Part 2

Could you take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work? 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?

My routine changes depending on what project I’m on. On the current one I try to keep quite a strict schedule of working two hours in the morning, four in the afternoon and two in the evening, so I do 8 hours all together - my ears can’t really take much more than that.

I’m not working at home currently, if I was I would probably be working slightly more hours than that. Generally when I’m working on an album, I think about it almost all the time and obviously if things are going well, then that gives me a generally happier disposition towards other areas of my life, and if it’s going not-so well, which I have to say is the default position, that makes me generally not as happy, but that’s inevitable and part of making music, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece or album that's particularly dear to you, please? Where did the ideas come from, how were they transformed in your mind, what did you start with and how do you refine these beginnings into the finished work of art?

I don’t generally have anything from my back catalogue that I feel particularly fondly about, but I have to say that I am surprisingly fond of the Short-Haired Domestic album that Lee and I have just finished. I also still maintain a certain affection for Ten Sketches for Piano Trio from 10 years ago which was very difficult album to make but surprisingly satisfying in the end.

With the Short-Haired Domestic album, the idea started when I realised that Lee had a talent for picking up the nuances of other languages, and that got me thinking how that could best be utilised. It seemed to me an ideal opportunity to utilise that idea over  several languages that you could then make a whole album out of.

I thought about the most direct way of being able to do the music, then started with the idea of using 1990’s breakbeat loops of which I had many on vinyl, so I just picked 9 of those, almost at random and said ok these will form the basis of the nine tracks on the album,  figuring that 9 was the best number of tracks on an album of the sort that we were going to make. Everything else flowed from that idea.  That some track bases would be bass, some would be synth, there would be a bit of guitar, pretty much in a style which you could generically call funk, and synths would be kind of dark and squelchy or discordant. I would try to work without chords wherever possible - I try and do that these days, working with chords forces you down byways which are already well trodden so I try and think in single lines where possible, and I managed to continue that right through the album.

Quite often I didn’t know what key a track was in until quite a late stage .

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 don’t feel there is any particular mood that leads me to want to be creative. If I have an idea for something then I obviously feel very driven to do that and to see it through. As these ideas gestate over a large period of time, you might be happy during that time or you might be sad during that time, but that doesn’t actually change the focus of staying with the idea and seeing it through to fruition.

Obviously if you’re suffering from a period of really bad depression then you’d stop for a while - that’s the one thing you really can’t work through, otherwise you just keep going . The compulsion to see your idea through to end keeps you going. I don’t generally tend to get distracted by outside things, although clearly ones domestic life has a part to play and there’s a balance to be had there. I generally think I have quite a good balance. When my children were younger, the balance was different and I worked less, but that’s what you’d expect.

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 think improvisation, unfettered improvisation, is something I’m not a huge fan of. What I am a fan of is ‘controlled’ improvisation whereby most of the parts I would play are improvised and usually, not actual parts, but I am very welcoming of the fact that it is within my gift to erase 99% of what I play in order to keep the one percent of what I think is worthwhile.

For me that is the only thing that validates improvisation, otherwise you just have no way of being able to control the quality sufficiently well.

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?

All sounds obviously have a role to play in the compositional sense as they relate to the production of records … yeah, that happens!

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?

That doesn’t especially mean anything to me. Music is a bit of a stand-alone enterprise. I don’t really get any kind of overlap with it.

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?

For me art is a very personal thing with no reference to any outside agency. I just make records that I want to make and I don’t really pay much heed to what effect they might have outside of my own brain, nor do I really care.

Art IS a purpose in its own right and whereas some people's art may have resonances beyond the sphere in which it’s made, I don’t set out for that to be the aim. If it is, that is certainly not the intention. It’s a very personal thing and I don’t have any aspiration for it to make any ripples outside of my own head.

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’m amazed that people are still making music in a way. It amazes me that there are still some really interesting records being made which I think is remarkable considering how long people have been making music.

I’m not a futurologist so I’ve no idea what the future of music is. You’d have to leave it to the few musical visionaries to be able to see how that works.