Part 2

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I can’t swim. When I was younger the chlorine in swimming pools really affected my skin badly and so when the rest of my class mates at Primary School were taken for swimming lessons I would have to sit in the viewing area and witness everyone else in the pool.

I really loved the sound at the indoor swimming pool and I still do. I was at an indoor pool recently with my three year old daughter and I still love that sound. It feels like a sonic Time Machine for me.

Another sound I really loved the is the sound of rain outside when I am inside, particularly when I am trying to sleep. I am sure it always helps me get a much better sleep.

What are among your favourite spaces in which to record and perform your music?

I like to record in a space that has a window or windows. A lot of recording spaces don’t have windows, partly because it can allow outside sounds to leak into the recording space and creep into recordings.

There are certain noisy sounds that you probably don’t want invading your recordings but I sometimes quite like the distant sound of children playing or a bit of birdsong or weather getting into the mix. Some people like to have total control over every sound on a recording, with each sound existing in isolation in its own individual space. I think that all that isolation and control can at times be an overrated way to record music.

Live, I like quite intimate spaces best. I don’t like conventional “ROCK” venues so much. If I go into a place and it’s all black with just some red or white typography I don’t really feel at home.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

It certainly feels very tangible to me, as much as holding a book in your hand and reading it or looking at a painting hanging on a wall.

Sometimes placing microphones just right and twisting dials to achieve an effect (or affect) can feel like sculpting or painting with sound … but sometimes it’s about capturing a magic that’s already there in a voice or combination of voices, or in someone’s playing.

Both of these approaches used together or separately can bring satisfying results.

How important is sound for our overall well-being, and to what extent do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment reflects its overall health?

It is incredibly important. I know it can help me feel more able to navigate modern life and all of the challenges it can present. It has also enabled me to make meaningful connections with other people. It has enriched my life in so many ways.

When I first discovered The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds in the 1980s I would play it if I would feeling upset or anxious or unsettled in anyway and I would always feel better after I took the time out to listen to it.

I remember hearing Brian Wilson say he wanted people to feel loved when they listened to it.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard, and if you suffer from these or similar issues, how do you cope with them?

One of the things I regularly tell sound engineers when we turn up at a venue is that we don’t want to be too loud. If you start off not too loud you can really play with dynamics. The human ear and brain can’t process properly sound that is too loud.

I was lucky that I learned this fairly early on from two of my big heroes Jonathan Richman and Ivor Cutler. So we rehearse quieter than most bands and have our on stage amps and the sound through the P.A. relatively quite compared to lots of bands. This has been good for my ears.

If a show that I go to see feels loud I will generally use ear protection but generally I don’t go to see many loud rock bands play. I’m not really a “Rock” kind of a guy.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. The pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself, and what importance does silence hold?

I have always spent a lot of time listening to music but silence and hearing natural sounds around me has always been important.

Being stimulated by stuff is great but I value the times where there is no outside stimulation happening. That silence or that empty page is what makes someone want to create something, to tell a story, to write a song or to make a mark.

I am quite lucky in that I feel that I have an internal mixing board that I can use if there are sounds going on that could be annoying. For example if I’m on a plane and there’s a baby persistently crying or someone just being too loud I can just relax and visualise that irritating sound being on a channel on a mixing desk in my head and just pull its fader down.

The shift from analogue to digital recording technology has given composers and musicians a great deal of freedom and autonomy. Is there anything from the analogue era that you miss or feel digital technology lacks?

When you have digital technology that can offer you instant solutions to almost any creative or technical hurdle, genuine human individual creativity goes out the window.

Problem solving and creative thinking skills seem to me to be undervalued. It’s not just about A.I., genuine creativity has been getting eroded away by having all of this stuff at our fingertips.

I still like making music to be like playtime. That doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously or see it as important. I want to explore options and find creative solutions by myself or with friends that I’m working with and that is like playtime.

With more and more musicians creating than ever before and more of these creations being released, what does this mean for you as an artist in terms of originality? Who are some of the artists and communities that you find inspiring in this regard?

When there is so much stuff out there it can be harder to find the stuff that really connects with you.

When I was a kid I would buy an album and there would be a track that I didn’t “get” or particularly care for on first listen but by the sixth or so listen it would have started to creep up on me and then it might go on to be my favourite and perhaps take my tastes to new places.

With endless other stuff that you can go to if you don’t “get” something immediately why would you stick with the thing that might be a slow burner for you. Having limits, technically or in what is easily available to you, is a positive thing. No limits is not so good, just look at the story of King Midas or of The Fisherman and His Wife.

My current favourite recording artist is Sofie Royer. I can hear, and she has identified, lots of influences from other artists that I love, from Serge Gainsbourg to Todd Rundgren to Gilbert O’Sullivan and way more other stuff but it doesn’t diminish her own originality, her own unique thing. The reasons she stands out as an artist to me all comes out of her own unique character and creativity.



Her two most recent albums Harlequin and Young-Girl Forever are my two favourite albums of this Century so far. She is the writer, arranger, singer and plays most of the instruments on these albums. She uses a musical and sonic language that gives me an entry point and then uses this to weave her songs that could only have come from her.