Gary Thomas of Moodship discusses his record, Incandescent.
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this episode, Tim sits down with the enigmatic South African musician Gary Thomas, now operating under the moniker Moodship. Known for his unique blend of moody songwriting, alternative guitar techniques, and precision multitasking, Moodship discusses his latest release, the Incandescent EP.
They dive deep into the reasons behind his rebranding from “Gary Thomas” to Moodship, the creative freedom found in his recent five-EP series, and the intricate process of recording in his Cape Town home studio. Gary also shares insights into his celebrated live performances, his work in film scoring, and how he captures his stunning nature-based content.
🗝️ Key Takeaways
- The Evolution to Moodship: Gary explains why he retired his birth name for the stage. It wasn’t just about SEO and standing out in the streaming age; it was a license to explore diverse musical styles without the constraints of his previous acoustic-heavy reputation.
- The Incandescent EP: This record explores two distinct themes: being deeply in love and dealing with overwhelming anxiety. Gary breaks down the contrast in tracks like Hounds, which pairs uplifting music with dark lyrical content.
- Solo Production & Collaboration: While Gary thrives in his “cave” (home studio) working alone, this EP features special contributions, including artwork by his partner Amber, and instrumentation from Gene Kierman (French horn) and Daniel Zachariah Franks (Violin).
- Cinematic Influence: There is a strong cross-pollination between Gary’s original music and his career as a film composer. His practice of filming performances in secluded nature spots acts as both content creation and a way to channel cinematic energy into his songwriting.
⏱️ Chapter Markers
- [00:00] Intro: Who is Moodship?
- [00:54] The origin story of the name “Moodship” and the necessity of rebranding.
- [02:15] The 5-EP Series: From Disembark to Incandescent.
- [04:14] Track-by-track deep dive: Solar Sigh, Hounds, My Reach, and Overboard.
- [07:54] The art of collaboration: Album artwork and guest musicians.
- [08:46] The “Work from Home” discipline of self-producing.
- [12:02] The philosophy of live performance: Managing energy, breaking strings, and “running the play.”
- [15:41] Filming in the wild: How nature influences Moodship’s aesthetic.
- [18:29] Film Scoring: Composing for Cape Helena and malaria documentaries.
Mentioned in this Episode
- Artist: Moodship (formerly Gary Thomas)
- New Release: Incandescent EP (Available August 4, 2023)
- Previous EPs: Disembark, Orienteering, Liberosis, Amalgamation
- Collaborators: Amber (Artwork), Gene Kierman (French Horn), Daniel Zachariah Franks (Violin), Damian Samuels (Filmmaker).
🔗 Connect with Moodship
- Instagram & YouTube: Search for Moodship to see his latest nature sessions and tour updates.
- Streaming: Listen to Incandescent on Spotify, Apple Music, and all major platforms.
📖 Transcript
Tim Smal [host]: Hi everyone and welcome to the show. My name is Tim Smal, and today my guest on the show is Moodship, also known as Gary Thomas, who is a highly celebrated award-winning South African singer and musician. His enigmatic style blends rich, moody songwriting with a vast array of alternative guitar techniques and precision multitasking. Moodship has toured all over South Africa, Kenya, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, Belgium, and France. He’s an award-winning live performer and music producer for film, documentary, TV and theater. And his new EP Incandescent is out on August 4th, 2023. Moodship, welcome to the show.
Gary Thomas [guest]: Hey, Tim. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Tim Smal [0:45]: I’m glad to be speaking with you today. I think the first question I’d love to ask you, is tell me more about your artist’s name, Moodship and where that came from.
Gary Thomas [0:54]: So, a few years ago I had to change my stage name which was my name, Gary Thomas, simply because it’s such a common name and it’s impossible to stand out as a brand on the internet, especially in the age of streaming. So I decided to change a lot of my musical style in a way, and sort of branch out. And I was hunting for an artist name that not only sounded cool, but also didn’t exist in the world. And I found that Moodship – those two words put together – kind of has a couple of cool sounding, ambiguous meanings and just wasn’t taken on the internet, so that was like a plus for me. And most people who I’ve mentioned it to said, “Oh, that’s a cool name and hopefully I will never have changed it again.
Tim Smal [01:45]: Awesome. Yeah, I really dig the name, Moodship, and I was wondering to myself if you ever wear mood rings yourself? I’m not sure, you don’t have to answer that question… But, what’s very cool is that you have a brand new EP coming out on August 4th called Incandescent, and it’s actually the fifth EP in a series of five that started around 2019 with Disembark and then Orienteering, Liberosis, and Amalgamation. Can you maybe tell me a little bit more about the previous four EPs before we discuss the new one?
Gary Thomas [02:15]: So again, with a sort of slight rebranding of myself and taking on a different stage name, I wanted to feel quite free in the ability to just make whatever I want musically. So in the past, I did these five albums under Gary Thomas, where I would write a lot of stuff that would be mostly similar to the live show that you saw, with a few bells and whistles added on top – which would be a singer, guitar, a stomp box and then some backing vocals or extra horns or strings. But in 2019, I decided that I just wanna make whatever I want because I have a very diverse music taste. I listene to lots of styles of music and if I felt like recording a heavy alternative song, or a really stripped down slow cinematic piano and string song, I wanted to do that. I think diversity is very key in music. So yeah, it’s just really me capturing what I feel like writing in the studio and what comes out. One of those EPs is an instrumental bowing EP. The rest of them are pretty all over the show in terms of tone and instrumentation.yeah. But I think it’s fun to just kind of see what I can do and just get weirder and weirder.
Tim Smal [03:43]: Awesome. And when I spoke to you earlier on in the year, you had the intention of releasing a single and then it turned into another EP, so I’m very excited that we now have four new tracks from Moodship, which of course includes Solar Sigh, Hounds, My Reach, and Overboard. These are the four tracks on the new EP Incandescent out on August 4th. You’ve actually played steel string, nylon string, banjo, bass, and percussion on this EP. So yeah, let’s chat about it and tell me more about the new EP.
Gary Thomas [04:14]: These four songs are obviously new tracks that I’ve written in the last few months – some of them longer than others. Sometimes I’ll lay something down, and some of these tracks I sat with for quite a while, maybe the beginnings of it musically for over a year and then came back to it and after some space I thought, “Oh, okay, this needs a bit of this, what if I added banjo or what have I added like bass”. And, yeah, to be honest, at this stage, when you are finished recording a bunch of tracks, you are happy with them, you’re proud of them. But I’m really just excited to get them out of my life now and move on.
But they have quite a range of style, they have two general themes in the whole EP: One is being in love and the other one is dealing with overwhelming stress and anxiety, that’s basically it. There’s a track there called Hounds where the music’s very uplifting and happy and energetic, but the lyrical content is quite dark and somber. I really enjoy that kind of contrast because people don’t really know how to gauge it or they’ll have a different view of what that song is or what it’s about, just because the lyrics are completely different to the music.
Tim Smal [05:27]: It’s really cool to hear more about the tracks because of course there are four on this record. You mentioned Hounds, can you tell me more about the other three Solar Sigh, My Reach and Overboard?
Gary Thomas [05:39]: Yeah, so essentially all those three tracks are straight up love songs. And they are written about feelings that I have for my girlfriend. But Solar Sigh is kind of like being suddenly distracted or attracted, and out of the blue and just kind of turning your direction to face something that is quite inescapably captivating and all consuming. And it’s about that desire to stop at nothing. It’s very “Scorpio” to stop at nothing, to be able to share that world with someone.
And, another song, My Reach, the chorus is basically, “You’re not so out of my reach.” And that means… it’s like nodding to myself thinking “Wow, look at this person that I’ve got, or look at this person that I get to be in their life” and saying, “You’re not very out of my reach – you’re actually like, right here.” Yeah, that one has like quite a dreamy, soundscape flow to it, with the extra violins and horns from Daniel Zachariah Franks and Gene Kierman.
And then the other one Overboard is two banjos, a bass and vocals. It’s called Overboard because it’s just like man overboard, like, “No, I’m out – like this is the person that I want – I’m off the ship.” And that song is essentially saying that there’s this feeling of love or connection with someone that I’ve kind of been looking for my whole life and never really found in certain ways in a relationship before, until now. And it’s interesting to think that it was there all along or that feeling was possible all along. And maybe I’d given up on that in some way.
Tim Smal [07:36]: Awesome. Well, I’m glad to hear that we have a record full of love songs, I know the audience will certainly love that. And what’s interesting to note is that your girlfriend Amber, actually contributed to the album in the form of providing the album artwork, right?
Gary Thomas [07:54]: Yeah. I’m very happy and honored, and it feels very special to me. I’ve sent her some of the tracks and she’s an amazing artist and illustrator and painter and ceramicist and photographer and designer. And I just trust her eye and her aesthetic so much that, yeah, I was really happy. She did a painting and then did some digital work to it, and I think it’s beautiful. And, yeah, it’s really special to me.
Tim Smal [08:23]: Great. And of course you’ve collaborated with other individuals, you mentioned Gene Kierman who played French horn on My Reach, as well as Daniel Zachariah Franks who played violin on My Reach. And what I wanted to quickly find out was, where you recorded this? I assume that you hunkered down in your studio in Cape Town and essentially recorded it yourself there. Can you tell me more about the recording process?
Gary Thomas [08:46]: Sure. So I just have a home studio and I mostly work alone. I produce all kinds of music for albums or for film by myself. And if I’m collaborating with someone who’s playing or singing or contributing, then it’s great to have people around. But otherwise I need and like to be alone in my little cave. It has its drawbacks and after a while you kind of get in your own head too much and you start hating the music and you need space from it. And it really is quite a “work from home” discipline kind of way of thinking. But yeah.
Gene’s a good friend of mine, he played on an album I did in 2012 called Midnight Atlas, so I got him to do some French horn. And Daniel laid down some violins on this track, My Reach quite a while ago that I started reworking. I really like working with people where sometimes I can guide them and say, “Okay, look, it’s an A minor, and then, you know, it has this chord change.” But essentially I like working with people the most where I can just say, “Here it is, do your thing – bye”. So it takes a level of musical intelligence, but also emotional music capacity, to just feel their way through, because I think that translates best when you have someone’s own style come through. And then I get the samples back and Gene’s created these awesome French horn lines that sound really pretty.
And yeah, I think most musicians have this internal drive where they want to be very prolific and to be churning out music as often as possible, because everyone has this fear of dying with only an album under their sleeve or something. So I’m trying to just snap out of it and work better and be more prolific. And I’m immediately thinking about recording the next set of songs right away – like tomorrow.
Tim Smal [10:53]: Yeah, so if you’re only discovering Moodship now, there’s certainly a lot to look forward to. We have the brand new Incandescent EP, which as I mentioned is the fifth EP in the series. Plus this new compilation release, which will be out soon. And if that’s not enough, then of course, another EP in the works as Moodship starts to write his new material. So lots to look forward to – I’m certainly very excited on my side. But let’s talk about the live show because you love playing live. You put on an absolutely incredible show.
As you mentioned, you listen to so much different kinds of music in the sense of studying jazz and listening to alternative and so forth. So coming to a mood ship show really is a spectacular experience. I was at a very special house concert in Sea Point in Cape Town in April this year, and boy was our I in for a treat – I got to sit in one of the best seats there, it was really comfortable, the mood was great, the lighting was great, and you put on an exceptional show. So tell me more about what it’s like to play live. You’ve toured all over the world, you have an incredible energy on stage, sometimes to the point of even breaking strings, which I believe is your worst nightmare. So tell me more about what it’s like to play live as Moodship.
Gary Thomas [12:02]: I love playing live. Going on tour is one of the funnest things to do. For every 10 shows, 3 of them are weird, but 7 are really fun. You go and you meet a whole lot of people, you make these friends for five hours.You leave the next day, you go somewhere new, see beautiful places. Playing live has a certain attractive disconnect to it, because when you’re in a studio or playing at home, you can stop whenever you want and you can just say, “Oh, I’m over this.”
But when you’re live there’s something about being there in front of a whole lot of people where you just have to run the play and you actually just have to let go. And I find that quite a cathartic experience, especially playing live heavy, fast kind of music.
So yeah, I think a lot of people when they come to my show and they’ve never heard me or seen me before, I think it’s quite unexpected for a lot of people. Obviously playing with the bow, most people haven’t seen before. And I like to explore a whole lot of different types of techniques on guitar and I like to be versatile. And I like to think that that’s enjoyable for people in a live show. I think about a set list, I think about dynamics and, “Okay, well, if I do this heavy metal song now, then I should do a super quiet ambient one afterwards.” And essentially I’m just there to have fun. I think about the audience – I do, and I do my best, but first and foremost, I’ll play the songs that I wanna play. And I think it’s ultimately more enjoyable for an audience to watch a performer who’s really enjoying and in love with what they’re doing. And so I just focus on that and I write a set list like half an hour before each show, depending on what I wanna do. And, yeah, I wanna do a lot of shows this summer and just keep going. Yeah.
Tim Smal [13:50]: Well, let’s talk a little bit about your summer tour. You’ll be playing throughout South Africa. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Gary Thomas [11:57]: Yeah, I can tell you so much about it. It’s just an idea that I have and I haven’t booked any shows, but it’s gonna be great. I would like to go all the way up the Garden Route and the Eastern Cape and the Transkei and the South Coast, North Coast, inland, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Johannesburg, Pretoria, maybe something in the weird middle of the country. But there’s always a lot of places to play. Because of the short shelf life of venues in South Africa, there’s always something new that pops up.
And what I like to do when I go on tour is to, in conjunction with a whole lot of the main towns and cities that you wanna play in South Africa, I like to go to a lot of beautiful places. So, I’ll play Grahamstown and East London, but then I’ll stop up in Hogsback and I’ll play a show there and then stay for a few days or I’ll turn off to the Transkei and play a show there, and then stay for a week, and then carry on… stuff like that. So, yeah I’m really looking forward. I haven’t planned anything yet, I need to work out some dates but I’ll do it, and, yeah, there’s a few more Cape Town shows. I think I wanna do another big Ernie Ball String Collective guitar show and maybe another house concert. But, life is short, you know, let’s play basically.
Tim Smal [15:15]: I notice that you do play a lot of really amazing shows in terms of the actual location. So can you talk to me more about your work that you do on YouTube and Instagram where you go outside into nature, you shoot the most beautiful videos. I’m just really wanting to learn more about the method that you use when you go out into nature. And I guess the point behind that for all the new fans that are discovering your music.
Gary Thomas [15:41]: So I do a lot of music for documentary and film and TV and sound design and mixing stuff. And I’ve noticed in the past few years how, as I’ve sort of developed that style, that instrumental guitar bow and playing with the violin below, that kind of music is very attractive for filmmakers. And so I do quite a lot of work like that. So I like to go out to make content where I’m doing that and I’m recording live, and it’s really just so much fun. I did a session on Saturday and I just go out myself and take my little tripod and my gear and I record to a little Zoom microphone in my back pocket. And I set up, make sure there’s no one around. If I can see anyone, I don’t do it, basically. And if anyone comes, I like, strike and leave.
So it’s really fun to be out there by myself. And I feel like especially with that kind of music being very exploratory and cinematic, it’s that feeling of being out there and just looking around. And when I press record and start playing, it really lends itself to whatever music comes out, which is similar to film scoring in a way. And I use a lot of elements of it in my albums. It ticks a whole lot of boxes: make good content, get out of the house, be in nature, have some thinking time and some solitude. And I love collaborating with people. Every once in a while we’ll take a friend with and we’ll do something, whether it’s another musician or a dancer. But yeah, those are so much fun. And I think when I look at my social media accounts and I see all these cool places, I have a sense of satisfaction with how much I’ve left the house, really. But, I live on the peninsula, so a lot of it is… it’s not very far at all. You know, I’m not traveling. I just know a lot of seim-secret places as you do when you are like a loner out in nature. And yeah, so they attract a certain audience for the live music world, but they also attract a certain audience in the filmmaking world, and they’re just so much fun. So, that’s basically it.
Tim Smal [18:00]: Yeah, that’s very cool. I can see how there’s cross pollination between the work that you’re doing in terms of film scoring and so forth, and then your own original music, which is great. So I never thought about it like that, but it makes so much sense because one is influencing the other all the time, which is really cool because you get to learn in the one field, bring it into the other, and so forth. So, on that note, have you worked on any interesting films or television shows or anything like that recently?
Gary Thomas [18:29]: I’ve just finished a score for a documentary by Damian Samuels called Cape Helena, which is a very interesting film that he’s made about the island St. Helena and its connections to, not only his personal heritage, but the heritage of many South Africans. I think a lot of people don’t know about it. And that was purely guitar bowing – very somber, cinematic, and moody stuff, which is just a dream for me. Lots of epic shots of mountains and talking about a rough history. And now, I’m doing a documentary with my brother’s film company. I’ve done some sound designs and some music on that. We went to Kenya and he’s been all around the world shooting for it. It’s essentially malaria orientated. I’ve done a lot of cinema music for that and then there’s some more stuff coming in the next couple weeks and stuff.
Tim Smal [19:29]: Awesome. Yeah, well, it’s great that you get to work on so many creative projects and incorporate nature into so much of your work. So it’s super inspiring and I’m looking forward to all the output that will flow from the Moodship in the next year or two. So yeah, it’s been really great to have you on the show today, Gary and certainly looking forward to the South African summer tour of 2023, as well as all the new releases that will be coming out, so I certainly will catch you at a live show. But, before we wrap up today, do you have any final words for the Moodship fans?
Gary Thomas [20:03]: Um, sure: Live your dreams! Yeah, just find me on social media. Look for Moodship and come to shows and be a good person out there.
Tim Smal [20:14]: Well, there you have it folks: The great entertainer that is Gary Thomas of Moodship. Of course, there’s nothing quite like a Mooship show where he performs and entertains – sometimes breaks strings, but, repairs them with great composure and in between crack some amazing jokes. So if you haven’t seen him live, I highly recommend it. Listen to the new EP, Incandescent Out August 4th, 2023 on all platforms. Check him out on Instagram and YouTube, and of course there’ll be lots more material coming out in the future. So look out for the next compilation release, as well as the South African Summer tour. Moodship, it was great to have you today.
Gary Thomas [20:53]: Thank you man, it was great to be here as well. Thanks for talking to me, it was awesome.