Sound: always in a state of emergence or decay
People don't have to put you in a box. You can have the confidence to move across, and combine and learn from each different practice. They inform each other.
Dub music is like a long echo delay, looping through time...turning the rational musical order into an ocean of sensation.
Like a fly bouncing uselessly off a closed window, I'm caught at a moment when the effort of finding new ways to perceive the world feels just out of reach for me.
The longer we live, the more we are obliged to confront the deeper meaning of what it is we do.
Logically there is nothing new to say about the New. Or maybe it's just a problem of articulating unfamiliar perceptions.
New ideas emerge of their own free will if they are allowed to.
Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art.
I'd just written the book Ocean Of Sound, and this terrible thing happened in my life: my wife committed suicide. I was a single parent because of that; I was completely shattered. I had a book that I'd just finished that had been produced through a really, really terrible period, but I had managed to finish it.
Sometimes I'd like everybody who is stuck, or lost, or vacant to stay that way and keep silent for as long as it takes, but that's the critic in me talking.
I was associated with the Artist Placement Group in the early 1970s and David Hall, the video artist, was an Artist Placement Group artist. I was completely broke at that time, and he said to me, "Come and do some teaching" - he was head of department at Maidstone College of Art. And I went and did a couple of teaching days and practically the only person who showed up was David Cunningham [Flying Lizard's main man], with all of this finished work
I had the idea to do an anthology about instrument-making.
I was at a time of my life of making choices, I suppose: am I a writer, am I a visual artist? And when I was a teenager. I thought I would be a film-maker. Am I a musician? If so, what kind of musician am I?
I had ideas about music and sound and listening and time and so on that I wanted to pursue as an individual, and by doing that book, Brian [Eno] opened the door, and he decided to do a record based loosely on the book.
I think I sent one [book] to Brian Eno. I don't know how I got to know his address, but I sent one to him. He called me up and he said, "I really like the book, and I'm starting a new label, would you liked to do something?" It was a tricky situation for me, because I've always had this thing in my life of a tension between collaboration, which was extremely important to me, and then being alone. Make of that what you will!
Paul [ Burwell] and I had also got interested in making books. We'd been working with Bob Cobbing, the sound poet, since the beginning of the 70s, and Bob had this press called Writers Forum.
At that time, 73 and 74, I became aware that there were a number of us making instruments. Max Eastley was a good friend and he was making instruments, Paul Burwell and I were making instruments, Evan Parker was making instruments, and we knew Hugh Davies, who was a real pioneer of these amplified instruments.
Every time when it comes to writing a book, I think, "I'm the last person in the world that should be doing this, I don't know anything, I can't do this." And I went through years of that with Into The Maelstrom.
I don't mean I give the same intensity to everything I do - if I did that, I'd be dead, but I'm very conscious, I make notes, and I have a fairly good idea of what's happening in my life.
I think I was like [a game of] skittles, knocked apart by this wooden ball, and there's a strength to that: you're not too self-conscious about what you're doing, so you're not too worried about it.
If I'd thought, "I can't really play this instrument," I wouldn't have done it! But I didn't care, you know. I didn't care!
I'd entirely forgotten about Pass The Distance, and then I went to Japan in 2000, and was asked to do interviews with all these journalists, who were showing up with bootlegs of this record, asking me to talk about it. I was astonished. It kind of gained momentum.
I do still have dips of confidence or [can think] everything I do is rubbish.
One of the nicest things is that I still get, very ambiguously, people saying to me, "Oh, I'm just reading your book." And I say, "Which one, for God's sake, I've done six now!" "Oceans of Sound".
I'd been listening to African-American music since the first record I ever bought, which was by Sam Cooke. And it sounds more like my private thoughts that I never thought I would be able to articulate - I never thought I would be able to express publicly.
