At Bristol’s recent FORWARDS Festival, Hak Baker sits with a cheeky-chappie grin on his face. It’s exactly the kind of jubilant spirit you might expect from someone who just wrapped up a set in which an audience member proposed (she said ‘yes’, thankfully), and whose debut album, Worlds End FM, saw him positioned as a pirate radio station host during the apocalypse – with all the end-is-nigh artistic licence that brings.
But there is, of course, much more than meets the eye with Hak. It would be easy to play up his boy done good image; someone who turned their life around following a two-year stint in prison (where he learnt to play guitar), and who now shares stages alongside the likes of Pete Doherty and Jamie T, and curated their own Somerset House show earlier this year.
Hak’s is a world that embraces the highs, the lows and, most importantly, all that sits in-between. His character and belief in never turning his back on his community extends so far as to paying a recent return trip to prison, where he led a jam session for inmates. As he steps up his ambitions, he’s forever mindful of his roots.
This week’s new release – the additional tracks that complete his Nostalgia Death EP – encapsulates all these nuanced aspects of life, from contemplative opener ‘Nameless’ to the buoyancy of ‘LUVLY’ via the existential angst of ‘Great Way To Die’.
Here, we speak to Hak about his upbringing, co-directing the video for ‘Nameless’ and working with Baxter Dury and Doherty on his latest project.
T: Hak, how does it feel to play at FORWARDS; what do you make of it as a festival?
H: I think it’s super progressive, man. Everyone playing this year is amazing. I’m someone who doesn’t really listen to too much new stuff, I listen to old music. But Yussef Dayes is playing, Greentea Peng’s playing – these are my people. This is probably one of my favourite festivals of the season.
T: Do you say that to all the festivals?
H: No, I said it onstage. Performance-wise, it’s great.
T: We’re obviously coming up to the release of your forthcoming EP, Nostalgia Death II. How are you feeling about its release?
H: Nostalgia Death was like a poke into the old school, because it’s an EP that highlights old school behaviour. For me, it’s quite similar to my first EP, Misfits, which had a lot of underground energy; that’s what I wanted to put out because that’s the behaviour I’m trying to eradicate – to stop hunting those instances of nostalgia that probably trigger a lot of my vices that I’m trying to get away from. So I thought the best thing to do was to say it out loud and scream it, man.
I feel like everytime I play the tunes, everybody is feeling it. The misfits, or the people who didn’t get the best shot in life, working-class people, I can see them; I spot them in the crowd, and they love it. So it’s doing its job. I can’t wait to reveal the whole thing.
T: It’s interesting to hear you talk of nostalgia as something you’re trying to escape. We might normally think of nostalgia as a good thing, but why are you trying to escape it?
H: My childhood and adolescence was wild. You can’t even say that these days because kids [nowadays] don’t do what we did; we took our lives in the palm of our hands at fourteen, fifteen, and moved out of our mum’s houses. We went out there and believed in each other, and had each other, back-to-back.
It was us against the world; we slept in the same bed, cuddling each other when it was cold. In order to dance in that kind of activity, there’s serious highs and then you have to convene in the lows together. The in-between was serious vice behaviour: alcoholism, womanising, fighting, violence, a lot of that stuff.
Now I have my temper under control, I have myself under control, and I’m trying to see the good things about myself, which I’ve never done. So it’s time to put all of that to bed. You know, me and my friends are wonderful people, and family has always been our number one thing. That’s what Nostalgia Death is about: realising that we can go forward, start a new reach of togetherness; [because] back in the day, it was all shenanigans.
T: It’s interesting because with your debut album Worlds End FM it was set as a pirate radio broadcast; it’s almost a facade – a made-up, imaginary world…
H: And this is real.
T: Exactly. And it feels like you’ve done the album which is the fantasy, and then this is you saying what’s real…
H: A million percent, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I did Worlds End FM and it was great. But sometimes I had that feeling that I knew it was getting out to more people, but it felt like in my soul I needed to… I feel like we always do that with the EPs and the smaller projects. Even though [Nostalgia Death] is a ten-track project with two halves, it felt like it’s very necessary.
T: You co-directed the video for ‘Nameless’. It’s very intimate – I love the little details and the moments, the flashes of toys and photos… and it’s even shot in your hometown of The Isle Of Dogs…
H: It is the Isle Of Dogs! It’s my mum’s house, it’s my little sister, it’s the people around me, it’s my friends. It was these lads from Australia that’d come and said they wanna shoot stuff, and sometimes I feel like it takes an outsider who can accentuate the beauty in things you love that you can’t really explain to people.
They did such an amazing job, in the way they shot and got involved in everything I was showing them, and in really showing the beauty of home. Other people have got small towns; [I’m in a] really small facet of the Isle of Dogs, not many people know that it exists, people think it’s in south London. It’s just small-town people, small-town places, and their community, and they managed to accentuate that, and I hope it gives other people, with their small-town feeling, a sense of pride and familiarity, and they should scream that from the rooftops.
T: It’s definitely very relatable. It was also filmed during the riots earlier this year. Did that shape the filming at all?
H: I think it subconsciously shaped what we were shooting, but we’re the masters of [dealing with] that, I feel like, in the Isle of Dogs. It used to be a BNP stronghold, but I feel like we’re the masters of togetherness over there, on the Isle of Dogs. You come there and there’s not gonna be a racial element you experience; someone’s going to take you in, someone’s going to ask if you want to go to the pub.
I’ve brought countless strangers to the Isle of Dogs – the lads who shot the video are a testament to that. After we did the shoot, we brought everybody to the pub, they couldn’t believe it. They don’t understand, it’s a gem. Small towns just get looked past and forgotten about, but we pride ourselves on who we are and our togetherness.
T: Speaking of working with others, the collabs on your new project include Baxter Dury. What was it like working with him? In a way, you two are quite kindred spirits; you’re like the observer at a party, watching on.
H: That was easy. Because he’s the same innit, he’s the same family. It was a phone call… I was in the studio with [another featured artist] Joe James; I showed him a tune and he said, ‘Do you know who would sound good on that? Baxter Dury.’ So I phoned him on the spot. I said I had a tune, sent it over, and that was it. And that’s how it should be with normal people.
Everyone’s got a bit of ego, but when the ego’s at the back and the first thing we’re dealing with is humanity and music, it’s easy. It’s good to find like-minded people, you know; it’s hard, because there’s a lot of w**kers out there.
T: And obviously there’s a live track with Pete Doherty. You played with him last year, you supported him…
H: Yeah, I’d played with him before. When I first met Pete, the first words he said to me were, ‘Oh, you got some demons, ain’t ya?’ That was our first exchange. When we made ‘Prometheus’, bro, I wish there was a camera. I was playing a guitar riff, he’d come in the studio, I was playing with some words; I started singing them, and then we just wrote the whole tune, completely off-the-cuff.
And then we just recorded. It was probably one of the most natural… he’s the man. I respect anyone in the music game that I’ve met and touched and held hands with. But Pete Doherty is the man. If you want real visceral, tiger energy, he don’t give a fuck.
T: Do you get star-studded at all?
H: No, bro. I’m living my life. I think if I told people the things that I’ve been through in my life, they’d understand why I don’t give a fuck about anything.
T: Again, since we last spoke, it strikes me that even though they’re very different, in both projects [Worlds End FM and Nostalgia Death EP] you’re expressing the highs and the lows, and it seems like you dabble in-between both, showing that one can’t exist without the other. Is that an assessment that resonates with you?
H: Absolutely, I can’t help but feel good and bad. As you said, they can’t exist without each other. I think artists sometimes get confused in their own ego and fantasy, that they’re exempt from the bad times, but none of us are. And if you feel like you are, then you’re completely lost and you’re a stranger to yourself.
It’s my job to make sure that that’s completely visible and audible at all times. You’re gonna win and you’re gonna lose. As soon as you win, you’re gonna lose – because as soon as you win, you can’t feel that high for long.
T: And what’s next for you? Are you writing anything at the moment?
H: Constantly, we’re going to put this second half of the EP out, then it’s album two, man. I have my ideas but I want to keep them [quiet]…
T: Any clues? Is it conceptual again? The end of the end of the world…?
H: I can’t tell you anymore. But we’ll talk about it at the time.