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 - www.leafcutterjohn.co.uk
 

Email interview done between 19 February and 1 March.
themilkman

For more information on Leafcutter John, visit the Leafcutter John and Planet Mu web sites.
Thank you John for providing the photos.
© themilkfactory.co.uk 2001