Littlecigarette
by Mister Mime
26th June 2021
Some people spend all their lives trying to escape from the darkness and their demons. Others learn to live with them, make peace with them, dance with them, and turn them into art. ‘Littlecigarette’ happens to be one among the latter. As for his moniker, in his own words: “…As an artist, I’d like people to try me — like a cigarette — taste me, smell of me and conceal me from their parents, get high on my schmaltzy fumes, becomes addicted or flush me down the toilet when they wanna quit me.“
His artistic vision and sound is a unique brew; stylistically ‘Glam-punk’, Rock n’ Roll in attitude and a storyteller and entertainer who sin(g)s, raps or meanders in between. His brand new single ‘Fur Coat’, the first release of his upcoming album ‘Omega’ is an honest and relatively jovial track that is equally underground as it is catchy. Most of all, he is unabashedly true to himself - a trait that the ‘king of the jungle’ himself, Drum & Bass legend Goldie, obviously saw in him before he signed him onto his record label. Just as another one of my favourite artists of all time said,” Be yourself.. is all that you can do...” He couldn’t have been more right.
MM: Why did you decide to call yourself ‘Littlecigarette’?
LC: You know, I used to smoke these short, effeminate, skinny cigarettes by Minsk. I just liked the look of them, I thought they were cool. That, I’d say, was the genesis, but from them stemmed the notion that as an artist I’d like people to try me — like a cigarette — taste me, smell of me and conceal me from their parents, get high on my schmaltzy fumes, becomes addicted or flush me down the toilet when they wanna quit me.
I’ve made aliases since boyhood. I made artist aliases often, and many there were: Littlecigarette was just the right name at the right time.
MM: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your musical background and how your musical/artistic journey began?
LC: There are distinct stages to my musical journey. I have an older brother who introduced me to UK HIP-HOP. He showed me two albums which I regard with immense esteem. Rap was my thing. I was a ten year old with a booming sentiment for unorthodoxy. I was anti-pop, anti-MTV, all of that shit. Then, on a more personal level, it began with Bob Marley. I watched the video of him live performing ‘Iron Lion Zion’ when I was around 12. That hit me. I saw his sweaty locks swinging and didn’t even quite understand fully what he was doing, I just understood that whatever it was, it was exactly what I wanted to do.
By 17 my music perspective shifted. No longer was I going to be unconventional for the sake of being unconventional, — I loathe that — if I liked a record, that was that; and so in flooded Prince, Talking Heads, Tom Waits, Michael Jackson, Echo and the Bunnymen, Belle and Sebastian, Goldie, Sizzle Kalonji, — and my musical world opened up to me in the synergistic timing of dabbling with MDMA. Those years, 17-19, personally, musically, honestly, were near divine.
MM: Why is the track called “Fur Coat”? What is it about?
LC: The video is a great explanation for this. I have a white fur coat, and it was my cloak of verve; I would have it hanging from my shoulders with some pills, weed and coke in my pocket, and for some moments life wouldn’t ache so much.
Fur Coat is about the jolliest you’re gonna get on the record sonically.
It’s about trying to make a pathetic, small-town night spent on the street with just me and my boombox into a fantastical and epic time. It shows a bravado, an audacity, when quite clearly the condition I was in at the time shows I was in great need of some dolce love.
MM: Your voice and sound are quite unique and eclectic. Can you talk about how you discovered your own unique voice/signature sound?
LC: I’m a bit of an extremist in the sense that I can and do enjoy pushing myself in the areas that excite and interest me. Vocally, I’m inspired by such a range of artists that I just soak each of them up. I like dynamism in my vocals and frankness. I guess you could say my style is an amalgamation of my biggest influencers. Fuck the limits: sometimes I’ll sound like Capleton, other times a soppy, desperate, broken boy.
MM: You made the track with just an SM58 and Logic. Would you care to share a bit about your creative/songwriting process?
LC: No. Just kidding. Let’s just make this clear, I’m not a rapper. I make music, I rap, I write, I sing, I play instruments: I’m not a rapper — but I can fucking rap.
Anyway, furthermore, I really don’t take full credit for my music - and that’s not because I wish to assign some credit to somebody else, rather something else. How I make a song: I play with sounds and I have some kind of non-verbal, occult dialogue with them as if what I am producing is actually coming from forces higher than me, deities in conflict, clamouring to push their agenda: and the winner may indeed use me as an instrument in achieving their means, and that means may be a song with an archetypal expression which has externalised and manifested the spirit that worked through me. It’s not all my music, it’s also the gods, and the way I interface them.
So, mostly, prior to concepts and lyrical ideas, the sound drives me first, the non-verbal, out of which the verbal and lyrical springs organically.
I do play around every single day with my SM58 — and I have skanked my noodle off for about 1500 days in 5 years.
MM: Who are your main musical influences for this track/album and in life?
LC: Fur Coat is English and punky to me, underground yet catchy, raw and original — I can’t pin an artist to it as specific influence — I can’t do that with me period.
In life I can say these fellas I owe a lot: Skinnyman, Prince, Talking Heads, Goldie, The 1975, Sizzla Kalonji, The Blue Nile, Peter Tosh, to name a few.
MM: Can you talk a bit about how your association with Goldie came to be?
LC: So I self-made an entire album. I was in the worst place my life. My plan was to release what I had made and kill myself: at least then people can have a piece of me when I’m gone. So as I was loading the gun so to speak, I sent one track to Goldie on a whim, which happens to be my favourite track. He asked to hear the rest of the album. Then he called me offering me a deal. The three days prior to that, I was plotting my suicide… This is where my reference comes from: “In my myth, Jesus has gold teeth.”
Early next year I spent some time with him in Thailand which changed the course of my life and for which I cannot express enough gratitude.
MM: How do you see the link between loneliness and addiction in the modern world today? Do you feel that the progress we’ve made in the fields of technology, transportation and all the other developments of the present/future can aid us with finding true connection? How did you learn to get over your own demons?
LC: Was I an addict because I was lonely? It’s not that black and white. Firstly, there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. I’ve spent countless hours alone in many different states of consciousness and those were some of the most profound and important. Being alone is essential for some time, so how can you expect to connect with other people if you’re disconnected from yourself. Know who you are. Then bounce into life and see who magnetises to your energy, but first find and know and build and nourish your energy.
And you don’t “get over” your demons, you just learn to live with them. Nietzsche said: “Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
MM: Who/what are some artists, people, places or things that inspire you outside of the musical world?
LC: My fiancé ain’t too shabby — she’s electrifying!
Marcel Proust is my greatest literary hero: I have built deep within my heart a chapel in the name of him. I really love literature: Nietzsche and Jung have their paws clasped around me for good, Goethe, Dostoyevsky, William Burroughs, Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, these kinda guys, I adore them.
In terms of places, Thailand spoke to me when I was there and calls me everyday. It will be my HQ one day.
MM: What do you like to do apart from making music?
LC: Flowers, dancing, travelling, singing, writing novels, poems, smoking weed, painting, my fashion, nature, and sex - lots of kinky sex.
MM: What can we expect from ‘Littlecigarette' in “Omega’ and in the future?
LC: Omega? It’s an actual record: an album made with ultimate authenticity, a maudlin diary of apt dynamism and true artistic distillation, and I’ve had 3 years to understand that, to ponder over it. I know what I have in the bag. Additionally, you can expect me to shake the foundations of your comfort, to provoke you and seduce you, to tell you a story worth telling, a story I know you’ve never heard before.
There is more beyond Littlecigarette coming which I shan’t speak of now, but it will fuck with the frameworks of how an artist can represent his life through his art. There will be another Track: “Certainly in Red” coming soon: and a follow on video from ‘Fur Coat’.
Most of all — and this is most of all — you can expect me to be myself.
You Can Follow Littlecigarette on:
https://littlecigarette.lnk.to/furcoat
All Images courtesy of Littlecigarette
