How and in what ways – if at all – is ambient jungle and influence on, or presence in, your own work?
“Ooh. Not greatly! Or at all even! [laughs]”
This is a big question, I know, but – your recorded work, particularly your two EPs, have a very heightened sense of place – London, more specifically Clerkenwell, St Brides, Shoreditch, etc, seems to be the subject of the work. Can you talk a bit more about this?
“I’ve been living in the same street for fourteen years now and I’ve just become really ingrained in the place and vice-versa. Just to the East of us, Shoreditch has changed to become very trendy, but around St Lukes it’s not all that different. I’ve got involved in local activism, pretty much singlehandedly protecting community areas from redevelopment. I know everyone in all the estates, all the old ladies.
“When I first moved here I was hanging out with Ken Downie a.k.a. The Black Dog who lived just up the Hackney Road. This was just after Plaid split off. I suppose, with this guy James who was one of the KLF’s circle, we were the second incarnation of The Black Dog. We even rehearsed in my basement here. Probably the closest I ever got to dabbling in music was supplying all the samples and working with Ken on a strange remix he did of a Lalo Shiffrin tune. Anyway even at that early stage I was obsessing on the area. Picking up some of the things that Peter Ackroyd had written. Doing a lot of ritual walking through the area. Crazy stuff I suppose.”
In the press release accompanying your album, you talk at length about reproducibility and the indelible marks left by human beings at each stage of artistic/mechanical reproduction. Can you explain a bit more how you feel this relates to your work, or rather why this phenomenon is something which interests/concerns you?
“It relates to the whole fingerprint of zeit thing which I mentioned vis-a-vis sampling. It’s essentially an occult concern I suppose, but it has a real-world corollary especially in detective work.”
Why did you decide to retire from blogging? Was it boredom, a sense of completion…?
“Just as I was wittering on about earlier really. I’ve started again actually but it’s a very different thing. WOEBOT was 100% music, but now I have a better vehicle for that. Someone was teasing me the other day, that I was like the bloody comeback king, and I’m ashamed to admit it’s true.”
What’s your current “relationship” with the internet? Are you still a participant reader, if not writer, in the world of blogging? As a record collector and also music-lover, what are your personal feelings with regard to how the internet has changed the way listen to / receive / digest music? How would you say you yourself have been affected by the now irrevocable sea change?
“I love the net. I still run Dissensus as well. I don’t contribute to it, but only because I can’t think of a better thing than a forum which is not steered by anyone or answers to any agenda. There’s still not a WOEBOT thread in the Music forum which makes me think I must be doing something right.”
Is there any contemporary music that you’ve been particularly enjoying?
“The Micachu and The Shapes disc is amazing and I love the Dirty Projectors new record. I had the last one as well, Dave Longstreth is a great character. I’ve tracked down all Zomby’s bits and pieces. He just gets better and better. His reggae stuff is a bit rubbish, but it looks like he’s stopped doing that now. Also Xylitol and, naturally, Belbury Poly.”
Do you have any thoughts as to the concept/execution of your next recording project?
“I have a title for the album which is People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time. And the idea is that it’s going to sound like that time when you’ve ingested magic mushrooms and the muck in your tummy is just starting to glow.”
Kiran Sande