In The Mind Of Maverick Sabre

The last few months have been big different waves. When it [lockdown] first started, it was just mad inspiring. The first three weeks I was the most inspired I’ve been in a long while; offloading things I’d been putting off. My fresh output – stuff that I was creating brand new every night – was just so much more than I’ve been doing in the past few months. Then it went in a dip and then it came back out… now I’m in the middle ground where I’m mad inspired still but I’ve become a bit complacent the last couple of weeks. It’s a weird one. I think it’s the same for a lot of people. Waves of needing to be around people and then enjoying not being around people.

For me, it’s more of an extension from the last record. I wanted to make something that would expand my sound a bit. Really, I was just having fun; I was experimenting. In the last couple of years I’ve been struggling in different ways. This EP [the upcoming You Know How It Feels] is one of the moments where my mind went off in that space. From start to finish on the first four tracks it’s almost a different world altogether. We’re creating a visual around it that’s gonna have like four short stories. The song will make more sense when you see the visuals on top of it.

At the moment, it’s breaking down mental barriers in a modern world. Questioning different topics, from love to ego to the way we treat our young generation; what we haven’t questioned. There’s a lot of things the younger generations now are questioning – from the makeup in society, from how we think about ourselves, how we talk about ourselves, how we pressurize the rest of society into conforming into something that we don’t even know if we want.

I suppose it’s a never-ending journey, really. For me, as well as telling the stories of society I see around me, they’re also massively personal stories. For me, it’s the same level to every record I put out.

I think more now, which sometimes is a good thing, and sometimes definitely not a good thing. You gain experience as you grow up, you land on your ass more and you care more in a sense about your output because you’ve learned more. Being an almost mental overthinker anyway, sometimes for me that’s great, because it forces me to be a perfectionist, but it can force me to overthink so much that I move on from an idea. I knew what was coming, I knew what I liked, but I didn’t have any outside thought about what I needed to change. I just thought, I like it, and I wrote it quickly, so I’ll bang it out.

I have to go back to making beats. I’ll just start making a garage beat or a boom bat beat, or just hit down on the guitar and zone out for a minute. I’ll stop singing or stop writing in that sense. Normally it’s just making beats; I’ll just switch off if I get clogged up making a song. I forget everything and I go into the motion of it and it brings me back to the song.

Make sure you’re your own biggest fan. If there’s anything to be learnt from years of going through labels and independents and touring and the whole thing. All music is subjective really. You might absolutely adore something, play it to your three closest friends and they might never get it, but there could be a whole fanbase of people out there who understand that song just like you. And that’s not to say that your opinion is overall the 100% right thing, we all have to make absolute shite, you know what I mean [laughs]. Before we give the power to anyone else’s opinion, make sure your own opinion is solid first. The only outside opinions are the ones you trust. Make the shit you love and believe in it.

For me, its funny because you could listen to a song thousands of times before its ever released. Normally for me, by the time a song comes out, that’s the last time I’ll ever listen to it until I perform it. Performing it can potentially bring you back into that place, but it almost goes back in to clean out. I build up that energy to bring the same feeling in the song, but as I do it, with every song, it clears out that part of my mind or my soul that still feels something for it. That’s a therapy in itself.

I suppose that track is openly talking about relationships – not just while you’re in it but the tail end of relationships that I think highlight a lot of what we’re lacking. Normally we end up holding on to something that’s not right, so it’s all these dependencies that we’re not sure where they came from. It’s either your something from your own insecurities that you need people around you; you need love but it’s not helping. Or it’s just a society thing to keep people in relationships, to keep people married, whatever it is. “Don’t You Know My Now” is kinda questioning that element in myself and having that conversation. What do we stay in things for? What does that highlight in the two people? There’s not to say there isn’t love there, but the moment we stay in things, ask ourselves, who conditioned us to do that?