BOOTS talks toilet samples and open-mindedness on FKA twigs’ ‘M3LL155X’ EP

FKA twigs’ EP3 is finally here. Out now via Young Turks, ‘M3LL155X’ is named after twigs’ “personal female energy,” and is co-produced by BOOTS. Best known for appearing out of the blue as a major force on Beyoncé’s latest self-titled album, as a more-or-less unknown producer, he’s since collaborated with Run the Jewels, Son Lux, Autolux, and now, FKA twigs.

Speaking to DIY, BOOTS gave a few insights into the process behind ‘M3LL155X’. The pair met, he says, in a chance encounter, and instantly clicked creatively. “It was a freak encounter,” he starts, “we saw each other out, and ‘chk’. We were chatting all night. We could just tell. At first she was wary,” he goes on “because I’m attached to something like Beyoncé. A lot of people are, believe it or not.”

As soon as they got in the studio, though, FKA twigs was convinced that BOOTS was far more than “that Rn’B guy”. They began opening their ears to absolutely everything, field sampling extensively for the EP. “I was in a place where I was tired of making beats, and so was she,” says BOOTS. “I was a huge fan of her second EP; it felt really singular, visually, sonically. She got off the plane and came right to the studio, and I said to her ‘go rest if you want, we don’t have to do this now,’ and she said ‘no, let’s go’”

“I just put a very high-powered mic on my desk,” he explains, “and I started dropping coins, and poured out a bottle onto the desk; getting all these sounds that you can’t really fake - cos they’re real things. It’s very much alive. In the end we did it in two weeks. She did an interview [with Complex] where she talks about the dripping of the toilet - that’s absolutely true. I was washing my hands in the restroom at [London’s] RAK Studios - we had done the whole EP in New York, and she said, right, we need one more song, and I agreed - I was in the bathroom when we first got there. I listened to the toilet, and i could hear it was kind of like [makes gurgling sound] doing all this musical stuff. I took out my iPhone, started recording it, and kind of spread that sound out across a keyboard - you can play it like drops of rain. It’s cool.”

It was, fundamentally, FKA twigs’ voice that led BOOTS into the collaboration in the first place. “I was always really attracted to strange voices - strange sounding voices, where you go ‘I’ve never heard this before’” he says. “Beyoncé has a strange voice - a perfect incredible, strange voice - but nobody sounds like her. Bob Dylan, David Bowie, every one of The Beatles, fucking Grace Jones. They have their own sound. That’s the thing that really sets people apart in the long run, their ability to use that voice. FKA twigs has one of those singular voices.”