Was there much of  natural alliance between computers and fine art when you began further education?

“Not really at the time, no. The computers weren’t for the art students, certainly not the foundation students, not at all – they were for special graphic and video-related projects in the computer department. It was all a bit pre-internet, really. Even though a few people might have had e-mails, not many did, and unless you were in the computer department you weren’t really allowed ‘in the web’, necessarily. This being 1987, ‘88.”

So did the emergence of rave play a role in ‘emancipating’ the computer for you and your contemporaries?

“Yes, concurrently at the time there was the whole rave thing. Coventry had the first all-night legal club in the UK, The Eclipse, which used to be a bingo hall – if you look on YouTube you’ll even see The Hit Man & Her [British television dance show, hosted by Pete Waterman and Michaela Strachan, 1988-92] was there once, it was awesome. I saw Altern-8 there, LFO, Forgemasters, A Guy Called Gerald, and all the DJs – but I didn’t really think much of the DJing back then. The live acts – they were something else.

“I didn’t have any equipment, I didn’t have my own computer, I didn’t have specific audio software. If I was messing about with sound, it was in a pretty 8-bit, low-tech sort of way. Pro Tools didn’t exist. And there wasn’t an academic computer music department [in Coventry], so it was a bit stunted. But when I was at university I was already going to a lot of gigs, I met people, and I got to use things like Sound Designer II, which was pre-Pro Tools, and became familiar with the first plug-in programs, but it would still be another ten years before I owned my own computer  – so I wasn’t using any of these things as much as I wanted to. A lot of my current work is things I would’ve like to have done when I was a student, if I’d had the equipment and if it they’d been possible at the time [laughs]. And to be honest, a lot of it probably wasn’t. But the impetus, the attitude, harks back to that.”

“I saw Altern-8 at The Eclipse, and LFO, Forgemasters, A Guy Called Gerald, and all the DJs – but I didn’t really think much of the DJing back then. The live acts – they were something else.”

Did rave connect naturally to the more academic computer music that you were getting into?

“Well I was already picking [rave music] apart, because I would only like the specific part that went [makes zapping sound], or whatever. In reality you only like 30% of Altern-8 because most of the samples are of things you think are a bit cheesy…

“I’m not a musician, I’m not a DJ, I don’t pretend to be any of these things, but as an artist I end up playing in completely different contexts – it could be academic, it could be in an art gallery, it could be in a nightclub, or a metal gig…the audience is always very different and you can get very different reactions.

“My influences are quite disparate in the sense that I’m picking bits out of this, and bits out of that, and I don’t really like one specific genre of music – because they’re all full of a load of shit [laughs]. There was one classic night that sums it up: I remember getting the train from Coventry to Edwards No 8 [rock club] in Birmingham, to see Entombed or Confessor, one of these Earache grind metal bands of the time. My old friend Lee Dorian was the singer in Napalm Death and Cathedral, so we’d go and see these bands that we’re totally brutal, and then get the last train back and go down the Eclipse and see Rhythmatic, or whoever it was on that night. I can’t remember now, it’s a blur.

“What I’m trying to say is that is that there’s not one particular of genre music that influences me – I like to pick things apart, even what I see on TV. I grew up with Ski Sunday on BBC2 and I loved the League Unlimited ‘Things That Dreams Are Made Of’ Martin Rushent instrumental that they used to play when the final results were on at the end of the show. And even with things like that, I’d be thinking, ‘The bass is excellent…but I don’t really like the rest of it.’”

“I even did inter-library loans, getting books like Xenakis’s Formalized Music, and started to familiarise myself with these things – because I wasn’t being shown it by anyone else, no tutors were giving me this kind of direction.”

When did you first encounter the work of Xenakis, Stockhausen and their ilk?

“I got Xennakis from the library because it started with ‘X’. I remember getting Stockhausen records, and checking out Vangelis because I’d heard that he was ‘a bit electronic’. At the same time, before I actually went to do my foundation course, when I was 15 or so, I did some work experience. Because I’d said, ‘Well, I’m not going to get a fucking job, I want to go to university’, my work experience was to go and shadow somebody at the local uni.

“So I went in, and at that time at Coventry, the art school – or the art fac as it used to be known in the 70s – was where Art & Language were. That was where Art & Language [collective founded by Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin and Harold Hurrell, 1967-present, responsible for the influential journal Art-Language] started, at Coventry University…They were the first people to implement art indexing with computers, and cataloguing all this stuff. I liked the more formal artworks that they made, like the mirror paintings, the monochromatic paintings, and so on. The library was really good, it had all these early Art & Language publications like The Fox, and other things that weren’t readily available elsewhere. So I basically spent half my time [on the work placement] hiding in the library, looking at books, and thinking, ‘Shit, that looks pretty wicked…’ I even did inter-library loans, getting books like Xenakis’s Formalized Music, and started to familiarise myself with these things – because I wasn’t being shown it by anyone else, no tutors were giving me this kind of direction.

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