People often mistake Morgan Bain for being older than he is, mainly because he's been around the local scene for years now. It's baffling to most when they discover he's only 20 years old. Gigging around town throughout his mid to late teenage years has allowed him to develop quite a mature approach to his music, something you wouldn't expect from someone who was starting things now from scratch. Bain's latest work, Why Don't You Stay, is a track that heads down a darker, alt-soul path. A lot of that influence came from working with Eskimo Joe's Joel Quartermain, particularly with the beatboxing element to the track, which Bain admits he wasn't too sure of what to do with it. “[The beatboxing] was just used on the demo at home as a click-track, that's all. I was planning on putting programmed drums and drum samples on the thing, and then I showed Joel, and he was like, 'We're putting that in'. I sent it to him, he sped it up and compressed it, and then we actually used it across the whole thing. I literally didn't even think of it as a feature. I'm loving working with him.”
Bain credits much of his musical inspiration from TV and movies, with musical soundtracks essentially shaping what he would consider a good film. He also recognises that television helped develop his moral compass. “Hearing people go 'Oh, you're really mature' and stuff is funny because I've been so reliant on things that are make-believe. I'm a huge movie person. When you're seeing a visual thing like a movie and you're hearing music that is emoting whatever is happening, that's when I get shivers. That's when I go, oh man, this real. I love making music that makes people feel... seeing people close their eyes and having their own little experiences with their own little messed up mind or great mind, and imagine things.”
A particular favourite that springs to mind is the 2013 Ben Stiller-featured The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, which features a number of songs from Swedish singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez. “Every scene where he's riding down the road on his skateboard, you just watch it and you close your eyes and it's just like 'Take me!'” But it's not all about the deep stuff – there's always room for the light-hearted flicks: “It's that kind of thing like, watching stuff like Madagascar, I'm fascinated by stuff like that, the animation. That stuff is hilarious, it's so funny and so comical. And being a bit of a wuss, I love my rom-coms and all that. Movies are a big influence for me because I'm an emotionally drawn person.”
