Part 2

What are among your favourite spaces in which to record and perform your music?

There’s a lovely studio called Air Edel, in London, which I really like recording in. They’ve got a really beautiful piano and the room is fabulous. It’s a baby grande; it’s my favourite piano in London. It’s gorgeous. It’s not too big, it’s not too small, this room. They do lots of film stuff there, which really annoys me. I’ll quite happily go there, just on my own and play the piano.

When we were doing the Edmund de Waal album, I took all the little fragments of Edmund’s pottery, his broken bits, and recorded them with really good microphones in this studio, just to get the silence.



I always liked performing at Iklectik in south London; that was a great building. I always think maybe churches would be good for me. I like playing in theatres. When we do ‘Blue Now’, I like to do the concerts in a cinema. There are terrifying ones coming up where we’re not in a cinema, which is more difficult.

I just did some singing for somebody and I’d record the vocals here at home. If I want to make a record, then I put it all together in the studio, which is good, but a lot starts on the sofa. A lot starts at home, just doing stuff.

The most unusual place I’ve played is this place just under the arches in Loughborough Junction, called Spanners, which I thought was going to be terrible but it turned out to be fantastic. We’ve made a live album. The guy said “Can we just plug you in properly?” and he had this box and I said “God, what is that?” Then he recorded what I was doing and suddenly people turned up. I said “‘Wow, what’s everybody doing here?” and they said “We’ve come to hear you”, and I’m going “Really?”

I had stuff set up on the Mac and I said, “Is it okay if I play twice?” They had this incredible sound-system. I was just standing in the middle of the room with a stand and everyone was around me, sitting down. And I was just going for it.



So it’s now a live album and we tried to edit it down but it’s vinyl-only, so we’ve cut it down from an hour and a quarter to about 44 minutes. A right old racket ... but it was really hardcore. What was nice about it was it was very minimal and I just kept shifting sounds around and EQ-ing and re-EQ-ing. I had a lot of fun.

It’s all about getting people to listen and the best way to get people to listen is to not have too much going on, from my perspective now.

The shift from analogue to digital has given recording artists a great deal of freedom and autonomy. Having worked for the first half of your career in analogue, which involved the physical splicing and baking of magnetic tape, is there anything that you miss from that era or that you feel digital technology lacks, e.g. the sound quality?

Well apart from the sound, which is different, for years I had a Revox: a quarter-inch recorder and player with two channels. You record on one channel and then bounce the music to the second channel; then you can go back to the first channel but what you have to do is decide whether you've got what you want on the second channel before you go back and bounce onto the first track again, which will give you three tracks but it does erase what you’ve started with. You can’t go back, so it forces you to make decisions about how you think about building up a track.

It had a varispeed on it, so I could record at two different speeds, then I could drop it down really low; so for instance on The Garden (Derek Jarman 1990), there’s an original track which we used on the CD but didn’t use in the film, and when Derek heard the CD, he said “Why isn’t that in the film? It’s just much better than the cue you did in the studio”. And he was right. It was a strange, psychedelic, weird piece of music that was recorded just messing around on the Revox.

Because of the varispeed, I could do half-speed guitars, so I could record it really high-level and then slow it right down and tune it and do all sorts of things; so I knew I had a few little bags of tricks up my sleeve, which you couldn’t do digitally … at all; you have to do it on tape. You record really slow and play normally ... and then you speed it up and it sounds really high. Holger Czukay used to do that; quite a lot of his guitars on some of the Can albums, or even the solo stuff, he uses this same technique, which you can only do using tape.

And that is what I did for years. I’d use four tracks: one, two, then back to one, then on to two again. So that’s called ‘Sound-on-Sound ’... Well that’s what I called it. A lot of my early stuff for Derek was recorded on a Revox. Eventually the sound just gets too bad ... but it shouldn’t really because you just learn how to balance as you go along.

Also, I loved tape loops; you could make those with Revoxes, so you just cut the tape and you could loop it around the room or whatever. I love analogue tape a bit like how I love real film, because film is made from chemicals and ¼’’ tape is a very physical thing: You can make noises with tape by just cutting into it like you’d cut into film and scratch it and everything like that, so I love it.

Tape is warmer, that's for sure ... but with the warmth comes hiss, probably. I’ve never been upset with a bit of hiss but when I first started doing music, people were very concerned that some of my samples would have hiss and they’d say “Can’t you do something about that?” and I’d say, well, we can EQ it”, but it comes with what it is. It’s more of a living, breathing medium than digital.

But I like the whole restriction. I mean, I wish I had a Revox now. At home I record everything on a computer and if I want to do the guitars, I put the amp into the shower and I sit there with a pair of headphones on, with a laptop on the basin, and I play the guitar on the loo. Even though I’ve got a stand-alone box which plugs into my mac, a Focusrite Scarlett 414 which apparently I can put the guitars into, I’ve just never done it. I should do it. Somebody could talk me through it in ten minutes, I’m sure, and then I’d start playing guitar again but I tend to do it the old-fashioned way: I just record the guitar somewhere else and then put it on digitally and import it.

I love what I’ve got with my Mac, using Ableton; it’s just fabulous. The trouble with digital is that you can do too much, and I hate that. My work has just got simpler and simpler and simpler the older I’ve got but it used to be like, ‘Hey, I can record five hundred guitars! Great’. Now I’d rather record two.



So, I’m a fan of both. I haven’t recorded on 2” tape for ages, which is big Ampex 456 tape. It’s good for 24 tracks. Even then, if you want to do an edit, you edit the 2” tape. If you want to get rid of a section, it’s big, thick 2” tape, so you have to line it up on the heads and go ‘Wee-wach-whohw-wachhh’ and you find where you want to edit, mark it and then move on to the next bit you have to do.

I started off recording on Revox but early Deux Filles recordings are only 8-track and if you can’t do it on an 8-track, you shouldn’t be doing it, really. I’m a fan of minimalism now. For instance, we just did a ‘Blue Now’ concert in Manchester, so it was recorded onto the desk ... and the engineer recorded 14 tracks - everything split - and I kind of think ‘Oh my god. I’ve got to lay out 14 tracks, all horizontally, and line them all up and everything’ and I just can’t get my head around it at the moment ...

But I’m not complaining. I’m going to send it to somebody else to line them all up. I just work off a Mac: I don’t have a studio or anything. Home recording is where I can do so much but then I get to a point where I can’t do what I want to do. Also I’m a big fan of Mono.

I would never cut a 2” tape; I never did but the engineers I worked with certainly did.

I had a tape recently which my friend Colin Lloyd-Tucker put in the oven. He masters stuff and he’s the other half of Deux Filles. I sent him a tape recorded in 1975, with David Bowie and Iggy Pop; just messing around really, singing ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ at Dave’s house in Switzerland. Colin baked it and made sure it wasn’t all stuck together, then he sent it back to me. Meanwhile, he transferred it all, digitally. It’s a super-bad recording but then again it’s David Bowie and Iggy Pop ... and me.

It is awful but there’s something about the awfulness. That’s the only baking for me which has been successful. (laughs)

Do music and sound feel ‘material’ to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

It doesn’t feel like material but I definitely know I’m making stuff because it’s collage, so for me it’s not a physical thing like material but I have my own personal instincts, where I think ‘This, A, goes with F’ and if they don’t work, then they don’t work. There’s no point questioning whether they do but I know instinctively for my taste, if I put things together, whether they work or not. That’s how I set stuff up on the Mac.

For instance, in New York the other day, I tried recording something and it wasn’t very interesting. Then I put it on a Mac and the sound was in tune with something else and I just left it. With quite a lot of stuff I do, I don’t actually do anything; I’m not doing anything to the sounds, I’m just putting sounds together.

I’m into putting things in tune; I’m not into ‘out of tune’. I collage - it’s simple - and then I maybe sing on top of collage. It’s about leaving room.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard, and if you suffer from these or similar issues, how do you cope with them?

I don’t take precautions. I don’t use earplugs at concerts. I’ve always stuck my head in the bins when I was younger. I like loud noise. I don’t protect my ears. Never have done, never will ...

But I’m trying out hearing-aids because I’ve lost the top of my frequencies. I don’t suffer from tinnitus, so I’m very lucky. I’ve come out of concerts when I was younger, with ringing ears, but it would go.

Throbbing Gristle at Heaven. That was fucking loud, because it’s just, like, right at yer. Frequencies. That was the most intense noise. Derek (Jarman) asked me to record it from where I was. After about three quarters of an hour I just left and went home but I kept the recorder going - I’ve still got the cassette - then turned it off when I got to the front door. I just couldn’t bear it any longer. It was too much.

No, I don’t take care of my ears. I’m not a head-banger but I was a head-binner.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. The pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself, and what importance does silence hold?

Silence is very important. I love silence but it’s never silent.

I’m a great stretcher of that John Cage thing: All sound is music. I half-agree and I love sound but too much sound can be intrusive.

I also like near-silence. I’ve never been in complete silence; I don’t know what that’s like.

With more and more musicians creating than ever and more and more of these creations being released, what does this mean for you as an artist in terms of originality? Who are some of the artists and communities that you find inspiring in this regard?

You can’t listen to everything. There can never be ‘too much’ music but there are not the hours in the days, there’s not the time in the world to listen to all the music that people are making. It’s a bit like ... you can’t see every Instagram photograph people have made.

I just read magazines like The Quietus, Wire and The Guardian. I’m pretty leftfield and predictable but I don’t follow anybody; I haven’t got the time. I do listen to lots of things but I’m trying to work all the time; so I spend a lot of my time making stuff, so it just doesn’t apply to me.

My stuff doesn’t sound like anybody else because I’m not using their instruments. I don’t use pre-sets. Basically I’m using sounds ... and then there are soloists who come and play on top of those sounds.

My favourite record of 2024 was Ministry of Loneliness Theme by Renato Grieco & Rebecca Moccia. It’s really beautiful.



The only thing is I now want to sing with them. Their sound is just fabulous; very minimal. It sounds as if they use tape and all sorts of different things but they manipulate things in a very delicious way.

I like Shiva Feshareki; she’s an Iranian composer. I love the work of the people I work with, really.

[Read our Shiva Feshareki interview]

As I say, FKA Twigs. I’m loving her new album. Is she original? The way she puts things together she’s very original.

There’s lots of obscure stuff but I never remember what it is. My nephew sends me recommendations of stuff which I think are really interesting but then I forget who they are because they were really interesting when I listened to them that day but they’re not going to be something I play over and over again.

The more interesting music I hear I listen to probably once or twice. I’ll always listen to something by Burial but there’s nobody consistent that I follow and go “Mmm ...” I like, for instance, Ryoji Ikeda, who’s a Japanese electronic guy but all his stuff, it all sounds different but it all sounds the same, so I don’t need to keep on listening to Ryoji Ikeda because he’s a genre unto himself.

What's your view on the role and function of music as well as the (e.g. political/social/creative) tasks of artists today - and how do you try to meet these goals in your work?

There is no role. If you like music, you like music. My stepfather didn’t like music - How can you not like music?! - but he was a very pompous, straight, middle-class Englishman (although he was actually Australian, I think).

I don’t think of music as having a role. It’s too mathematical for me. Michael Nyman would be able to answer that question really well. It’s just too complicated a question; I just don’t think like that. Obviously it’s great if you hear it and like it and you go to concerts, buy records, etc. I always think of human beings as animals. Sound is probably more important than music.

Do I try to meet some of these goals in my work? Sometimes. I definitely try politically now but I know I can’t put a record out on Mute and go, ‘Fuck (insert world leader’s name)’ but I can do it quietly.

I’ve used two tracks with war poems by Harold Pinter. You can’t go wrong with a lyric which says:

‘The bombs go off
 The legs go off
 The heads go off
 The arms go off
 The feet go off
 The light goes out
 The heads go off
 The legs go off
 The lust is up
 The dead are dirt
 The lights go out
 The dead are dust
 A man bows down before another man
 And sucks his lust’

So that is a war poem.

Democracy:

‘There’s no escape
 The big pricks are out
 They’ll fuck everything in sight
 Watch your back’

Those are political poems, so I’m being political when I sing them and if you don’t understand that, then that’s fine but that’s my way of waving a flag. That’s why I play tapes of Marlon Brando talking about the North American Indians because it’s just such a sploot; I can just go and have fun with this speech. I’ve made it political because I want to make it political.

I’ll play a recording of Bertrand Russell live and everybody goes “Wow”, because it’s Bertrand Russell talking about pacifism and being kind and good and … ‘don’t be a prick’.