The Blue Notebooks is now four years old. Looking back on it, it how do you feel? Does it trigger any particular thoughts or emotions? Is there anything you would change about it if you could?
“I haven’t listened to it in its entirely since I made it so its hard for me to comment. When we play the material live we always have a good time, and it’s great to hear those texts – the lines by [poet Czseslaw] Milosz that open up ‘The Trees’ is a kind of touchstone for me – “…and the trees were even higher than in childhood, because they had been growing during all the years since they had been cut down”. Amazing that he allowed me to use it.”
You’ve recently scored Waltz With Bashir. How does scoring a pre-existing visual work differ to working from scratch?
“Film scoring is a mix of writing music and puzzle-solving: the music has to work but you don’t want it to stomp all over the film – so it’s a pretty interesting set of challenges. Waltz is an outstanding piece of art and it was pleasure to work with Ari on it – he is very into music and pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. Ideal!”
The narrations and literary references [fragments of Milosz, Kafka and Marukami] of The Blue Notebooks and Songs From Before, not to mention the ringtone idea of 24 Postcards suggest that you like to have some kind of thematic or conceptual focus for a project, rather than simply composing out of nothing, so to speak. Is that the case? Do you see yourself ever making an explicitly non-conceptual work?
“No – it’s the ideas or the stories or the questions that get me started.”
What was the genesis of 24 Postcards in Full Colour?
“I thought about what a waste it was to have several hundred million loudspeakers walking around the world with nobody caring about writing for that incredible medium.”
Memory seems to play a big part in your work – both explicitly, in the titles (Memoryhouse, 24 Postcards, Songs From Before) and narrations, but also in the texture and grammar of the music…
“I’m interested in how stories and reality interact – in how we narrate and fictionalise our own lives and history – I just think it’s a fascinating human process and so revealing of what motivates us. I’m interested in making connections and asking questions in what I do.”
Not least in your invocation of Kafka and Marukami, you seem very concerned with isolation, walking, the city, what one might call psychogeographic themes. Is the individual adrift in the city a theme which interests you? What’s your own relationship with (the idea of) the city?
“Yes, I’m very interested in the urban experience – it is a kind of shared reality for most of us – and will only get more so. How we find meaning in our urban lives seems like a big question to me. Also the city itself is kind of a collective act of writing – a fiction we live in.
“I’ve just moved to Berlin – every new city feels like landing on a new planet, so I’m kind of adrift at the moment – spending most of my time getting lost – which I love doing.”
Who in world of contemporary music, be it electronic, classical, rock or whatever, do you particularly admire? Are there any you’re into that you feel are criminally ignored or undervalued?
“I’m interested in all sorts of artists that work creatively with sound and use their chosen language in thoughtful ways. Off the top of my head, recent and otherwise: Battles, GAS, Autechre, Es, Arvo Part, Planet Mu, Godspeed et al, Philip Glass (still), Meredith Monk, but also… Purcell, Dufay, Dunstable and other dead folks. 33.3 should have been huge for Play Music, same goes for Rachel’s for Systems/Layers.
Do you consider Songs From Before, The Blue Notebooks and Memoryhouse to be a loose trilogy? There seem to be all kinds of conceptual and musical linkage between them. If so, is the sequence over? Or will this become a tetralogy and so on in time?
They are a trilogy – so far! Really I just keep writing all the time – the records are just a kind of slice through that process – I suppose they hang together because I’m still obsessed with the same things? But in reality they are part of a continuing series of overlapping things.
Working with Tilda Swinton and making The Art of Mirrors – what’s been your relationship with Derek Jarman’s work over the years? What appeals to you about his work and do you feel it has any resonances with what you do? What exactly is The Art of Mirrors?
“Jarman was important in so many ways both as a filmmaker and because he was one of the artists who was really making political work at that time . So for me, seeing those films in the toxic right wing conformist culture of the 80s was just such a relief – it seemed like it was possible to have ideas after all. I love his connection to the punk sensibility too – those films are rough but so very alive – and because of that, very beautiful.
“The Art of Mirrors is an hour of music that coexists in performance with a sequence of Jarman’s super 8mm home movies from the 70s. It’s a piece I’m very fond of and have been tinkering with over the last couple of years. I plan to release a recorded version of it in late 2009 – maybe including the films if possible.
Tell me about your experience of working with Vashti Bunyan and, going further back, Future Sound of London.
“Working with Vashti was just a joy. She is such an interesting person, and the material was just so exciting to work on. We spent absolutely ages on that record, really building it up from individual atoms over many months. Making any record is really a kind of lab experiment – you don’t know what you are making until its done – and it was fascinating to go through that process with Vashti – building a new pallet of colours that would connect to her previous work while still telling her stories for now.”
“FSOL were one of the most creative folks around during that brief era when the electronica scene – even in the mainstream – was really wide open to innovation and experiment. It was so interesting to be involved in some of that work – I learned a huge amount about how I think about music and sound by working with people who approached things in a radically different way – really starting from the machines themselves, rather than any sort of musical theorising. I think the work we made together reflects that collision in all sorts of ways.
Where and how do you work? What distracts you?
“I have studio that feels more like a store room or maybe an unfinished industrial site? It is filled with lots of semi-derelict equipment, synths, computers, pianos, boxes of stuff, cable, coffee pots, paintings, carpets, wine glasses, radios, rolls of tape, hundreds of books, scores, cassettes, scribbles, drawings, records…Pencils and manuscript paper litter the floors. It’s a kind of total mess – which is how I like it.
“I’m nocturnal – everything distracts me!”
There seems to be a renewed appetite among music-lovers/consumers for ambient, post-classical instrumental music such as your own? Do you agree? And if so, what do you think are the causes of that renewed appetite?
“I’m not sure…I’m probably not the best person to answer that question, but I do have a sense of people listening to a variety of things outside the mainstream, which I think is a good thing.”
What does 2009 hold in store for you?
“I am doing a couple of films as well as getting the Jarman project ready. There will be live performances too – of the ringtones and other things. I’ve been working on a new film and music project with the artist Darren Almond – hopefully we can get that on its feet too. Lots of other stuff floating about…”
Kiran Sande
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