Marika Hackman teases her upcoming album: "It’s quite sexual; there are songs about masturbation and fucking - it’s a really funny record"

Late last month, Marika Hackman dropped a brand new track. 'i'm not where you are' (all lower case, thankyouverymuch - Ed) is a solid gold banger, so much so when we found out the former Dork cover star had an engagement at this year's Great Escape, we made a bee-line to find out more about what we should expect from that much anticipated third album, due to arrive Really Quite Soon. It must be nice to come back and do festivals? Yeah, it’s throwing me in at the deep end, but I quite like that. It’s a good challenge, and they’re always fun. There’s always something that happens that’s a bit awry, but y’know - it’s a bit of a test, and you go back into it knowing that later on, you’ll be touring with a much slicker operation. The last record was about getting people involved; festivals are a perfect space to test that out? Yeah, and everyone’s up for a good time, so it’s nice. Where have you been? I’ve been in my room., I’ve basically been in my bedroom for like year, writing, arranging, sorting out a record, and then in the studio making said record, for the last year or so. Now it’s all ready, and I’m just waiting for it to land. I can’t say when, but it will be coming. Last time we saw you, you were like, ‘I’m going punk’? Yeah, I was into that, we’d just tracked the first three songs on the record. It’s slicker, it’s more poppy, but I think it’s heavier at the same time. It also feels really raw. The lyrics are super upfront. They’re quite abrasive, it’s a hard listen for my parents, but they love it. In terms of the recording process, it was really immediate, but it was also very - I don’t know, it focusses on different parts in quite a singular way where they all have space to breathe. I spent so much time creating all these different parts, with all these instruments that lock in together, so it’s got a rawness, but it’s smooth. What inspired that? The last one was quite urgent. The urgency that came with the last record was the fact that it was not a live record. That’s the natural thing, so everything that we’re doing on top of that is to make it sound smooth and nice and great. This time around I was layering it all up again from the bottom, so the urgency just came from working fast and knowing what we’re doing, getting stuff down and tweaking it up as we went along. It gives it a real directness which I think is really key for music generally. Did you know what you wanted from this record going in? I knew exactly what I wanted, and I think I’ve achieved it with [producer] David Wrench, which is great. I knew that he would be the guy who worked with me to get that sound; he’s a mixing genius as well as being great at production. He can make shit sound as clear and fucking great as you can get it, and I knew that I wanted that to happen. Also within my writing process, I write everything, so we basically went in and re-recorded my demos. There was no real finding my way in the studio, which I did with my first record; this was like, this is what we’ve got, let’s make it sound fucking good. It’s a very different way of working. It’s quite a confident way to go in. Yes, I think that just comes when you’ve been working a career for eight years; confidence is a big factor. It really helps.