Part 2

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

It all depends, but these days I try to keep my work to the daytime hours, I used to stay up late recording and editing. I’ll start around 11am and work through to between 5 and 7pm. This is the same if I’m recording, editing, mixing or working on comics or graphics. Some days I’ll do all these things together but that’s rare. I’ve always been lucky having both my visual and sound practice, if one gets on top of me then I switch to the other but both can either feed into each other or be quite separate, but they are all part of the same world.

 
Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

Probably my first solo album was a breakthrough, I’d had these abstract images or sound structures in my mind for many years, the first tracks I made for this record came really close to these ideas I’d had floating around. The albums I’ve made with Daniel Beban under IMBOGODOM feel really special to me, we recorded three albums at BBC Bush House over a number of years before it was decommissioned. Beban used to work nights there, so we would use the empty studios and make pieces with the numerous tape machines, creating loops and recording live takes through the machines. I’d wanted to make tape music in a proper studio for years, Beban is amazing with tape techniques and studio knowledge, together we  combined songs with concrete processes that opened up avenues I’d wanted to explore for a long time. I also feel that breakthroughs can happen all the time, each new project and collaboration brings new ways of working to the fore.

 
There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

Early on with my solo work I used to often use drugs, it was very important for me to be in a heightened state of reality, my whole way of working and personality was tied to these altered states. I loved the way sound presented itself under the influence into this almost 3D experience, there’s a certain amount of rewiring that goes on with using substances that I feel has stayed with me in a positive way long after I stopped taking drugs. These days I just get on with it, starting the work is the main barrier to break and then the process of making, building or editing starts to flow. Working with the modular system can often feel quite uncreative, it’s not like playing a conventional instrument at all, but once you’ve worked through certain perimeters you can start to play it like any other instrument. Making the work is what’s most important for me these days, in the past everything had to have an almost ceremonial aspect and adhere to the world I’d built up around me. I’ve always planned far in advance either internally or in sketch books, so ideas ferment over long periods of time, these then collide with ideas and techniques that present themselves in the moment. There are different stages the work inhabits along the way, even after the works been made. I often only realise what the work is about after it’s finished. At art college I was taught, not always by tutors but by fellow students, that you should have this neat little concept tied up before even starting to make the physical work. This never worked for me, it was only after I made the work that it started to come into focus and that would influence a stream of work after that realisation.

 
Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

I used to be hung up on music coming from this place of pain and the music being a catharsis from this, it was like that for many years. But the tortured artist has limitations, and wanting to be Syd Barrett or Skip Spence is a very gloomy path to tread. These unhappy artists become idols for some and did for me for a while, but the reality of living life out of phase with the rest of humanity is a very lonely one. Of course, sound heals by its very nature - that’s what it does. It’s always been a lamp to light the way and a distraction from the everyday.

 
There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?

Influences from all over the world can be integrated into people’s work without actually copying the sound of another culture, but it’s important to acknowledge that influence, especially where there’s an imbalance of power. It’s an important discussion to have. How do you find a sensitive way to disseminate information so that people don’t feel like something has been taken from them?


Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?

I like the way sound influences strong internal visual imagery, even without the prompts of lyrical content, most instrumental music can conjure memory and creative thinking giving way to abstract thought processes. Music elevates your surroundings, sound-tracking your walk through the woods or a city, laminating with your feelings and your relationship with what’s around you. I’ve made instrumental music with strong imagery in mind and people have recounted the same or similar scenes back to me, there was still a transferal of specific intent that translated nonverbally that I find really fascinating. The space in between our minds and bodies holds a huge amount of mostly untapped information; sound is the astronaut swimming across the gulf between us, connecting not only vibrating particles to our ears, but information knitted into the fabric of time and space.

 
Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?

I’m interested in both removing myself and other people out of this world, and in placing us within the everyday. I use a lot of science fiction imagery in my work alongside surrealist modes, both cannot exist without the experience of being inside and outside of reality. You cannot bend reality without first taking it in your hands and manipulating the original form, you have to know something about both sides. I said earlier on about not really knowing what the work is about before coming to the end of a process. I titled the MICROCORPS album XMIT because I liked the look of the word and its multiple abbreviations and acronyms, also something about it looked quite alien. But it’s meaning ‘transmit’ sparked a relationship to the times we’ve been living through; the transmission of new information being both in the form of viruses and technology and all the extraneous feedback created from these sources that seem completely out of our control.
 
What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?

The unknown and unknowable.