Medlar on Caribbean Inspiration, Creative Curiosity and Finding Optimism in His Sound
Medlar has spent much of his career resisting the advantages of being easily defined.
Since breaking through with ‘Terrell’ in 2011, the UK producer has moved freely through deep house, disco, broken rhythms, garage and jazz-inflected electronics, building a catalogue across labels including Wolf Music, Razor-N-Tape and Make A Dance. Rather than settling into one particular corner of that spectrum, curiosity has continued to pull him elsewhere.
His latest EP follows the same instinct, although its different strands share an unexpected geographical connection. ‘Solar’, ‘Destino’ and ‘Rigel’ were all produced following Medlar’s move from London to the Caribbean, with outdoor dancefloors providing a loose conceptual thread that only became apparent afterwards.
“I think the connections formed later and wasn’t too forced as all 3 tracks were inspired by outdoor dancefloors, produced shortly after a move from London to the Caribbean.”
Rather than arriving in the studio with a fixed idea for the record, its identity gradually emerged from a change in environment.
That openness is immediately apparent on ‘Solar’. Built around swung percussion, warm keys and a spacious groove, the track features South African vocalist mtsjungles, although their musical relationship had been waiting considerably longer than the record itself.
“The instrument came first but we’ve spoken for over a decade about collaborating and she’s an old friend. I sent a loop at first and mtsjungles came back with an amazing full vocal!”
The space within Medlar’s original idea gives that vocal room to become the track’s emotional centre. Around it sit several sounds that have become recurring features of his productions, particularly Rhodes, Solina-style strings and textures associated with the 1970s.
Asked where the warmth so often present in his records comes from, Medlar gives a characteristically straightforward answer.
“Boring answer but I think just sound selection.”
It is deceptively fundamental. Rather than relying on processing to introduce character later, much of the record’s personality is already present in the instruments and textures being chosen at the beginning.
New York producer JKriv subsequently takes those ingredients somewhere different with his remix of ‘Solar’, pushing the track towards a brighter Italian house feel while retaining the warmth of the original.
The pairing was not assembled specifically for this release. Medlar and JKriv had already discussed exchanging remixes, with Medlar’s admiration for both JKriv’s productions and Razor-N-Tape making the relationship an obvious one once the right track appeared.
“The remix exceeded my expectations and takes it in a different direction.”
That willingness to let existing ideas mutate becomes even more apparent on ‘Destino’. Featuring spoken word from For Mankind, the finished record was not initially conceived as a single piece of music at all.
“The collaboration started as a dub type tune which was 100bpm or something, and the instrumental was an unrelated project, sometimes something great is born out of combining 2 disparate projects!”
There is something revealing in that process. For a producer whose catalogue regularly moves between styles, unexpected combinations are less a disruption to the workflow than part of it.
‘Destino’ brings a Balearic openness and brighter energy before ‘Rigel’ moves into deeper territory. Moog lines, restrained acid and a stripped-back groove evoke classic ’90s house, but Medlar avoids treating the period as something to replicate wholesale.
“I think updated drums and structure but with similar melodies and sonics is a good way to bring a vintage sound a bit more up to date.”
It allows familiar musical language to remain present without turning the track into a historical exercise.
That balance between absorbing sounds and refusing to become overly attached to them has followed Medlar throughout his career. House, disco, jazz and broken beat can all appear within his records, even if specialising more narrowly might make his work easier to categorise.
He is aware of the contradiction.
“I think more than anything I’m just a fan of music, production and have a curiosity about trying to recreate sounds, it makes more sense to do one thing well, I think, but it’s been more honest to myself this way!”
That last point perhaps explains the longevity of the approach. Variety is not being pursued for its own sake. It comes from an interest in production itself and the challenge of understanding how particular sounds work.
The same organic quality applies to where those records eventually land. Rather than finishing music and cold-emailing labels until somebody responds, Medlar’s releases have often developed from relationships already established around him.
“It’s usually born out of an existing relationship, it’s hard to hit up labels out of the blue with demos, so usually is born out of already talking or being friends then that can inform the creation of a demo or sometimes the right tracks just land in the right places.”
Across a catalogue that has travelled through different labels, tempos and corners of club music, those relationships have provided structure without requiring the music itself to become more predictable.
The new EP captures that particularly well. It moves from the soulful openness of ‘Solar’ through the Balearic leanings of ‘Destino’ and down into the later-night pulse of ‘Rigel’, yet Medlar admits there was little grand design behind the sequencing beyond knowing instinctively where it should begin.
“I think it just felt that solar is track 1, beyond that I’d be happy with any order.”
Perhaps the clearest unifying quality is instead emotional.
There is an optimism running through these tracks, from the glowing textures surrounding mtsjungles to the open-air quality that connects music made after leaving London for the Caribbean. It was not something Medlar deliberately set out to communicate.
“I think I’m more optimistic than I’ve ever been so that’s nice that that seems to be a thread!”
That feeling is also pulling his productions towards increasingly ethereal territory, something he describes as containing “some optimism/naivety to it”.
After years of moving between different musical languages, there is a fitting simplicity to that development. Medlar may still be driven by the desire to understand unfamiliar sounds, combine disparate ideas and avoid committing himself to a single lane, but the records inevitably reveal something about the person making them.
On this EP, a new environment, old friendships and an enduring curiosity have converged around something unexpectedly straightforward: music that sounds like its creator is in a good place. Grab your copy here.
