My father was a mobile DJ, I grew up in a house full of vinyl. I DJ'ed on CD's for a few years, it gave me some kind of dissociative disorder that I've never quite recovered from.
I try to make music in some kind of reverse process, attempting to stay the listener and make what I want to hear; I pride myself on my listening. It's probably fair to say that I make music for myself, primarily. It's nearly reflexive - I make mad noise and I've done that so much that's mostly what I remember; this is key to preventing unnecessary distractions, such as reality. If you obey your inner logic, you'd never make albums like the Stonephace LP, it just wouldn't make any sense, so you have to find workarounds. It was exciting when I first met Larry, I really enjoyed the first thing we made but we had a lot to learn before we could integrate properly - the difference is what we've been listening to in the interim, and this time neither of us came in with preconceptions from a particular genre.
When Helm and I moved in together we realised that we could accomplish a lot. I'd got into crazy European progressive jazz and rock, and modern composition started to seem a bit mundane. It seemed to me that noise had become a more important factor than the music itself, so whilst Larry went off to find the notes that started Stonephace, I worked on my noise. We built preamps, modified mics and returned to tape and vinyl, imperfect media for our imperfect sound. I wanted to be able to make electronic music that was much more organic and human, dissonant and resonant. When we stuck it back together it felt right this time - Larry said he preferred the sound of it to anything else he'd ever recorded.
I started doing this in my bedroom when I was 8, I spent years making music in isolation. Now I live in a great music making community at the end of the world, great players, interesting ideas and directions. People with little in common, apart from a shared perspective and love of music. I love the music we make, but above that, I'm grateful to work with such excellent musicians from such broad origins.
