Stanley Belton discusses self-recording, hiraeth, and the emotional traces behind analog textures

Transmission 198: Interview with Black Market Karma

Black Market Karma is an English rock group formed in London in 2011 and currently based in Dover, Kent. Headed by multi-instrumentalist Stanley Belton, the project has built a large discography through self-recorded and self-produced releases that fuse 1960s pop structures with psychedelic repetition, tape-warped textures, and references to folk, Indian music, hip hop, and lo-fi electronics. The band has toured across Europe and collaborated with artists including Sonic Boom, Tess Parks, and The Underground Youth.

Title: Mellowmaker
Artist: Black Market Karma
Release Date: 2025-06-06
Genres: Garage Rock, Psychedelic Rock
Label: Fuzz Club Records
Description: Interview with Black Market Karma on Mellowmaker, recording in solitude, and how hiraeth shaped the album’s analog textures and emotional tone.

Their twelfth studio album, Mellowmaker, is scheduled for release on 6 June 2025 via Fuzz Club Records. Conceived as a companion to 2024’s Wobble, the record continues Belton’s focus on analog imperfection, off-grid rhythms, and layered effects, drawing on themes of dislocation and longing.

What first pulled you into music — was there a moment, an album, or a sound that set everything in motion?

It’s hard to really remember, man, but I think I’ve always been very receptive to music from a really young age. The earliest memory I’ve got of music affecting me was probably watching films when I was a child — The Jungle Book or Star Wars movies, things like that. As a kid, the music would stay with me.

I think that’s the earliest moment where it was like, whoa.

What pushed you to start creating your own songs rather than just listening?

I don’t know, man, I don’t know how to answer that. I just wanted to try and contribute something, do my own thing. It just felt like something I wanted to do from pretty much— I think obviously there’s a minimum barrier, like learning to play an instrument, which I had to get past.

But once I could play the guitar fairly well, I started wanting to write music very quickly. It was just a feeling I had — I wanted to try and make my own thing. I don’t know why.

I just did.

When you formed Black Market Karma back in 2011, what atmosphere surrounded the early London scene you were stepping into?

I feel like the kind of music I’m inspired by and wanted to add to was maybe on a bit of a downturn at that time. It’s always been quite underground, but when we started, there weren’t many independent bands playing that kind of music — not amongst the people I knew. It took a while to find anyone inspired by the same or similar music.

It felt heavily skewed towards what people were calling indie rock at the time — stuff like The Libertines and The Strokes was the main thing. That’s how I remember it. So for us, it felt like being the odd one out a lot of the time, until we started finding people into similar music. That’s when it became more exciting.

If people recommended music I hadn’t heard before and I loved it, it expanded my horizons — what was possible.

Comatose, Cocoon, Easy Listening, Semper Fi — four albums in one year. What helped you maintain such consistent energy?

I think I just had a desire to have a discography. I wanted to feel legitimate. For me, legitimacy isn’t tied to success in terms of numbers or fame.

It was more about having a decent amount of work I could be proud of and present. So when I told someone I was a musician, it actually had some weight. Without sounding negative, there are a lot of people who want that title without really having any work.

I was very pushed by wanting to say, “Here’s a collection of albums.” That was my main goal — to make myself feel legitimate. That’s where it came from.

And like I said, I was discovering a lot of new music around that time, and I felt really inspired by everything I was hearing.

Do you approach lyrics and instrumentation as separate layers, or are they shaped in parallel?

Most of the time, lyrics come second for me — not always. Sometimes I might have a tune in my head, and I’ll be making up words along with it. Then I catch myself doing it, and it starts to form some kind of meaning. I take that and try to flesh it out, make it more coherent. But that’s the rarer way.

Usually, it’s music first, and then I try to find what it could mean, what it means to me, and turn that into lyrics. The melody usually informs the lyrics. It’s pretty closely linked for me.

How did the idea of self-producing everything from scratch come together for you? How did working entirely alone, again, help you maintain a cohesive thread between Wobble and Mellowmaker?

Those two albums in particular were made very close together. Some of the songs, if I remember correctly — it’s a bit of a blur — were even recorded in the same year. Working on my own definitely brings a level of consistency. I think it’s just an inherent thing that comes from working by yourself — there’s a thread to it that’s singular.

A lot of the music that really inspired me — Spiritualized, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Spacemen 3, and that whole neo-psych scene I was discovering — a lot of those artists produced their own music or had a very large role in the overall sound. That inspired me.

I wanted to be able to do the whole thing and be totally self-sufficient. I think that kind of independence does help you stay more consistent, simply because there are fewer people involved.

When recording Mellowmaker, how much did working right after Wobble affect the way you approached the songs?

I was discovering a new sound for us, and Mellowmaker felt like the immediate evolution from Wobble. It all happened very close together. When something like that’s coming through your channel, you need to get it down and save it while it’s happening.

I felt very inspired and excited about music again at that time. I wanted to capture it all as it came, while it was still fresh. You can probably hear that — if you played them back to back, you can hear the progression. Where it ends up is very stream of consciousness.

For me, it’s about trying not to get in the way of what the songs want to be — just guiding them and letting them become what they’re going to be. When you do things in quick succession like that, you get a very natural progression, which is something I’ve always aimed for. I try not to overthink it or get on top of it too much — just let it be what it wants to be.

I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s how it feels for me.

Is there a central theme or thread running through Mellowmaker, or did the concept take shape more instinctively as the record unfolded?

Yeah, I think so. Obviously, there are varied themes from song to song — the subject matter changes — but the overall feeling I’m trying to capture in a lot of my music is something else.

I might be wrong, but I think the Welsh have a word for it — hiraeth. It’s a feeling of trying to find your way back to a home that maybe doesn’t exist. Or maybe it existed in a past life, or exists in some other time or place that’s not tangible in the current reality we’re living in. That might sound a bit hocus pocus, but it’s kind of like nostalgia — except it’s not nostalgia for something that happened.

It’s for something that maybe doesn’t exist, or something more. It’s hard to explain, but I think most people feel it at some point, if not all the time. A lot of these last two albums are me trying to give some form of permanence to that feeling — a longing for… I don’t really know how to explain it.

I think hiraeth is the closest I’ve found, because it’s like nostalgia, but not exactly — nostalgia means fondness for the past, and this is something else. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Was there a particular track on Mellowmaker that proved especially stubborn or unpredictable during recording?

I’m trying to remember, man. Let me think. I think maybe one of the harder ones was the last track, Adoration.

It has quite a dense arrangement and was a bit tougher to mix than some of the others. It’s probably the most ambitious arrangement in terms of the number of instruments and parts going on. That one probably took me the longest.

But overall, they all came together quite smoothly. Like I said before, I was just trying to let it be. It was a good time.

I was making up a lot of stuff, feeling excited, and just letting it come. The whole thing was quite smooth and really enjoyable, actually.

Beyond music, are there books, films, or even places that have seeped into your songwriting in ways that might not be obvious at first listen?

Definitely. I moved down to Dover about four, nearly five years ago. I’ve spent a lot of time here — the nature is beautiful. I’ve spent a lot of time walking along the tops of the White Cliffs of Dover, in the surrounding countryside, and by the seaside. It’s a totally different environment from where I grew up near London.

That definitely had an impact on how things sound and feel. Part of it is the sense of scale and scope — when you can stand on top of those cliffs and see so far, uninterrupted.

I think you can hear that in some of the new music.

Looking ahead, are there any new directions or ideas you’re itching to chase down for the next record?

I think I’m falling more and more into experimenting with electronica and synthesizers, and I’m finding that really exciting. I’m discovering more about that world. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed, but especially with these two albums and what I’m working on next, I feel like I’ve found a nice bond between our older, more guitar-based sound and this more lo-fi, nostalgic, dreamy, electronic, colourful thing.

I’m trying to bring the two together, and I don’t feel bored of that yet. So I think I’m going to keep going in that direction.

Photos courtesy of Black Market Karma

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others