With a brand new single and visual adventure to absorb your thoughts, we caught an interview with the unmistakable creative artist Co.Lega, to talk all things you.love and beyond.
We get into the inception of the song, the visuals, production choices, aspirations, and even his thoughts on AI-use in art and music, plus much more. Here’s the conversation in full.
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Co.LeGa – amazing to catch up, congrats for the new single! Total change of direction again both sonically and thematically. What was the spark for this song?
Hey, lovely to catch up again and thank you!
This song was a long time in the making. The change of direction was deliberate; I love experimenting. For me, the most exciting music is something I haven’t heard before that still manages to be catchy. I don’t really think in terms of genres or sticking to one subject. Every song is its own thing.
This one started with me playing around with the voice, trying to turn it into an instrument, though not quite in the ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ sense haha. At first I thought I might rap something, but it went off in the direction you hear now. The voice became the rhythm section: a repeating mantra that the rest of the song was built around.
There are several different motifs. I wanted them to sound quite sharp and very rhythmic, so I chose words for their texture, those rough ‘r’ sounds, bits about ‘resurrection’, ‘dust and the rust’, that sort of thing. Those sections give the song a very different character.
But it’s still a pop song about love, quite gentle on the surface. Underneath, you’ve got those more “aggressive” patterns, layers and bits of rap going on. Electro, perhaps. Or synth-pop? Something along those lines.
Tell us more about this thought process around ‘love as a signal, desire as data’ – it almost feels as if these two should be flipped around – what’s the main difference between the signal and the data?
I’d say it’s really just a love song. But what is love here? Is it strong enough? Can you trust it? I don’t know. It’s not really a song about technology. It’s about love, and perhaps about being hurt. Love that cuts like a scalpel. Love that could swallow you whole.
The track is built around a retro funky soundscape and then levelled by a kind of dreamy, breathy vocal and some additional voices that add to the ambient counterforce. It’s playful but haunting at the same time, and yet it works. What do you hope listeners take away from this one?
Thank you! I really like that reading. What I like about the song is that the way those vocals work together feels like something I haven’t heard before. Or at least I don’t think I have.
“There’s this strong, mantra-like vocal foundation, with a beautiful, delicate love story built on top. A mix of pain and elation, really. That’s how I hear it, anyway. It’s not necessarily obvious.”
You’ve taken a fairly universal subject matter and added a kind of cinematic complexity to the outskirts – what was the artistic intention behind that?
Because I don’t want to repeat myself. Love is still the biggest subject! I don’t like obvious answers. I want people to interpret that world in their own way. It means something quite specific to me, but it could mean something completely different to someone else.
Writing lyrics is difficult, and I don’t think art should spell everything out. I throw away about 95% of what I write because it starts sounding too obvious.
As for ‘cinematic complexity’ – thank you! That’s quite a compliment. I might just leave my answer there. 😉
How long was the track in the making, and how much editing or re-drafting was there in terms of landing on this multi-layered, rhythmic then dreamy and delicate, uniquely structured audio expression?
The song took several years. It needed a long time to mature, and a lot of editing to get it where I wanted it. Those rhythmic vocals are made up of many layers, and what you hear is the final, carefully refined version.
Every edit was done by hand. It was painstaking. I’m not keen on tools that do the creative part for you. AI in art, for instance, doesn’t really appeal to me. I don’t use tools that make those decisions for me. Of course I try everything, but at this point I still see AI as prediction, a language model working out the next word. For me, that doesn’t translate into art. It hasn’t got that human unpredictability, that little bit of the divine, if you want to call it that.
AI-generated images actually put me off. I value human imperfection much more or the kind of perfection that comes from obsessively refining something, while still leaving room for surprise. The human brain is still quite extraordinary. I don’t think it’s been beaten when it comes to creating art.
For practical jobs, it’s a different matter: making another version of something that already exists, whether that’s suspenseful music for a Hollywood film or a short advertising video. AI has already taken hold there, and it’s staying. The trouble is that everything could end up uniform, standardised. That little spark disappears.
In my view, this track has that something about it that could stand the test of time – a kind of alternative, Massive Attack curiosity and calming embrace that’s addictive to lose yourself within. What are your thoughts on the matter – how do artists seek to create something like that, or do we just get lucky and stumble upon the right formula sometimes?
Thank you. That’s a huge compliment! You’re spoiling me now. Coming from someone who knows music as well as you do, it makes me very happy to hear it.
As for a formula, I don’t think there is one. If I’ve managed to achieve what you’re describing, perhaps I can offer this: I’m reminded of something I think Agatha Christie said. I’m paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of ‘Every artist must first be a craftsman.’
Beyond that? Experiment. A lot. 🙂
What’s the most important lyric or phrase that you want this track to instil in the minds of listeners?
If I had to choose, perhaps: ‘love, break through yet again’.
Love, affection, partnership, harmony, closeness – being with someone and building something together is such an important and beautiful part of life. It’s something I’d wish for everyone. 🙂
What made you choose this particular track to follow the somewhat more confronting industrial edginess of Digitally Modified?
As I said, every song is its own thing. The style, the subject, the instruments, the way you approach it, they should all suit that particular adventure, that particular story.
I don’t like following conventions or expectations, including my own. You can’t keep turning the same thing over in your head and writing in the same way. Surely that gets a bit dull? One thing interests me today, something else tomorrow. Some fascinations stay with me, mind you, but I’ll keep those to myself.
So if these two singles sound very different, I’m pleased. At least I’m not quite such a bore after all haha.
When we spoke in 2025, love was a heavy theme throughout your music and mindset. This track seems to pull us back towards that – are you still inspired by love, and does the ‘love without filters’ idea from Bionic Heart still play into your sense of purpose?
‘Bionic Heart’ is an interesting idea: you want to love everyone, but how do you manage that with the heart you’ve got? Perhaps you need to swap it for a bionic one and give it another go.
I remember Silke, who sings it so beautifully, telling me that as she sang it, she pictured a 50s housewife trying to keep up a cheerful front. Brilliant. 😉
In the past twelve months, given the meteoric rise of AI-generated music and AI-driven business and conveniences, have your views changed on the intersections between humans and machines?
AI, AI, AI. It’s already a bit passé, isn’t it? 😉
At this stage, with this whole business of predicting the next word, I find AI useless in music. Use it and everything will start sounding brilliantly produced and exactly the same. It won’t give us the next Jim Morrison, The Prodigy or Gorillaz.
For practical tasks, where you need another version of an existing solution tailored to your needs, it’s brilliant. In areas where the ideas have already been worked out, AI is already taking over.
And that’s fine. There’s no point fighting it. But are we supposed to become fans of a particular prompt? Prompt fan clubs? haha.
“Being human, being an artist, means wanting to be original. You might start by imitating someone you admire, but you do it in your own way, with your own mistakes, and end up finding a new path.”
And what about love, the subject we keep coming back to? Who’s actually experiencing it? The prompt? We want real stories. In the end, it always comes down to telling a story.
So, for practical use, yes. Artistically, I don’t see the point.
How did you settle upon this natural-world artwork, and what does it represent in terms of the song’s themes?
Thank you for asking, because this gets to the heart of it. you.Love is green and alive. It’s rooted in this all-encompassing Mother Nature, so powerful she could swallow us whole.
It’s all analogue. The way the video was filmed isn’t polished to perfection. And I’ll say it again: AI-generated videos and images don’t appeal to me.
Perhaps that’s the rebellion of our time? There were the hippies in the sixties, punk movement and so on. Every generation has had its rebellion. Maybe this generation’s will be rejecting AI?
Give the balance of serenity and high-octane visual energy for the reels and video, what did you hope to add to the song’s impact in terms of the visual storyboard?
I want each single to have its own identity, its own atmosphere. Is the video that closely tied to the music? I don’t know. It’s open to interpretation.
you.Love is green. Mother Nature is swallowing us whole. We think of her as ‘she’, but perhaps she’s ‘he’. We’re part of her, so let’s love her!
What about live performance or clips – anything else in the pipeline this coming month or so?
I’m putting most of my energy into new music and the visual side of Co.LeGa. I’m open to exploring how the project could work live, but I’d want to find a format that really suits it, something where the music and visuals work together. I’m looking for collaborators who’d enjoy figuring that out with me, people who might see possibilities I haven’t thought of.
There should be another single before the year is out. The visuals are nearly finished already. Giving each release its own look and feel takes a lot of energy and resources, so that’s keeping me fairly busy at the moment.
Any final thoughts on you.love or the next chapter of the Co.LeGa journey?
I think you.Love is a conversation with love itself. We are Mother Nature. We are stardust. We exist because of the Sun. Our entire solar system is hurtling around the centre of our galaxy at 230 kilometres a second.
“We’ll disappear, but our love will survive. Our feelings reach far beyond our galaxy.”
How’s that for a final thought? 😉
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Follow Co.LeGa on Instagram.
