Mercury-nominated artist Ghostpoet appeared at 2016’s HowTheLightGetsIn festival opening party, performing his off-kilter, loopy electronic ditties blessed with delightfully rambling musings on modern life.

Here he speaks to the IAI about strange song titles, the trouble with studios, and why simplicity is the most important thing in life.

The theme for HowTheLightGetsIn 2016 was ‘The Known the Strange and the New’. We were looking at phenomena or ideas that elude our current explanations or defy our expectations. Do you think this could describe your own music?

Often what I do involves a juxtaposition so that the music goes one way and the lyrics go another way. Some people may find that strange. But it’s all subjective with music and art. They can be whatever you want them to be. I use odd time signatures from time to time and I enjoy immersing my music in strange sounds. But I don’t really see my music as strange.

You’ve said before that you never want to be pigeon-holed as a rapper. Could you explain your resistance to such genre labels?

Genre labels in music don’t mean anything. I listen to all genres and I don’t feel the need to make music which fits into any single one or even a group of genres. That approach can be very limiting creatively. When I first started, that stance was seen as quite strange, but now it’s not strange at all to like a dozen different genres and incorporate them all into one song. There are a lot of artists thinking along those lines, and I think journalists are starting to get that as well now.

How much of your music and your lyrics is based on your own experiences of the world?

Most of it really. It’s not all personal but it’s very much steeped in what I see, smell, feel, and experience as well as what I take from other people’s experiences and observations, I’m always looking around because I’m always looking to see what’s going on.

When you’re writing something about your own experiences, do you feel that it helps you to make sense of them, that it provides a narrative?

At the time of writing I’m not thinking along those lines. I’m not looking for an answer to a particular question. It’s more a subconscious, therapeutic thing. But looking back at particular songs or ideas I can see where they’ve come from and then that can help. But at the time it’s just what feels right.

A lot of your songs are kind of about the mundanity of everyday life…

I need to change my shit. It’s depressing.

No, it’s good! But why do you do that?