got the name "Undisputed Altitude" for the opening track or is that still something that you want the fans to figure out?
Anton: No. Alright here's the thing. I was gonna say no, but then I thought it's only the fans that are gonna be cropped into this interview, right?
Nick: Maybe. I think some people on the outside too would be curious.
Anton: Sure okay. So first and foremost, I think I did a good job with that name in the sense that it brings to mind like, I'm so high up, I've reached such a height, right? The name directly comes from an album by Slayer. They have an album called “Undisputed Attitude,” so that's where it's from. The word beginning with “U,” that's eight letters long, and then “attitude” is eight letters long. That just fits into my head. Then out–undisputed altitude, I'm flying above all this shit. That works for that track because it all builds up to the coda at the end where it's the release. So there you go. The track name works, but it's also a very obscure Slayer reference.
Naked Flames - "Wall I Was" (2025) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Let's move on to reel it back to the very beginning. Before we jump into some of your past releases, what was it like growing up in the humble town of Waterlooville?
Anton: What the fuck?! Okay. That's a great question! Jesus…I mean…there's two sides to it in the sense that growing up it was all that I knew, right? In the sense that it's a very nothing town in the sense where no one's going in, no one's leaving it either because there's just people that have been sort of stuck there. There's nothing happening at all. So if you need entertainment, if you are an outgoing person, you'll hang out with your friends from school. Now none of my friends in school lived in Waterlooville and so if I needed entertainment, I had to resort to myself. I would go inside my own mind and just figure out ways to entertain myself rather than, you know, what all my other school friends were doing. If they lived in Denmead, they could meet up and go onto the fucking football field and have a kick about, which is what I envied the most. That's clearly very character developing in a sense of if you're stuck with yourself for so much and you work out what it is that you like, you feel much more vindication towards expressing your own outlook on things. In the future, I know that now, but back when I was living in Waterlooville, I didn't understand why everyone else seemed so much more well adjusted than I do because I wasn't doing anything really. I was just in my room and, you know, looking at a wall and thinking about stuff. It sounds depressing, but it wasn't. I really liked it. I was chilling.
Nick: Are you a Russian Anton?
Anton: Well I'm 50% Russian by blood, yes. The only Russian I speak is the swear words 'cause I played “Counter-Strike.” So I'm 50% Russian by ethnicity.
Nick: When did you first stumble on The Beach Boys and inadvertently Brian Wilson?
Anton: Yeah so I started with “Pet Sounds,” as I would imagine most people did, back about 2013. That was when I was in my Pink Floyd era. So I was listening entirely to Pink Floyd and a “Pet Sounds” full album upload just appeared in the sidebar, so I'm like, “oh, Beach Boys. I sort of know that name from somewhere, so I'm gonna check it out.” I didn't take it any further because I was so into Pink Floyd and Van Morrison and Bob Dylan at the time. I wanna say early 2016, I revisited “Pet Sounds” and the moment I heard, “wouldn't it be nice,” I was in tears. I lost it. I was like, “oh my God, this is everything that I've been looking for and I've already known this stuff.” So I was replaying through “Pet Sounds” constantly in my first year of university. “The Smile Sessions” came after that, which I thought was even better than “Pet Sounds.” For me, “Beach Boys” was just those two albums for about two years because I could not stop listening to them. Third year of university is when I started listening to the more obscure in the sense that I think that Beach Boys’s “Love You,” “Sunflower,” and “Surfs Up,” people know those at this point, but back then the entire discourse was “Smile Sessions” and “Pet Sounds.” It felt like I was listening through more of the deeper stuff. “Love You,” that really grew on me so much and it felt much more idiosyncratic in just stupid fucking ways. Like I was listening to this album thinking like, “what are you talking about? You are making these lovely arrangements around something that's just so dumb and stupid.” And I love this because I relate to this on so many levels. Once you start really caring about an artist in that way, you wanna hear everything they've done because you wanna inform your context around what it is you love about them. Obviously Brian Wilson is someone who is plentiful when it comes to different factoids and different things that he has done and his history and all demos that he's made. Then after you get into Brian, you start thinking about, “well that's not just the entire Beach Boys.” You've got Carl and Dennis and Mike and Al. So you go into all of their individual histories and you see these YouTube channels that archive only Al Jardine, that archive only Mike Love. They're segregated into different camps because some people really hate one side, some hate the other.
Nick: When did you start to become interested in Electronic, House, UK Garage, that sector? Who were some of your gateway artists?
Anton: I thankfully have a very clear answer when it comes to what got me into House and Techno. Have you heard of Basic Channel?
Nick: Unfortunately no.
Anton: So Basic Channel are a very seminal Dub Techno, Minimal Techno duo from Germany. A lot of people revered them as sort of the very first proper foray into excellently executed Minimal Techno. They had a plethora of EP releases that I went through a few of them in early 2018. That was the very first moment I realized that I am a big fan of Techno. The pulse of it just kept me coming back and back because before that I was mainly listening to, you know, Rock, Pop, Ambient, Drone and Experimental stuff. So that laid the very early groundwork for me. In early 2018 is when I fully got into House. That was because of DJ Seinfeld if you know who that is.
Nick: I've heard the name, but I've never listened to them.
Anton: So there was an album called “Time Spent Away From U,” which is something I heard in 2017. Like I had listened to House and Techno in 2017, but it always felt secondary to stuff like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, right? It always felt secondary to that. One night I just put on “Time Spent Away From U” in the kitchen over the Bluetooth speaker at my friend's house in university. It fit the moment so well in a way that I couldn't describe that I had to just keep re-listening to it over and over again. I could not get sick of it. It just kept happening. Then I thought about all of the House and Techno that I'd heard before that time that I hadn't clicked with that much. What if I heard it now and it all just fell into place? That was it. I was a convert essentially. So I went through all the Basic Channel, all the Chain Reaction, all the 1080p cassette tapes, all of the 100% Silk, all of that Lobster Theremin. Just boom, “oh my God. This is what I was looking for. But why did it take so long for me to click with it?” So late 2018 DJ Seinfeld “Time Spent Away From You,” that was the ultimate moment where I thought, “this is for me.”
Nick: When did it click that you were going to try your hand in creating music?
Anton: So I've been making music since I was about 10 years old using the same software that I use to make the music today. I downloaded FL Studio 9 and that was because that was the most recent version at the time. The reason I downloaded that was because people who were making “Guitar Hero 3” for PC custom charts were using that to make their own songs. I thought because I was an avid Guitar Hero fan back then, I wanna make my own tunes. I'm gonna download the demo version of FL Studio 9 and make stuff. It was a lot of fun, right? I was just making things. I didn't give a fuck about if anyone heard it. It was just fun to do. It just wasn't being released in that early period. It was only being released in the sense that I would give it to my friends and my parents. I mean it was put on the internet, but only so that my friends could hear it. It wasn't released as like, “I'm Naked Flames,” 'cause I used the name Naked Flames since the very beginning. There was no other artist name. That's what I came up with when I was 10 years old.
Nick: If you can remember, how did you conjure up that name?
Anton: I can't remember because it was just off the dome. I just thought, “oh, Naked Flames. That sounds good.” It's just stuck 'cause I think it still sounds good.
Nick: Now unfortunately, your earliest releases that are known under the name Naked Flames are currently lost, but maybe you still have them, most notably the “Ianto Shrine” debut and the”Xmas” EP. I did see that there was some interest regarding that on the Lost Media Wiki Forum a few years ago.
Anton: I don’t know anything about that.
Nick: Do you have any of those files and have you considered making them public again?
Anton: Of course I have all the files and they're never going public. I just don't want people knowing about them because they're shit, they're fucking awful. They're so bad man. It's equivalent to, let's say that you hit the big time one day and people really fucking cared about digging up your back catalog, right? Imagine that there were people who thought “we need to see those.”
Nick: You know what's funny? I have a friend who conducted a Sonemic interview with Octa Mobius Scheffner who has a very similar view about her early stuff. Unfortunately, that is released and is available. In that interview, she basically said like, “do not listen to all of my discography. That is a stupid idea. You're gonna waste your time.”
Anton: Here's the thing. I come from a different perspective in the sense that I am someone who has been extremely curious about the early boards of Canada projects that haven't been released as well as–do you remember that Godspeed You! Black Emperor tape, “All Lights Fucked?”
Nick: I don't remember much from it, unlike their later stuff, but I thought it was a fine little tape.
Anton: For me, I've wanted to know what that sounded like since I was about 13 years old. It only came out in 2022, so that was nine years of my life where I thought, “I need to hear this tape.” It's a very similar story in the sense where that's just not representative of the Godspeed sound. So I know what it feels like to be so curious to hear someone's backstory with such candor, right? If you heard “Ianto Shrine,” all the really early shit, you might hear the roots of where my other stuff might have germinated from. I know to me that it is shit music, right? It's that weird dissonance where I know how much I would be intrigued in hearing someone's shit music, but at the same time, I don't really give a fuck about other people hearing my shit music. So it is a very interesting balance. Plus I've always thought that in people's imaginations, their versions of those albums sound better than they do in real life. So I'd rather that they think of it their own way.
Nick: I will say, looking at the artwork of those albums, which is available, part of me is like, “that would be interesting 'cause that looks very different from an album cover like ‘Miracle and Transit.” I wonder if it's a more stripped back version of what we were eventually going to get from you.
Anton: I will safely say that none of that is House. None of it's Techno.
Naked Flames - "Iantos Shrine" (2015) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Naked Flames - "Xmas" (2015) EP cover
Photo Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Nick: What initially compelled you to create the boards of Canada Sleep Mix? Was this originally going to be a one-off thing, but you ended up loving it so much you came back for more?
Anton: Basically a bit of both in the sense that I originally made it for myself because I wanted to hear what a Board of Canada sleep mix would sound like. I wanted to just put the Ambient sections together for myself because I like those parts. Then I thought, “well, I can put it on YouTube, right? Why not?” So I put it on a new channel and at the time I was very much an active user of a forum called Tourism, which is the Boards of Canada fan forum. I posted it on there after I had released it, not thinking much. Just a few fans will listen to it and enjoy it and then the admin of the forum puts it on the Facebook page of the BoC Fan Group, which has tens of thousands of followers. So the YouTube algorithm picks up on the fact that loads of people are listening to it all the way through and starts pumping it out to people's recommended. There were people in my college music class who were telling me that they were being recommended my video and I was like, “wow, this feels like I'm fucking famous or something.” People were coming up to me saying, “you made this right 'cause you are Naked Flames? You made this video that's appearing in my sidebar,” right? I was like, “holy fuck, okay this is legit. This is actually working.” I made it when I was 15 on a complete whim. So I was like, “well, I have to do more of these 'cause people like this shit.” That tied in with me releasing my own material on that channel because I thought if there are people who are subscribing because of the sleep mixes, then statistically speaking, at least 0.1% of those people will listen to my own stuff and therefore I technically have an audience. So the sleep mixes were a conduit for people actually listening to my own material.
[naked flames]. (2015, April 22). Boards of Canada - Sleep Mix [Video].
Nick: What's your favorite sleep mix you put together, if you can answer that?
Anton: Oh I haven't heard any of them for years. I distinctly remember the “Yume Nikki/2kki/.flow Sleep Mix.” I listened to that one quite a lot just because the first 10 minutes of that is my favorite “Yume Nikki/2kki” soundtrack piece of all time. So whenever I wanna hear that I go back to that. When it comes to artists, I listen to the Grouper one a lot because my girlfriend usually listens to rain sounds to go to sleep. One night she was like, “Anton, can you put something on besides rain sounds?” I was like, “alright, I'll put the ‘Grouper Sleep Mix’ on.” Then that became a routine to listen to that one
[naked flames]. (2019, January 2). Yume Nikki/2kki/.flow Sleep Mix [Video].
[naked flames]. (2019, March 29). Grouper - Sleep Mix [Video].
Nick: The earliest Accessible Naked Flames album is one that's very unique in perspective to your later albums. When it comes to “Sand In Your Eye,” I found that there was a very high variability between these tracks, ranging from Vapor, Ambient, Electronic, and, of course, some Techno but not too much. Why did you have all of these styles simultaneously colliding with each other on this one?
Anton: I think at the time I wanted to make something that sounded, in my version, like the “Yume Nikki” soundtrack. So the “Yume Nikki” soundtrack is ostensibly five second loops for about a minute, then it fades out because the soundtrack of the game–it's a 2004 RPG game so each track is a very short ambient loop, but it's done so effectively that none of the loops really get old. So I thought, “I wanna make an album,” hence why so many of the tracks are called “(something) room” because it conjures up this idea of a place where there's a loop that's happening that just becomes part of the background sound of the room. The different styles, I would say, is because it is a culmination of the random things that I'd been doing for the last four years or so. So I'd made some Techno just because I wanted to make a four on the floor thing randomly, some Ambient, some guitar loops, some Noise. That album was not made in a conscious effort to make an album in the sense that it was a collection of things that I'd made before and I'd turned them into a loop.
Nick: Were some of these tracks similar to “Iantos Shrine?”
Anton: Yeah, a lot of them were.
Nick: That's interesting. So we're talking around 2013-2014 ish?
Anton: Yeah like really early experiences with FL Studio basically.
Nick: So it kind of is your first album, in a way.
Anton: I mean yeah the public perception versus my perception is so different because I've been not releasing things for so long. I struggle with qualifying it as that. I can understand how you would reach that conclusion.
Nick: I do know that the album does sound like a certain strain of Electronic music that was starting to get really big around the time you were making those tracks. I wanted to ask, as someone who I guess was on the internet a lot back in the day, was Vaporwave on your rotation when creating certain tracks on “Sand In Your Eye.”
Anton: These are really fucking good questions 'cause that's exactly fucking right. I remember listening to Blank Banshee when that came out, right? The first Blank Banshee album that was in tandem with obviously your “Floral Shoppe,” your “Eccojams,” like the early Tumblr wave of Vaporwave and Vapor in general. Right? I was hearing that stuff and thinking, “how the fuck would I make something like this? I don't know how people did this and made a name for themselves, but I want that, I want a piece of that pie.” So Blank Banshee, even though I would imagine that none of my stuff really sounds like any of that, was heavily influenced by Blank Banshee definitely.
Nick: Any Telepath?
Anton: Telepath I got into later. Telepath was more like 2016-2017. “Sand In Your Eye" obviously came out after that, but by that point, Blank Banshee and “Floral Shoppe” were my cornerstones of cool music, right? I thought, “wow, this is exactly the sort of internet aesthetic that I wish that I could go for, but I just can't, I have to do it my own way, based on my own experiences of making whatever the fuck I've done before even hearing any Electronic music.” The early albums like Naked Flames one through four, which no one's ever gonna hear 'cause they're terrible, but those were all Electronic albums that I'd made before I'd even heard anything that resembled Electronic,” 'cause it's just, I had FL Studio, so I had to make it on Electronic Music Suite. I grew up on Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and so I had this sort of idea to make something electronic in that sense and put my spin on it. But then when I heard Blank Bashee, I was like, “wait, no, you can be serious about this and it sounds really good.” I was really captivated by all of that.
Naked Flames - "Sand in Your Eye" (2017) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Nick: You explained earlier how you were, by this point, into Techno by 2019. So with that, would you say that “Boring Fantasy” had a more unified and subdued style compared to “Sand In Your Eye?”
Anton: Absolutely, because “Boring Fantasy” was the result of me hearing nothing but Basic Channel and Chain Reaction for the last year. I wanted to make Dub Techno, I wanted to make something that was purely textural and atmospheric. I didn't wanna impress anyone with a melody or a baseline or anything like that. I knew I could make something like that if I really tried. I could and it happened so fast. It happened so quickly. I just thought, “wait, I actually have a knack for this. I can put my own spin on it and it sounds all right.” I didn't really release it in any major sense, I knew that I could make what I loved. So that's what “Boring Fantasy” came from. “All Singing / All Dancing” by Extension is basically the same sessions that went into both.
Nick: Looking at this time period preceding and during 2020, do you often miss the simplicity of stuff like “Boring fantasy" and albums like it?
Anton: Absofuckinglutely. I've even mentioned this before on my questions page. I've said that the stuff that I'm making now, even though I'm really happy with what I'm doing now, thank fucking God, it is so much more maximalist. I have so many different techniques that I've procured over the last five years that I didn't have whilst I was making “Boring Fantasy.” When I was making that stuff, it was really simple in the fact that I knew that I had one synth, plugins, reverb, and delay. That's all I had to work with. Yet even with that, I made something that I was really happy with. Nowadays, when I'm making stuff, I have infinite possibilities and it can take ages to get an idea down that I'm really happy with because I'm not that naive. I know that I have to build it up to a grandiose level. During “Boring Fantasy,” I didn't give a fuck. If you're making simple Dub Techno, all you need is a kick drum and a chord. That's it. I can't do that anymore. I really fondly look back on those early days of making “Boring Fantasy”
Nick: People liked it at the time too.
Anton: Yeah, it was brilliant 'cause that was back at the time when I was still using Rate Your Music. When I released anything, it was my friends on Rate Your Music that would hear it first 'cause they were people who I had sort of followed for a few years. If they think it's good, then I think it's good. It was that first taste of getting other people's opinions factored into your own opinion of a certain release. That's seductive, you know?
Nick: I also think, to this day, that Rate Your Music has some of the best functionality compared to other places.
Anton: It does. It's a funny thing. I'm indebted so much to Rate Your Music in the sense that I wouldn't be where I was today if it weren't for that website, obviously. That's where I started out getting any sort of audience that stayed around. But at the same time, it's funny growing up and realizing how much of a bubble that is, and it's not representative of the outside world. I've been fairly offline for the last few years and just interacting with so many different people that are, you know, it's very clear the radio music audience is a very specific tailor made audience that, you know, has a voice on the entire history of music and present it in an objective fashion that is so not representative of how the outside world thinks. But at the time, if that's the only thing that you know, and those are the people saying that your stuff is good, you're gonna get an inflated ego. That's how it worked for me, at least that's how it was for me.
Naked Flames - "Boring Fantasy" (2019) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Bandcamp
Naked Flames - "All Singing / All Dancing" (2020) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: In what fashion is “It Is What It Is” a more personal album originally reserved for close family and friends? Why was it released to the public in 2021?
Anton: It's very similar to “Wall I Was” in the sense that during that time period was when I felt like I was actually getting a public presence here. I'd released “All Singing / All Dancing” which had gotten the ball running a little bit. Then I got “Binc Rinse Repeat" which finally put me in the limelight in the sense that it got a front page Rate Your Music review. Then Anthony Fantano tweeted about it. So all of a sudden, loads of random people were listening to my stuff which I'd never ever fantasized about. I just thought “I'm making it for myself.” It was just my friends who would all hear it and I care about what all my friends have to say. But then BOOM, all these people are hearing this shit and it's crazy. So off the back of that, I made “247 365,” which is sort of like, “okay, I am carving into contemporary sort of online scenes, my own path,” and during all of that time, I'm stressed. I'm extremely stressed because not only am I thinking that I'm now making music for people. I'm not making it for myself. I'm making it for people. That immediately throws so many fucking spanners into the works. You start thinking about whilst you are making something, “I like it, but will people like it?” It just completely fucks you up because I know what I like, I don't know what people like.
Nick: You also now have Fantano's audience paying attention to you. Especially at that time around the pandemic, they would follow anything that that guy says. The guy has almost a cult status on the internet because he is the person who pioneered that type of music commentary. So many creators I know wouldn't exist without Fantano. So now you have him paying attention to you. I'm sure that was something that was heavy on your conscience.
Anton: He is a veritable taste maker in every sense of the word. So I thought that anything that I release has to be to the standard of what people want, not what I want, which is how it's been for the last 12 years. I released “247 365" when I was 21, but I've been making it since I was 10. So 11 years of doing whatever I want suddenly turned into, “no, you can't just do whatever you want because you have the opportunity to become big.” And so “It Is What It Is” is the punk antithesis to that in the sense that here are the demos that I've made over that time that I really like and I'm gonna only release it on YouTube so that the comfy YouTube corner, that I know are on my side, are gonna hear it, but not all of these super impressionable people who know me entirely for the fast-paced internet core shit, right? Already by “247 365,” I accrued a lot of demos that I had only made for myself. So I thought, “I only wanna give this to my friends,” so I made a bunch of tapes that I sent out to friends like in college and university. Then people online in different circles were saying like, “dude, you cannot keep this to yourself. This is really good.” I thought, “you are only saying that because you're my friend. It was like just some fucking stupid shit.” But I sort of reckoned with the fact that it's better something than nothing, right? I can have it out there and if people don't like it and then I've fallen off or whatever, fuck them. I don't want them being my fan if they're that disposable. I only want people who are gonna stick around and realize who I can be on a personal level, because the personal level comes through the music. Music is not made entirely to appease people unless you're a grifter and that's not what I am. So I thought, “put it out there, be true to yourself.” It worked really well, because that's one of my favorite things I've ever made.
Nick: How did you go about your approach to that record around 2018 to 2021?
Anton: Well you have to realize I wasn't making a record. It was all tracks that I just made. It was a tape that was made in one evening 'cause it was all just tracks that I had on my hard drive. I thought, “why don't I try and put them together?” I put them together and then I bounced them onto a tape and then I ripped that tape to get the tape quality. I just thought, “oh, that's really good. I'll put it on YouTube.” I didn't wanna put it on Spotify. The only reason it ended up on Spotify later is because I thought, “okay, it's time.” I've heard enough people say that it's their favorite thing, even though I disagree entirely with streaming and I hate Spotify with all my fucking guts, I'll put it on there just because people want it. It's so easy for me to put it up there anyway. So you have to realize that those tracks were not made with an express intent to be released. They were all unreleased tracks until a day before they were released, if that makes sense.
Nick: I will say it is quite annoying when something isn't on Spotify and people treat it as such a big deal. Have you seen that?
Anton: Yeah that happens, of course. I get it every fucking day. I get emails, I get questions, I get YouTube comments. I get everyone on Instagram saying, “why is this not on Spotify?” and I'm like, “fucking download it. Just have it.” But I realize that it's me being a Luddite, I don't understand how the current model works for people ingesting music because I've been stuck in my ways. Everything that I listen to is a local file that I have on my computer. It's just always been that way, and it will be. So I can't be too angry at people yelling at me to get on Spotify because that's all they know. It's what they've been fed big streaming, I don't know.
Nick: I will see comments on a YouTube upload saying, “man, I wish this was on Spotify.” Aren't you listening to it?!
Anton: I'm glad you get me there because that's the pain that I felt when it comes to people telling me, “put it on Spotify.” They don't know how hard it is to get something on Spotify either. You have to go through a distributor who might not even be able to upload it properly. Then the funds that come through, then you have to pay tax on it. For fuck's sake it's not the same as just giving people the audio.
Nick: I feel like it's easier to just make a CD.
Anton: Yes. I love making CDs. Whenever I play live or I sell something on my website as a CD, that's the best way.
Nick: It's person to person, you know. You have a story behind getting that CD. It's a more personal piece than just streaming it. But a lot of my friends have started to feel that way about Spotify. They're like, “why are people so dependent on Spotify?” It doesn't have to be that way.
Anton: If I'm gonna add one addendum is that I get it for people who are younger than me, right? I'm someone who grew up without the internet for quite a while, and so if you are someone who is an early teenager or a late teenager or maybe even early twenties, Spotify is what you know as the place that you get music. You don't go to HMV to buy a CD, you don't go on Discogs to buy a vinyl record, you don't go on YouTube to listen to the thing, you go on Spotify because that's what everyone else is doing and it's the easiest way to share it on social media. I get it. That's how it's been set up. If that's what you do, then I'm not holding that against you at all.
Nick: It just sucks that that is the way that it is, you know? There are more ethical ways to stream music that don't involve giving your money to Spotify.
Anton: The ethical thing to me is funny because I'm not afraid to admit that's the secondary reason that I don't like it. The main reason I don't like it is just because it's fucking stupid and inconvenient. The fact that it's extremely unethical and that Daniel Ek is obviously an absolute fucking waste of skin only fortifies the fact that why the fuck would I ever wanna play into this shit? It's horrible. I hate it. But at the same time, if you are younger, I understand why it would be the way that you listen to music. It's just how it's been, right?
Nick: I do think younger people need to educate themselves on how to get music in other ways too instead of just being like,” I can't do anything now because it's not on Spotify.”
Naked Flames - "247 365" (2021) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Bandcamp
Naked Flames - "It Is What It Is" (2021) mixtape cover
Photo Courtesy of Rate Your Music
Nick: Interestingly, around the same time you were unknowingly making the “It Is What It Is” tape, you were already, starting in 2015, slowly but surely building up Ambient compositions that you would self-release on tape in early 2022. So how did you find yourself composing these methodical Ambient soundscapes and how did you approach them?
Anton: I would say that the “Black Front Door” material is made between 2015 to 2022. Whilst that is correct, it is a bit misleading because most of that stuff was made in late 2021. However, there are sections of that album that I did make in 2015.
Nick: Which ones?
Anton: So you know track five? It's the 24 minute long one. It's the longest one. There are three sections to that track. The first one is the ambient drone, the second one is the piano, and the third one is the drifting warmth that sort of comes in after the piano. That drifting warmth was made in 2015 for a YouTube video that I had released, which was called “have yrself a very merry xmas.” It is just a random Ambient track that I made. Then the piano section is from 2016, which was just a random piano recording that I had made at my grandparents' piano that I recorded on my phone. So whilst it is technically 2015 to 2022, all of the material surrounding those samples was actually made mainly in 2021 because one of my friends at the time had told me about a plugin in FL Studio that was called The Fruity Granulizer. What that will do is you feed it a sample and it will take small intervals of that sample. Imagine that this is the full wavelength, it'll take bits of that and it will randomly play certain moments of it, right? That means that if you have an ambient section, you can make this warm pad out of it very quickly. So that is entirely where “Black Front Door” came from. My friend told me about this plugin, I made this album. That’s essentially the entire album, Ambient tracks based around samples that I had already accrued from, “Miracle in Transit,” which was still in progress at the time, I think, and “247 365” samples that I had accrued during that time that I then fed into the gran and made Ambient versions from there.
Nick: How did you come up with the thematic framework for “Black Front Door?” When was that exactly? Should I open the black front door?
Anton: No, because it's the wondering what's behind it that's interesting, right? If you've got an album called “Black Front Door,” then you've got 90 minutes of standing in front of that door without opening it. That means that later I could make an album that you have opened and therefore there's a resolution for that, right? But the idea that there's an album based around an entry point, not actually penetrating that entry point, it already conjures up imagery in the listener's mind of, “okay, I'm in an interstitial space before the main event.” Therefore, people can tie that into their own experiences, right? I don't know what their experiences are, but they can apply that to it. That's the main thing with all my albums. I want to give people carte blanche to put their own experiences onto rather than me force feed them certain things. So the imagery for “Black Front Door,” a lot of the song names, album names, and any names that I've given to anything, I can't really explain because they're just things that sound good to me, right? “Black Front Door,” it just sounds interesting, right? I mean, you've immediately said, “should I open it?” That's immediately given some depth to it without me even trying. There's a door and it's the front of a building and it's black, you take it from there.
Nick: You may have just revealed this to me, but I do hope there's a sequel
Anton: I've already said that there was a sequel on my questions page. To be honest, I didn't even say that. I'm not afraid to say that yeah I was working on a sequel that was aptly named “Black Corridor.” That was something that I was working on since 2022. I'd already made a bunch of tracks for that. I'm happy to say that in the future that might come out.
Nick: Okay readers…2026…fingers crossed.
Anton: It's probably gonna happen. There's gonna be a sequel to “Black Front Door” at some point. I'll say that very clearly.
Nick: Deep under the layers of New Age Ambient, did you hide any of those signature Naked Flames Techno elements?
Anton: Not Techno elements, but there are Naked Flames elements in the sense that some of the granulized samples came from earlier releases of mine.
Nick: Which ones? So in song six, which is the last one, which is the 20 Minute Drone, very simple drone. The main sample that you hear through that is the song called “Sand in Your Eye,” which I split up and I knew that if I have a bass drone in the key of B. “Sand in your Eye” is also in the key of B Major. So if I can take that and split it up, it will work over the top. I like this guitar loop that I made for the “Sand in Your Eye” song. So it only seems reasonable for me to sort of transmute it into a different environment here. There are parts of that album that hark back to early releases of mine, but they might be not as apparent to, I don't wanna say, a layman 'cause that sounds derogatory, but someone who's just listening to it and enjoying it, right?
Naked Flames - "Black Front Door" (2022) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Album of the Year
Nick: Finally, we've reached what many consider to be the most prominent Naked Flames album, the ones that most people are introduced to. Even while “Wall I Was” is out and about, there's still one that people will probably regard as your best in time…maybe…depends on how good the sequel is to “Black Front Door.” “Miracle In Transit,” how did you evolve your sound into something more hi-fi this time around?
Anton: So what happened after “247 365” is I knew that I had momentum. I already knew that at that time I had made the lo-fi sound my own in such a way that I felt like it might be becoming a bit of a pastiche. So I thought the logical progression to this is to not make it lo-fi and make something that sounds “good” to people who are listening for the first time. I was going through a phase of thinking, “oh fuck, I am making things for an audience now. It has to be good. If it's not good then I have dropped the ball.” So I was listening to a lot of music that at the time was being shared around the internet, really cool shit. Do you remember that Peshay Studio mix YouTube upload that had like five million views?
Nick: I don't think so. Maybe if I saw it, it would ring a bell, but not at the moment.
Anton: Yeah, there was a certain thumbnail image which was these three islands in the sky with a rendered water pache studio mix. That was huge. All of these Drum and Bass nostalgic tunes were making numbers on Spotify. They were getting so many plays. I thought at the time, “if I want to be successful, I have to pander. I can't be original.” So I was trying to make Drum ‘n’ Bass for quite a while, and I tried to make it in a hi-fi environment. Whilst I made some tunes that I thought were okay, they felt so disingenuous that I was quite sickened by them. I knew that I had to make them into a house in the Techno setting that I had grown up on. So a lot of the tracks on “Miracle in Transit” stem from a confusion surrounding what I need to do to make myself popular. But then as my self confidence increased, I was more assertive with regards to making it sound like how I wanted to do it. I wanted to do things my way. So I slowly but surely made tracks that I knew sounded like they came from me as opposed to what people would want to hear. I think that that has inadvertently perfectly met at the crossroads of those two elements in the sense where it's genuinely me, but it's also appealing to people.
Nick: It was reminiscent of your earlier work, but it was kind of like you were going through your 2011 James Ferraro arc. I'm sure fans at the time were like, “what the fuck's going on with this guy?”
Anton: Yeah, that's the thing. You have the fans who are like, “this is so new.” But then you have all the new people coming in, which completely dampens the fans and think, “oh, this is what this guy's about and he's good.” It's so weird to think that because you obviously care deeply about your fans, you care deeply about the people who have stuck with you through your growth, but when you do something that is so off piece, it will hit an audience of people who are hearing that for the first time. You have to weigh against what is true to you and what will propel you into the limelight. As an artist that is seduced by the idea of becoming popular. In the same circles as people that you've seen being completely venerated by your friends, it only makes sense to make something that–it's very difficult to describe this. “Miracle In Transit" was a very weird intersection of what I feel genuinely is an expression of myself, but also what I know in the current climate in 2022 in the internet scene will attract newcomers. I was definitely thinking about newcomers. I was not thinking about entirely what I wanna do, that it's the cross section of both, and it just so happened to have worked, right? That is the thing that people know me for the most. That is the thing that got a pitchfork interview. That is the thing that the label got a PR team for to chuck out to people. That's the thing that got playlisted by Spotify. It fits so well into the existing landscape. It works as a moment in time for those people. They think of it as 2022, COVID nostalgia. It works for them emotionally as opposed to just me expressing myself and like, “oh, this is something that Anton would've made, it fits into the public perception of the time period.”
Nick: Are you a secret transit fanatic who believes in walkable cities? In other words, are you in the autism elite club of train lovers?
Anton: Yes. Absolutely. I am a massive train autist. Massively.
Nick: Are you a fan of British transit in specific, or do you have a favorite type of line in the world?
Anton: Yes. I've had many many questions on my questions page asking me about specific train lines in London, be it on the London Underground, National Rail, all of these different things, because they have understood that when it comes to trains, I can talk infinitely about them. I care deeply about public transit. I like driving in my car, but nothing touches public transport. The way that it connects people, the way that it gets people from A to B, the way that it can bring you to certain destinations that you wouldn't have thought to go to because you see it on a map and it's in the nether regions of a certain line, and you think, “what the fuck can be there?” All of that stuff is incredibly meaningful to me. I really care about public transport.
Nick: Also the diversity of the design of these trains are very fascinating. They tell a story of the city.
Anton: Of course. Absolutely.
Nick: How did the name, “Tennessee Transit," come around? That's near me. I don't really associate Tennessee with transit. It's usually big ‘ol trucks on the backroads.
Anton: Yes. So with “Tennessee Transit,” that's a bit of a morbid tale because back at that time I was in a long distance relationship with someone from Tennessee and I had a dream one night. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but have you ever played an album or any sort of songs whilst you are asleep and those songs then appear in your dream in real time?
Nick: Haven't tried it.
Anton: Ah well, I'm someone who's sort of, I care very much about the subconscious in the sense that I'm fascinated to see where it takes me. I was listening to the Paul McCartney album, “Tug of War,” right? That album has the key sample that “Tennessee Transit” is built off of, “Take It Away.” If you hear the end of “Take It Away,” that's what “Tennessee Transit” was built off, right? So while I was hearing that track whilst at the same time in my dream, there was this really horrible, gritty experience where I was on the way to Tennessee all excited, but then when I got there, a tragedy had befallen the person who I was supposed to meet. I woke up feeling fucking awful. But at the same time, it instilled in me an interest in “Take It Away" by Paul McCartney, because that was the track that had the soundtrack to this very real moment to me that hadn't actually happened. It was in my dream. You must have had it where you've woken up from a nightmare where you feel like your day is ruined, right?
Nick: It's almost like, “why did I have that dream? Why is my brain treating me like this?”
Anton: I wanted to tackle that headfirst and think, “if I'm going to have this dream, I'm going to make something out of it, because otherwise I'm just gonna feel like shit. I have to work from 9:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. thinking about this. Fuck that. I'm gonna turn this into something good.” so I took the “Take It Away” sample and I very quickly whipped up a work in progress track with the main melodic component. I was hoping it conveys a sort of really optimistic, hopeful feeling that is subdued by manic and worry. It feels like something melodramatic. Melodrama is the main thing that I wanna convey with that track.
Nick: That's interesting, and believe it or not, people consider it to be your best track ever.
Anton: I don't think it's my best track ever, but I am on board with people who think that it is 'cause I am super happy with how it turned out when “Miracle in Transit" was still in its development stages. I knew that that track was going to be one of the hits.
Nick: Is that the reason why you put it at the very end?
Anton: Yes 'cause it did feel kind of different from the other tracks. I knew that “Pan Matsuri" was gonna be another hit. So I knew that “Pan Matsuri” should go at the beginning to set the good impression. Once you've set the good impression, you can go into deeper territory, which is how you get into “Under Every Tree in England” and “Miles of Conkers,” right? At that point you've listened to enough of the album that you're able to go into more cerebral territory, but then you come out the other side to “Tennessee Transit,” right?
Nick: That's how it felt to me. It's almost like you're on this happy journey and then it ends with you hitting a wall almost.
Anton: Yeah. You're met with your own reckoning of that situation because people will understand it in different ways. People will hear “Tennessee Transit" and feel like it's a super jovial tune, or some people will hear it and think that this sounds quite soul crushing. I didn't expect this. So it works both ways. You can go through a happy journey and have it end horribly or you can go through a happy journey and end on a high note, right? It works for either situation that depends entirely on the person who's listening to it.
Nick: By any chance, did you ever hear about the discourse that “Tennessee Transit” had over in South Korea? So there was an argument about New Jeans potentially ripping off that track with their new single at the time, “Ditto?”
Anton: I heard about that because people on my questions page were telling me “look at your YouTube upload for Tennessee,” which is not even my own upload, someone else uploaded it, but the entire comment section was filled with comments in Korean. So I was like, “what's going on here?” And then I see “Ditto ripped this off” or “the producer is such a scumbag for ripping off an independent artist” blah blah blah. I'm like, “do you people not realize that this is a Paul McCartney song?” Like if you listen to Paul McCartney, you're gonna think that New Jeans got it from Paul McCartney, not me. So yeah, I'm the guy who sampled this shit. My song would not be possible without Paul McCartney for fucks sake. So that just blew my mind.
Nick: At least Koreans now know about you.
Anton: Yeah, it's interesting to think that there's such a huge audience around that. There were people uploading comparison videos. I'm just like, “is that what you people know me for? Me as the person who got ripped off by New Jeans?” I never thought that was on my Bingo card for fucks sake.
Nick: Imagine getting copyright shanked by a bunch of Korean chicks.
Anton: At the same time, I dunno, I thought it was just hilarious.
Nick: I wonder what New Jeans fans would think about your stuff. They probably wouldn't like it. I'm gonna be real.
Anton: Yeah, exactly. I have no idea what the K-Pop sphere is like. I don't know what people are looking for in music. I mean, I've heard a lot of New Jeans that I fucking like a lot. I understand a lot of it is built off image and it's manufactured and whatever you wanna say about it. To think that those worlds have collided in any way at all is amazing. Just goes to show how you have to prepare for the unexpected.
Naked Flames - "Miracle in Transit" (2022) album cover
Photo Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: In regards to the visual accompaniment of “Miracle in Transit,” you’ve mentioned that the album cover is a friends place that no longer exists, however on the Dismiss Yourself YouTube channel, the visual had those components but placed in different fixed movements per track. How did the choice to have that as a fun way to visually convey the album come about?
Anton: I didn't make the visualizer. That was made by my old friend whilst I was on tour. So I didn't really have a say in the visualizer. I just knew that friend made the album cover and I fucking loved that. I loved the way that the “Miracle In Transit" album cover came together. I think that he did a fucking amazing job with that. But the visualizer I didn't have any key part in. So I dunno how much I can speak on where exactly that comes from. It maybe came about in the sense that said friend and I climbed a tree one day, and we took a picture of those two like logs that are protruding out into the distance. Then he modeled that in 3D space, right? He recreated that and so it became a centerpiece for the theme of the visuals, those two logs. I didn't interact with him when it came to making the visuals for the video. A music video, you know, it's an interesting point because you can make a visualizer for the album and you can spend days over that. But 1% of the people that are hearing the album are actually watching the visualizer because everyone's listening to it on Spotify. They're not watching the YouTube video as it's happening. They're probably listening to it in the background. Where am I going with this? What was your original question?
Nick: What was the inspiration behind the visuals? Well obviously it wasn't your choice, but how did the choice to have that as a fun way to visually convey the album come about? It's fine if you don't know.
Anton: That was the label like, “oh, you gotta make a visualizer for the album.” That just meant that Gabriel made a visualizer and it worked out and it was fine.
Nick: That's cool. I enjoyed the visual. Yet I don't know if I liked it as much as “Wall I Was.”
Anton: That's 'cause I'm fucking brilliant.
[dismiss yourself]. (2022, July 29). [2022] Naked Flames - Miracle in Transit [Video].
Nick: Are there any plans on performing live or putting out future material?
Anton: Of course there are. I've already played live a bit in London and there's gonna be more shows later. They're quite low key, just because I enjoy playing mainly to my friends and to rooms of about 40 to 50 people. Playing to a big room is always fun, but when you play to people that you mostly know and you can chat to afterwards, that's my favorite thing. Just the fact that you can buy a pint for people and then have a chat afterwards is way better than having a swarm of people come up to you and all ask you questions about shit. I'm working on new stuff every single fucking day, be it material that I make for myself or material that I make for an album or a future EP. My website is the main place that I put stuff nowadays because whenever I make a demo, I don't wanna upload it to YouTube, I don't wanna upload it to SoundCloud, and I definitely don't wanna upload it to Spotify. But my website is such a lovely corner of the internet that is tailor made just for myself that I can dump whatever the fuck I want there. So if I put a demo there, not only does it build up excitement, but it keeps engagement. I managed to have carved out a niche where I don't need to rely on any other platforms or any other promotion. People are visiting my website every day to hear what I've put on the main page. I'm so lucky and privileged that I've gotten to that point. I know that it came from my own work, but it still feels like privilege. It's amazing.
Nick: Thanks for this interview. “Wall I Was,” forever. Any final words to leave us on?
Anton: Oh God. I don't know. Just like there will be things in the future. There are people who doubt that I'll ever make anything again for some reason and I just wanna reassure them that I'm making things every single day after I come home from work. If I don't have another plan, if I'm not going on a fucking date night, if I'm not visiting a friend, I'm working on stuff constantly. That's my default mode. Rest assured there will be things regardless of whatever happens.
Nick: Late 2020s era is gonna be insane, I hope.
Anton: Yeah, I've already planned out 2026 in my mind.
Nick: I hope the harvest is bountiful.
Anton: God I hope so. I was literally thinking today 'cause 2024, I thought, was gonna be the year that I released everything. Obviously that didn't happen and I still have all this stuff even after. So 2026, that's when every three months I will have an official release, not a demo that I upload on my website, not a random YouTube video, but a thing that I actually do. I've had it growing inside me for so long to be in that region of just release, after release, after release, and I know that it can happen in 2026 because that's what I've been doing all of 2025. Just not showing anyone.
Nick: All right.
Anton: All right.