This is a Hudson Mohawke Record

Ross Birchard's story is becoming familiar. The young Glaswegian producer plucked from one existence and sharply dropped into another, swept out of the Sub Club to work with the likes of Kanye West, Drake, and Pusha T. His phone book must read like Hot 97's calendar. Yet the featured artists on his second solo album Lantern tell of something different, something altogether smaller. "Not that the people on the record aren't all fantastic, but they're not names that distract from the album. If I had a major, major artist on there it would overshadow everything else. This is a Hudson Mohawke record."

I'd been sent Lantern a couple of weeks ahead of our interview and it's a weird album. Good weird, though. No: great weird. Exceptional weird. Singularly and brilliantly weird. It quickly became a hyperactive child set free in my iTunes library – abrasive, unruly, and impossible to leave alone. I was hammering it with friends before going out, but equally listening to it during my droopy-eyed commute.

The early work of Birchard, and contemporaries including Rustie, paved the way for current electronic music's ongoing love affair with pop and hip-hop, drenched in maximalism and high-octane drops. Yet we now live in the world of PC Music — the hyper-glossy excess is coated in folds of irony, shielding us from the vulnerability that comes with emotional honesty. Lantern refuses to play by these rules, shedding the baggage of meta-dynamics in favour of explosive and forthright optimism. The record, much like its creator, is a happy anomaly.

On the pursuit of happiness, sat opposite me in the window booth of an otherwise empty restaurant, the 29 year-old assures me his interest in harnessing the euphoric is nothing new. "It's something I've always been into. It comes from genuinely being a fan of happy hardcore, and in a completely non-ironic way. I used to sincerely listen to that kind of music without any idea of the context or the scene."

From these early influences, Birchard's desire to capture something blissful and full of joy has endured, surviving the weather of his meteoric rise. The young Glaswegian producer has had a few years loaded with world-altering encounters and projects. Such a transition, I reasoned, must have wildly altered his perspective on, well, pretty much everything. "Everything I've experienced has made me more aware of what to and what not to say in interviews." Birchard tells me, his eyes disappearing behind a loaded grin.

Much of this rise came courtesy of TNGHT, his super-trap production duo with Canadian producer Lunice. With their self-titled EP came a dizzying ascent, constant touring and a swell of high-profile interest. "We were courting offers from huge American labels, who were like 'here's a shit ton of money, go and make a record.' I feel like we could do that at any point. It would have been great for maybe a year, but then it would have run out." For a voice as distinct as Birchard's, the possibility of him being swallowed into a multi-record deal as a hit-machine is jarring. "We could have made a full TNGHT record, but every solo thing either of us released after that would've had TNGHT in brackets all over it."

"When I was first moving into that world, a lot of opportunities came along, and I was like 'fuck I'm so exhausted' but they felt too good to turn down. I had to start prioritising, I realised I couldn't just say yes to everything because I was worried the opportunity wouldn't present itself again." The whirlwind of sudden interest in his production forced Birchard into a process of impossible compromises and even more impossible schedules. "Eventually I was like, 'I'm going to have to start saying no or I won't be able to make another record. There will be no more Hudson Mohawke'."

We talk for a while about the "burning out" that this intense block of time induced. Months of live dates, interspersed with regularly producing for other artists — all the while "touring with a bunch of people who just wanted to get fucked all the time" — culminated in an unsustainable lifestyle. Birchard is cautious that we don't spend too long talking about this time, yet far from being guarded or embarrassed, he seems to see it more as irrelevant. Suddenly feeling trashy, I apologise and assure him I'm not just grabbing for debauched stories to fuel click-bait. He shrugs and offers me another grin, "stuff happens, but I don't feel the need to talk about it."

Stuff does happen, but I'm struck by how high Birchard has set the bar for "stuff". He talks of a globe-trotting work life, behind closed doors with the elite powers responsible for the most lucrative, and forward thinking, popular music of our time. "Stuff happens", as far as I see it, would best be used to describe mundane minutiae; my phone running out of battery on a night out, an accidentally over-zealous serving of ketchup, farting on the tube. But perhaps this says a lot about the few years Birchard has emerged from, a period of success saturation. A journey of such intensity, it has blurred into an exhaustive, but life-changing mess of 'stuff'.

If Lantern is the aftermath of the blur, then it certainly proves the theory that expressions of joy need a bit of darkness to push them out. "This is me as a producer, not a beat maker. It's expanding on a lot of things I've wanted to do for years. Trying to make actual songs rather than a beat." I ask, if in trying to escape beat-making, he is rejecting the party altogether? "There is a reason we put "Chimes" out as a single. Obviously I want to make party music because it is fun to DJ, but it's not what I want to put on an album. I strayed away from obvious big buildups and drops."

As we talk more about Lantern, Birchard becomes more animated, expressing a childlike enthusiasm, as though somebody else had made the record and he was its biggest fan. "I really like the song with Miguel, I love the idea of putting this ridiculous guitar solo at the end!" His pride is less like arrogance and more an ebullient excitement – it is this unbridled character that grounds the album. From the glittering majesty of "Kettles", to the gabba breakdown of "System" – a track Birchard describes as "a hard, 909, Jeff Mills, boot in the balls after all the R&B" – the album is a crystallisation of the influences, quirks, and experiments that he has collected to date.

"I feel like a lot of people only became aware of me after the TNGHT stuff, so my mission statement with this album is to open up the rest of my fan base to what I'm really into." They are in for a ride, anyone anticipating wall-to-wall club bangers won't be disappointed as much as they will be bewildered, possibly even overwhelmed.

Further demonstrating his warped perspective, Birchard starts to crack up when I raise a question about the album artwork. "We had another idea for the cover originally. It was going to be my Dad, dressed as Ronald McDonald, digging a shallow grave. But then it turned out my Dad wasn't available." I wonder what significance I should read into the image of a clown preparing a final resting place, but decide the secrets behind it are probably best left to Birchard's fruitful and relentless imagination.

The collaborating artists on the album also mark an interesting progression for the producer. For what is no doubt the most high profile Hudson Mohawke solo release, the names alongside his are relatively unknown. Save for Antony Hegarty and Miguel, the album is punctuated with features from vocalists Birchard has stumbled across and cultivated "personal relationships with", to avoid the "total ball-ache" of sending folders of music to A&R people.

Birchard seems confident on this, centralising himself as the main character on the record — not just an element utilised by a bigger name. With this has come a cautious confidence, "I'm in quite a good position, but once you start saying 'I'm exactly where I want to be', it's the beginning of the end. If there is something I want to do, and I manage to do it, then I'm constantly waiting for the next step."

Having previously noticed a Curb Your Enthusiasm reference in his Twitter bio (the TV show being a shared passion of ours), I offer the suggestion that perhaps Larry David is someone who is exactly where he wants to be, and is comfortable with that success. Birchard considers the comparison, "yeah but he is worth hundreds of millions – he made Seinfeld and now he can just get away with vanity projects!" I suggest that maybe, just maybe, those TNGHT album deals he turned down could have been his Seinfeld? Hudson Mohawke laughs in my face.

Lantern is out 16/06. Hudson Mohawke is on Twitter/Facebook/Soundcloud.

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