Interview: Martin Kennedy (All India Radio)

Photo credit: Steven Pam

Interview: 25th October 2025.

Ahead of the release of their new album The Unified Field (review here), Hotel Hobbies had the opportunity for a chat with All India Radio's founding member, Martin Kennedy.

Hotel Hobbies: The new album, The Unified Field is released in a little under a week. After releasing so many albums, do you have the same sort of anticipation when something new is coming out?

Martin Kennedy: That's a really good question, actually. I have to be honest and say no. When I was eighteen or twenty years old and I had a release coming out, that was the most important, exciting thing in the world and everything else stopped. I guess you get older and a little bit more jaded. I still get excited, just not to the same extent I used to because over the years, you see how these things work or don't work. I look forward to it; I really enjoy the release process but I take it with a little bit of grain of salt these days.

Hotel Hobbies: It has been a lot of albums and a lot of years!

Martin Kennedy: Yes. I have lost count of the number of albums. There are some compilations, experimental things and collaborations too but it is true that I have released a lot of music.

Hotel Hobbies: You have had a bit of a hiatus. What prompted you to come back and work on a new album?

Martin Kennedy: COVID was a weird time for everyone. I think I just I got sick of the grind and I felt that I'd just run out of energy, run out of mental energy and run out of creativity. I released one more album during COVID, and I wasn't really happy with it. I just thought that I was done and couldn’t release music anymore. Then a few years went by and in the words of Austin Powers, I found my mojo. I did literally find my mojo and I started writing the new album and got back with my longtime bass player, Mark. We had a drummer for hire but now we're now back with our original drummer, who didn't play on this new album but will be going forward. I just felt the time was right to do this again. The other thing is, I'm really, really reluctant to play live shows. We've only played one show in the last fifteen years or something like that, which is just stupid. I have awful stage fright but I need to conquer that. So with the new album, we're going to be playing a lot more shows and that's just the decision I've made and the decision we made as a band and we're going to do it - fingers crossed.

Hotel Hobbies: Thinking about the new album, The Unified Field, and coming back to music again, was there a particular concept or mood you were aiming to capture, or was it just what naturally came from starting to write again?

Martin Kennedy: I always try to capture a mood, and it's always hard for me to put into words. I'm always looking to do something that melds my love of ambient music, with my love of Pink Floyd and electronic stuff like Tangerine Dream. Like that fantastic album I can see in the background there (HH: Stratosfear by Tangerine Dream). I'm always chasing that sound and that mood. It was kind of easy to get back into writing again because once I set my mind to it, it just all pours out of my head. That was good. However, this time I wanted to keep it relatively simple and not overload the music with layers of stuff that I've done in the past. I wanted to be able to easily recreate it live, which was always a problem in the past. Some albums just had everything on it, strings and ten million guitar tracks and all sorts of stuff. You couldn't play it live unless you had a ten-piece band. I want to be a three-piece band live. I actually wrote the new album with playing it live in mind, and that's how it's worked out.

Hotel Hobbies: Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream are musical influences you have mentioned many times in the past but David Lynch is also an influence. How has he influenced your approach to sound design or storytelling?

Martin Kennedy: I got back into David Lynch when the third season of Twin Peaks started in 2017. For me, it was the most incredible piece of television I've ever seen. It absolutely blew me away visually and with the mood it created. Half the time, I didn't know what the hell was going on but with David Lynch, I don't care. It's just the journey and the music and the sound effects and everything. That really inspired me. I did an album not long after Twin Peaks: The Return came out and David Lynch has been in the back of my mind ever since then. I thought with this album, I'll just go full David Lynch influence. So I've got samples of him talking on the record. It's more just the mood of it, I think. Our music is instrumental mostly, so there's no lyrics. It's just capturing a particular mood with the music.

Hotel Hobbies: A balance between the cinematic and the dreamlike?

Martin Kennedy: Well, that's the perfect description!

Hotel Hobbies: The opening track, The Red Room, has sound clips of him talking about the unified field theory.

Martin Kennedy: With the song titles, I tried to have each one named after some kind of David Lynch reference. Some of them are a bit more obscure than others. I just had to sort of complete the David Lynch package by naming the songs after some of his work.

Hotel Hobbies: Twin Peaks clearly inspired the video for The Red Room.

Martin Kennedy: Was it that obvious (laughing)? That was the brief to the filmmaker. I've worked with the director, Clint, before and he actually made me a David Lynch-ish video a couple of years ago. It was just beautiful. So I asked this time, can you do something similar to that again for The Red Room? It's right up his alley and he did a perfect job. A homage, I guess, rather than a rip off.

Hotel Hobbies: Another musical influence is on the album with your cover of Catch the Breeze by Slowdive. What particularly drew you to that track?

Martin Kennedy: I grew up listening to shoegaze music. For me, it kind of began in the late eighties into the nineties. That's when I had my first band. Not All India Radio, just an indie rock band here in Australia. I loved that shoegaze sound. I always tried to recreate it in the band at the time, but it never worked. We weren't good enough for that. I lapped that stuff up. This time, I just decided what the hell, I'm going to record a shoegaze song that I love. Catch The Breeze was a theme song of my early twenties. It's not a bizarrely different version. It's a very faithful version. I don't like listening to cover songs that are, you know, almost unrecognizable. I like cover songs that kind of sound the same.

Hotel Hobbies: It fits in very well with the rest of the album, I think.

Martin Kennedy: Do you think so? I was worried that it would stick out like a sore thumb so I'm glad to hear you say that.

Hotel Hobbies: It is the only track on the album that has ‘proper vocals.’ What do you think Lisa Gibbs brought to the song? It is a quite lovely performance.

Martin Kennedy: I am pretty sure Lisa was familiar with the song but she was definitely familiar with that whispery shoegaze style and she can do that really well. So for her, it was natural. I just sent her the tracks and let her do her thing. It was pretty much perfect. I didn't need to give her direction.

Hotel Hobbies: It gives the album a slightly different tone and is well positioned in the track listing.

Martin Kennedy: A couple of albums ago, I did a Pink Floyd song, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, with a similar kind of whispery female vocal and that worked out really well too. I love that dream poppy whispery vocal thing. In fact, I'd love to do a whole album of that stuff of my favourite cover songs one day.

Hotel Hobbies: That would be an interesting listen. With The Unified Field you have the shoegaze and you also have the ambient tracks and some touch on post-rock. There is definitely variety within the sound.

Martin Kennedy: Yes, it kind of mixes it up a bit. There is a little bit of post-rock in. I always worry that every song sounds the same so I do try to vary it.

Hotel Hobbies: It is hard to pick a favourite track, but I think one that stands out is Everything That Exists Anywhere. Can you talk particularly about that track and the process behind it?

Martin Kennedy: It's another David Lynch quote. I can't remember what that came from but it's definitely David Lynch. That one was is probably my favourite song on the album too. It's got elements of what I call Old All India Radio. The tremolo guitar and not much else going on. It starts, then it just sort of evolves and it gets really big towards the end. That’s not a revolutionary way of writing a song. There's so many bands that do that, but that's my thing. I can't give you any deep and meaningful description of what it's about. It's just an evolving kind of song. We had a rehearsal today and it's actually one of the, you know, one of the most enjoyable songs to play.

Hotel Hobbies: As you are an instrumental band for the most part, when you are writing do you have bits of music that evolve in a direction you did not expect or end up being used elsewhere because they link better to other sections of music you have written?

Martin Kennedy: I usually start off at home just with doing demos, even if that's just strumming an acoustic guitar. Then, I'll kind of build it up and I don't rush. I just take my time and then come back and listen a few weeks later and then, as you mentioned, I'll pick out certain bits and match them up with other bits. So yeah, they evolve over time and depending on how we're recording, whether we're recording as a band altogether or we're recording our parts separately. With this album, we did it separately because we're in different states. I get the demo to a certain point and then send it to Mark, the bass player. He does his stuff. There might be some changes, but usually by that stage, the song is kind of set in stone, or the structure of the song is set in stone. The demo will go to the drummer as well and he'll do his thing. Then it'll all come back to me. I can still change things around to a certain extent but usually it's completed by that point. Then, we go into adding more instrumentation or straight into mixing it. Usually, it's a sort of demo, a little bit of tweaking, recording and then mixing.

Hotel Hobbies: With the tweaking, there must be a point where you have to actually stop and say its finished.

Martin Kennedy: Oh yes! With this album, I was starting to add lots of stuff. The original version of this album had a lot more instrumentation on it. I actually ended up stripping stuff out of it. The version that will be released is eighty percent stripped back from what it actually was. That's about being able to play it live but also I just wanted it to be kind of pure. I wanted it to be more vital, simpler and purer rather than full of load of stuff that you don't actually need.

Hotel Hobbies: This album, and your music in general, finds a real balance between being intimate and being expansive. How tricky is it to find a happy medium between the two?

Martin Kennedy: I guess that's part of the songwriting and being conscious of not trying to repeat yourself and trying to throw in some variety to the songs. A long time ago, my songwriting was extremely boring. I can say, without being too precious, that I was a crap songwriter a long time ago. I think I've gotten better. I don’t mean I've got more complex. In fact, I've got simpler in a way. You can't just repeat a couple of chords throughout the whole thing. You have to vary it up a bit, especially with instrumental music where there's no vocals. You have to keep people's interest somehow.

Hotel Hobbies: Talking about stripping back and here, I am thinking about the title track as an example, the second sort of section of that track has widely spaced guitar chords. The use of space appears as important to you as the use of instrumentation.

Martin Kennedy: Yes! I've sort of worried a bit about space in the past and this time, I left those spaces. Like I said before, those spaces weren't there in the original version of these songs. I'd fill them up with other stuff. So I said, I'm going to take it out and leave the space. I wanted to leave the space for Mark to play something on the bass or not play something on the bass. I wanted to let the notes and the chords just ring out. I'm glad I did actually because I really like it the way it is.

Hotel Hobbies: It is a very immersive album indeed.

Martin Kennedy: Speaking of immersive, this is the first time we did Atmos sound. A fan actually convinced us to do Atmos this time. It's actually really expensive to do but we did it. It is on Apple Music. I actually haven't heard it (laughing). I haven't heard the mix because I can't play it! I haven't got the Atmos gear. The guy who mixed it assures me it's very, very nice (laughing).

Hotel Hobbies: Your music has featured, in the past in some television shows and films. Some people would be listening to your music without knowing the band. How do you feel when you watch things using your music?

Martin Kennedy: It's been a few years since that's happened, unfortunately. It's so much harder to get those things now, but it's an absolute thrill to see our music in TV shows. It's strange to see some of the things that's been in really weird stuff. Our music was in CSI Miami and there was a scene of a roller derby, people on roller skates going around this rink and they had one of our songs playing. I thought, Why did you pick this song? That's so weird. But they did. They used one in a funeral scene in a British soap opera. Actually, a lot of our music gets used in funeral and death scenes, which I don't know what they're saying, but it's quite funny.

Hotel Hobbies: You have had some collaborations with other people such as Devin Townsend. What has that taught you about synergy with other musicians?

Martin Kennedy: The thing with Devin was really amazing. It just all came out of the blue. He really loved one of our songs from a couple of years ago and wanted to do a version of it himself. So he asked permission. He didn’t want to do a direct cover but recreated the song in his own way with his own lyrics. Then, I asked him to play on one of my songs. He could do his ambient thing or solo stuff, whatever, just whatever he wanted to do. He came back with a solo, ambient track, keyboards and beautiful vocals. It's like he did the whole lot and it was just magnificent. He was so generous with his time. It was fabulous. I'd love to do an ambient album with him. It was talked about, but he's a busy guy. We'll just see what happens in the future.

Apart from Devin, I've worked with just a couple of other people. One is an Australian artist called David Bridie, who was in a very well-known ambient band, Not Drowning Waving. We did an album together. I've worked with Steve Kilby from a band called The Church. That's more poppy, psych-pop kind of stuff, different to All India Radio. Apart from that, I haven't really worked with a lot of people. I like to work alone and I don't like people looking over my shoulder. The people I have mentioned weren't that sort of collaborators, so that's good.

Hotel Hobbies: If you had a dream pick of someone to work with, who would it be?

Martin Kennedy: David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. That would be a good one! I think he's a bit stuck in his ways (smiling) so I would fit into his way of working. I'd be very happy with that. Even to get him to do one solo on one of my albums would be a dream come true!

Hotel Hobbies: He did the album with The Orb, so you never know!

Martin Kennedy: Yeah, that was really highly regarded too. That sort of gave him a little bit of street cred as well. He needs to do it with me. I'll give him some street cred (laughing)!

Hotel Hobbies: With Floyd and Tangerine Dream as older influences, are there any newer bands you are enjoying?

Martin Kennedy: Nope (smiling). I have no idea of what's new. I honestly don't. When I discover music, it's all old music. It is old Tangerine Dream Records, it's Pink Floyd Bootlegs, or it's some obscure Krautrock. I don't know any new music and I'm sure it's fantastic. What little I have heard of it, sounds like kids have been listening to my record collection and I think, how dare you take my record collection and make it sound really good (laughing)? I switched off new music probably in the late nineties, early two thousands and I haven't followed it since. I just follow my own boring path.

Hotel Hobbies: I very much enjoyed the Zeit version of The Red Room. 

Martin Kennedy: I love that stuff and I would love to do more of that and I probably will. It's kind of a bit of a side project. I will continue doing what we're doing on this new album but I'm always going to go back and do those long Tangerine Dream-ish kind of remixes because that's what I'm really into.

Hotel Hobbies: You mentioned you have released a lot of music. Are there songs or albums in the band’s history you look back on as key moments or as ones of which you are particularly proud?

Martin Kennedy: Yes! In 2003, we released the first band album. Before that, it was just me solo. That was a key moment really for me and probably one of my favourite albums. It just worked. The band worked really well together and the songs were good. We still play a lot of those songs now. So there was that one. There was the one that Devin Townsend played on, Afterworld. I really loved that album too even though there’s probably a song or two I would drop. Then I would mention the album Space. They're the most cohesive and the most band-orientated albums. I think me working in a band rather than solo is the better thing. It’s better having other people to bounce ideas off and to collaborate with.

Hotel Hobbies: These days, it is also easier to do that remotely if you need to.

Martin Kennedy: Yeah, that's right. You don't actually have to be in the same room as them. So if they annoy you, you just press the escape button (laughing). I would include this latest album as one of my favourite key albums. It was very collaborative, more so than anything else we've done. I found myself really, really enjoying the process. I was not being precious, not being annoyed and I was listening to other opinions, which I probably haven't done enough in the past. I think it's the way forward really for me.

Hotel Hobbies: It sounds like after your period where you did not want to make music that you have really enjoyed this one.

Martin Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. This is what I'll do until I get sick of it and go back to a solo artist again (laughing). I think I'll get a few years out of this!

Hotel Hobbies: Thinking about playing live again, do you have particular songs that you want to play or do you have moments where it becomes like improvised?

Martin Kennedy: No, I'm not good at improvisation so it's pretty structured. We've got a set list together and we're playing pretty much to the set list, and pretty much as they appear on the record. There's a little bit of variation but I'm not a great guitarist, so improvisation really scares me. That ties in with not having also enjoyed playing live. If the gig is structured and I know what we're playing, then I'm more inclined to want to do shows. So that's the way it kind of works with me.

Hotel Hobbies: For people who do not know, could you talk for a moment about the origin of the band’s name?

Martin Kennedy: In the late nineties, I was in an indie rock band and that had run its course and I wanted to do something completely different. A friend of mine had travelled to India. He was backpacking around India; he took a little Sony Walkman cassette player with him, and he recorded sounds and all sorts of things. He gave the tape to me and I got really inspired by it. There were all sorts of weird and wonderful sounds. I could hear someone in the background saying All India Radio. And of course, that's the name of India's national broadcaster. I just thought, that's a good name for a band. So that's how it started, really. In some ways, I really regret that because in the early days of e-mail - this was the late 1990s - I'd get emails from people in India asking for the sports scores and the weather and stuff like that. I had people complaining about particular shows that weren't in their area. So it was quite funny.

I felt like a real imposter stealing All India Radio’s name. I actually had an e-mail from a government official complaining to me about stealing All India Radio's name. They are proud of their national broadcaster. Here I was, some Aussie stealing their name. I just I replied politely to say I'm kind of nobody. I'm just an Aussie man with a little band that no one's ever heard of, except for him. That stuff died away as the internet developed over the years. It was quite funny in the beginning, people mistaking me for India's actual broadcaster.

Hotel Hobbies: It has been a pleasure talking to you and seems like, as you mentioned, getting your mojo back has been very successful.

Martin Kennedy: I think it has. I have actually felt really revitalised. I'm not quite sure why. COVID knocked us for a six. I have got my mojo back and I'm quite excited about it. I'm getting old and I'm not worrying too much about what I should sound like or what we should sound like. I'm just doing my own thing. If some people really love what we're doing, that's good enough. If we sell enough to fund the next record, then that's good.

Hotel Hobbies: Thank you so much for chatting and good luck with playing live and the release of The Unified Field.

Martin Kennedy: Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it.

The Unified Field is released on 31st October 2025.

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