| It’s
been a while since your last album. What have you been
up to since the last Wagon Christ album?
Yes, it’s been the longest gap between
albums since I’ve started recording. I’ve
been making music, but other things got in the way a
lot, like family and things… well, not so much,
it is more labels really. I finished the next Wagon
Christ album last summer, nearly a year ago, and I said
to Ninja Tune that it was ready, but they said they
didn’t want to put out anything by me for about
a year or so. First, we were going to put it out this
summer, and then I sort of fucked up a bit and agreed
to do the Warp record this summer, so Ninja has been
put back until next April. The album will be two years
old by the time it comes out. So I have made the music,
it’s just that sometimes, labels don’t want
to release it. Ninja had everyone making records this
year, so when I said that I wanted to put my record
out this year, they said: ‘you can if you want,
but we won’t be able to support it and work very
hard for it’.
It must be quite frustrating to sit on a record
like this…
Well, it’s good because I can tweak little bits
every two or three months, load it up and listen to
it and tweak bits here and there, so in some ways it’s
good. I’ve done loads of Rephlex stuff as well.
Coming up, I’ve got the Amen Andrews, drum’n’bass
stuff, Kerrier District, disco stuff… So I’ve
been making loads of music really, it’s just that
labels are a bit slow. Kerrier District is the area
I grew up. It’s a bit like Metro area, not similar
music, but Metro area is the surrounding area of New
York I think, and Kerrier District is the equivalent
for Cornwall. It’s just a stupid name I thought
(laughs). The Kerrier District stuff is pretty cheesy
disco. I don’t think many people will believe
it’s me who’s made that stuff. It doesn’t
sound anything like me. Just grooves, simple disco grooves.
It sounds live, but it’s all programmed to sound
like old disco.
Where do all these influences come from?
It’s just different moods. Maybe, I’ll
be doing mostly drum’n’bass, and then I
can’t stand doing drum’n’bass, so
I have to do something different, so I’ll get
to do disco for a bit, and after two or three months,
I’ll be like, I can’t do anymore disco,
so I’ll do some hip-hop. I just like doing something
for a little bit. Sometimes, I’ll do one drum’n’bass
track, then the next track is hip-hop. Sometimes every
track is different. I just need to keep myself amused.
I do get into periods when I do loads and loads of drum’n’bass
or loads of hip-hop, but my record releases don’t
reflect that. All I try to do is keep myself amused
when I’m working, make it fun for myself. If something’s
not fun, I’ll just stop, do something else, and
get back to it when it seems more fun. It’s hard
for remixes that way. It’s not fun, but you have
to do it. It’s like an essay, you usually leave
it to the last minute, and then you have to rush.
Do you ever sit down and say ‘I’m
going to do a drum’n’bass or hip-hop track'?
Sometimes, but not usually. Usually I just
start playing around and something comes from that,
or I’ve got one sample, like, quite often, I’ll
buy a CD, like today (Luke and I arranged to meet in
Rough Trade in Covent Garden), one or two of these CDs
will probably have some samples and I’ll be using
that as a starting point. It’s a bit like jamming,
that’s the first bit, then I’ll add something
else, and something else, and go back and change the
first thing. It’s really nice with new computer
technology because you can have a hundred unfinished
tracks at the same time and you keep going between them.
With my old Atari set up, years ago, I had to start
a track, then work on it and finish it. I couldn’t
load up another one at the same time because all my
settings would have to be changed. It’s really
nice that all the settings are inside the computer.
It’s really new for me. It’s only been two
or three years since I’ve had a proper computer.
And I can work anywhere. I’ve got it with me today,
and I can work on the bus or something, not that I’d
do it in London.
What are your influences? Obviously there’s
a strong hip-hop influence in your work…
Yeah, it feels like my base, just because it’s
been the style that I’ve liked for the longest,
knowing that it was a style… when I was young,
I just liked pop, you know, I’d listen to the
radio, I’d liked some records in the chart. Prince
I liked a lot, a few things like that. But hip-hop was
the first thing I really liked, so it’s my biggest
influence in a way. Biggest after Prince, because I’ve
like him for so long that he’s probably my biggest
influence. Same with Grant (Wilson-Claridge, co-founder
of Rephlex with Richard D. James). That’s how
we met and we got together at school. We were in the
Prince fan club. We went to the same school, but we
didn’t know each other, so we’d arranged
to meet in some room somewhere…
Would you say that hip-hop influences you in
all your work?
Yes. It’s hard to quantify how your influences
go into your work. I think in a way that really bad
stuff influences me more than stuff I like. I always
know what I don’t want to do. Sometimes I’ll
make something and then I’ll go ‘oh no,
I don’t like that’ and I change it. I don’t
really know what I want until I play around and I find
something that I don’t want, and then I’ll
change it and it’ll be like ‘oh yeah, I
like that’. Sometimes I’ll have big ideas,
but usually, it’s just playing around searching
for something that sounds good.
You were one of the very first one to heavily
mix hip-hop and electronic together. What do you think
of the work of people like Prefuse 73 or the Anticon
crew?
I think it wicked. I kind or wish I was young
and starting now in a way, because there was not much
things to listen to when I started, which was good in
a way, but me and Aphex and a couple of friends who
haven’t gone on to be successful, we used to make
our own music in Cornwall because it was all sort of
boring. There was nothing we could really listen to
except Radio 1. There were no clubs in Cornwall until
1991, and that was the ones we started because it was
just so quiet and boring down there. So I think it was
good for us definitely, for the kind of music we’d
make, because we just had to discover it I suppose,
but I always feel a bit jealous of the kids today, or
even kids who’ll grow up in twenty or fifty years
time, because the later you grow up the more stuff you
have to listen to, especially with dance music. It was
so new when we were making it. It was really nice in
a way not to have any rules, just play around. Now,
it’s nicer in other ways just because you can
draw on so many more influences. Prefuse, his stuff
sounds so cool. The production of it, whether you like
the music or not, the beats… it’s all nicely
produced, and no one could have done that ten years
ago. Sometimes I wish my first record could have sounded
like that, because mine sounded shit…
How would you say the scene has changed or
evolved since you released your first record?
There’s so many little bits of it, so
many little scenes nowadays. I like not to think about
it at all really. I just do what I do. It’s hard
to think how fractured and big it’s become. I
still sort of feel the same as I did ten years ago when
there was acid house and drum’n’bass. There
are so many different genres within genres now I can’t
keep up really. I think the electronic scene is pretty
healthy though. It’s nice that bands are starting
to form with electronics. I always felt a bit guilty
and sorry for bands really, because I come from a band
background, playing drums, bass, guitar, singing…
I felt a bit guilty that I helped destroying bands because
there weren’t any bands for such a long time in
England. There was Oasis, Blur, The Verve… not
many at all. I don’t worry about electronic music
because I know it’s here forever, but I worried
more about bands. If you’ve got a really good
band, it’s so much more interesting than one guy
with a computer. You can have some amazing stuff with
one guy and a computer and other people playing live
stuff.
You were talking about your connection with
Richard D James earlier. Why do you think there was
such a concentration of people in Cornwall who started
playing a kind of music that no one else was playing?
I don’t know. I’m sure there were
people doing similar things everywhere else… We
were quite influenced by Aphex. He was like, THE man,
in Cornwall. I started making electronic music in 1989
when I went to Sixth Form College with my friend Jeremy
Simmonds, and I hadn’t heard of Richard then.
We were in a band before that, a bit like the Stone
Roses, Madchester kind of bollocks. We had this guy
who was about thirty when we were twenty. He was the
singer. He sung Beatles kind of things, and we would
just make them funky. Then we got bored of carrying
around the drum kit and stuff and just started making
stuff in Jeremy’s bedroom because he’d just
got a four-track recorder. Then we started hearing Aphex’s
stuff shortly after, like 1990. It wasn’t Aphex
Twin then, it was just Richard. People used to pass
his tapes around saying: ‘listen to this, it’s
fucking mad’ and we’d listen and it was
like, 'Jesus!'… it was so advanced at the time.
It was probably stuff that was like Selected Ambient
Works Vol. 1. They all sounded a bit mellow and
funky at the time. He was a really big influence. We
were just starting to do stuff in our bedrooms, and
his stuff sounded like he’d been working in his
bedroom all his life. Also, he was the first person
I knew who’d released music he’d made in
his bedroom. That was really mind blowing for me. It
seems such a small thing now, but at the time I didn’t
think you could release music you’d made in your
bedroom. I thought you’d make music in your bedroom
and that would just be a demo, and then you’d
go to a big studio, work with fucking horrible engineers,
all that classic image. It was amazing to be there at
the time. I don’t think it’s got anything
to do with Cornwall, except that it was quiet and boring,
and we didn’t have any scene shoved down our throat
like you get in London. In Cornwall there was nothing.
You’d have to do it yourself. We didn’t
have enough money to come up to London, so we just stayed
there. I wouldn’t move back there, it’s
a nice place, but… Richard still feels Cornish.
I asked him the other day: ‘do you feel Cornish?’
and he was like, ‘yeah, of course’.
Would you be tempted to work with him?
We do work loads. Nearly every time I see him,
we make music together. We just have no interest in
releasing anything, and it’s not really good for
releasing because we just jam and play around with all
his gear. He’s got the most amazing studio, so
we play around. Some stuff we play sounds quite interesting,
but it always goes on for about half an hour. Every
so often, we’ll be like, let’s edit some
of these tracks, make them into proper tracks that people
can listen to, but you can’t really do it. Just
the way we play around. We never sat down and said 'let’s
do something'. We just play around. Same with Squarepusher.
We’ve done tracks with Tom, I’ve done tracks
with Mike Paradinas, everyone’s done tracks together,
but usually they’re not as good, or at least as
focused as our own stuff. They’re messy and big…
Someday , I’d like to shove them out on the internet,
but I wouldn’t want to make money out of them,
you know, like ‘this is Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert’,
because they’re just not that good. If I was to
release a track with Richard, it’d have to be
better than something I can do, or better than something
he could do, or maybe not better but something unique.
Since 1992 that we’ve been working together, I’ve
got about three data tapes full of tracks we’ve
done, but usually they’re about half an hour long
and messy…
So no projects like the Mike & Rich album
then?
It’s a great album. That’s exactly
what I meant. I think if they hadn’t done that
record, I would have been more into releasing stuff
that I’ve done with Mike and Richard, but that
record is so good that unless I was making something
that was that good or better, I wouldn’t want
to release it. I love that record. I think it’s
a classic example of why it’s good when people
work together. Mike couldn’t have done that record,
Richard couldn’t have done that record. Only Mike
& Rich could have done that record.
Have you ever been tempted to work with rappers?
Yeah, I have done. I’ve only ever released
two 12” with rappers, on Big Dada (the first two
releases from the Ninja Tune sister label), with two
British guys (Alpha Prhyme and Asylum). It was alright,
it was fun. I’ve done loads of other stuff that
I haven’t released. The only thing I know is that
I think I’m going to release a whole album that
I’ve done with this MC called Blu Rum 13, who
works with Vadim and a few other people. We did a whole
record, but it’s quite old now, we still haven’t
released it. It’s like my Ninja record. We kind
of tweak it every so often, change little bits. I’d
love to work with a famous MC as well, that’d
be really cool. With some American guy like Q-Tip or
something, it’d be wicked. It cost loads of money
though. I did use to want a remix when I was on Virgin.
I remember asking if I could get a DJ to remix one of
my tracks, and they called him and it was $20,000 to
do the mix. Most of these guys are like that…
‘sure, I’d like to work with you, and that’ll
be $100,000’. You have to find nice people who
don’t have record deals and work with them. I
think the record with Blu Rum will come out at some
point though.
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