Interviews

Evan Bartholomew

October 2008

Though you have a fairly large web presence, there is very little personal information. How about a brief bio as a way of introduction - name, age, where you live, family, what you do for a living. Or are these closely guarded secrets as part of the ambient music mystique and persona?

My name is Evan Bartholomew, I'm 31 years old, and recently moved to rural Hawaii. I create music and all that that entails for a living - touring, remixing, scoring, and running a label.

Evan Marc, Evan Bluetech, Evan Bartholomew. So just who is this Evan guy? Why so many names and labels?

I've created different aliases which allow me to explore different parts of the musical spectrum without having to stretch any one alias too much. Evan Marc is my alias for forward thinking uptempo music like tech-house, minimal, techno. Evan Bartholomew is for more experimental soundscape, ambient, modern classical stuff. My Bluetech alias is for all things electronic, downtempo, glitch, dub, etc.

How long have you been on the music scene, and how did it start? Was it always about electronic music, or did you start in other genres?

I played classical music since I was a little kid, but started on the scene in 2000 DJ'ing psytrance music. By 2002 I had shifted into downtempo and was working on the material that became the first Bluetech album.

You have the most amazing cover art I've ever seen - hand stitched, homemade paper, with beautiful artwork. I think it is wonderful. But in a day and age when music is becoming more disposable and downloadable than ever before, why go to the effort?

I feel like you answered your own question! It’s precisely because less and less people buy music, that we go to the extra effort to make really special packaging. Instead of just being another plastic disc in a plastic case, we create numbered limited edition pieces of art, which I believe are an incentive to supporting the music.

So I'm thinking there's not a lot of call for DJing in rural Hawaii ...

I didn’t move to rural Hawaii to be getting a lot of DJ gigs! I just moved out here a few months ago, though I lived her for awhile 10 years ago previously. I’m sure there is an electronic scene here, but I haven't really sought it out.

How can you afford to live in Hawaii and just do ambient music? Are you living in a hut and growing your own food or what?

I afford to live in Hawaii and do ambient music because I treat my music career like a day job. I get up and put in my 8 hours a day running the labels, writing new music, searching out gigs, and doing all of the menial office works that goes with trying to keep a record label floating.

Do you live alone in your rural getaway? Any family, friends, pets? Do they like your music?

I have a dog named Kaia who is a blue eyed Siberian Husky, though all of my family is on the west coast. I hope Kaia likes my music, though whenever I ask her, she just kind of wags her tail and puts her paw up on my foot, so I’ll take that as a yes.

What made you decide to move there?

I tour enough that I get hyper urban overdose I think. There is something about being in 5 or 10 different cities in a short period of time that makes one really crave solitude and quiet somewhere in the country.

How and when did you meet Steve Hillage, how did that come about? What was it like recording with him?

I originally met Steve and Miquette at Glade Festival in the UK, though I've been listening to System 7 music since high school. We hit it off, and they licensed a few tracks of mine for a compilation they were putting together for Platipus Records. I started working on Dreamtime Submersible, and had a feeling that it would be a much better album with the addition of Steve's signature guitar parts, so I asked him and it just kind of came together. Hopefully it’s not our last collaboration!

How do you decide what music ends up under which pseudonym? Do you compose/record it with a particular project/name in mind, or do you just record a bunch of stuff and decide later which ones "fit"?

I definitely compose with a specific project in mind. Bluetech music is what I tour with most of the time, so I tend to write stuff that has a really kinetic personality to it, like some cosmic space hop - stuff that will move people on the dance floor as well as entertain them intellectually, and hopefully impart a spiritual component to their dance. When I’m a particular techno mood, usually inspired by listening to something that gets me going, I write for the Evan Marc project. When I’m feeling more intimate, or melancholic, or subdued I write ambient and experimental music for the Evan Bartholomew alias.

What are your primary sources of musical inspiration?

My primary sources of inspiration are extremely varied. I am inspired by natural forces, and I mean that in a more animistic sort of way. Like the force or energy of the volcano here is an inspiration to me, the way the lava destroys and creates room for new life and new land at the same time. I’m an active dreamer, and many of the scenarios and events that occur in the dreamtime became inspirations for music, though I’m usually looking for a more universal thread, or element that reflects a common mythology, i.e. Phoenix Rising off the new Bluetech release on Somnia. In one sense it’s about the larger mythos of the phoenix, but it’s also about a very personal and intense dream involving the energy of the phoenix, which affects and directs the way that I live my life.

What about your collaboration with Steve Hillage? Did you record together, or swap sound files across the net, or what?

Steve and I swapped files across the internet. He's in the UK, so it’s hard for us to physically work together. Sometimes I think that is better in a collaborative environment, as each person has their home base where they are used to creating. I wrote base tracks and sent them to him, and he did a number of passes over what I had written and sent the parts back to me so that I could construct, edit, and reconfigure them to make it all work as a story.

Do you use both soft synths and actual gear? Any favorites?

I'm almost entirely digital at this point. I had recently invested in a modular analog system, but sold it as I knew the Hawaii weather wouldn't be too kind on those circuits. I am looking at the new Dave Smith analog devices with a bit of gear lust however.

What do you like best about making electronic music?

I like electronic music because after a period of extreme specialization into infinite micro genres, it seems like the horizon is open again. You can make music via electronic means that has the subtlety and sway of Debussy or Satie, music that sounds organic and otherworldly at the same time. Truly there are no rules about what it’s supposed to sound like anymore. It’s liberating as a composer to have that sort of freedom! ♫

Thanks Evan for the interview!

Beta Two Agonist

September 2008

Beta Two Agonist is Ian Lizandra, who resides in The Netherlands and records on the Dutch label Databloem. I was very impressed with his debut album Zero Point Field, enough so that I named him best new ambient artist of 2007. His latest solo album is excellent as well, plus he has a new collaboration with Jason Corder - you can read reviews of both in this month’s CD reviews.

For a brief bio of Ian, check out his webpage here. Up until recently, I didn’t even know Ian’s name, so I figured I ought to get to know him better and enlighten EAS readers in the process.

How about an off-the-wall question to start with – do you have asthma?

As a matter of fact, yes. Since I can remember I've had respiratory problems associated with asthma, so I always carry an inhaler with me.

You probably guessed the true intent of my first question – what is the origin of your chosen band name?

A beta-2-agonist is a substance that can be found in asthma medication. It relaxes the airway muscles and allows for more air to reach the lungs. I adopted this moniker when I started making more ambient-based music. I found out later on that Aphex Twin has a track called 'Ventolin', which is also an asthma medicine that I used a lot as a kid. I have always had a special relationship with all things air-related, so air - or the lack of it - has always played an important role in my life. Just breathing in and out is a wonderful thing and the most fundamental aspect of life.

Your webpage says that you were born in Barcelona, the son of a Catalan musician and a Dutch mother. What nationality do you consider yourself?

I consider myself to be somewhat rootless, nationality-wise. I've never had the feeling of belonging to one nationality. When I'm in Barcelona I feel somewhat out-of-place or disconnected from that specific culture and when I'm in The Netherlands I have exactly the same feeling. Although I speak Dutch fluently and without accent, I don't feel Dutch. It's probably because of growing up between two worlds. I do love the Mediterranean way of life though and love spending time with my Catalan family. Barcelona is such a vibrant city and it definitely has a special place in my heart.

Does your multicultural background have any impact on the sound of your music?

I don't know if it's clearly recognizable in my own music, but one consequence of having a multi-cultural background is that in my case, one is more sensitive to both the differences and the similarities between cultures. There are a lot of similarities, especially in music. For example, in traditional flamenco music people speak of 'duende', which is difficult to translate but can be seen as a mysterious blend of passion, tragic sadness and expression. It's something that everyone feels when moved by music or other art forms but no philosopher can explain. By listening to lot of different musical styles from all around the world I realize that this is something universal, you can hear it in Indian raga, jazz, classical music, electronic music and so on. In every culture music expresses our deepest emotions and I can only hope that people hear and feel it in my music too. One thing I like about electronic music is that has no real form or footprint that ties it to a particular culture. It can take many shapes because it is not limited to instruments or a specific technique or sound.

The Databloem label, and your music in particular, can be difficult to categorize. What do you call it when people ask what style it is?

To be honest, I always have great difficulties to label my music and most other music for that matter. For sake of convenience it's ok to use terms like free-jazz, atmospheric ambient, avant-garde or whatever, but the music that moves me almost always defies boundaries, because it is something that is dynamic and elusive. I use the term atmospheric sometimes, because it implies that I try to establish an atmosphere with my music, but then again, isn't all music about mood and atmosphere? More often I just tell people to listen to my music if they're curious to know what it sounds like, but it's funny that most of the time people just want to categorize. I think it's difficult to label your own music, because you have no distance to it whatsoever. I find it very difficult to listen to my own compositions objectively, if that is possible at all. I rarely listen to my albums, besides the actual process of creating them.

What’s the coolest thing and the worst thing about making music on computers?

The coolest thing is that you have an infinite palette of sounds at your disposal, and even more ways to process and mangle sounds beyond recognition. But at the same time, that is the worst thing about computers or any machine that can be counter-intuitive and that needs your input. It is easy to become so absorbed by the endless creative and technical possibilities, that it starts working against you. That's why, for me, it is best to see the computer as a creative tool and instrument, not a means by itself. One can feel detached from music that way. When I see it as a vessel for expression, everything around me becomes an instrument. Computers, software and interfaces are the new musical instruments of our time and have expressive and technical capabilities that are inaccessible to traditional instrumentalists. One thing I am particularly wary about is the idea that you need more effects, instruments, software or any kind of expensive hardware to make better music. I love equipment too, and when it comes to certain types of equipment it really makes sense to buy the best quality you can afford, but I'm convinced that the latest gear won't necessarily inspire me to make music. The same goes for software. I used to have this huge list of VST plug-ins, now I use only those that prove to be essential. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that electronic music is so influenced by software/hardware tools that the medium eventually becomes the message.

Describe how you go about composing a piece.

It's a really intuitive process. Most of the time I start with experimentation and collecting source material, looking for sounds and not really thinking about whether I can use something for a composition. Those sounds can come from field recordings or objects lying around, recordings of instruments or can be computer-generated. I leave a lot of room for randomness, chance and happy accidents.

There is something magical about stumbling upon a sound that really excites me and gets my juices flowing. A composition might start with a chord, motif or texture that evokes a particular mood. When a sound raises the hairs in the back of my neck, I build on that emotion, adding to it without compromising that initial gut feeling I had. I try to avoid using the same approach or compositional method over and over and just let it happen. When I have a rough sketch for a piece, I start refining it and often a track is combined from several versions or other compositions. When I feel that the composition is well-balanced musically, I start working on the mixing/mastering stage.

It's not uncommon that images or words are the seeds for a composition, for me there are so many similarities between poetry, music and visual art. I find it very interesting that these fields are blending more and more. I remember reading something about certain composers seeing colors and forms when hearing notes or chords. When you think about the fact that colors are vibrations too, that's actually not very difficult to imagine.

Your music tends to be more about unusual sounds than musical compositions in the conventional sense. So how do you tell when a piece of music is done to your liking?

That is the most difficult part, realizing that nothing is ever really finished. When I feel that there's nothing I can do or add that will improve it, I just leave it and listen to it a week later with fresh ears. When the music still captivates me at that point, I consider it finished. It's actually quite ironic when I stop and think about it; I strive to make the music sound free-flowing and organic, when it is actually deliberately arranged. I read something about a novelist who said that writing is more like stripping away, rather than adding. I like to think of composing the same way and focus on the bare essentials of what I'm trying to convey.

Have you done any live performances yet, and if not are there any plans in the works? Or does your method of composing and playing not really work for that?

Yes, I do perform live occasionally and I always enjoy it. The challenge for me in playing live is keeping an experimental and improvisational attitude towards electronic music. Without sounding like someone merely experimenting with sound in an unorganized fashion or just triggering sequences. It's interesting to note that a lot of people who are not used to electronic musicians, tend to complain about the lack of 'gestural' performance, such as in the way a violinist's or pianist's movements are connected to the sound they produce. They just see someone staring at a screen, pushing knobs and twisting buttons. One of the things I find difficult is that I never consider live performance when I compose my music, so that I really have a hard time translating it to a live setting. I'd love to find a way to play my music live like a jazz musician, to have true improvisational freedom.

What is the most unusual sound source you've used for a piece of music?

I was copying from a floppy disk once on a very old computer. Because of the old drive, it made this chittery rhythm. I immediately got my recorder and started copying files to and from the floppy drive. I also got this amazing surprise when I accidentally opened a non-audio file in an audio editor. And I used body sounds several times in my compositions. There is a hidden world of sounds that you would normally not be able to hear, unless you use extreme amplification, like putting something under a microscope. You can record the strangest sounds using contact microphones or a pick-up coil, of which the latter picks up electro-magnetic fields. Circuit-bending cheap toys can yield very interesting results too.

But in the end the most important thing for me is that the sound excites me, regardless of its origins. I don't focus on where a sound comes from, as long as it stirs something in my imagination. One thing I noticed over the years is that my perception of sound versus noise, if there is any distinction at all, has changed dramatically. I love listening to the murmur and noise of city and nature alike, or the drones and hums of machines. I've had numerous occasions, when composing, where the sounds outside would blend with my music. Every time that happens I feel great joy, because I feel that my music at that moment is part of a whole, as if the world adapts itself to the music, as well as the other way around. One time I had this wonderful experience where my composition blended with a piece of music from a documentary on TV. I listened in amazement how, in some uncanny example of synchronicity, two musical fragments that would normally be completely separated in place and time, were fused into something new. It was wondrous and I darted for my minidisc recorder, but sadly I was never able to capture that moment.

What is the appeal of adding buzzes, static or distortion - sonic elements that most musicians work carefully to avoid?

Kim Cascone, an artist who himself has made extensive use of glitches and digital sound artifacts, wrote an essay about what he called 'The Aesthetics of Failure'. He describes it way better than I ever could. For me personally, there is something beautiful about using errors and grittiness and turning it into harmonic or rhythmical material - especially in this world where everything is supposed to be perfect on a superficial level. Maybe the crackle, static, clicks and pops of vinyl records influenced me, as I used to listen to my father's record collection as a kid. It's a very familiar sound to me. Because of our changing environment, immersed in digital technology, we are confronted with beeps, glitches, clipping, aliasing, distortion, quantization noise and so on. These tendencies can be seen in other fields as well, such as visual arts. Errors are way more interesting, because they catch us off guard and challenge our notions of what we define as right or wrong. Interestingly enough, a lot of sounds that I use come from organic sources and, when taken out of context, can be surprisingly similar to sounds generated by digital means. I also noticed that these types of sounds are becoming more common in mainstream music too, so that is an indication that we're growing accustomed to them.

You recently did a collaboration with Jason Corder. How did that come about, and how did you like it?

We got in touch through an art project I was setting up, for which I was inviting musicians and visual artists. Because Jason is a label mate on Databloem Records, I thought he might be interested in participating so I got in touch with him. We talked about how we enjoy making music and he suggested exchanging some material for a possible collaboration. From then on, it just happened naturally. The first sound you hear on the 'Further to find closer' album is from a prayer bowl, which was the first sound I sent to Jason. We started processing and mixing the musical fragments after we made a few conceptual decisions, such as using mostly acoustic instruments as our source. After that we just kept adding elements to each other's sounds or processed them into something new. Before we knew it, we had almost an hour's worth of material.

I definitely loved working together. There's a term in Dutch that describes the process very well; 'kruisbestuiving'. Literally it means cross-fertilization, but it is mostly used in the context of two people influencing each other creatively or otherwise. Working with another musician adds a whole new dimension to the music, because of different approaches and ideas being introduced. The whole project was a free-form challenge-response improvisation. When Jason introduced a rhythmical idea somewhere along the line, I responded by developing that idea further. The result is that you can really hear a progression and flow in the album.

Any other collaborative music projects on the horizon?

At the moment, no. But It's definitely something I want to do more often. One of my long-time wishes is to collaborate with jazz musicians, because I like the modern jazz approach of experimentation combined with traditional instrumentation. I love that blend of organic sounds and digital processing. But I'm open to whatever musical avenue presents itself. I want to try to reinvent myself and find new approaches to make music.

Thanks much Ian for the interview, and for the great music! ♫

August 2008

Mike Griffin

I am proud to say I’ve known Mike Griffin almost from the beginning of Hypnos – not quite back to his Chromostatic 1 studio, but I did visit him at Chromostatic 2 on several occasions, since we live within a few miles of each other. I had the pleasure of bumping into him and his wife Lena at a Mexican restaurant a few months back. I interviewed Mike once before, but that seems eons ago, so he willingly accepted my invitation to update the record. For more information about Mike and his label, visit www.hypnos.com, in particular the forum there, where Mike posts frequently.

Your brief bio on the Hypnos page is almost apologetic about releasing your bizarre noises for public consumption. Several releases later, do you now consider yourself a “real” musician?

Well, that bit of text was tongue-in-cheek to begin with, and was written quite a while ago. It brings back a recollection of what it felt like to go from someone who bought other people's CDs and listened to them, to someone who made music and released CDs for other people to buy and listen to. It was a shift in self-perception, I guess, and I think most recording artists (if they were to be completely honest) would admit that one some level it still feels strange and sort of preposterous to release music out into the world, call oneself a recording artist, and try to "promote" the music into the hands of other people.

On another level, though, I've become accustomed to it and I know that even if I feel humble about what I do, there are people who like that sort of work, and will even pay to hear my latest recording.

When did you first realize that you really had something with the Hypnos label?

Pretty early on it became obvious that many of the artists I had enjoyed listening to before starting Hypnos were eagerly looking for good outlets for their work, and the number of independent, well-regarded ambient music labels was small. So even before Hypnos was very established, or selling many CDs at all, I could tell that there would be no trouble finding high-quality material by well-known artists for the label to release. Within the first year I could see that there would be plenty of great music to release, and then it would just be a matter of figuring out how to get the CDs into the hands of people who wanted them…something not quite as easy as it first seems.

You’ve had a number of spinoffs and collaborations – the Binary sublabel, the association with The Foundry, and now Hypnos Secret Sounds and an affiliation with AtmoWorks. What makes these partnerships work – or not?

Well, it's easy to make a spinoff work when it's still part of Hypnos, as with Binary or with Hypnos Secret Sounds. Those are just different ways of doing the same thing, in the case of Binary as an outlet for more dynamic electronica, and with HSS as a way of releasing smaller limited editions for odd projects or new emerging artists.

The other things you mentioned, The Foundry and now AtmoWorks, are more like partnerships, and they're both examples where I had a good relationship with other label owners, and there were potentials for what I guess business buzz-word types would call "synergies," or in other words, ways in which we could both help each other.

In the case of The Foundry, I thought it was a very cool, small label but Michael Bentley was about to shut it down because he couldn't sell enough CDs in order to justify releasing new projects. At that time, Hypnos mail order was booming like crazy and I was looking for a way of getting more ambient and experimental CDs released but I didn't have the time to do more Hypnos releases myself. So for a while, we basically treated The Foundry as an offshoot of Hypnos, where Michael would curate and design these great CD projects, and Hypnos would agree to purchase a large enough number of copies up-front that The Foundry could mostly be assured that each new release would break even. Even though that partnership didn't continue forever, I'd argue that it was still mostly successful.

In the case of AtmoWorks it's a label that's redefining itself as entirely a download-only label, and so nobody at AW has any interest in mailing out any physical CDs any longer, let alone making them and keeping CD stock. On the other hand, Hypnos has established a pretty efficient way of making our own limited-edition CDRs, from our Hypnos Secret Sounds imprint, and we also have a very good mail operation now that Lena is working on that full-time. Here then is another case where AW had a desire to still have the option of a tangible CD product for the customers who don't want downloads, and Hypnos has an ability to help with creating and mailing CDRs, and so we both benefit. And as with the Foundry deal, this is a way of feeding the Hypnos mail order business with a steady number of new releases to sell. This is a very new arrangement, as we've just been selling AW discs for about 10 days, but it appears that it will benefit both parties, and this arrangement might even be the sort of thing we'd consider doing with other small labels.

In general, I'd say that this music genre is so small, and there's so little money involved, that it doesn't make sense to be territorial or competitive. It's much more productive and healthy for everyone if you find ways to cooperate. Rather than viewing other small labels as competition, I view them as part of the lifeblood that keeps the genre going. When small labels die off, and music mail order companies shut down, and magazines and webzines cease publishing, it just de-energizes the whole scene. We all benefit when there are other people putting their work into the mix, as it keep people listening and enthusiastic. When people stop listening and lose their enthusiasm, the whole scene dies.

It’s no secret that there were some bumpy times for a while for the label. Was there ever a time that you thought about hanging it up, or that the label would fail?

Definitely there have been a couple of stretches where the label was half-dormant, not releasing much music, and infrequently updating the web site or the online store. There was never a thought that I would walk away from Hypnos, not for a moment. I viewed that time as a sort of hibernation, and I always knew that some kind of change would occur that would help me get Hypnos running full-speed again. Basically, Hypnos as a business was too successful to just walk away from it, but not so successful that I could just do it full-time, and coupled with the other demands of life, it was too much work for me to do it myself. I mean, you can work 12-16 hours a day for a while, and if you really push yourself you can do it for years, but eventually you will crash, or burn out. I've talked to many people who assumed that Hypnos was just trailing off into nothing, but it never seemed that way to me at the time. I just wanted to find a way to get a part-time helper or something, and get things revved back up again.

How in the world do you find the time to maintain a full-time day job, make your own music, and run an independent label solo (almost)?

As I said above, it's really not possible in the long term to do everything alone. I tried, and for at last 5 years after I started Hypnos, I slept no more than 4-5 hours per night, and I was constantly exhausted and stressed. I think it would be possible for someone to start a small label and make some music, in addition to the job, if they didn't spend so much time on it. Really the very time-consuming part of Hypnos that never stops and never lets you take a break is the mail order business. If a person had a label to run, and felt overwhelmed by the demands of life for a while, they could easily just not release any music for 6 months or so. Or a recording artist, who was really busy and stressed out, might just not record anything for a while, and spend one month per year making a new album. But the mail order business, there's no way to take a break, and if you're too busy to keep up with it the way it deserves, then you end up giving poor service and your customers start to drift away, even if they love your music. That started to happen a bit with Hypnos, for a while, but I'm happy to say that the mail order business is better than ever now that it has someone keeping up with it properly, and orders are going out quickly.

Of course, when I say “almost” in the previous question, I’m referring to your other full-time employee, your wife and fellow musician Lena. How did the two of you meet?

Lena and I got to know each other in a way that might seem like the least likely way to meet your ideal partner, but it happened... we actually became friends online, just casual friends not trying to date or anything. We got to know each other at a distance for quite a while before we started to realize we'd really like to meet. As I said, it seems like an incredibly far-fetched way to meet someone who is a perfect match for you, and that you'd be much more likely to meet crazy people this way, and we're both aware of that and sort of amused and astonished at how it worked out so well from such an unlikely beginning. But it has worked out not only for the two of us individually, but for Hypnos too. Hypnos really needed, and has really benefited from, a dedicated employee's full-time efforts and attention.

So are the two of you planning on collaborating musically?

We already have collaborated musically already in some ways. For her first album, I acted as engineer and producer, and while I think of the album as hers primarily, she views it as more of a 50/50 collaboration. In fact, if I think of some of Brian Eno's collaborations, at times he worked in a role as conceptualist and producer, using the studio as an instrument, in collaboration with someone like Harold Budd or Jon Hassell who performed as instrumentalists. I would view that kind of interaction as an "artist/producer" relationship even if the producer has a big role in how the album sounds, though others would call it a collaboration. From that perspective, you could say that Lena's first album was a collaboration and could have included both our names on the cover.

We definitely intend to collaborate in a more traditional sense soon. I can envision an interaction like the way I work in Viridian Sun with David Tollefson, where I take on the production side in the studio but I'm also an equal "player" at the same time. I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was looking at the Hypnos web site and saw a CD listed there by a group called "Wildwood" and I didn't know what it was, so I asked Lena and she said it was our collaborative project. Probably the name came from the fact that we love going up to the Wildwood trail to run through Forest Park. You know how dreams work, though... in my dream I had helped record and release this CD but had never heard of it before. One way or another, and whatever it's called, there will be a CD like that some day.

Any other collaborations you are working on?

I have done some work on a collaboration with the wonderful Italian ambient/drone artist Oöphoi, who has also released some work on the Hypnos label solo (Athlit) as well as with Paul Vnuk Jr. (Distance to Zero). He sent me some sound materials and I reworked them, and added new sound sources, and I've created about 2 hours worth of material that I like very much. I'm going to edit these down to about a CD's worth of material and send it back to him and see if maybe we have an album here.

I've discussed collaborations with a small number of other people, but I tend to be cautious about starting these things up, because they can take a lot of time and energy if the match is not a good one. I've observed collaborations between other artists that ended up being a difficult tug-of-war and both sides ended up frustrated. Still, I'd love to work with some different artists in the future. A good collaboration ends up being a cross-fertilization that helps both participants grow and learn in ways they couldn't have done alone. For future collaborations I might enjoy working with people whose work is very different from mine, coming from quite a different place rather than just minimal ambient.

Last month you performed for the first time in 10 years as half of Viridian Sun. Other than the technical problems you mentioned on the Hypnos Forum, what was that like, getting together after such a long break?

It was our first live performance in 10 years but it wasn't like we went into the show without familiarity. We had just finished a series of recording and editing sessions for our upcoming album, Infinite In All Directions. And in fact we had recorded another album about 5 years ago, which ended up being shelved not due to any problems with the material. We just got busy and stopped working on it for long enough that we never started again. So, Viridian Sun has seen some gaps in activity but not the full 10 years. The fact that David Tollefson and I are very good friends, and see each other regularly even when we're not making music, made it feel very natural to start recording again. This live performance was very easy, aside from the technical problem you mentioned, and we'll probably perform live again soon, maybe to celebrate our CD release.

Describe the process of recording Fabrications. How did you go about recording the sounds, and what sorts of processes did you do to get the sound the way you wanted? How did you know when a piece was finished, what measure did you use to decide you were satisfied with a particular track? And what inspired you to make "music" out of these sounds? How happy are you with the end result after 10 years in the making?

Fabrications was really made with two totally different processes. The first process was gathering location recordings, using a digital recorder and a pair of binaural microphones. Binaural microphones are tiny little clip microphones intended to be replicate the human stereo hearing response, with sounds reflected and absorbed by the head in between two ears. So you either mount the microphones on a dummy head, one next to where each ear would be, or more commonly you put on a pair of sunglasses and clip one microphone onto the glasses right next to each ear. Ordinary stereo recordings give you some sense of location by the different sounds picked up by the left and right microphones, but when you record with binaural microphones this way, the sense of location in place is enhanced by the effect of the head in between the microphones. Especially when you listen on good headphones, a good binaural location recording really gives you a weird, scary sense of being there. Much of this is lost when you layer different sounds, and add effects, but some of it still comes through in this album.

And that brings me to the second part of the process, which was editing all the many hours of location sounds, labeling digital audio tapes and transferring them to my computer and trimming and labeling little clips. After that, starting to layer location sounds together, and add some subtle effects, creating collages of different places and times to create new complex locations that never really existed. When I started, I think my plan was to present the sounds in a way that was more naturalistic, fooling the mind and the ear a bit by combining incongruous sound-places with each other. What I found was that the result of combining different sound sources was not bizarre and surreal but quite natural sounding. If you add the sounds of an ocean walk in Kona, and the sounds of a crowd at a house party, and the sounds of an airplane cabin while passengers are boarding, you don't really end up with something that sounds odd or artistic. It just sounds like regular life. It often sounds like you're listening to a recording in an ordinary place, with a TV or radio on in the background.

I wanted the end result to be more interesting, but without chopping up the audio into little clips and creating a disorienting little sample experiment, so I started to abandon the idea of presenting just a few "clean" layers of location sound, and started to create much thicker and more complex layers, at first with 10 or 20 layers at a time and later with even more than that. What started to emerge was that it was most interesting if you could just swim in this ocean of different sounds, with one layer or another briefly rising above the others and making itself known. The thicker and more drone-like I made the tracks, the more interesting they became. As long as I didn't leave all the layers equal, which just ended up making a gray, boring sound muck... the important thing was to have a lot of little hints and vapors of sound-places, with one or more making itself heard above the others to give your mind and ear something to grab onto.

That's a lot about the process and intentions so I'll try to address the rest. Knowing when a piece was finished was the hardest part, and that's the reason it took me 10 years to finish. I kept coming to places where I felt each piece needed something more in order to be interesting, but when I added more, it became less interesting. It was not until I had allowed the project to sit for a very long time that I figured out the key to making the pieces interesting, and getting them to that "finished" state. Then all the pieces came together very quickly. I wanted each track to sound very different from the rest, and the thicker each track became the more difficult it was at first to differentiate them. I had to undo some of what I had done, and add a couple of top layers to each track at the end, a sort of varnish or coating which livened up the mix. In the end, I'm very happy with Fabrications and much more proud of it than anything I've ever done. I'm not only proud of the end results, the sound and the art of it, but I'm also proud that I didn't just stick it on a shelf and move on to something else. I learned something important about the creative process by "rescuing" this project that had dead-ended several times over the years, and neither just leaving it unfinished or releasing it in an unsatisfactory state. I know that it's a challenging listen, and not conventionally musical, but I hope people will have a chance to hear it because I think it's very rewarding.

Just what magnitude are we generally talking about for sales of ambient CDs? Are they generally in the thousands, the hundreds? What's the least amount of sales you've ever had for a Hypnos title?

I can't speak for all the other labels but I think generally, sales are much, much lower than people think they are. Many small labels are selling less than 100 copies of each new release, including labels you've heard of. I've talked to a few label owners who have told me they sell 90% of their CDs to us, through the Hypnos store, and in some cases we're only talking 40 or 60 copies or even fewer.

It's no surprise that such a high percentage of small labels shut down quickly. If you're getting CDs manufactured and need to sell a couple hundred copies of each release to cover your costs, you actually have to be more successful than most new labels just to break even. Lots of people start a label with the expectation of losing a few thousand dollars a year on the venture, just for the fun of being involved in the music, but working hard AND losing money at the same time gets old quickly.

As for our worst-sellers, we have some CDs that have sold less than 100 copies even years after release, and while many of our Secret Sounds limited CDRs have sold pretty well, others have sold only a few dozen copies. Even as relatively successful as Hypnos is, we sell a small enough number of CDs that we have to be extremely careful which projects we choose to manufacture conventionally. More projects have to be released as limited CDRs to control our costs and risk, so we can continue.

How closely do you track sales of Hypnos titles? For example, can you tell me this Jeff Pearce or that Saul Stokes title sold 1124 copies, or 675, or whatever? What is the bestseller in the Hypnos catalog?

We work up reports from time to time, to see how things are going. After filling people's orders and reading reviews and answering inquiries about CDs, though, you get a sense of what's selling because it's what people are talking about. There are those CDs that nobody ever talks about or buys, and it can be a bit puzzling.

The best seller so far is definitely Somnium by Robert Rich. Not only did we press 2,000 copies of that one initially, instead of our usual 1,000, but that first pressing has sold out and we've just had another 1,000 made. So, given that we sent out quite a few promotional copies from that first pressing, and have sold a few of the second pressing, I'd say we've actually sold around 2,000 copies. There are other Hypnos releases that have sold out the first pressing of 1,000 and been re-pressed, such as Robert Rich's Inner Landscapes and Humidity, Vidna Obmana's Landscape in Obscurity, our first compilation The Other World, Jeff Pearce's To the Shores of Heaven (and we're about to re-press Daylight Slowly any time now). There might be a couple more I'm forgetting, but CD sales in general have been slower the last 7-8 years so all of our all-time top sellers are from the first 4 years of Hypnos.

You mentioned earlier the importance of keeping the ambient genre alive in general, without regard to whether it is a Hypnos title or not. What do you think of the health of the genre right now as compared to say, when Hypnos started? Better, worse, about the same? Any trends you've observed?

I think a few things have contributed to generally very low CD sales in the ambient world. First, lots and lots of self-released CDRs by new artists trying to get exposure. This results in a huge number of CD releases for an ambient music listener to choose from, and lots more CD releases means that each release sells fewer copies. This is only a "bad" thing in the sense that it dilutes the soup for everyone, makes it harder for each label to become sustainable.

Second, lots of free and "netlabel" releases by both new and established artists trying to get listeners, resulting obviously in more free stuff for people to listen to, leaving them less time and "hunger" to search for CDs to buy. It also contributes to the sense that music is something you just download for free these days, not something you buy.

Third, file sharing in the form of bittorrent and "download blogs," which means that even if there's an artist and a label out there making music to release on CD, many listeners who might otherwise have bought it can get a copy for free. I understand that many who downloaded it wouldn't have bought it anyway, but my gut tells me that the number of "lost sales" (people who downloaded who would have purchased if they hadn't found it for free) is greater than the number of "gained sales" (people who wouldn't have bought the CD before, but downloaded it and liked it so much that they bought the disc or legal download), even if the huge majority of downloaders are neither "lost" nor "gained" sales, and would never have purchased the CD whether or not the download had been available.

The world we live in has changed, and I think the end result will be more people doing something (such a recording music) moderately well, for free, and fewer people doing something extremely well, for money.

The "for free" practitioners will squeeze out many of the "for pay" artists. We're actually doing great, and I'm not whining about our specific situation at Hypnos, but I worry for the scene in general that new labels will not start up, new mail order businesses will not start up, and the few that do start up will have such a hard time that they'll likely quit right away.

What we'll be left with is a small number of established artists like Roach and Rich doing their own thing, a few labels like Hypnos that are churning along doing OK in their niche, and other than that, just a vast sea of hobbyists releasing MP3s for free download by the thousands per year. That's still OK for Hypnos but it doesn't make for a very healthy scene overall. Will there be a new Robert Rich or Steve Roach, in a time when there will not be a Hearts of Space to launch them and promote them, and get their CDs into the hands of tens of thousands of listeners?

Labels will need to adjust, and find ways to connect with listeners in ways that the listeners find compelling enough to keep paying something to keep the labels alive. I think part of the solution might be that labels need to offer more -- maybe better packaging and better liner notes and text, maybe video DVDs and "behind the scenes" materials, whatever they can come up with to make the experience of buying the official release much better, worth paying for, compared to downloading a ZIP file of MP3s from Bittorrent. It also might mean lowering prices on CDs and legal downloads. I think many people might be more likely to buy a CD for $10 than $16 or even $13, and at $8 the purchase becomes easier still.

We're thinking of creative ways to get ambient music listeners to consider supporting Hypnos, whether it means buying CDs or downloads or CDs with free immediate download, or CDs plus DVD supplements... who knows?

So what’s next for Hypnos and for M Griffin?

Now that Lena is working on things full-time that frees me up to try to develop the label, interact with more artists, and work on releasing more music. So far that has been going very well, and our release schedule has been very busy with 8 releases in the first half of 2008, and at least 10 more planned for the second half.

I feel Hypnos and Hypnos Secret Sounds are going strong and pointed in the right direction, so now we want to concentrate on two things.

First, we want to start up our download store which will be called SoundSwim (www.soundswim.com) and which will eventually replace the Hypnos Online Store, selling both downloads and CDs.

Our other big priority right now is to get the Binary sub-label built up to be more of an equal partner to Hypnos. We'd like to release more music on Binary, starting with Saul Stokes's new album Villa Galaxia coming in August, then followed by a compilation called Nevertime. The intention is to strongly define Binary as an outlet for modern electronica and minimal techno. We're also going to create a limited CDR imprint related to Binary, called Binary Explorer Series, which will relate to Binary the way Hypnos Secret Sounds relates to Hypnos. The limited CDR imprint lets us try new things, release live recordings or re-issues, or launch new unknown artists without worrying about selling a lot of copies.

Sounds like Hypnos plans to be around for a long time to come – which is great news for us ambient fans. Thanks so much Mike for the interview! ♫

Jeffrey Koepper

July 2008

For more background on this month’s interview subject, solo American synth artist Jeffrey Koepper, please read his bio page on his website. Thanks Jeff for the interview, I really appreciate it!

In April you performed at The Gatherings concert series. How did that go?

The Gatherings concert went great. Chuck Van Zyl and his crew are great guys to work with and everything went off without a hitch. I think that is the best venue to play live electronic music - being an old stone church the sound is incredible and it is visually very inspiring. I have become spoiled playing there. It doesn't get much better than that for atmosphere.

How does playing this sort of music live compare to being in the studio?

Playing live is like nothing else, it is an incredible feeling. For me it is very different from the studio. The studio is a more controlled intimate solo experience, where it is just you and the machines creating. Live has the energy of the room and the audience which can really build an intense feeling. This feeling in turn will take you into new directions for the compositions.

Your music has a very "composed" feel to it. How much does improvisation play a part in your creative process, versus carefully planning things out?

Well, I would say my music is mostly improvised and done in the moment, inspired by the feeling of the moment. I rarely plan and compose music before I go into the studio. In the studio I work with the machines and the different interfaces they offer, these interfaces in turn influence the music and how I make music. I try to get as much of the composition going as possible and then capture it live to a two track mix. I feel that captures the life and energy of a piece. I may then add some textures and sounds during a final mix. That way the feeling of the composition is captured and there is still room at the end to fine tune and finalize a piece.

On your website, at the end of a long list of familiar musical influences in EM and synth-pop, you go on to mention "Arp, Oberheim, Moog, Sequential Circuits and many others." So how important is the technology in making good electronic music? And how is it an "influence"?

The technology I use to make music is very important. I feel the type of musical equipment you use directly influences the style and direction the music will take. I list companies such as Arp, Oberheim, Moog, Sequential Circuits and others as influences because the sound and interface they offer directly influences how I work on a composition. I also feel that most of the music I like and that I was influenced by was done in the past using that type of equipment; that is proof enough for me. I could be called a Luddite in the fact that I don't use a computer at all in the studio. Everything I use is hardware, down to an analog mixing board and recorder. I could never work in the "mouse controlled" world of computer recording and soft synths. I just can't connect to that world.

Your list of gear is impressive. How were you able to amass such an impressive collection for your studio?

The gear and old technology has always been important for me from day one. When I first got into music and bought my first synthesizer in 1985, it was analog. The funny thing was analog was on its way out of fashion but I just knew from day one I loved analog synths. People would say to me back then "why do you want that old junk" but I didn't care, I knew what I wanted. During that period the prices of analog synths dropped very low because there was little or no interest in them from most musicians. So you were able to buy them reasonably priced. But little by little people started to realize that analog synths were incredible machines and not outdated, so now the prices are back up to where they should be in my opinion for such wonderful machines.

Do you have a personal favorite in your synth collection?

I really can't say I have one favorite synth, they are all so different and good at different things. I love the aspects of the synths that give them their unique personality. For example ARP instruments are very different in tone to the Oberheim synths but I like both just as well...they all have their applications. So I guess I love them all equally. But I do really love everything Arp has done. :)

Your discs have a very professional look and sound, from the packaging to the music. How do you manage to do it all yourself?

Wow thanks for that. I try really hard to bring the best product I can to my audience. I put alot of time and effort into creating and recording the music. I want it to sound beautiful and lush. Steve Roach has been great with mastering my records. He's a great guy and I appreciate what he does. Also the packaging and art is important to me, I grew up with records and incredible 12 X 12 album jackets. I miss that format alot. So with my releases, I try to make them like mini album covers with the digipak format.

Will you remain strictly a solo act, or have you considered collaborating with others? If so, who would you like to work with and why?

I am always open to collaborations, given the members both have something unique to offer. I have collaborated with others in the past and there have been some great musical moments. I really enjoy the feeling of creating new pieces in a group situation. Working with others can lead you in directions you would have never ventured to on your own. As far as people I'd like to work with in the future, I'd love to do a project with Steve Roach, I think that would be very cool.

What is your favorite part about making music?

Well, there are so many aspects I love about making music, it’s hard to pin it down to one. I guess one thing that I really love is the creative spark that happens when composing and a piece starts coming together and coming alive. It is a feeling like no other. This feeling can give me the chills and make you very high and that feeling is also addictive, once you experience it you want it more and more. Another aspect I love about making music is using the older technology to create and bring that to the world. I like to show what is possible using just vintage hardware synths and sequencers. I feel that there is still a lot of good work to be done with this technology and many new directions to explore.

With all the time spent creating music, do you get much of a chance to listen to others? Who are some of your favorites, EM or otherwise?

I do listen to music all the time. I tend to listen to a lot of music that was recorded in the mid seventies to the early to mid eighties. I like the sound and production style of this period. I like the classic EM artists as well as the early eighties electropop artists.

In fact, in addition to the ambient music scene, I do early eighties influenced analog electropop music under the name Wire Service.

Do you listen to your own CDs after you are done with them, or do you tend to move on to the next thing?

I tend not to listen to my CDs for a while after I release them. During and production and mix down you can really over listen to a piece. I will usually go back after about a month and listen to the CD after it is fresh to my ears again and check it out.

Who is your "trusty assistant" in the photos section of your site?

My trusty assistant is my dog Kali, she is a chuiabull, which is a chuiahuia/pit bull mix. She is a great assistant and helps me with inspiration and with all my compositions.

When you aren't making music, what else do you like to do?

When I am not making music I like to restore, build and repair analog synths, this is good for me because I can keep up the studio in great working condition and is necessary. I like to hike and camp and get out into nature whenever possible. I also like to restore and play around with old Volkswagens so I keep pretty busy.♫

Thanks again Jeff for the great interview - we hope to hear from you again soon! Check out Jeff's latest CD Sequentaria, which was reviewed in the June 2008 issue of EAS.

June 2008

Deepspace

Deepspace is Mirko Ruckels. Born in Germany in 1972, he now lives in Australia and has been making ambient music since 2000. For these and other fun facts about Mirko, visit the bio page on his website. I want to thank Mirko for doing this interview.

How do your musical ideas come about, how are they inspired?

Ah, I'm fascinated by the idea of musical inspiration. There are so many ideas in our culture about it Some I agree with, some seem hideously mythic. Personally, inspiration can come from so many places. It can come from going for a walk, seeing a photo, having a dream, seeing an abandoned old house while driving along the highway, or basically any other interesting event in my life that "rings my ambient bell".

A lot of the time, my musical ideas come from trying to illustrate a certain emotion that I am feeling, via sound. The emotion can be anything. When I say emotion, I don't just mean happiness, sadness etc. It could be a sense of the quiet surrounding you, or the emotion you experience when you look up at the clouds, and for a second, grasp the great scale of things.

I'm constantly trying to capture feelings in music that I don't feel are fully explained by words or images. For example, the word "desolate." It's such a great word....but I'm frustrated by it. There is so much nuance music can give to this word, such that the word itself leaves things to chance and personal interpretation. As to images, I feel that I want to complement them with sounds. A tree swaying under the winter sun just sets me off! I want to create a piece that sounds like that!

I just realized while writing this that I often do the opposite too; I will hear a piece of music, and spend a lot of time trying to define it through mental images or through words, usually to my poor wife. Luckily, she is a writer and loves talking about the same sort of stuff.

Describe how you go about composing a piece of music.

I remember recording 'The First Glimpse of the...' from /The Barometric Sun /after a lunar eclipse less than a year ago. I was taking photos of the moon, and there were these vast beams of intense light coming off it, in a cross shape, probably because of the location of the sun at that point. I had no idea why, but it filled me with a profoundly serene feeling. I was thinking about the enormous size of those beams of light, each as wide as the moon itself, and I literally ran to the computer and wrote that piece.

I like having a few methods up my sleeve for composition. But at the centre of all of these methods, I'm very aware of idea of creative flow and energy. I try to get out of the way of my own often cynical brain, and let ideas come out fast without too much intellectual side-tracking. The best idea can seem absolutely stupid, or ridiculously simple. I love simple and stupid ideas. They are often overlooked by composers, as the ideas often *sound* different (ie good) to the way they feel when you play them. Musicians often like to play things that make them feel good about themselves.

This is where ambient musicians come into their own: they seem to think purely about the idea, not the technicalities, because of the expectations and wonderful limitations of the genre. Almost every other western genre of music I can think of requires a certain technical proficiency. Ambient music is very un-western in that sense. It seems to privilege the artistic over the technical. I recall Brian Eno saying that he used machines to record his early albums, because no musicians could play his ideas in a simple enough way. I like that sort of thinking. There is so much pathos in the simple.

As to the physical process, I will sit down and play with sounds on my computer, experimenting with ideas, or I will sit at the piano or guitar, and ideas will come there. I am an obsessive kind of writer, and I used to spend hours trying to craft the perfect chorus, for my previous bands, which were rock, usually Beatle-inspired affairs. Now I do the same with electronic music. I tend to not take ideas to the next stage unless they give me a kick. I have a little rule I use when writing, which I call the "smile" rule. I will not let an idea go to the next stage of recording until it makes me smile. That way, I know I'm not kidding myself. Kidding yourself is the biggest danger for a composer. Sometimes you can lose perspective, and then you begin to accept ideas that are substandard, because you are tired, or you think no-one will notice, or worse, because you think you are some wonderfully talented demi-god.

I use tricks to gain perspective on my compositions, especially when I feel like I'm losing it. I will write an idea, and record a rough version of it, then I will purposefully try to forget it, start a different piece, and come back to it after a few days, then listen to it again. I will have largely forgotten it, or at least in won't be in the front of my thoughts, and then I can hear it and be surprised by it. If I'm not pleasantly surprised, then the song usually ends up in a folder somewhere called 'never to be released.' or 'use in event of blackmail'…

The songwriters from ABBA (swedish ambient outfit) described the composer as a dragonhunter- you sit outside the cave, and wait for the dragon to appear. You may have to wait for days outside that cave, and if you turn your head for a second, the dragon may leave the cave, and you will have missed it. This sums up the approach that I like. I'm sure it sounded more eloquent when they said it. And it was possibly in Swedish. (Ed. note: Yes, Mirko is having a little fun here - just making sure you all are paying attention!)

How long, on average, would you say it takes you to put together a full album?

On average, I would say six months. I tend to have quite a few pieces on the "boil" at any one given time, so even though an album might be released only three months after another, as was the case with last year, the albums all had longer gestation periods that often overlap.

One thing I like to do is write pieces for future albums, that won't be released for a long time. That way, I don't have to hinder the flow, so to speak. I find it's important for me to let the ideas out, even if I'm never going to use the piece, or even if that future album is never going to see the light of day. The upshot of this is that there are many albums of material slowly filling up, as happened with Subantarctic Sessions, which came out of pieces that weren't included on other albums, mainly from the Slow Moving Lifeforms Volume 1 sessions. So there will eventually be albums that may be simultaneously released that have had a gestation period of years.

How do you decide what goes onto an album and what doesn’t make the cut?

I have scores of pieces sitting in folders on my computer that have missed out on being included on albums. Slow Moving Lifeforms Volume 1 for example, had a very particular sound and it was very easy to decide which pieces to leave out, and which pieces to include. The new album I'm working on, called The Glittering Domain/The Shrouded Domain is going to be a double album, because the pieces that I selected just *had* to go together, even though they fell into two slightly different camps that formed one concept. I have a pretty high mortality rate for pieces. Out of every five pieces, one will make it to some project, either deepspace, or my other electronic side-projects, Pilot of the Future and Atomium.

A lot of your music so far has been given away for free as downloads. Why is that?

Well actually, normally the albums are not available as free downloads, only as streams. I like the idea of being able to stream an ambient album, to see if you like the journey, and then buying the album if you like it. Previews of ambient music don't really work well for me. It's kind of like someone saying "look at this great picture!", and then only showing the top left hand corner of the frame. However, I do like the idea of a listener supporting their favorite artists as well, in a monetary way, as it does enable the artist to raise the quality of their work, by providing them with the funds to do so.

Subantarctic Sessions and Barometric Sun are available as free downloads for a couple of reasons. I put Subantarctic together simply as some out-takes from an unfinished Artic ambient project. The reception to that album took me completely by surprise- had I known people would like it that much, maybe I would have released it as normal on emusic or iTunes like the other albums. Clearly, a businessman I am not! And Barometric Sun ended up for free on lunarflower.us because I wanted to show some support to that label. I have noticed that today many beginning netlabels offer free downloads. Whether this is a good or bad thing....is going to be a very long argument isn't it. I do feel empathy for artists signed to labels that charge for releases. But then I also feel empathy for independents who are signed to no-one but themselves, who have to promote themselves without assistance. The music industry is tough. I take solace from the fact that in the end, the listeners benefit from the increased amount of music available.

You were born in Germany, but now you live in Australia. How did that happen?

My family moved from Bremen, Germany to Brisbane, Queensland when I was about 7 years old. I loved the little farm that we lived on, and to tell you the truth, I've always felt as little disconnected to the country that I live in now. It's a beautiful place, but I can't deny that I am from elsewhere. I'm actually half-french, half-german, and the older I get, the more that seems to awaken in me, and explain many things, such as where the music comes from. Maybe if I didn't live here, I wouldn't feel the need to travel musically. Not many people know of ambient music in Australia it seems- Having said that, Ultima Thule and artist/dj's like Mike G are clearly very much into ambient music, and I think it is there, but far under the surface.

Your wife writes supernatural thrillers, you write space music – how did the two of you meet?

We met playing in rock bands. I was a guitarist, and we were auditioning some lead vocalists, and she turned up, playing and singing "Picture This" by Blondie like she was Debbie Harry's long lost sister. I was quite a bit younger than her, and she actually introduced me to the more underground aspects of music. I became aware of artists such as Sonic Youth, The Cocteau Twins, Harold Budd and My Bloody Valentine through her influence. Those artists definitely became a big influence on me. Anyway, she has become very successful in her field and has published over 20 books now, all over the world.

What do your wife and kids think of your music?

I have a five year old boy called Luka, and a twenty-one month