logo

Part 3

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?

I find there's no one way. Sometimes  if you are well fed, well slept, you’ve done everything you need to do, then you can create. But then sometimes I just can’t in that state. It’s like I need disorder or stress sometimes to work again. And it will be when I am tired, stressed, annoyed with myself that I have had a late night, or am eating badly, not getting chores done … THEN I can create. It follows no rules for me. I catch it when I can catch it.

Sometimes I need to not concentrate on it too much. Some of my best stuff is almost when I am saying EFF YOU to everything and am just chucking some things down, noise, off the cuff … a bit throwaway and only half concentrating on it … That's the stuff I come back to and go … jeez did I even do that, I can't even remember it at all. And there’s something in there, something genuine rather than - oh NOW I am sitting down to MAKE MUSIC and I am going to be organised.

I think that may be just me though! I know many people who CAN create in that way. I guess everyone is different

How is playing live and writing music in the studio connected? What do you achieve and draw from each experience personally? How do you see the relationship between improvisation and composition in this regard?

I feel the best things I do all come out of jamming. So if you can jam onstage but keep it reigned-in enough to make sense … that's the goal I guess.

I only ever performed electronic stuff live with Second Storey, and as we went along we let the sets become looser and looser, until our final concert at the last ever Bloc rave (legendary parties) we did this set (with Steve Davis the snooker star beaming down the front!) and really, we were looking at each other throughout the set at certain points and just going what the heck is this?! It was joyous and spontaneous and I don’t thing we could do it ever again like that … and there is no recording! So that is special for us and those that were there. We know it was the best gig we did. And that was after not much sleep the night before, and thinking we were going to mess it right up.

Plans going out the window can be the best thing for music or creativity I think.

I guess it's chaos vs. organisation. As the chaos comes in, you are channelling the divine, or the subconscious, or whatever you want to call it, and then you can organise it to get it over to other people, either as a release or a performance. Unless of course you enter the Free Improv world, which fascinates me, being in the moment and letting people in on the chaos live as it happens as it were. I would love to explore this more

How do you see the relationship between the 'sound' aspects of music and the 'composition' aspects? How do you work with sound and timbre to meet certain production ideas and in which way can certain sounds already take on compositional qualities?

Timbre and sound and composition, it’s all vibrations and movements in time. Stating the obvious again.

I tell my students that we are always playing with time. Things move over time, harmonics move over time, and things vibrate at different frequencies, and at different times within a musical part, or a track, or an album, or a concert. And then the rest of your life, before and after it … and the eras before and after your life, the cultures around you … it's all the same thing, really. Tones slowed down become rhythm, rhythm sped up becomes drones.

There are certain timbres I love, who knows why my brain responds to them in that way. Neuroscientifically it is still somewhat of a mystery. I often find myself heading to washed out drones and reverbs, glissando glistening arpeggios, but in terms of how I get there. I try different methods. I am a big fan of FM synthesis for the unpredictability of timbres it produces. Wavetable also is amazing. But I am no expert. I am always well behind the current developments.

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? What happens to sound at its outermost borders?

High volume sound. This is what addicted me to music. Once you have been in a band with big Marshall stacks, big drums, big bass rig, and through a PA, and you feel that amplified power, you feel it physically and you are creating it, contributing to it, controlling it - you can't leave that feeling behind. Same as a big dub reggae sound system.

I have played records on Iration Steppas, Mungos Hi-Fi, Sinai Sound systems, and so on. You can’t beat that. It is utterly physical, and people become entranced and enveloped in the sound and bass. I cherish dearly my formative experiences at big raves, Metalheadz, Plastic People, Teachings in Dub, Jah Tubbys’ at St Pauls Carnival, Dissident Soundsystem in Bristol (legend has it that Loefah once blacked out when he dropped a new dub on Dissident, the bass was so heavy and his mixdown so good!).

Sound is of course an elemental force of nature, and we love to force ourselves in front of something that has the power of an avalanche or an earthquake. It is soothing and fear-inducing at the same time. You are safely exposing yourself to forces more powerful than yourself.

When you add rhythm to that, the combination of moving rhythmically with repetition and letting body movement be inspired by the movement of amplified sound … it’s ancient … sound is physical so you can feel it, eyeballs rattling, oesophagus shaking, trousers flapping, chest thumping … that's when music really becomes overwhelming and is a portal I think, to either getting your innermost problems coming out, literally shaking out your demons, or being taken somewhere else.

I have had many out of body experiences at clubs with really good soundsystems, at FWD>>, at Plastic People when the bass dropped on Loefah’s ‘Horror Show’, or when Doc Scott first started dropping ‘Acid Trak’ by Dillinja - you lose it! People around you are losing it! It’s a joyous thing and a cosmic thing - you get energy you didn't think you had – it is transferred to you from the producer through the track, through the sound system. You can jump in the air higher than you think!

I remember at Berghain once they played one of my fave Nathan Fake songs, "Outhouse", and it sounded so incredibly good loud, on that rig, I just completely left myself. For about 10 minutes, I was at one with the music. I opened my eyes and I was well over 100 metres from where I started, facing the back wall of the club, when I had been dancing right at the front, facing the DJ! I didn't feel I moved an inch! If that isn’t teleportation, I don’t know what is! Music can transport you mentally and physically and emotionally.

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 never really think of myself as an artist. It's strange … I just do what I do. And then hopefully people listen and maybe get inspired or feel a certain feeling.

I know many artists can inspire movements, or revolutions, or bring a message. I’m not sure that is my role … But then something as simple a message as ‘Soundsystem has done miracles’ in Mala’s ‘Miracles’ track … you take that away … it isn’t overtly political but it is telling you something .... I don’t know … I think beyond art as therapy for myself I’m not sure what I’m saying or trying to achieve. I am a melancholy and depressive person, and music can be a form of therapy, and inevitably my music reflects that. But like with everyone I am a contradiction. So there are moments of joy, hope and redemption in my music too. I hope …

It is remarkable, in a way, that we have arrived in the 21st century with the basic concept of music still intact. Do you have a vision of music, an idea of what music could be beyond its current form?

I am intrigued by what the combination of quantum computers, VR and immersive environments will result in. We are going to enter other worlds, which people have been doing for millennia anyway obviously through shamanic ritual and vision quests etc …

Although I was chatting with Shackleton the other day about where music may be going and he posited the idea that the change may be in timings and rhythm rather than technology-based or in the sounds themselves. Or perhaps the people of the world who are just getting access to computer-based music making technology may be the ones who will bring something new to it. New approaches, rather than advances in software or computing power.


Previous page:
Part 2  
3 / 3
previous