On a more serious note, I am also getting some packages ready for a video art piece about the Black Death I did with a dance company in Edinburgh. That is called Leg Across My Skin which is an anagram of “Mary Kings Close” – the location of the film. The film is being screened in Canada soon. I spend most of my time just trying to look after myself and the art sometimes has to take a back seat. It will still be there when I feel better ! (As I write Ken is now doing the entire Beatles back catalogue whilst letching at the women on Neighbours)…

How did you come to film making in the first place? Can you tell us about your career behind the camera?
When I was 8 years old, I had two epiphanies. One was that death is a real event, and two, that cinema is wonderful, emotional and a naïve form of immortality. I was obsessed with super 8 cameras and video. But even at this stage there was always a healthy distraction in other areas. I wouldn’t get involved with narrative and this has never been my strong point even though I was reasonably good with words. I remember doing a kind of Blair Witch thing when I was 14 and I would get sidetracked into filming the shapes of the leaves and the sound of the wind. Then I realised that the material didn’t make sense, in the conventional sense. My family have watched my messed up art evolve over the years… I am the weird sheep of the family and I haven’t had a straight linear path into an evolving career like some of my peers. They usually make video films, then 16mm shorts, then a 35mm short, then a bit for telly, then maybe a feature... I have gone video, abstract sound, music, directing documentary and just before I fell ill I was writing a feature idea, a western that has taken me three years so far to collate. I have to work much much slower than regular folks who don’t have M.E.

I presumed, stupidly, that the best way into filmmaking was through education. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I went through four colleges and the best bit of advice I ever heard was from Kubrick : “Go outside. Film 30 different things. Edit them in a different order.” Brilliant.

It’s an ego thing wanting to be a director – an auteur, unless you have an altruistic motivation I suppose – so I guess I was trying to stop dying, or somehow investing in my own immortality. I have lightened up a lot since I got ill and not worried so much about making my “defining cinematic moment” and I have decided that more collaborative art forms are more beneficial for me. Filmmaking is wonderful, but it suits a particular kind of artist. I need to be having creative satisfaction every single day. Being ill is a bit like people in prison. Prisoners sometimes get the chance to do Open University courses or to use the “enforced retreat” to learn about Spanish. I did my art and music in my cell-like cupboard.

What is you best souvenir as a filmmaker?
Without a doubt, filming killer whales at St. Kilda – a very remote island, 8 hours from Scotland’s west coast. I went there with my girlfriend Sarah in 1994 and it’s an amazing place. You have to go with the army. I also have some lovely audio and video trophies from working in the American wilderness…

You’ve worked on a film about Scanner. Did you actually meet Robin Rimbaud? What was he like? Was he one of your “heroes”?
I wouldn’t say he was one of my heroes, it was more the fact I was pitching an idea for The South Bank Show and Robin fitted the bill because he gives good interview. It was either going to be him or Autechre, who are my heroes. The problem in doing a South Bank Show on Autechre is that although they can be incredibly eloquent and intelligent – they would prefer to remain out of the eye of the camera. Robin is a nice guy though and I really enjoyed working with him. I also directed one of his promos when he was signed to a thrash metal label in Sheffield. The track was a collaboration with Si Cut (Db) called Michael Jackson so I could say to people I was doing a Michael Jackson promo and it wouldn’t be a lie…

Social Electrics includes a short film, No One Sees Black. Can you tell us about the story behind it?
It’s that old chestnut death really. It’s also a reaction to the fact that films made in Scotland are either about wee bonnie kids or abuse or Scottishness on the sleeve. What could be more universal than death? We are crap at death in this country. We don’t die very well and we don’t care for the dying very much. So I made a tiny film about some of the images that may or may not be the last visions of this man. It’s not 100% successful but I have a soft spot for it. It’s total freedom working in this way. You see pictures and you hear sounds. It’s abstract. We don’t have a problem with abstract music so much, but abstract filmmaking grates people, so it’s nice to be the fly in the ointment… The film was 50% improvised and was shot by a great cinematographer – my flatmate Ken (the guy that fancies the women on Neighbours)…

Where did you get the Bovine Life name? Has it got any specific meaning?
Sure. I made a film in 1994 called The Sound Of Taransay – before The BBC went to make Castaway 2000 there on this Scottish island. I fell in love with the idea that highland cows were somehow spiritual animals, slowly hoovering up grass and the machair all day, wise sage-like sentient animals… so I named my production company Digital Cow Productions. The film was shot in Harris, which is just beautiful… and Bovine Life comes from that. If you see a Digital Cow Productions, it’s my film work. Bovine Life is always my musical side. But since I got ill, I was pursuing a Bovine Life, like a slow motion human… so that was it…

How did you come to music? Bip-Hop.com implies that you turned to music after contracting Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, as it had become too difficult for you to carry on making film, but was music always at the back of your mind? How did the whole Social Electrics project start?
I always worked on the periphery of music. I made my living as a documentary film maker and artist and never really had the courage to do my own stuff, until I met the right people to inspire me, like Sushil K Dade AKA Future Pilot AKA. I had worked on programmes with musicians for a long time so it was just the confidence to say “I am a music maker” that really got it going. That and the Net. Social Electrics began as a net research project. I was funded by Edinburgh College of Art staff development fund to research the use of the net in a collaborative manner. So I made friends with strangers and, like Sushil says, “just contact your heroes. Sometimes they say yes !” Sushil also promotes the idea of travel without moving. Ideal for when you can’t move much!

Social Electrics is quite a complex record in the way it deals with sound structures. Was it deliberate?
Yes, it was for me to kind of work out where my interests lay. I wanted to use my collaborations to learn about all the different types of electronic sound being made all over the world. I just plugged in and learned. It was also to have a bigger sound. You know how the net sometimes joins machines together for the SETI project and so on, well, my idea was to increase the availability of tones, timbres and noise from other folks’ unique studio set ups for my own project…

Now, through this process, my own voice and real interests are coming out. I think the next album is going to be a reaction against the last one. And it won’t be so eclectic… or will it?! 

Where do you get inspiration? On your album, there are signs of hip-hop, electro or electro-acoustic even. What would you say your influences are?
The Mego label was inspiring and I met Alku (Opopopp) through Mego. I liked their attitude being a cross between high art and dysfunctional hard drives. On another tip in Cologne, Wolfgang Voigt is wonderful. A real subtle style of artist, I wish I could get a collaboration going with him. It’s not for the lack of trying. His Gas project is amazing. Take track 5 off POP for example. I listen to it every night before bed and it’s different every time. I swear it changes every time. His stuff is so deceptively simple – just layers of thick dense matter. Huge swabs of sound are compressed to form this dense ambience. Meditative stuff. Part of you wants him to do more with them, but you know they’d be ruined if he did more… Autechre are total heroes. I know this is hardly original for me to say that. For me the last track of Envane is the favourite piece for me. I think they were stronger before they got too DSP obsessed. Confield is a good, if not great, piece of work, but like Aphex, there’s so much “fuck you” in their music these days. It’s a very male thing as well, just look at the kind of people that turn up to their gigs. I couldn’t see one lass in Edinburgh! They’ve lost a bit of sensitivity. Maybe artists need to do that to evolve, and that’s useful, but their recent live stuff has been a bit compositionally weak for me. People follow them like sheep. I have a soft spot for string quartet and I am a huge Gavin Bryars fan. He has some great ideas, but I am not fond of his recent output. I used to love early Nyman too, when they performed live it was earth shattering. God, I sound terrible, citing artists’ “early stuff!” Edinburgh is terrible for live music; Glasgow is a million times better.

Anyway, here’s a list of 21 artists I like also : Nobakazu Takemura, Kristen Hersh (see Murder Misery And Goodnight), REM (UP is the best work), Steve Reich, Wim Mertens, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Grandaddy, Sigur Ros, Matmos (The West is superb), Philip Jeck (vinyl Coda 4 is incredible), Four Tet – I really like his home recording ethic, it’s incredibly well produced. I like hip hop, Cloudead are great, I am just getting into Nick Cave believe it or not! Both Murder Ballads and And No More Shall We Part – both wonderful. Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn moves me, Biosphere can be good when he is not over sequencing, Boxharp are a new project to me – a wonderful combination of field recordings and alt alt alt country, Pan Sonic are great and pure, I love their beats more than their sketches, I mean I could cite trendier examples to impress you and your readers, but when it comes down to it I am as likely to put Morrissey on the stereo as some Cologne drift music. That said the Germans do it well. Arovane, Vlad Delay and Frank Bretscheider. I have just finished an album with Frank actually out very soon on Bip-Hop…

What equipment do you use to create music?
As little as possible ! I use an Apple G4, loads of field recordings, PEAK, Cubase, Loads of patches and virtual instruments and the brilliant HALion. I find Logic too programmer-ish, but I am a bit impatient like that. A load of purists will diss me for being a Cubase user but I have to say I am just used to the interface. I wish I could do this stuff without a computer and I am actually moving into production that only needs minimal tweaking on the computer, or just mixing. More “real” stuff. The computer makes me very ill. I want to work less with machines, but still make interesting music… I like the idea that the people I tend to like know a piece of gear really well and do not try and master a whole suite of stuff. It’s a bit like the Squarepusher story. He knows his sampler and bass really well… I find that I work best when I keep things simple.

How did you work with all your collaborators? Did you give them “carte blanche” or was it more of a collaborative effort?
It was often (but not always) my mixing with their source, but the upcoming Frank Bretschneider release was done very equally – a mutual thing. We sent 5 tiny mps across the net and worked with them, then we reworked the collabs. I was amazed when he agreed to work with me. The Kohn tracks were done with him remixing me. The Third Eye Foundation tracks were made by me remixing Matt Elliot’s recent output with his help.

How did you get in touch with these people?
Mainly email. That’s it. Just ask them! As I say, sometimes they say yes! 

You released Social Electrics on French label Bip-Hop. How did you come to work with them?
I think Bip-Hop were the only label that didn’t mess me around, they didn’t promise things they couldn’t deliver and so on. Bip-Hop is a genuine label run by Philippe Petit - a guy with his heart definitely in the right place. I was recommended to them by KRAAK – Kohn’s label… and the rest is history! In some ways I think Bip-Hop is finding it’s feet and its “sound” but it’s a great ride along the way… Scratch that, maybe Bip-Hop’s strength is going to be its eclecticism… I mean, I love labels with a definite identity like Mille Plateaux, but I am less likely to buy from them now that I know what they are like… sometimes that’s a good thing, and I contradict myself here, as a lot of the Gas stuff is on that label, and that rarely changes – and that’s what the label is all about anyway – more a singular ride. In some senses newer labels are able to learn from the mistakes of the established ones, but they are presented with a new set of problems too – everyone wants to have their own label. But I liked the fact I could find a Bip-Hop release in Edinburgh, and that was good enough for me.

Is Social Electrics still a work in progress, or are you moving from the framework adopted here?
Social Electrics will return as a net-only project probably, but I will be releasing the next Bovine Life release as a more sensitive solo project. I need to get better through and with sound. I am ill a lot of the time and it takes me an aeon to make stuff that sounds reasonably good. Sometimes a lack of energy means I am able to make decisions about composition more easily as I have only about an hour a day to work on material…I want the next release to be more organic and single minded. Having said that, the net will still be a massive part of my musical life. I have to be careful not to turn into a computer tosser though. I try and meet real people whenever I can. They are much nicer than virtual ones.

There are obvious differences between filmmaking and playing music, but I also suppose that there are some similarities in the way you can express feelings or ideas, and both medium are very often complimentary. What do you find in both art forms?
When I was a filmmaker, I was always promoting off the cuff work. Improvising and so on. Randomness. I think that’s an obvious parallel to the compositional process. I always made pretty wacky stuff, even for TV – so it was no accident that music making wasn’t a big leap. I had always used music in really up front ways in my film work anyway, so it was a small step to turn the pictures off. I mean, there’s a whole history of this “invisible soundtrack” stuff and that’s been going on since film began to have an influence on music. There’s nothing new with this idea. Just ask Aaron Copland.

What are you listening to at the moment? 
Generally speaking I am making an effort to find less abrasive music at the moment, but this list is pretty average for a week’s listening…

Gas: Zauderberg 
Vincent Gallo: When
Kelly Howell’s Deep Sleep Frequency Tape
Zen As Eternal Life (six tapes on Zeb)
Cray – Undo (forthcoming on Bip-Hop)
Steve Reich: New York Counterpoint
Susumu Yakota: Grinning Cat
Expanding Records: EVS Series
Four Tet: Pause
Kate Bush: Hounds Of Love (only really for the wonderful track Watching You Without Me – I would die for a collaboration with her)
Wim Mertens: Maximising The Audience
Matmos: A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure
Meditation Instruction: Sogyal Rinpoche
De La Soul: 3 Feet High & Rising (remastered)
Aphex Twin: Drukqs
Gescom: Assorted napster downloads (when it was good)
Pulse Programming: Pulse Programming
Farmers Manual: Explorers
Tennis: Europe On Horseback
Björk: Vespertine
Master P: Ghetto D
Fargo Soundtrack
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing (I keep coming back to this every few weeks… Brilliant…)

Does your disease affect the way you work in anyway? I mean, do you think it influences your work?
Absolutely. M.E. makes my sounds quite abrasive and uncompromising. But it’s changing. I have woken up and realised that my music affects metabolism as well as my daily healing (and hearing) process, energy and so on. This is why I have to get out of my digital editing hell. The act of making it on a computer has big implications for health – for healthy folks too. Maybe in a few years time Kid 606 will find that his glitches cause internal reactions. We reap what we sow. I have to get healthy. I think that a lot music made by the static folks around at the moment (Vlad Delay, Janek Schaefer, Pole – maybe Philip Jeck) has something alive and healthy in it somewhere… There’s been times when I have considered my illness as a gift because I have much lower tolerances to stuff – I can sense how healthy it is likely to be. I like life. I want to be healthy. If I can’t be well, I can at least have a healthy outlook and music making is part of that…

Have you ever released any music prior to Social Electrics, or have you thought of it?
Not really. Only on the net and with net folks, but I was talking to Christopher Murphy about this – he runs the excellent Fallt site, (www.fallt.com) and we were saying that there’s as much discipline on some net releases as on “real” releases. Now Napster is down, and I am truly sad about it, we are looking once again to more traditional means of getting our music. When I released stuff online I did it for free and even if that meant sweet talking bigger names like The Third Eye Foundation. I did it all for free. I even paid to have a massive advert in The Wire advertising my collabs for free. We got 10,000 hits in a week! Fantastic. All for free. That honeymoon has gone, but I really like the idea of doing more nice stuff on the web. There was a spirit of openness online a year or two ago. It shall be again! 

Do you think you will ever go back to filmmaking?
Well, funny you should ask really because I am about to go to Amsterdam to the Documentary Film Festival to present my audio and video collabs with The Northern Region Film & Television Archive. I have been kind of film making over the last six months, remixing this archive. By the way, if anyone is interested in finding out more about this project go to www.tees.ac.uk/artist But to be quite honest, I am excited in the short term by making the net a place for documentary projects. More people see my work online anyway!!! I would be really interested in doing something about the Wild West online as I lived in The West of America for a lot of 1998 just before I fell ill. I cannot imagine I am going to be well enough to go back to film making proper anyway in the short term. There will be a CD released of the archive stuff available to organisations only I am afraid. Mail me for more info. It would be great to be working on major TV stuff again or larger scale projects, but at the moment, I struggle with staying well, making ends meet and still making work. Work helps but it also takes over… having said all that, I LOVED making films.

Can you tell us a bit more about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis? Is it treatable, how does it affect you on a day-to-day basis, etc…
I’ll talk about this only because there’s so much ignorance about the illness, so forgive me if I sound like a malingerer.

M.E. is a much maligned and VERY REAL illness. It had such a bad press from under diagnosis to misdiagnosis - now everyone who is a bit tired thinks they have it. Some doctors liken it as the opposite to the way the HIV virus works as M.E. people have very over active immune systems causing a lot of problems. There is much discussion as to whether it is an autoimmune problem or a nervous system dysfunction. Or both. 

But consider this. Nearly 1% of the population has it in some form and of that 1% - a quarter of them are semi-permanently bed bound. The rest of those numbers struggle also. The medical establishment knows there is a problem but M.E. people often look healthy and their blood tests usually come back normal. People do die because of it in extreme cases. Last year there were suicides in the UK from the condition – mainly due to hopelessness. In most cases they struggle to get benefits. I lost my day job of teaching at a university through it.

It’s not just tiredness, it’s a condition which is like having flu constantly – aches, head pain, fibromyalgia and lymph node pain, lethargy, stomach problems, IBS… and every patient is different…

With me, it’s mainly chronic fatigue and lymph pain and headaches most of the day, but with a lot of cognitive problems and memory fogginess. Stomach problems also, and many food intolerances. I can only really work one hour or two a day at full speed and that’s on a good day. I recommend the excellent charity ACTION FOR M.E. for more info at www.afme.org.uk - they have some better definitions.

I have come to a bit more peace about my condition over the three years – from denial, to cure, to obsession and now to some kind of resolution but it’s fucking hard work. And I am one of the lucky ones because I have a life outside of the illness, even if most of it is channelled through my G4 !
 

For more information on Chris Dooks, visit the Bip-Hop, Bovine Life and the University Of Teesside web sites.
Thank you to Chris and Philippe.

© themilkfactory.co.uk 2001