You’ve been based in the Suffolk countryside for the past six years. Were you a city-dweller before that?

“Previously I was living completely in metropolises. I lived in London for 10 years, I served my sentence in New York for a few years…But when I want on international visits, even if I did go to cities, I’d gravitate towards the countryside -  for example, in Japan, I’d always get on the train and go off to see Nagasaki, or Mount Aso, or the [Aokigohara] forest where people commit suicide – not tourist things, necessarily, but just whatever’s available to you.

“I hate cities, I’m quite agoraphobic, I hate all the fucking people everywhere. You have a panic attack when you get into Liverpool Street [laughs]. There’s bomb dogs everywhere, and it’s like…going to the airport just to get out of a tube station. And the shops are shit. They’ve not got what you want. You say, ‘Ooh, I’m in London for the day, I’ve got an hour to kill, right, I’ll go and have a look at the music shop on Denmark St. Oh, it’s ÂŁ30 more than it is on the internet, and they haven’t got it in stock anyway.’

“I come from Coventry; I wish I’d grown up here [in Suffolk]…or Japan [laughs]. Being here has enabled me to be more productive and prolific, and I wasn’t able to do those things before; now I’ve got somewhere permanent to live and concentrate on my work. It was like being on the run before, for years I lived out of a hold-all and a laptop bag, just going, ‘OK, I’ve got a year here, and then….’ When I had to leave Sweden, Coil happened to be on tour, so I took the tour-bus with Coil to Helsinki where I lived on the fortified island, Suomenlina, in the harbour. And then I ended up DJing at the Coil gig that night. All because it was just for the best way for me to go. I was on the ferry and the tourbus with them, and all the restaurants and the bloody nightclubs – it was great getting pissed on a ferry with Sleazy [Coil/TG’s Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson]. And Geff [Rushton, AKA Coil’s Jhon Balance], when he was still with us.”

“I was always going from place to place. In Finland, when I lived on the fortified island, you didn’t see anybody – so it was kind of rural anyway. I went there after being in New York for years, and London before that. I spent a lot of time in Barcelona, for example, because it was cheaper to stay with your friends and hang out in Barcelona for two weeks than it was to be in London. Well, that was the case in the mid-90s, anyway.”

“In Finland, when I lived on the fortified island, you didn’t see anybody – so it was kind of rural anyway.”

Your 2009 album Wild Tracks is based around field recordings. Is field recording a long-standing preoccupation or something you took to only recently?

“Well, one of the main things that contributed to me being able to do that was simply have the right microphones and recording device – it was something that I would have liked to have done years ago. The recordings that I made are to be used in other projects, in particular a film project that I’m making. And that’s why they’re called Wild Tracks, because they are wild tracks – which is a term that comes from cinema. Again, it’s about being honest. It’s quite honest, my work, I think. It’s Wild Tracks because that’s what it is.”

It’s got some nifty packaging…

“Yes, I think it’s very commercial – so I don’t know why it’s not in Top Gear magazine or why they don’t have a little thing in The Guardian [laughs]. The idea for that design came from the very late 80s and early 90s when Sony – and some other companies as well – had these DAT packages, with a little handle, and they were like those KIDZBOXes. I had one once – I nicked it from a studio and put my DAT tape it and fetishised it, basically [laughs]. Then I saw those KIDZBOX things and found out where they were manufactured, and that was that. It was hard to get, and they didn’t do them in black – well, if you want them in black you’ve got to pre-order 50,000. So unless it was coming out in Universal, with a major advertising campaign, that was never going happen…But again, it’s site-specific or context-driven, really. The result of working with what you have to work with.”

Responding to the innate strengths of a given medium or material.

“That’s something else I’m quite interested in: fetishising the object. The materialist thing. I’ve always been aware that a CD’s a CD, that it’s not a vinyl, and that the masters are different. There are different places and different ways to get the sound you need. You always go to the people you know. So if it’s for vinyl you go to Dubplates+Mastering and you get Rashad and it’s all sorted then. But a lot of good places have died. That’s why I’m interested in digitally mastering things myself.

Are there any mastering houses in the UK that you recommend?

“Not enough. Digitally, I have to give a shout out to Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering, which is based out on the Isle of Skye now. He used to be the guy who did all the CDs at Porky’s years ago. A lot of the other places have closed down. I’ve not been to any of the newer ones, with the geezers who do 12” grime records and whathaveyou, so I don’t know if they know what they’re doing or not. And I don’t buy any of those records, so I couldn’t tell you.

“Apparently Rob Gordon [of Warp techno heroes Forgemasters] has got a cutting lathe, but I don’t know if he ever gets it out. I long for the idea that maybe there could be a Sheffield cutting lathe place. I mean, what do people do now when they make 12”s? Don’t they still all send them to Czechoslovakia or somewhere like that? Cut them over the telephone? [laughs]”

What have you done, design-wise, for your new record?

“The album I’ve just made, Value+Bonus, the reason it’s a double CD – it comes in one of those No Fun gatefold CD sleeves, like those Japanese jazz reissues or the old Impulse ones – was that there had a been a Prurient record that had a CD + a 5” vinyl. I previously had some 5” records – Merzbow’s Green Wheels, and Masonna’s Destructive Microphone (I think I gave my copy of that to Jeff Mills). Anyway, I wanted to do a double-5” record in a gatefold, but it turned out that the guy who makes 5” records in the States was a nightmare to work with: you couldn’t get it cut at Dubplates + Mastering and send him the lacquers, he had to cut them himself. So we didn’t bother, and I thought, OK, I’ll do a double CD – because I’ve got the material, I’ve been working on all these different things, and they fit together.”

Kiran Sande

1: Spoken Introduction. Keith Jarrett: The Impulse Years 1973-1974. (impulse).
2: Track 03 (ACID). Robert Hood: Omega Man Album Promo. (M-Plant).
3: Anima Pepsi (Recording from Pepsi Pavilion, Osaka, Japan, March 1970). David Tudor: Live Electronic Music. (Leonardo Music Journal).
4: Nous sommes MMM. MMM:  MMM 4. (MMM).
5: Fetish. Baby Ford: BFORD9. (Insumision).
6: Quicksand Area. MISSING CHANNEL: Atomic Whirlpool EP. (Hardwax). (*note:  All tracks play in-side out).
7: The Digital Domain. James A. Moorer & Elliot Mazer & Janis Mattox: The Digital Domain – A Demonstration. (Elektra).
8: Silent Calculus (An Introduction). RLW: Acht. (Selektion).
9: Acid nO!se. Russell Haswell: VALUE + BONUS. (No Fun).
10: Exterminana. Sacher-Pelz: Cease To Exist. (Marquis Records).
11: 11: Voyage absolu des Unari vers Andromede. Iannis Xenakis: Musique Electro-Acoustique. (Fractal).
12: Addiction (Dog House Mix) [Edited By - Chep Nunez]. Skinny Puppy: Nettwerk Sound Sampler Volume Two – A Food For Thought.  (Nettwerk).
13: 5-8-6. New Order: Peel Sessions. (Strange Fruit). (*note: transmission: 1st June 1982. Check: editing + reverse edits).
14: Untitled B-side. Ugandan Methods: Mat Oput – 1/2. (Downwards).
15: thank you, goodbye. good luck. Swans: FEEL GOOD NOW. (Not On Label).

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