How George King Found Freedom in Sound with Catching Flies

Growing up in North London, surrounded by a family devoted to music and a community humming with creative energy, George King was steeped in rhythm before he knew what it meant to produce a beat. Introduced to the drums at age ten, he began building a language around music, one shaped by jazz rehearsals with Camden Music Service, field recordings from the forest outside his Airbnb, and a curiosity for the emotional truths buried in samples. Today, under the moniker Catching Flies, he crafts electronic music with a distinctly human pulse—layered, genre-blurring tracks that feel like sonic diaries.

With early inspiration from down-tempo legends like Bonobo, Lemon Jelly, and Nightmares on Wax, King made his own way in the SoundCloud era with his debut EP, “The Stars,” a self-contained body of work born from the desire to create—and finish—music without waiting on collaborators. That autonomy grew into a career defined by its creative independence, emotive storytelling, and a deep respect for imperfection. The first time he performed for a live audience was in 2014, while on tour with Bonobo, and he realized introducing up-tempo tunes could keep the crowd more engaged. With this and an organic desire to feature real-life sounds in his music, he began introducing faster rhythms and field recordings—in cities like Ojai or Marseille, featuring birdsong, wind, and streams of water—into his music, and King’s sound began to grow. Since, he’s played in cities around the world, and even inside cultural institutions and museums, including Musee D’Orsay in Paris.

Between playing festivals in Albania and Italy, King shared with Whitewall the evolution of his sound, how storytelling—as therapeutic and autobiographical as it can be—is central to everything he creates, and why remaining honest is central to keeping his creative practice personal.

The Making of a Musician

WHITEWALL: Let’s zoom out and talk about growing up in North London, with a family dedicated to music. I read that your grandfather was a musician and that influenced you. What was that time of your life like?

GEORGE KING: When I was growing up, there was a bubbling music scene in North London. There were guys in school a few years above me who were producing. I didn’t realize this at the time, but when I look back, it was a very musical environment. I started playing drums when I was about 10. My parents were like, “Maybe you should learn an instrument. Which do you want to play?” Probably to their dismay—and probably to my neighbor’s dismay, as well—I said drums. In hindsight, it wasn’t the best instrument to pick, because it’s quite an antisocial instrument. It’s also an instrument where you need other people for it to sound interesting.

What was formative was that I had this drum teacher who was very embedded in the London music scene, and he was touring at the time. As a 14 or 15 year old kid, to be taught by someone who’s actively involved in music and touring, was very inspiring. There was also a local music organisation called the Camden Music Service and they had a jazz band, and I started playing drums in that. Out of that band has come the trumpet player from Rudimental; Nubya Garcia, who’s an amazing jazz musician touring all over the world now; people who were in Amy Winehouse’s band. It was a real melting pot for music, and it was very inspiring to see. That was my initial dip in the water.

Then, I started listening to a lot of hip hop, and that’s where sampling started. I made the connection between Jazz and Hip Hop. That was kind of the beginnings of learning how to produce. And I just kept going. At that point, in my teens, music was a way of escaping. I’d come home every night and instead of doing my homework, I’d go into my bedroom and start making music. I could get lost for seven or eight hours, producing and learning how to do it. 99 percent of it was terrible, but that was where I found this real passion for it—and a love and excitement for the infinite possibilities that it offers.

“Music was a way of escaping.”

—George King

WW: Why did you want to launch your own endeavor, and under Catching Flies? What meaning does that name hold?

GK: I had made a few hip-hop instrumental beat albums before that under a different alias. I was working with a lot of rappers, and I was in various bands, and what I learned in all those environments was that it was incredibly frustrating that I couldn’t just finish stuff on my own. I was always waiting on someone to record this or someone to turn up to rehearsals for that. At that point, I was like, “Hold on, why don’t I just try and do this on my own?” That’s where Catching Flies first started. Initially, the first EP, “The Stars,” was me making, at least to my ears, hip-hop beats—and I was putting my own melodies over the top, where you would usually have people rapping or singing. It was a very self-sufficient ecosystem, where I could just make stuff, finish it, and put it out. That was the advent of the SoundCloud era and Majestic Casual, the YouTube channel.

It was an incredibly exciting time where you could send your music to these places, they would put it up, and overnight, you would get 100,000 views on a song. It was mind blowing. I did that a few times, and I was like, “Wow, this actually kind of works. And people seem to like the music.” I made the EP, “The Stars,” and I said, “I need a name.” I had a day or two to decide before it came out, so me and my friends sat down, and I had about 20 names on a list of paper. One was Catching Flies, and I just went for it. I didn’t actually think it would last this long. The fact that I’m still called it is kind of a mistake. [Laughs]

It’s a British phrase for when you’re concentrating or sleeping, and you have your mouth open—you’re catching flies. Funny enough, my mum was going through old videos of me as a kid a few years ago and found one where I’m running around in the garden trying to catch flies. It felt like it was meant to be, and there was a reason for it after all.

Evolving Sonically as Catching Flies

WW: I’m sure a lot has changed since those early days. Not only are there new music platforms beyond SoundCloud and YouTube, but you’ve recorded new albums, toured, and seen more of the world. All that influences the material you’re writing and producing and how you’re thinking about being a musician and producer. What has changed? What’s stayed the same?

GK: There’s been a lot of changes, but also a lot of constants within the evolution of what I’ve made. The changes are that I started getting into more up-tempo music. The first two EPs are down-tempo, very chill, and it was through that then I went on tour with Bonobo. I did a month with him in Europe in 2014. It was my first experience playing live and being in front of crowd—and they were big crowds. He had just put out an album called “The North Borders” and his career was flying. Playing in front of loads of people every night, as well as being a supporting act, meant that I needed to win people over. You realize that a lot of the down-tempo stuff doesn’t necessarily translate live or work in a live environment, especially if you’re performing Solo. When people are out at a gig, they want to dance. They want to have fun.

I grew up on a lot of the down-tempo scene from the ’90s to the 2000s—people like Bonobo, Nightmares on Wax, Aim, Lemon Jelly. That was my entry into electronic music. Then, I found the more up-tempo stuff and tried it myself. That’s been one of the things that has changed a lot, but the core elements are still there. I’m still sampling and I’m still working in a similar way, although I now know a lot more than I did back then. I look back at that time, and it was such a beautiful time of naivety. I had no idea what I was doing. No one cared. There wasn’t one person who knew my music. It’s a really freeing place to be in. You don’t realize it at the time, and you never get that back. In a way, it’s when my ideas were the most free. As the years go by, you become more aware of all of that.

WW: What was it like playing for a live audience for the first few times? Some musicians are very startled by it, and others are energized by it. Where did you fall?

GK: It was a real baptism of fire. It was such a learning curve. Some people grow up thinking, “I want to be on a stage.” That was never my end goal. I didn’t even consider that as an option, because I’m not the kind of person who likes to be in front of loads of people. The idea of standing in front of 4,000 people and performing is wild to me. But over the years, it’s become this extension of myself that isn’t really me. It’s more about the music. It took a while for me to get comfortable with that side of things. Over the years, I’ve grown to love it. The studio is a very isolating environment—it’s just you and the music. But when you play it live and you see people’s reactions in real time and get their feedback after the shows, it makes it really tangible. It’s invigorating and inspiring to see the music interact with real life. And the travel and touring side of things has opened me up to new cultures, new people, and new experiences, which obviously then feeds into the music. If I think of certain tours I’ve done—like in India and China, which are such culturally enriching and colorful and noisy places—I’ve found a lot of music while I’m out there, and it all feeds back into the creative process.

“It’s invigorating and inspiring to see the music interact with real life.”

—George King

Inspiration Found In and Out of the Studio

WW: Do you feel that the time outside is just as important as the time inside the studio?

GK: Definitely. When I was first producing, I would spend all my time in front of the computer, slogging away. Over the years, I’ve relaxed that and learned that a week off or a week of travel in a new place is so important for when I get back. I find it’s when I get back from those experiences that stuff just falls out. It happens very quickly. But if I’m in the studio for two months with no shows or no travel, things become slightly stagnant.

WW: You’re speaking about gaining inspiration out in the world for music that’s made inside the studio, but you also make music about a place in the actual place it’s inspired by—in songs like Ojai and Marseille—and weave in local instruments and noises you capture. It feels like a holistic approach to making a song—going to a place, being inspired by it, staying there, making music within the same space—but it’s not the norm for musicians. Can you share more about these geographically centered storylines and the process behind creating them?

GK: On some level, there is a real simplicity to it. I’m in a place, I’m inspired by it, and I call the track that because it feels like the natural thing to do. But on a personal level, it’s about it being a diary and documenting these things—and being able to listen back to that in ten years and go, “Oh, I remember where I was, the chair I was sitting on, the window I was looking out of when I made that song…” That feels exciting and special to me. When I make a song in a place that isn’t my studio, it attaches all sorts of memories and emotions to it. And whenever I’m traveling, I’m recording a lot of field recordings on my iPhone, and they end up in the music.

In Ojai, there’s a load of birdsong that I recorded from the forest next to my Airbnb, and that’s on the track. These little things are almost “in” jokes for me to listen back to. There’s all sorts of sounds recorded from my local area that end up on the tracks. I’ve got a song called ‘Kite Hill Theme’ and I was recording some ambience on Hampstead Heath. The recording picked up this conversation in passing of someone saying to their friend ‘he seems like a lovely guy’ – and so I put it in the track. I love the idea that this little moment is then potentially heard by someone in China, for example. But rather than it being for anyone else, or for the music, it’s personal—it’s a personal thing for me to attach emotions and memories to certain songs.

WW: It’s interesting because field recording is like sampling, in a way—removing it from its context, putting it into something else. It’s like an ebb flow of reality and illusion, where you can’t really tell where it’s from.

GK: Totally. It works the same, but with sampling, I can take one note of a harp from a record in the 1960s that was recorded by this one person who had a whole life of their own, but they were in a certain studio in a town in some random country, and they’d then put that out—and then 60 years later, I’ve found it, changed it, and I’ve put it in my song. It fascinates me that you can end up with a song that tells so many different stories within it. Even if it’s not explicit, it’s there in its feeling. I love that idea.

Storytelling Through Music

WW: How important is storytelling to your overall creative practice?

GK: It’s really important. It’s the driving force behind what I do. All my music needs to feel personal to me, otherwise it doesn’t come out. Every track I put out, I have a reason why it came out and what it’s about; why it’s there and why it’s important that it’s there, rather than making music for music’s sake.

WW: I read somewhere that a goal of yours is to create electronic music that sounds human, and that seems to be in line with what we’re discussing—the human nature of what we experience, how it can be encompassed into a story, how music can tell that story. It’s an elaboration of an emotion. To some people, electronic music can seem robotic or sterile, but when you use the word “human,” there’s something intimate and vulnerable about it. How do you feel you insert aspects of humanness into your music?

GK: It’s hard to put it into words, because a lot of the time it’s quite subconscious. But I think it is as simple as feeling a certain way and writing a piece of music that houses a certain level of emotional content within it. That’s the thing that makes it feel good to me. A lot of what I do is instrumental, because I try not to be too didactic in terms of what the song means. I want people to take their own meanings. There’s an instrumental song I’ve got called ‘Z’ on my album “Silver Linings,” and one of the YouTube comments said, “This song to me feels like life is beautiful, but it has its ups and downs.” That was literally what the song was about. I didn’t have to say anything, and there were no lyrics, but other people got that feeling. That was an amazing realization to me—that these things do translate when they’re honest. That someone else got it the way it was meant to be received.

WW: Would you say your music is a representation of who you are?

GK: Yes, at least, I hope so. Every song I listen to of mine, I know what I was feeling at that time, and it takes me back to that place. In a lot of ways, it’s like therapy. It’s a way of pouring everything out and offloading it onto a song. When I look back on the last 15 years, I’ve used music as a mechanism for dealing with some really complicated emotions and feelings; as a way of getting them all out. I don’t think I realize I’m doing it at the time, but when I look back, I see that that’s what’s going on.

“In a lot of ways, it’s like therapy.”

—George King

WW: Do you think that’s why you make music in the first place? As a release?

GK: Yeah. I can’t imagine doing anything else. Even if no one listened, I’d still make it because it’s such a release and a relief for me. When you’re in the zone and you’re making something, it’s the only thing you’re doing in the world. It’s totally consuming, and it blocks everything else out. It can take you out of all sorts of other headspaces you may be in. The feeling of making something that feels good and hits me in a certain place in my soul is the best feeling in the world. It doesn’t get better than that. That’s what I’m constantly chasing. Of course, there are weeks or months where you don’t get that feeling and it doesn’t happen, and you can end up feeling the other side of emotions, like frustration, but you’re constantly chasing that feeling of finding “the thing.”

“Even if no one listened, I’d still make it because it’s such a release and a relief for me.”

—George King

WW: Speaking of frustration, a lot of creatives right now are frustrated by the advancements of technology, rather than being excited by them. How do you feel about that—and about something like AI? Are you leaning into it?

GK: I’m not scared of it. It excites me. To be honest, I’m quite slow on the technological advancement side of things. I tend to shy away from it. I like to keep things as simple as possible, so I haven’t used a lot of it. I’ve used it for certain things—like this website called LALAL.AI, where you can remove vocals from the song. You can remove and extract certain parts of the music from it. It’s making sampling incredibly interesting and exciting. In that way, I’m totally here for it. This may date badly, but I have faith that there’s an emotional, personal quality to music that you cannot get from anything else but a human who is experiencing certain feelings in real time. That human touch is the thing that will never go. AI will, in the future, allow us to make all sorts of amazing sounds and formulate tracks, but there will always be a human element required to tell a story in a way that I feel only humans can do. I may be wrong, and it may go the other way, but as I said, from a creative point of view, I will always need to make music. So, regardless of if AI is making it better than me, I’ll still do it. [Laughs]

“There will always be a human element required to tell a story…”

—George King

WW: This isn’t about AI, but it is aligned with this “big brother” speak: Are you still independent? How do you feel about remaining on your own? It must be freeing, but is it also challenging at times?

GK: Yes. It’s all I’ve ever known. It comes with its ups and downs, and it didn’t happen deliberately. When I was first releasing music, I sent it to a few labels and no one got back to me, so I thought, “Well, I’ll just put it out myself.” That was the knee-jerk reaction, and then over the years, I was like, “Hold on. This kind of works.” There’s something exciting about having an ecosystem where I can make something in this studio in North London, release it myself online, and it can be heard by people in Hawaii or whatever, who then come to my show in Hawaii. It feels like it’s totally me, and there are no exterior forces making that happen. It makes playing a gig in Hawaii so much more exciting and so much more of a win because I’m there because of that process. It also means I can put music out spontaneously. For example, with Marseille, I finished that, and four weeks later, people were hearing it. In a label system, it would take a year or 18 months for it to come out. I find that immediacy really exciting.  

“It feels honest, and that is important to me.”

—George King

WW: Have you always released music with immediacy?

GK: I changed tact recently. I think between my first album, “Silver Linings,” and my second, “Tides,” there was a five year gap. After “Tides,” I vowed for it never to be like that again. The idea now is to put things out every few months. At least that’s the phase I’m in at the moment. A lot of the things I’m putting out now, I could tweak for a year, but I think it would dissolve from the initial feeling. So many times, I’ve listened back to version ten of something, and then I listen to version one, and I’m like, “I’ve ruined it. I’ve taken out the feeling that I initially had.” And that initial feeling is the important thing. So now it’s, “Okay, it’s done to a point. I like it. Let’s just draw a line under it and put it out.” That’s going back to the idea of things being a diary. It’s totally in real time. I was in Marseille two and a half months ago, and now I have a song called Marseille. When I was in Ojai, I made the song Ojai, and a few months later, people were listening to it. I think with all this stuff, the overarching thing is that I need to keep things exciting for me for the music to be good.

“I have to keep things exciting for me for the music to be good.”

—George King

WW: It seems like considering the audience less and less gives you more and more.

GK: Totally. Over the years, I’ve fallen into the trap of worrying about how people are going to receive it, and I’m sitting there two weeks into making something going, “I wonder if the people who listen to my music are going to like this.” And whilst I really care about people who listen to my music, and I want them to enjoy it, these things have to come from a place of what I feel. If people don’t like it, that’s cool, but I had to do what I had to do. Generally, I feel if there’s a reality and a real emotion, it will connect. That’s always been my feeling.

I have this when I listen to other music, too. I feel like you can feel when a song has emotion in it. My friend was telling me she was listening to Jadu Heart’s new album, and a song on it brought her to tears. And then she read about the album, and they had said that Jadu Heart was basically a production duo, and they were also a couple, but then they broke up, and they wrote the song the day after they broke up. No one has any idea about that until you read the interview, but there’s something in that song that you can feel. That’s fascinating to me.

Inside the Studio of Catching Flies

WW: Where do you primarily make music? In a studio outside of your house, or do you have a home studio?

GK: I work from home. That’s a choice. I’ve had studios over the years that I’ve gone to, and I found it really stifling. A lot of the times, those studios have no natural light. They’re in a dingy soundproof-treated room. I don’t think the music I make is conducive to that environment. I’ve found that natural light is super important – I’ve got a big window here. I look out and I see trees and sometimes I work with the windows open. There’ll be planes flying overhead, birdsong, or a noise that I hear, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool! Why don’t I try and recreate something like that and put it in the song?”

Also, working from home means that I can integrate the music and creative process into my life in a way that I couldn’t if I was going to a studio. Here, I wake up in the morning, make something up for a few hours, and then I could put a wash on or go and sit in the garden for half an hour, and then come back in and do a bit more. It feels a lot more organic to me to do it that way. I love it. Over the years, I’ve turned this into a real safe space where I have everything I need. It’s all very comfortable and very low maintenance. I’m able to dip in and out of it, and if things aren’t working one day, I go, “I’ll just go into the park.” And that’s okay.

WW: Working from home also gives you the freedom of making music wherever you are, regardless of being in your actual house—as we know from your songs about Marseille and Ojai, where you recorded them there.

GK: Yeah. The notion of having a quiet place to record for me is not always necessary. I love that I can record a guitar, and you can hear the washing machine in the background. I don’t want to take real life out of music. I want it to feel like it’s a living, breathing thing. When I record strings, for example, sometimes I record it on my iPhone, as well. I’ll listen back to the recording I’ve made on my iPhone and the one I’ve made on an expensive microphone, and I actually prefer the iPhone recording. I don’t want things to sound clean and crisp because that’s not how any of us experience life. Even when I’m listening to music while walking down the street, I’ll have one headphone on, listening to the music, and my other off, hearing conversations and trees blowing in the wind. That feels like the way I consume things.

“I don’t want to take real life out of music.”

—George King

WW: That’s the beauty of real life—its complexities, its layers.

GK: That’s why I don’t like noise cancelling headphones. I don’t want to be cut off from the world. All these things—technology, noise canceling headphones, TikTok—cut us off from the reality of life. I was playing at a festival in Bordeaux on this amazing beach, and one day, I found myself sitting on this beach on my phone, scrolling, and I was like, “What the hell am I doing? This is insane.” I’m no angel and I find it hard sometimes to not get pulled in, but I’m trying to be much more conscious of going, “Hold on. I need to put these AirPods away. I need to put my phone away. I just need to sit on this train carriage and watch these humans interact because that’s so much more interesting.” You learn so much more through these little interactions. Sometimes, my phone will run out of battery, and I’ll have a two-hour train journey, and I’ll be like, “What the hell am I going to do?” Well, I could look out the window and I could chat to another human being… In all senses, I’m trying to create those moments and avoid the other stuff.

WW: Do you find it hard to avoid the other stuff with so much going on all the time? Life’s greatest luxury right now feels like slowing down and embracing any given moment.

GK: : I feel like we live in a world now where we’re always doing three or four things at the same time. For me, at the moment, life’s biggest luxury is simplicity. Less. We’re in a world where it’s more, more, more. And I have a job where it’s more, more, more—traveling, doing shows. Sometimes, just sitting in the garden, feeling the sun, and doing nothing are the best moments. Those have become farer and fewer between.

“Life’s biggest luxury is simplicity.”

—George King

What’s Next for George King’s Catching Flies

WW: Speaking of more, more, more—what are you working on now? Next? I saw on your website a tour schedule slated through fall. Do you plan on traveling more?

GK: Last year I travelled a lot, so this year I made a conscious decision to scale it down a bit and be more studio-focused. I just put the finishing touches on another album – and that’s going to start coming out in the next few months. That’s basically going to be “Beats and Pieces 2,” an extension of “Beats and Pieces 1.” And then I’ll start thinking about doing an album after that.

For a bit, I want to be in a phase where I’m not thinking; I’m just making stuff and seeing what happens. Trying out different things. In the past, I haven’t done a lot of collaboration, so I think I’m going to do a bit more of that and have fun with it. What I’ve realized over the last few years is it’s very easy to take it all too seriously and to get obsessed with release schedules and all sorts of stuff. But look, it’s not that serious. It’s music. It’s supposed to be fun. I’m trying to tap into that, have fun with it, and enjoy it, and hopefully, something good comes from it.