See Him Now: Cagedbaby

Long haired, very unshaven and somewhat wide-eyed, to look at Cagedbaby (aka Tom Gandey) isn’t the kind of bloke you’d expect to produce killer dance tunes about disco biscuits and cross-dressing. Indeed, the Brighton lad admits his upbringing to ‘wholesome hippy’ parents is a million miles away from the funked-out, clubby beats that pervade throughout his debut album, ‘Will See You Know’. He muses: “It wasn’t till I got out of it (his hippy upbringing) that I began to expand my musical tastes. I hadn’t heard anything other than folk and classic dinosaur rock… Dolly Parton featured heavily in Dad’s collection.” Nice.

Fortunately, Tom soon immersed himself in hedonistic club culture - a scene he clearly feels passionate about, “I love clubland there’s nothing better than clubnight going off…I’m getting into more of them and better quality ones now - it’s pretty amazing to be in control of the music when you’re at them so you can spread the love.” From such dance floor euphoria, to hazy, ambient come-downs it’s a scene that’s undoubtedly shaped every level of his long-player. Indeed, buoyed by the fantastically foot-stomping and camped-up ’16 Lovers’, together with the zany, funkadelic ‘Disco Biscuit’, ‘Will See You Now’ is a work worthy to soundtrack many-a summer.

Of course, the album has prompted some to bracket Cagedbaby with the likes of Mylo, Cut Copy and LCD Soundsystem – acts widely heralded as sparking somewhat of a revival in dance music. Tom agrees there was a slight lapse in the quality of acts penetrating the charts in recent years, “God knows why there was a lapse in the releases over the last couple of years, it was as if everyone forgot how to make music and just chopped it up instead till there was nothing left to chop. But the Chems, LCD and Mylo all shouted otherwise. There’s great music and dance bands around at the moment. I think it’s just the cheese that died, the audience were sick of being treated as dogs.” Too right Tom.

In a bid to ensure the album was aurally pleasing and as diverse as possible, Tom admits he was a bit of a perfectionist while honing the sound, “I was very fussy. The album took ages, countless months, days and hours. I spent four days at a time looking for a snare drum - a lot of the tracks are inspired by the snare, it’s not the usual way to compose.” Er… right. Thankfully, like many critics he’s pretty damn chuffed with the outcome. He beams: “It’s great to hear it as a whole piece now. I made sure the album was perfect before it came out, everything has been tweaked, I don’t hear anything else out there like it.  I hope people get that when they're listening. I wanted to hear an album that totally turned me on so I wrote my own.”

Definitely one for ‘bigging-up’ his own work then and he sees ‘Will See You Now’ as quite unique: “My music is totally original, I’ve had a pretty different crazy life and I haven’t.phpired to any other acts, I’ve just put down what came out, if people do that then we are all different” Importantly, the album has depth through its lyrics - which range from flamboyant and humorous to introspective. Tom says this was an important.phpect of the album: “I wanted to go the whole way with the songs - they all started out as instrumentals but didn’t feel complete until I’d waxed lyrical. There was very late night poetry going on there.” Naturally then, when questioned as to whether he’d go back to polish the album given a chance, he quickly quashes the idea: “Not now. I’d probably produce it in 64bit 192k (a bit too techy that for us, cheers Tom). But that wasn’t possible at the time or on my system. Truthfully, there comes a point when the human ears can’t tell the difference.”

With sets at Creamfields, Get Loaded and Bestival still to come and an appearance at Glasto under his belt, many festival-goers this summer will be treated to the live delights of Cagedbaby. The live stage is something that excites Tom “(Having a band) is a great interpretation, it definitely rocks more. It’s great to put on a show that isn’t some album playback. I’ve seen many ‘bands’ just press play - its lame, we’re totally live, the guys are amazing and into it. Gigs are magical.” Indeed, as Tom sees it what distances himself from other live dance acts is “my own rider, a big smile and boundless energy, it’s all very exciting.”

Looking to the future and Tom already has some ideas stuffed up his sleeves for his second album, as he reveals: “I’ve got about 10 tracks already and a few I’m digging out of the vaults to revisit, it’s going to be brilliant and I can take my production skills into overdrive.” In fact he feels he’s got better things to come: “It’s going to be a bit more of a journey, link the tracks up together, I’d love to do it in surround sound and produce a DVD package rather than a CD and release an instrumental version of it. Do some great videos too.”

As for career.phpirations and there’s no film star wife in the pipeline, no multi-millions in the bank, and apart from the obligatory Simon le Bon-style “big, white yacht”, he proclaims: “I want to give something back to nature, I’m definitely putting some major money into keeping forests and coral reefs going. Beauty is bliss.” Proof Mr Cagedbaby is just a hippy at heart, then. Bless him.