Part 3

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Definitely. I think the answer to the question above highlights that for me. I never really go into a writing session with a particular intention - only a collection of raw material in the form of iPhone recordings or samples I’ve made and a desire to fuck them up ...

Whilst this stage is experimental, it doesn’t feel very scientific, as it is inherently super chaotic, and there’s no real consistency in these sessions… like, the way I approach each sample from a processing / abstraction standpoint will be totally instinctual.

Things tend to get more scientific in the mix down stage, because this is a much more objective process for me. Like, whilst there aren’t hard and fast “YOU MUST DO THIS” things in the mix down, there are a lot of processes which can be applied to electronic music as a whole, regardless of the genre, like being able to use clippers effectively, understanding spectrometers, what saturation actually does to a sound ...

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

It led me to a realisation that everything around me can be regarded as fascinating and beautiful if I choose to be more momentarily present and apply some internal aesthetic viewing to that present.

This idea slowly came from the practice of creating internal compositions and trying to hear the world as musical I talked about previously, so I guess I learned a salient lesson about life by reflecting on music in this way …

But I do think it is a pretty natural state many people who have a love for art come to eventually.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

There’s an objective, set process in the act of making a great cup of coffee for me. I know that if I follow the methodology, I will end up with a great cup of coffee each time. I can safely know the outcome will be exactly the same each time as long as I follow the established steps.

But in music, I can utilise the same elements across numerous projects and the outcome will still always be different, because there are so many separate elements and thus near infinite ways to combine them.

So yes, I would say it’s inherently different from a mundane task. I can create vivid imaginary worlds through the act of making music, which isn’t something I can express when making a great cup of coffee.

That said, there is still a connection there, and that is presence. As I said in the question before, one of the greatest gifts making music has bestowed on me is the acceptance that everything can be regarded as fascinating and beautiful, as long as I am present in that moment.

Making music is a very ‘in the moment’ task and I am deriving beauty from the act of combining and creating sequences, but I’m also doing the same with making the cup of coffee - watching the thick black viscous liquid drawl out of the funnel of my espresso cafetière is super hypnotising, as well as the sound of the oily coffee softly gurgling through.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Absolutely - to be frank I’m terrible at paying attention to lyrics and they don’t affect my music taste anywhere near as much as the timbres and atmosphere of the music itself. Explains why I can listen to Memphis rappers talk about putting people in acid baths and still enjoy it …

I’m deeply affected by a lot of the stuff on Telefon Tel Aviv’s album Dreams Are Not Enough. Joshua Eustis literally describes the sound of that record as “the rapture of despair”. That comes through for me loud and clear - a sense of tangible loss derived from the loss of his bandmate in 2009. There are lyrics on this album, but this is not what elicits such a deep emotional response in me.



‘Purple Flower’ by Yusef Lateef is a song which hits me in a way I can’t explain too. I mean it’s got purple in it’s name and you know how much I like my purple neon hi-tech forests …



But no it’s an amazing record, it evokes a sense of total dusty intimacy which I love in jazz, as well as a really clear sense of imagined landscape in my mind’s eye, and that really does tend to be one of the most important factors in whether a piece of music will affect me deeply or not.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

That’s a really tough question, it’s not really something I think about too much truthfully. I think the fact music has become more accessible and democratic than ever (a byproduct of piracy) makes me very content.

AI is a major talking point at the moment, and I think a lot of people are really scared that it’s going to end up replacing artists, but truthfully I don’t see that happening (at least from the way things are going). Inherently the AI can only make stuff after being trained on pre-existing content. With that in mind it’s essentially impossible for an AI to create something groundbreaking, because inherently it is working in a feedback loop echo chamber … it’s regurgitation rather than creation. So, like anything else, I think it’s a wonderful tool.

One which I’m particularly interested in at the moment is a Max 4 Live device called nn which is built off the RAVE machine learning model. Nn kind of acts as an intelligent “timbre transfer” tool - basically you can make one sound sound like another sound. I’ve found it an amazing tool for generating ideas, but there’s no way I could predict/anticipate something like this ... and I think that for me is a really exciting thing.

So I’m not interested in specific developments per se, I’m more interested in witnessing the birth of new methodologies for making music informed by AI which present ideas I could never even conceive of!