Bio: Neuro Placid | Interview: Eerie Rose

“Neuro Placid is an alter ego to the up and coming MC in question. This project is created and composed by Ollie Brown from south east London. Mixing punk with rap, Neuro has made a name for himself in the live gig circuit around the city and has organically grown a following through playing venues and attracting fans on the internet through Lou Smith’s camera lens. Discussing internal battles with a dark sense humour, Neuro Placid delivers songs with sharp wit and sporadic energy.”

The new single, Silly in the Mental, has just been released, along with a music video. Tell me a little about this song!

The lyrics came to me when I was working as a carpenter. I was really inexperienced and fucked up a lot. That’s why I started with the lyrics “I’m a toddler with a power drill”. I’m just trying to get across the frustrations I had at the time of not having a place to live or any identity anymore. I went through a sort of ego death during the lockdown and felt trapped inside my identity as Ollie brown - I felt like I needed to reinvent myself to carry on in my life and escape my imposter syndrome from a near death experience I had around that time. Neuro Placid can say things and do things Ollie Brown can’t.

From A Clockwork Orange to Alice in Wonderland, the music video is a wonderful introduction to Neuro Placid as an alter ego. Could you expand on some of the references and concepts that inspired it?

Neuro Placid is like an anti hero, so I wanted to make that obvious by dressing like Alex DeLarge from a clockwork orange. The near death experience that inspired a lot of the music I make was drug related. Tripping out and seeing things that aren’t there is a psychedelic experience, and I felt like Alice in wonderland was a good example to represent that side of myself and my music.

How did it feel taking your character as a performer and translating that into film? Your energy onstage has really captivated people, especially in videos online shot by Lou Smith. Is this just your natural persona or do you need to get into a specific headspace to be Neuro Placid?

I’d like to say it’s pretty natural becoming Neuro Placid. But I’m not always sure. Sometimes I get onstage and I’m not angry enough. Then, I start to get angry that my body isn’t giving me the energy the songs deserve, so then I become crazy on stage anyway. I’m okay with being angry on stage. These songs can be very cathartic to perform. I’ve got to release it all on stage as it’s not always safe to release those emotions in normal day to day life. Neuro Placid is more a person who lives inside of me rather than someone I actually am…there’s definitely a transition.

Do you find that making work and performing under an alias provides you a space in which you can be the most honest and vulnerable version of yourself, or does it instead encourage you to invent an entirely new character to portray?

Being Neuro Placid definitely gives me an opportunity to discuss things I can’t normally say in music. A lot of it explores my deepest truest self, but I also like to push myself to say things I wouldn’t say or even naturally think of to keep it fictional. To keep my lyricism and stories free of any boundaries.

The lyrics in this single are incredibly relatable, despite taking things to the extreme. I personally haven’t set fire to anyone’s family dog but I do viscerally understand that feeling of having the dream vs the reality, words vs actions, what you want to be vs what you are currently being.

I don’t like to be political in my music. But no matter what, everything is political. The reason I’m on a stage rapping these crazy lyrics is because therapy in this country is very hard to access due to the government not prioritising mental health. I definitely decided to become a disciplined rapper so I would have more space to write more lyrics. I often wondered why dark things happened in life. I also wondered if I could ever use those experiences for anything that could help me. The answer was music.

As the prophecy would have most likely foretold, we met for the first time in the smoking area of Venue MOT in south London. I’m a little surprised it wasn’t The Windmill, but it still counts. Tell me a little about how important the live music community is to you and your work, and how you find yourself working within it - how does where you play, or the audience you encounter, impact the music you make for example?

The live music scene is majorly important to my life, but it has zero impact on what kind of music I make. I honestly expected everyone to laugh at me on stage when I did my first shows as a rapper. The only reason I went through with playing shows in the first place is because I wanted to be certain. The community in the live music scene has kept me sane through some hard times…it’s also driven me insane some other times. But that’s life. Give and take. I see the bands I play with like Plutozbeach, Alien Chicks, and House Arrest more like family than friends at this point. All love to them.

For the majority of us making creative work in London right now, times are getting increasingly hard. Money is scarce at the best of times, and as we get older the realisation that success doesn’t always come with security is an especially scary one. How have you found this yourself, and how do you manage to persevere and continue making and performing?

It’s not easy keeping a music career afloat in this day and age when you’re doing everything yourself. Everyone I know is struggling financially. The cost of living is ridiculous. I’ve had to stay with family and hop from sofa to sofa on and off for the last couple years while trying to make it with Neuro Placid. There are times where I feel like this is a waste of time and I’m never going to make it. But then I remember the love and support this project has gotten and it’s like a shot of adrenaline to get back up and keep fighting for what you love. I say fighting because a lot of people don’t like the controversy in my lyrics. I find I constantly have to stick up for myself. But doing this has made me realise that Neuro Placid is a project worth sticking up for.

How much does collaboration with other creatives and friends mean to your work? Do you focus solely on music, or are any other creative mediums included in your practice?

I wrote all the music for Neuro Placid by myself which is very different to my first and only project before this. In my old band Blacksanta we use to write everything together. I learnt a lot that way. When the band split I didn’t feel completely lost because I was already working on Neuro Placid by that time. The songs didn’t fully come to life until I met Jak Colley. We would record nearly every week for a year while learning each others creative language. It would take a long time to record a song back then. Two years later we can record a whole song in one day now. He also organised a lot of the arrangement with ad-libs and what you’d call “ear candy”.

What’s all this about goth girls?

My personal life can be chaotic. I seem to always fail with personal relationships. It can be a pretty dark thing to think about. I like to take the edge off of that with a sense of humour. My friends would make jokes about me liking goth girls so I thought I’d just carry the joke on. I think also pretending that I have a specific type takes away power from evil ex’s. It’s like me saying “you weren’t the one. You’re just another one” it’s petty. But that’s Neuro.

What do we have to look forward to with Neuro Placid for the rest of 2023?

I want to establish myself better online in 2023 with more released music. Hopefully an EP. More music videos. I’ve done hundreds of gigs last year. It’s time to release good shit.

Stay up to date with Neuro Placid on Instagram, Spotify & Youtube.

Neuro Placid - Silly in the Mental