It’s fair to say that Mr Tom Misch’s 2020 isn’t turning out exactly as he’d expected. He was supposed to be travelling around the globe right now – instead he’s been no further afield than his back garden. He was supposed to be playing sold-out shows to his ever-growing legion of fans – instead he’s been noodling around on the guitar to himself. And he was supposed to be embarking on a relentless promo schedule as he geared up to release his second album What Kinda Music, a brilliantly hazy and experimental affair written in collaboration with jazz drummer Mr Yussef Dayes. But even that’s not quite the hectic meet-and-greet he’d envisioned – right now, he’s sat on his bed, on the phone to me…

“It’s been a shock to everyone,” says the 24-year-old of the coronavirus pandemic that sent the UK into lockdown. “But I’ve actually really enjoyed some of the days because the pressure has been taken off me to some extent. I had a lot in my diary. Now, if it’s sunny I can sit outside and play guitar instead.”

As Mr Misch points out, much of his music has been made at home anyway, so his life isn’t wildly different at the moment. All of his buzzed-about early mixtapes and EPs – even his Top 10 debut album Geography, a soulful, summery fusion of jazz, hip-hop and pop – were written, recorded and mixed in his bedroom. Working from home was no barrier to their success: to date, Mr Misch’s music has received 650 million streams, gained him almost half a million Instagram followers and caught the attention of everyone from De La Soul and Mr John Mayer to – oh, yes – President Barack Obama. 

Even during the strictest of lockdowns, he can’t help racking up the stats: to pass the time over the last couple of weeks he’s started posting his “Quarantine Sessions” on YouTube, jazzy guitar covers of tunes such as Thundercat’s “Them Changes” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, recorded in his bedroom. They swiftly broke the one-million streams mark. 

“They’ve been getting more plays than my actual music videos!” he laughs. “And they’re just recorded with an iPhone in my room. People like seeing something raw, without the fancy production. But I get a lot of comments, like ‘I can’t believe Tom Misch has a normal bedroom!’ That’s weird. What did they expect?” 

He laughs, “OK, it’s not the nicest house to be quarantined in. I’m living with some boys from school and the place is a bit student-y with a nasty kitchen. But they’re nice boys.” 

Mr Misch might have mastered the isolation life, but What Kinda Music, which was released last month, is the product of something very different indeed: two people working together in close collaboration, vibing off each other’s ideas and following each other down tangential avenues. Mr Dayes is an inventive and adventurous percussionist who plays in Brixton “cosmodelic afro-punk” jazz group United Vibrations and his more avant-garde leanings combine with Mr Misch’s carefree, melodic nous beautifully. In a world of social distancing, it sounds preciously human. But it wasn’t planned that way. In fact, it wasn’t planned at all.

“It started off as just me and Yussef messing around in the studio,” says Mr Misch. “He’s an amazing drummer, we had a great musical connection from the get-go, but the intention was never to make an album.” 

Yet as the ideas flowed, so the material stacked up – the inventive rhythmic propulsion of its title track; the spacey Radiohead stylings of “Festival”; the elusive and experimental jazz jam that is “Kyiv”. All of them seem to evoke the hazy, low-key atmosphere of southeast London, where life is a degree less frenetic and a shade greener than everywhere else in the capital. Mr Dayes also hails from the area and it was while the pair were jamming together that Mr Misch realised that he had seen him play before – back when he was nine years old. “I suddenly remembered this talent show at school with this guy who was insane at the drums. It had to be him. Fast forward 15 years and we’re making a record together!”

The spirit of adventure on What Kinda Music is laudable, yet it’s some leap from his sunny debut album. “A lot of my fans might not like this record,” accepts Mr Misch, “but I think it’s important you evolve. I’m just going to make the music that excites me, wherever I am. The nature of collaborating means channelling someone else’s energy, and the energy of Yussef being in the room was not a particularly commercial energy.”

Besides, none of Mr Misch’s music was ever designed to be a commercial success. “I’m not really courting fame,” is how he puts it, and past interviews have revealed him to have a more than ambivalent relationship with stardom: he has expressed a longing to have a regular life without being recognised, or to pack it all in to get a degree (in geography, funnily enough). He’s even suggested that he might work in a bar. “There was a point where I just wanted to work in the Wetherspoons in Forest Hill, just for some normality,” he laughs, aware that this is probably the first time a rising musician has ever uttered those words. “I don’t think that will happen anymore – people would be asking for photos while I’m serving a beer!” 

These days, he says he’s gotten much better at accepting his status. “I avoid certain spots, like Peckham High Street on a Friday night, because it’s not really a vibe,” he says. “Most ordinary people actually wouldn’t like [being famous]... it’s kind of just a disruption. But as I get older, it’s a lot better. You’re more mature, and your listeners are more mature, too.” 

Indeed, one of his listeners is so mature that he was once the actual American president: in 2018, President Obama chose Mr Misch’s “Disco Yes”, a breezy collaboration with Ms Poppy Ajudha from Geography, as one of his standout tracks on his traditional end-of-year playlist. “Yeah, that was cool,” says Mr Misch, unfazed as ever. “It was more the sort of thing my parents were excited about. It’s the kind of thing you go, ‘Hey, look at this, Mum and Dad!’”  

Music has been a part of Mr Misch’s life ever since he was four years old, when his dad “forced” him to play the violin. Mr Misch ran through the grades, sang in choirs and picked up the guitar along the way. Then, when he was in his mid-teens, one of his sister’s ex-boyfriends introduced him to legendary producer J Dilla: “I started making beats and got obsessed,” he says.  

It wasn’t long before people were getting similarly obsessed with Mr Misch’s own creations – at night, he would post them online and watch as his SoundCloud numbers racked up and music blogs started to froth. “I was still in sixth form, so it was very exciting,” he says. “It was the dream as a creator, to make music and on that same night put it out and get instant feedback. I can’t do that now. I can’t make something and drop it the same night. It takes months to do a proper release.” 

He sounds frustrated by the constraints of the music industry: “Yeah, because when you make something, you’re excited about it in that moment. Three months later, you could be sick of it.”

To try and gain some control, he’s kept things independent, releasing music on his own Beyond The Groove label (What Kinda Music is released in partnership with Blue Note). It’s his own way of doing things, but then much of Mr Misch’s career has always been somewhat unique. He quit a degree in jazz guitar at the prestigious Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Greenwich after just seven months because he found it dull – “You need to learn about 1930s jazz, but I just wanted to play stuff I was into. I didn’t want to put the work in when I was already doing what I wanted to be doing.” And while most people might play their first live show to three family members and the barman’s dog, Mr Misch’s debut on the stage was a sold-out show at the Bussey Building in south London. “That was pretty scary,” he admits. “But before that, I’d done some DJing… and my first show DJing was at Parklife [Festival] in front of 10,000 people!” 

From huge festival crowds to isolating in your bedroom – that’s not the direction stellar careers are supposed to go in. But then maybe that suits an artist who has always put musicality and integrity ahead of exposure. Besides, these are strange times, and you imagine no matter what the next few months bring, Mr Misch will have no trouble finding new ways to connect with people.