โI’ve had 10 years in the wilderness as an artist,โ says Oscar Powell, backlit from the evening light of West London through the window of his studio, which doubles up as the headquarters of his record label, Diagonal. โI ran away from my own success and I feel out of time with everything, but Iโve reached a point where I donโt really care, thatโs just who I am.โ Powell’s latest album We Do Recover, and the follow-up WDREP1 that came out at the end of of 2025, close out a nine album run that took in anything from theory-inspired minimalism to delicate piano sketches and, from his earliest days, tense bangers that suited the moment in which post punk and gnarled techno collided (to euphoric rather than dour effect) on Europeโs dancefloors.
The rise and not-quite-fall of Powell began with a Damascene conversion to the power of supposedly unpleasant electronic music when he saw Russell Haswell clear the room at the Bloc weekender. Powell instantly became a super fan and ended up babbling excitedly at him on the street not long after. โI was this 27-year-old yuppie advertising guy, going โitโs Russell Haswell!โ, he couldnโt believe someone recognized him, he stared at me wondering โwho the fuck is thisโ.โ That night, though, Powell was at Cafรฉ Oto where he spotted Haswell again. They got talking, and became firm friends โ Powellโs label Diagonal, run with his school friend Jaime Williams, would contribute to the revitalising of Haswellโs musical career. This was closely followed by an encounter with Karl โRegisโ OโConnor that turned the music fan into a creator himself. When the pair met at a night run by the Blackest Ever Black label, Powell gave Regis a CDR of his music. โI never thought I could be an artist until Karl told me โyouโre good at this, you should release itโ,โ he says, adding that he needed that moment of validation. โWithout that, life would be a lot easier because Iโd just be working and not having to worry about doing the thing I loveโ. Heโs perhaps only half joking.
That moment of generous affirmation from an older mentor led to Powell having the confidence to put out his first record, 2011โs The Ongoing Significance Of Steel & Flesh. It was followed by a string of excellent and hyped EPs for Diagonal as well as The Death of Rave and Muteโs Liberation Technologies imprint, before he signed to indie giant XL. โThe music started getting more and more maximal, both in the hype and in life,โ he says. Perhaps the peak of this came when Powell put an email from Steve Albini rejecting clearance for a sample on a giant billboard, provoking something of an internet storm (something we reported on at the time). Although Powell speaks fondly of his time at XL, and indeed met his wife there, itโs clear that the pace of things left him feeling discombobulated. โI didnโt know who I was back then,โ he says, โI thought it was just going to go upwards, but I couldnโt handle it and it was hurting me as a person.โ At the time Powell was โchameleon and divergentโ with the way he was making music in all genres, from techno to noise, but felt people wanted him to the post-punk, Mika Vainio-influenced racket that characterised his early releases. โI loved it but itโs not really who I am,โ he says โpeople were calling me a punk and I just knew that I am not a punk.โ As Powell started to endure an identity crisis, feeling that the music he was expected to play didnโt necessarily fit the breadth of what he wanted to do, the balloon stopped rising.
At the height of the XL chaos, Powell was given a label bomber jacket, with OSCAR emblazoned on the back. He recently leant it to a friend, who left it in his car boot, from where it was stolen โ perhaps a handy symbol for the shift heโs had. โYou have a few good years of doing festivals and making a living from it and then youโve got nothing,” he says, adding that “I think I cared too much about what people thought.โ He stopped DJing and playing live, saying โI never enjoyed it, even though I looked like I did.โ He laughs, โI looked like Arnie Schwarzenegger, but deep down I was terrified, I panicked before I had to go onstage. Exposing myself in public is not one of my favourite things to do.โ It’s an interesting revelation from an artist who might be assumed to posted a peacocking confidence, and explains a lot of how his career evolved.
After the madness of a decade ago, Powell has instead taken an โisolationistโ approach to being part of music. He found that philosophy and reading books, rather than going out raving, were a huge help in expanding his ideas. โI donโt profess to be an expert on philosophy but there were some writers who just really helped me,โ he says, โthereโs a Deleuzian idea of a line of flight, a line of escape, and I thought it was beautiful, and as as somebody who probably wanted to run away from what music had meant to me I just went and took a different flight.โ This has been reflected in how Powellโs frequent changes of tack have felt quite gloriously naรฏve, a sort of Tigger or Mr Toad-esque enthusiasm for music and art. Yet this isnโt something he sees himself, however. โI made all these albums, but I donโt think of them as drastic changes,โ he says; โthey were just me growing through time, but to everyone else, it was โwhat the fuck are you doing?โโ
So some expecting the fruity, witty bangers that characterised his earliest releases were surprised by his ฦolder multimedia project, a collaboration with visual artists Michael Amstad and Marte Eknรฆs, which emerged during the grim may of the Covid-19 pandemic. This was in part about how humans compartmentalise our lives in the digital age, but also became โa way that I could build a space for myself where I could be separate, at the time I wanted to escape from music โ Iโd been scarred by it. It was a bubble against thingsโ.
If anything, he says, this is a feeling that has only become stronger in recent years, in which heโs become a dad, had to return to his day job in advertising to make ends meet, and recently lost a friend to suicide. โIt was a shock,โ says Powell, โbut I was unable to feel anything โ I realised I was numb to the world around me. I had struggles at that time, mentally I was fucked, I was using a lot of drugs, struggling to be father, struggling to make a living, just life. I needed to grow up a bit.โ
Oscar Powell is typically and refreshingly honest about his initial โselfish and old schoolโ wariness of having children as an impediment to creating art. โI struggled to adapt,โ he admits, โbut it has taught me to be less selfish, I donโt resent my son for taking me away from my art, if anything he feeds it, and makes it stronger.โ Being a dad, he says, โIs a beautiful chaos, but so rewarding.โ
He stopped drinking and taking drugs for a year, giving him a โclarityโ that helped shape the music on We Do Recover. However, heโs keen to emphasise that the title doesnโt mean that this is a recovery record about addiction, instead โa collective sense of โthis can get betterโ, a message of optimism injected into peopleโs ears.โ Powell also recently came off antidepressants, which he says has been a further help in come back to being able to feel the world. โNow I cry when I listen to the Frozen soundtrack in the car โ itโs amazing to be able to cry againโ.
Itโs striking, as the studio darkens and Powellโs dog snuffles on the floor, just how much a place of transition he appears to be in. He has a huge, cackling laugh, directed most frequently at himself, whether that’s the craziness of his earlier years, bemusement at what is currently going on in electronic music, or the struggles of running an independent label in the mid-2020s. Just as with his music thereโs a sense that he charges into making it with a refreshing lack of over-thinking, heโs honest about the issues that have dogged him alongside the waxing and waning of his commercial fortunes. โIโve been trying to find a way to have balance in my life,โ he says, explaining that this has always been a struggle, whether itโs about how to put making music against the need to work, or the extra-curricular activities and intakes that come with electronic music. โIโve always loved to party and that would never change. Iโve had periods of being good and sobriety but I donโt think Iโll ever stop liking the party, nor do I want to, to be honest.โ He pauses. โMaybe nihilistically. I do think Iโm prone to self-destruction, evidence suggests. I donโt by any means feel like I am expert in balance now either, but Iโm getting better at it and God itโs good, but I love chaos as well, when Iโve had periods of being sober, I miss this energy I get from feeling like Iโm out of control that ends up driving me on. Thatโs not about drugs and alcohol, itโs about doing basic tasks in life โ opening post or whatever โ things that would make it easy for me.โ
If he has a regret, itโs that he could have known all he does now when he had the power and resources of XL behind him. I suggest that thereโs a paradox in that heโs learned all he has perhaps because things didnโt quite work out in the mainstream. If there is a balance in Oscar Powellโs life itโs that he can accept this is the case. โI donโt really care anymore,โ he reflects, โI donโt want a big label, we donโt need it as artists โ where does it go? You just run out of steam. I prefer being at home. I like the countryside, a quiet life, I like my dog, I like reading.โ A pause. โI quite like shagging.โ
Towards the end of the interview, Powell turns on the computer sat on the desk in front of the night and the lights of London, and has a digital rummage in his Dropbox. He digs out a track that was once built around a sample of Gareth from The Office, but has morphed into a thudding anxious monster, a joining of the dots between his early years and his present, something that also applies to his recent WDREP1. I suggest that this is going to be a far easier sell than the records heโs been making lately in what he described as his โwildernessโ years. โI canโt understand that,โ he says, again bemused by how people might find his more abstract work difficult. “But Iโm in this process โ I think I had to recover as an artist, I had to go through something to discover who I was and now I know.โ He says that, perhaps, 2026 is going to be all about rediscovering the pleasure of making dance music again, but as he wants to do it. I suggest that the “we” of We Do Recover might also be a message of positivity to himself. Powell agrees. โMusic for me is a constant battle to love myself, rather than be loved,” he says. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel good about myself sometimes โ which is weird.” The laugh again, “because life’s not that bad.”
We Do Recover and an accompanying EP, WDR EP1, is out now on Diagonal Records
