How did you come to
music?
I think music just came to me, at first I didn't go
out and look for it. As a kid I used to enjoy listening
to my dad's records (a collection of prog-rock and classical).
I also had a fisher-price tape player with three tapes;
a chart hits tape, a Puff The Magic Dragon story tape,
and a tape with the 2001 theme music which I almost
wore out through repeated listening. When I was about
7 I learned the acoustic guitar and the piano but never
made much progress as I was never interested in reading
music or learning the names of notes. I used to love
just messing about and making simple compositions. At
school I remember feeling really frustrated, I never
got into the orchestra due to my lack of academic musical
knowledge which meant that I never got my hands on anything
more exciting than a recorder or
a shitty casio keyboard.
As a teenager I got an electric guitar and learned how
to play it from books and friends - for a few years
I was in a succession of indie bands with silly names.
We were never any good but had a great time playing
gigs in pubs and dingy bars in my home town, Wakefield.
How does your past as a folk musician affects your
music today?
I think the music I release is still a kind of folk
music - if folk music is about people telling stories.
I still make tracks with just voice and guitar because
it can be very quick to make music this way, and at
the start this is all I had.
What is the turning point that made you swap the
guitar for computers?
When I got my first computer I realised that I could
use it to make almost any type of music that I wanted.
So I spent a year or so learning how to use it and trying
to find out what I wanted to do with it. At this time
I was at art school and being exposed to all kinds of
new ideas and music, I realised that I didn't want to
make 'pure' paintings, sculpture, music or whatever.
I don't consider my stuff pure computer music. I always
have to mix up styles and influences and use sounds
from all sorts of sources. I get ideas from all over
the place, the computer is just used to bring these
elements together.
You're father is a painter, and you have studied
art yourself. How do you think this is reflected in
your music? How does art influences your work?
My farther died when I was about 12 and I always felt
that it would be a good thing to follow in his footsteps
and become a painter myself. After about a year at art
school I realised that painting was not for me - I was
quite good at it but there is more to life than just
being technically good at something. I started making
performance pieces and sound works, which were much
more satisfying to me because I could communicate with
an audience directly and be quite spontaneous. I think
some of the things that happened during my arts education
helped to form my ideas about what art should and shouldn't
be and it's during this time that I began to develop
my own tastes in music. To me art and music are the
same thing, it's just easy to call sound on a CD music,
and a painting art - but they might be talking about
the same thing. The most important thing to me is the
communication part of the equation. The medium and style
are less important.
You name Chasm, Richard D James or the pioneers
of the music concrète movement as your influences.
In what way do you think their work has had an influence
on yours?
I've got a bit of a soft spot for Richard Hampson's
work as Chasm & Main - He actually responded to
an advert for collaborators which I put in Loot when
I first came to London. We met up and he totally inspired
me, not just
his music but his attitude to it's making and composition.
We worked together for a little while and I think I
learned a lot from him in that time. It was Robert who
introduced me to the work of Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer
and a whole host of concrete and electroacoustic composers
who have influenced my composition. I also felt that
Robert took me seriously as a composer which gave me
the confidence I needed to experiment with stuff when
I made Concourse EEP. When you listen to the
record and I think you get the feeling that it is an
experiment more than a neat and beautifully finished
piece of music.
I liked Aphex's music as soon as I heard it, he has
a knack for soaking up a whole variety of different
ideas and combining very accessible elements with other
more weird components. He's not really a huge influence
on me though, and I don't know him very well - I just
like his tunes.
How did you come to record for Planet Mu?
I made a demo and played it to my friend Neil who has
a great record collection and he suggested a few record
labels to try. So I sent out a few copies of my demo.
Within a few weeks I'd received about ten 'we have listened
to your demo but....' messages, which I'd been expecting.
After about another two weeks, Mike (ED: Paradinas,
head of Planet Mu and man behind µ-ziq) e-mailed
me saying that he'd listened to the demo and liked the
last few tracks (the ones I thought were a bit too weird).
He encouraged me to write some more tracks and these
made up the recordings on my first Planet Mu release
Concourse EEP.
How would you describe your music?
I wouldn't try and describe the music I make - that's
why I make sounds and not text, If you listen to it
it will describe itself. If your looking for somewhere
to place my records in your collection file under 'un-pop'.
You are relatively new to the electronic music scene,
although your compositions sound very confident. How
do you explain this?
I have received a lot of support from other artists
which certainly gives me the confidence to try different
things out. I think being on Planet Mu has helped me
too. During the time I've known Mike he's really supported
me and helped me develop what I'm doing, I don't think
I would have made Microcontact without the
support I have received from him.
Is there a concept behind Microcontact?
It's not really a concept album.
Untitled 9 is quite different from the
rest of Microcontact, as it is a more 'conventional'
electro track than the rest, which flirts more with
electroacoustic. Was it composed at the same time as
the rest of the album?
This track was written at the same time as all the others
on Microcontact - there was a fair bit of discussion
regarding it's inclusion on the album - Mike liked it
but I thought it sounded a little out of place. Mike
and I spent about three months getting the tracks into
the right order, we decided to put track 9 where it
is as a kind of wake up call. I'm glad we put it on
there because it's good fun and features vocal samples
of my friends Tomoko and Sabastian. When I listen to
track 9 all I can think about is recording the vocals
with them messing about in my studio, It was the most
enjoyable part of the making of Microcontact.
Can you take us behind the process of creating a
track?
Of course each track I make is different and I try to
vary the ways I make tracks. Quite often I start by
recording a load of sound samples using my studio mic's,
contact pickups, and minidisc recorder for field recordings.
Then I put the sounds into my computer and sampler and
take it from there, building passages using a basic
audio/midi sequencer and putting those passages together
to form tracks. It's fucking boring to talk about but
nice to do if you are a bit anal like me.
You organise sonic workshops in art galleries. What
happens during these sessions, and how do you use the
work collected?
I know it's not very rock'n'roll but I think education
is really important, I'm not a qualified teacher so
I teach in the way I wish I'd could have been taught
when I was at school. The workshops are usually based
on the way I work. So I'll take a group of kids, give
them all minidisc recorders and mic's and let them loose.
They decide what sort of sounds they want to record
and what to do with them afterwards, I'm just there
to introduce them to the possibilities open to them.
My next workshop is based in a lighthouse - I'd really
like to stick contact pickups all over it and turn it
into a huge microphone but we'll have to see what the
kids come up with.
What is your opinion on the electronic music scene
today? What do you listen to?
I'm not really the right person to ask about this, I
go for months without listening to other peoples music.
Of the new stuff I've heard I go through phases of loving
stuff one minute and hating it the next. In my good
books at the moment are; Hrvatski, Electric Company,
Matmos, Hellfish & producer, Llewellyn Ap Gruffydd,
Palace Brothers/Will Oldham, Kid606, Blectum From Blechdom,
Janeck Schaefer, Venitian Snares, Speedranch, Queen,
and a few other bits and pieces.
Musicians use the Internet more and more, and you
have just launched a web site. Do you think there are
other ways for you to use the net?
Musicians throughout history have adopted the latest
technologies in order to pursue their creative ideas,
and I think the Internet is on the verge of becoming
a useful tool. At the moment most of us, in the UK at
least, are stuck with slow & expensive connections
which limits the amount of stuff we can do. As soon
as we get high speed connections and cheap call time
I think we'll see all kinds of shit going on. Having
said that just a simple thing like e-mail has revolutionised
the way I work and I'm just getting to grips with having
the web site which was made for me by Graham Voice,
who did the Jega site. One of the features we have just
completed is a page where you can go to download sound
samples which were made as part of a radio project I
did with Kicks, an independent radio show in Belgium.
The idea is simply that people can come to my site,
download the sound samples and make a composition using
the sounds. All the compositions will be featured on
the site and the best ones played on the radio and made
into a CD. It's not exactly cutting edge use of the
technology but it's the sort of thing that would be
really difficult without the web.
Where does 'Leafcutter' come from?
Leafcutting is my own special dance step, I'm thinking
of putting full details for it's practice and regional
variations on my website.
Email interview done between 19 February
and 1 March 2001.
Thank you John for providing the photos. |
