I'm taking my glasses off because I've been told that that's a better idea well I'll take my glasses off and now both of us are just walking blind through this conversation how about that that's right that's right good well I want to say thank you first of all um for making this beautiful beautiful
album um I found it deeply moving and at times very sad and um and at times I actually felt a joy throughout it but but never without this sense of responsibility I just felt like I I was drawn in and I should listen and I should just really try to feel something here that that I can take that
I can I can take responsibility for it's the best way I can describe it well that's that's a very very nice comment thank you so much I also wanted to say thank you because I often enter into these conversations trying to walk a line between the past and the future it but in the present moment and I know
that the past doesn't interest you um in terms of specific detail and I was very excited about being able to talk about this album and and talk about where it came from and what it means uh rather than sort of trying to trace it back over this Wikipedia list of things that you've that you've achieved in your life
but I am going to ask a cheeky question I'm gonna I'm gonna use that observation to ask a question which you'd almost qualify as a question about your past um what is it about the idea of retracing your steps or having to recontextualize things that ultimately doesn't interest you if you could put it
down to one thing I think it's because if you have a history have quite a lot of history it has a certain weight to it and it's it's kind of inertia because there's a tendency in the world for people if you've done something and it's been successful for people to want you to always be doing that same thing again
and again I can completely understand it I I'm not blaming anyone for it but but it it creates a sort of Anchorage that I don't really particularly enjoy um so I always I always say that people are always congratulating me for the album I made 20 years ago that seems to happen a lot you know
whatever whatever date I mean 20 years ago album that people are congratulating before and it it sort of introduces them two thoughts do you think was it better you know have I actually deteriorated since then which is not a helpful thought anyway um but but also it makes you think um
did I did I have any better idea then about what I was doing that I do now I didn't you know I I always work in sort of at the edge of like I'm sure you do as well you work kind of at the edge of what you understand you don't you don't generally sit comfortably in the middle
of what you know you can do and just do it all over again The Thrill Is to go to an edge that you and look over into a land you've never seen before um and then go there um and I I think um that's that's actually the whole thrill of working for me and if I'm if I feel the Anchorage too strongly that sense of always
looking backwards uh it it just holds me back I think and I I mean I can really understand why people want to ask those kinds of questions um and I hope they can understand why I don't particularly want to answer them I feel as as someone who makes music as well as tries to understand it and speak
to artists about the about inspiration is execution is to me the hardest thing I think I think we get drawn naturally into a place of expression and creativity and it's wonderful and then we're faced with the kind of cold hard reality that at some point you should finish and let this thing go and I think
yeah in in creating that sort of new metric you said it's okay if you if you feel that fear there's other ways to get to execution without having to face down a nine foot bear in a bear pit that wants to kill you yeah well I I always say Beginnings are easy endings are hard
um Beginnings get easier and easier actually you know there's there's so much technological assistance to beginning so many ways of getting something started like you know Rhythm machines and chord pattern makers and all that sort of thing so so there's lots of ways of getting something pretty respectable
going quite early on um and again to quote Picasso who who said um there's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning but that that feeling of Terror you feel when you've done something that and you know it's good and you just don't know how not to ruin it you think no I everything you try on
it makes it worse and yet you know it's not finished so um I tell you another good one um in the in the sort of adages about creativity thing REM coolhaus the architect said this to me he this was about 20 years ago and they weren't using computers much in in their design officers they were still they
would still sit around a table using things like this and this and this just you know that's that building there and we have this this Hall there and so on and so they were doing it all with boxes of matches and pieces of card and they they resisted going to the computer and I said um why do you do
that REM you know why do you hold back from the computer stage and he said it's because of the premature Sheen so he was saying that the problem with you can make anything look really good really quickly if you've got the right texturizers and so on in the computer so you can you
know you can put little people in the in the town squares and clouds in the skies and everything and suddenly you think wow I've got something here but you've gotten away from there you've gotten away from the actual Original Soul the original purpose of it I'm very aware of that when when you're working that it's
it's now very easy in studios to get premature Sheen very easily and it makes you think wow Hey look it's nearly done and it's a long way from them you know this album is done I hate to break it to you but forever and ever more forever and ever no more is done um it's a it's an emotional experience
and I I feel it I feel like it knows it sometimes I think art is created and it finds us and then we turn it into something that means more than perhaps even what it knew it was in the first place but yes I feel like and I'd love to know whether you were conscious of this at the time because from
the words the questions the revelations put to out put it our feet to the performances even deciding to work with your own family the idea is is to me a very it not even idea that the result is very emotional it is for me actually as well yes more than I expected it to be um it was like a chemical experiment
that suddenly exploded in a way I didn't expect so the experiment was to say okay I've been doing um what you might call Landscape music if you like for quite a few years of making atmospheres and moods and places really rather than narratives they're not stories they're places you
can go to musical places um and put it dropping a voice into that didn't sound that revolutionary to me I wanted to try it but it really there was a sudden chemistry to that which I didn't expect first start it was very easy to do I didn't expect that to be the case you know I'm working over Landscapes that
miss a lot of the things that normally happen in ordinary songs like yeah no beat there's no metronome there's no kind of structure no structure no no chord patterns but you found your architecture really easily you can hear that like you found the placement naturally of these of these of these
thoughts I know and uh it's still a little bit of a mystery to me how that happened um it was it came much more naturally than I expected uh so I would work on the soundscapes for quite a long time um some of them were things I returned to you know drop them for a few months and came back to them some of those
soundscapes are quite old now at least they started a long time ago um and then finally when I picked up a microphone to sort of see well what what person exists in this space and what does that what is that person feeling so the the voice is really there is a kind of almost like a narrator
not so much as a personality but as as somebody to represent a human having feelings if you like that sounds a little bit abstract but what I want to say is that it isn't necessarily me it's not autobiographical in a certain way um it's just meant to be a n are Anonymous a Anonymous of what
they call him on this album I'll forever and ever no more most of the time you're working with people who try to achieve that feeling and then present that feeling job done move on to the next feeling when I listen to this album I feel like it's really it's yearning to feel I I actually don't feel you
actually I'm sorry if you take this as an offense I actually don't think you actually achieved it entirely because I think that it it's not the purpose the point is to I'm searching to feel something when I hear this I had a realization which probably most other people have when they're at 18. it just
occurred to me quite recently that the primary job of artists is to create places in which you can have feelings uh I I more and more think that the job of art is to present you with other worlds and they can be novels or they can be films or they can be pieces of music or paintings but essentially their their
worlds of some kind and the process of engaging with them is saying okay I'm going to live in that world for a little bit I'm going to exist in that and see what it feels like to be in that world and that to me is the most important thing that we do really as humans where we we
probe the possibilities for the future and for alternative locations and so on by living them in a model in in a simulated form um so I don't have to go and live in a totalitarian Society to have an idea of what I might feel about it because I've read 1984 and I've read Brave New World and I've seen
Brazil and you know the the whatever that film was about um Society so so I already have I already understand the feelings that's attached with those things without having to have the physical risk of living in them so for me art is a safe space to have feelings in um now this is very clear to me when you
look at children playing we all know that children are learning when they play they're they're putting things together they're finding out how hard this is what makes that break how they feel about these other people you know we learn everything in in our childhood about materials and ourselves
and our capabilities and our relationships with people by playing actually by doing them in simulation you know what about if my tank is two times as big and goes faster uh for example so we do we're pretending and we're kind of what effing all the time when we're kids and then um
we're told to get serious and get educated and sit exams and so on and we stop describing what we're doing as playing but in fact I think children are learning through play that's obvious but adults are playing through ART I think that's where we play We Carry On playing but we call it art and we call
it going to the theater or we call it getting a new album or whatever we call it but I think that's still the same instinct to see what other worlds are like to see what it's like to be in in this place and what feelings we have from it I'm becoming quite good friends with someone who obviously is very dear
to you uh and you to him and that's Fred and uh yeah and such a beautiful soul um and we had a really lovely conversation I I watched it actually well I I watched I I didn't watch all of it because I was sent an excerpt of it and I watched the excerpt but I really liked it it was so
nice thank you yeah I I love him and I loved it and and I loved the way he described you and he used this word of like the the this boundless curiosity almost childlike curiosity that you apply to things and it's rare that I get to sort of speak to two people with a fairly sort of sharp vicinity of one
another about that and not to reflect on his reflection of you because that's just straight up weird but it is it but is but is he but but is he onto something you know I mean like like where does that kind of idea of he the way he described it was that I would see something and yet you would
see angles and things about it that that are there to be learned and observed that I would have missed because I would have been staring at the shiny thing on it you know what I mean I have to say and this is not modesty or false flattery or anything like that I I think of Fred as my mentor as well in that I
learned so much about contemporary music from watching him working um I didn't you know when I first worked with Fred I could see he was brilliant it's it's very clear he's a very very sensitive and good artist um and I was very impressed by that but I didn't really understand a lot of what he was doing
it took me quite a while to think oh my gosh this is really a new idea about how you can make music um so I I learned a lot from him so the it's a two-way relationship you know I mean I'm very flattered to to be called a mentor of someone whose work I like a lot but actually it worked both ways around I
started listening to music differently when I watched how Fred was making it that's beautiful can you can you go into a little more detail on that and how do you have enough space between that moment and realizing what changed for you when you started hearing how he was processing music and and releasing it
one thing I know the first thing I noticed actually was his way of working is quite quite different from the way I was working until then so you know it's very common if you're working as you probably know if you're if you're working with um logic or any of these other kinds of programs
that you kind of get a loop going and that's the sort of ground work and then you start putting things on top of it and and it's it's quite a kind of linear building process what I noticed with Fred is that he would start something and he wouldn't turn it into a loop that is going to run through the old track
he'd just have it running for a tiny little bit and then he put something else there and then suddenly there would be a big hole and there would be a disruption um it's hard to explain this because for people who aren't familiar with these ways of working but what I think most of
us would done or would have done um is to say okay here's here's a lump of land and now let's populate it with a few things and so you're kind of overseeing the whole process and putting things in at various points in time he he doesn't seem to work like that he starts something and then he sort of
stops and looks around a little bit and said okay now we'll go over there with it and then stop and look around oh no we'll go over there you know they they're very non-linear his pieces they they don't have the same kind of homogeneity that you would normally get from for instance
loop-based music so that that was the first thing I noticed the second thing I noticed was where he was taking his Sonic material from he's often recording on his phone and he's often recording in quite noisy places and he doesn't clean everything off so you get in every piece of recording there's a
sort of context comes with it as well the the sound has a history built into it you're right he's he's there's you beautifully described it that feedback loop he's not trying to to get away from it he's actually letting it pour through his art and through his spirit it's wonderful you know because we're of
course we're constantly being told and it's constantly true that humans are being atomized increasingly atomized you know separated off broken down into you as an individual with all your individual tastes and you've got to have your own toaster and washing machine and wide angle television and
everything else and I've got to have mine and we've all got to have our own particular shoes and so on so this this sort of atomization of the world that has occurred really as a result of uh capitalism and lots of different products proliferating um I'm so pleased to see the opposite
also happening that there's a kind of a new movement that says no let's just reuse things let's let's find things and make sense of them again use them differently I sort of Wonder as you were putting this this album together and collecting your thoughts and actually probably listening back and wondering
where that might have come from um where you found yourself as a as a human being as a spirit on this planet at this moment in time aside from the art what is inspiring the art in terms of you how you feel right now at this point in your life I have a kind of optimism because I see the biggest movement in
human history going on right now which is let's call it the environmental movement um millions and millions and millions of people all thinking about the same thing millions of scientists working on new technological solutions that are very interesting many of them millions of people who think about governance
working on new political systems like citizens assembly and Global assemblies different ways of choosing leaders and or and of um organizing uh you know government structures new forms of Economics being born there's everybody's working on this problem the only problem is we don't know about each
other the this New Movement is so strong and so powerful and and every day coming into being and strengthening and knitting together more strongly and at some point soon it will become self-aware and will suddenly realize oh my God we're all on the same side I would love to talk to you about
special audio because obviously we believe that that is a wonderful development um there and you we've talked about technology and we've talked about the tools that are now at at in the hands of of artists and creatives that allow them to move quicker and and um and talk about is was it the
premature Sheen that you just um but but we believe we we believe as you know that sound there was room to move and sound and and you are someone who has immersed himself literally and and allowed us to do the same thing in sound so I would love to have a conversation with you about it you know
the step from mono to stereo is a big step uh that that happened in the 50s I guess the 40s or 50s or 60s things went from mono to stereo big big difference so suddenly you have this quite big canvas to paint on you can put something up there and something down there and something in the middle and you have a
sense of of a big canvas that you're working on but when you go into three dimensions it's a much bigger leap there's there's a bigger difference between 3D and stereo than between stereo and mono I think um then you really are in a in a landscape you know when there's Sands
coming from all sorts of different places and you're not sitting looking at a flat picture anymore even though that's not an unpleasant experience it's there's a limitation to it you know once once you are in the middle of the the world of sound my God there's so much you can do it's so exciting