Image Courtesy of Rainy Miller.
Rainy Miller is a producer and artist known for crafting emotionally charged, atmospheric music that feels both intimate and expansive. Collaborating with vocalist Graham Sayle from High Vis and Christ Bryan, along with composers Alex Currie, August Rosenbaum, Christopher Bryan, J Ludwig III, and More Eaze in the past, his sound blends raw vulnerability with textured sonic landscapes, creating work that feels deeply rooted in personal reflection. His latest album “Joseph, What Have You Done?” will be released 2nd of May 2025 – while his single was just released – and continues his exploration of memory, identity, and the weight of lived experience. With high approach to production through his label Fixed Abode and a style that resists easy categorization, Miller creates music that feels more like a cinematic experience – layered, honest, and unflinchingly human.
SLEEK: “Joseph, What Have You Done?” feels like a heavy, almost biblical title. Where did that comefrom, and what does it mean to you personally?
Rainy Miller: It’s a direct reference to Joseph of Nazareth. The man who fathered a son that wasn’t paternally his. It’s about a collective effort from many, regardless of blood, gender, age, relation… Any of that, that succeeded to admirable heights, in the purpose of fulfilling the role of paternity within my life.
S: Your music feels raw and atmospheric – like it’s sitting right on the edge of collapse. How did you push or evolve that feeling on this album?
RM: It’s funny for me because there’s never really a conscious decision to try and embed any, level of anything within the music. There’s no pre conceived barometer for the emotionality of any one moment. It’s all honesty, and when you’re working with honesty you literally have the source materials laid bare in front of you in terms of how much one moment will be concentrated with any one shade of emotion. It’s only ever a reflection of a moment in time, that is banded with exactly how I felt at that time. There’s no need to embellish anything, I’ve never had to distort the truth within that matter. So if that’s where the music sits, “on the edge of collapse”, then that’ll be where I was retrospectively.
S: You mix beauty and distortion in a way that’s really distinct. Was there a specific sound or feeling you were chasing when you started working on this project?
RM: There wasn’t anything as per se in terms of a desire for a specific sound at all. I was, at times however, very inspired by the sonic of the southern gothic genre. The use of the guitar, the beauty of delicate vocality, not having to be perfectly in tune etc. But I wasn’t chasing anything that I felt existed really, because I was trying to hold a mirror to that, and have my own version of what that is. I would say generally, the landscapes that the mid-west of America holds, I was always referencing that, but not in a way that was even specific or direct. It was literally placing that mirror to it almost in a way to reflect the environment around me up here in the more rural sides of northern England. Find the similarities, split the differences etc. So at that point, you’re naturally dealing with shades of colour, texture, moods, faces etc. and trying to almost, use your own place in the world and context as a Stanley knife to mould and weave those things into usable, tangible pieces of sound. That way you don’t have to desire a sound, it just becomes what it will.
Image Courtesy of Rainy Miller.
S: A lot of your past work plays with grief, memory, and identity. Are those themes still running through this record, or did something new take over?
RM: Yes of course, if anything this record is the ultimate surmise of that journey in a sense. At least in a way that feels biographic. This is the culmination of all of the memories and grief and so and so forth that I’ve been preparing myself to put out as art. You have to live some life to make something meaningful, at least in my opinion. I can only speak for myself of course, but living life, dealing with memory, dealing with pain, sorrow, happiness, love, hardship… all of those things are then only things that will shape you as a person, art is about how you document that to me. They’ll run throughout my work until I call it a day. I think the only notability of something that I’ve taken on throughout the making of this record, is a fascination with iconography, the relationship of that with religion. How that marries with self religion etc. but again. It’s all the same thing eventually. It’s all derived from self, the inner workings of a mind. You have to feed it with things to think about to keep the wheel turning.
S: How did the production shape the album’s direction? Were there moments where the production became the emotional core?
RM: It always is in a sense. I’ve only ever been at the wheel for any art that is primarily made for, and about myself, so for me, it’s odd because all these things act as mechanics to actually paint the final picture so to speak. My music is always made from visual memory, or from a visual standpoint in the eye of the mind for a better term. So there’s a system where I’ll reflect on something, something that I can see in my mind, a memory of the past, a moment someone said something etc. It can even be convoluted to the point of the reframing of a film scene, or the reframing of a passage of writing etc to then match up with a specific moment I’ve lived etc. No matter what it is, it’s all specific moments of time that have stuck with or had some impact on my journey of life. From that point, the production has to then paint those visuals. I’m scoring my own movies in a sense. Then the words become the descriptors to add the muscle, and flesh and bone to that film. Movement can’t occur without muscle, and bone, it all weaves with another to become a vehicle for something etc.
S: Who else had their fingerprints on this album? Any features or collaborators that brought out a different side of you?
RM: In terms of collaborators that brought out a different side, it’s almost the invisible man in a sense, it’s the actions of others independent of the project. I’d say the biggest turning point for breathing life into the project was Chris Bryan. (he also happens to be on the record) He introduced me to “Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus.” and for some reason, that hit me like this divine intervention. It was the spark I was looking for. So there’s that, there’s my family, for giving me the tale to tell for example. There’s not many hands-on collaborators here because there really didn’t need to be. I added a touch vocally. There’s two other northern voices on there in Graham and Chris, they help to give it that worldview, and thicken the accentuation of language. Other than that, it’s just masters of their practices that could achieve things I couldn’t musically, but I always told them pretty much what I wanted in terms of the idea. They were the technical geniuses, like J.Ludvig or August, that I needed to bring out the flourishes. A few of them being those that I’ve trusted time and time again. More Eaze, Alex Currie etc…
S: Your live shows are intense, almost like installations. Are you thinking about how this album translates to the stage, or are they separate worlds for you?
The shows for me are always going to be exactly what I need them for, they are hour long periods of just, explosive self expression, in order to actually extrapolate all of the physical and emotional reactivity to those memories I’ve made the music about. Maybe one day there’ll be a way to wrap the context around them further, and add that artistic element but for what they are right now, they’re acting as physical therapy in a sense. It sounds really daft but; it wouldn’t matter if there were 10 or 10000 people in there for me at the minute. Everyone becomes a barrier to just reverberate off of.
Image Courtesy of Rainy Miller.
S: Was there anything sonically you deliberately avoided or rejected while making this album?
RM: No, I don’t think I ever want to think about making work in that way really. Every trope of musicality, instrument, texture etc. In the world exists to serve a specific emotional purpose, they all gather individual responses from individual people. I think to reject any of it, is to reduce your armoury of creativity. Maybe one day, conceptually it could be cool, but for now, I’d rather have every colour to paint a canvas with so to speak.
S: When someone finishes listening to “Joseph, What Have You Done?” front to back, what kind of headspace do you hope they’re in after
RM: It’s odd really, because I understand that the project is entirely self serving. It’s narcissistic and self indulgent. The only thing I can hope for is that people who look for any light, who share any relevance to the story, can find it within the music. Because there is a lot in there, it’s a record that is essentially bathed in many victories.
Rainy Miller’s show dates
Apr 25th Globus by Berlin Atonal, Berlin
May 2th The Flying Duck, Glasgow
May 11th Disgraceland, Middlesbrough