I first began to work seriously with sound in the mid-seventies. I moved into this medium from the disciplines of painting and printmaking. Sound had the added attraction of unfolding over time.
Time is an important aspect in my work. There are references and connections to time running throughout the body of my work from the first to the last.
Early influences included Can and Neu, Stockhausen and Cage. These gradually gave way to the music that I was discovering myself which was more in line with Eno and Hassell and extreme experimentalists like Throbbing Gristle and Test Department.
I was a founder member of the band :zoviet*france: who are generally regarded as amongst the pioneers of the post-industrial experimental genre and who have influenced many more mainstream bands in the following years.
My own work has been noted as having a unique style and individuality and has itself fed back into more mainstream genres in the form of commissioned sample libraries, collaborations and re-mixes, and film and installation work.
As a continuing practitioner in the visual arts I do not draw a clear distinction between the two mediums. The work in both areas is inter-related and cross-referenced. This is perhaps best illustrated by referring to my earliest releases, which were vinyl LP's encased in a succession of unlikely and impractical "sleeves". This served at least two purposes; one being to demonstrate that the "object" was equally as important as the music contained in the medium. (These sleeves were all hand-made and hand-printed on a variety of materials including hessian, hardboard, aluminum, roofing-felt, ceramic boxes etc. and have since become collector's items as "art objects".)
The second purpose derived exactly from the "punk" ethos of doing it yourself and the "fuck you" attitude embodied within punk. (We had been told that it was impossible to make these sleeves in any commercially viable quantity and were determined to prove the critic's wrong.)
The third purpose, of course, was that it set our releases apart from the norm.
Whenever possible I have carried this practice over into later works and continued to place equal emphasis on the artwork included with a release and the object itself, with CDs encased in specially designed, and often hand-made, packaging. The purpose, once again, is to make something "special" and to elevate it beyond the usual defining parameters. Subsequently they have become objects of much greater significance to people than they would have been had they been released in ordinary cardboard sleeves or crystal cases.
The definition of the genre that I work within is one that is also open to interpretation. I think of my work as "soundtrack" music and as such it remains open to the inclusion of whatever style I see as relevant. This also allows me to include narrative occasionally e.g. "Tin of Drum" includes narrative pieces written and performed by myself. These owe something to David Lynch and Twin Peaks.
A visit to the real Twin Peaks during an American tour prompted me to later write the pieces which were imaginary spoken statements given to the FBI concerning the whereabouts of the narrators on a date some forty-five years previously. The point being that this would be an almost impossible task, yet all the people "interviewed" managed to give accounts of the day in question. It didn't really matter if the stories were true or not, the narrators were all glad to have been asked as it somehow gave some kind of meaning to their lives.
This is reflected in the statements that they make which include details and insights into their lives, as they judge them to be. In this case these characters (like Becket's)...
