I grew up in the South Wales valleys, but I think my parents realised from quite an early age that if they hadn't sent me to boarding school I would have probably gone to prison. And it cost them absolutely everything.
Obviously I can't rely on my group, but I don't want to rely on a laptop just to play back some backing tracks, that's not the way I do things really.
The thing I've learned is it's good to restrict your palette somewhat. I will try and, say, use two or three instruments on one track. You learn, after a while, they're all good at certain things and other things fall outside of the natural areas they work well in, so I tend to stick with what they do best.
Sometimes I just experiment quite a lot. I've always got my computer set up to record so I'll just record a sort of library of ideas [that] I'll either come back to or use as they stand.
I write all the time, I've got a big, thick, old ledger book that I write stuff down in. I used to watch TV and write things that people would say and now I tend to get it more out of books and from conversations with people I meet.
It's the way I make music, I will take two ideas and smash them together and if they sit well together for me then that's fine, and it's the same with the lyrics - if I see a couple of lines and I like the way they look on the page then I'll use them. I find they take on a meaning of their own, it's very difficult to explain how I actually go about all that.
I still use a lot of cut-ups, I physically cut-up pieces of paper and stick them all together on another piece of paper then I'll think, "Ah, that looks good," or shuffle them around a bit and then I'll photocopy it and then that's my lyrics.
I still love pop music, I still have a huge pop music collection, and I like that juxtaposition of styles.
I really like working with drummers, I like being able to bounce ideas off drummers.
I'm not a great fan of people who suddenly manage to pull out the whole track sounding perfect from a laptop. That doesn't feel like any kind of show to me.
Unless somebody's actually creating something and doing something spontaneous I wouldn't find it at all interesting, to watch or to create, so, I'm trying to make my solo shows something different altogether.
I tend to work in the mornings, then take a few hours off in the afternoon to walk the dog, and then come back and work in the evening. So, if I can remember my pre-dog walking music when I get back then that's fine, I'll kind of commit to those bits, but if I can't remember them I'll just move on to something else.
I've also got a kind of rule where if I don't write it down and I can still remember it it's worth remembering!
I'm not the fastest reader or writer but occasionally I'll write things down just so I don't forget them.
My dad owned a tiny little shop and we never had any family holidays or anything like that, so I was sent to boarding school as a means of control more than anything I think.
Going to public school is like living in bubble, you have no concept of what other people do.
I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I did tend to buy things and just hang on to them.
There's a lot of people I know who have a lot of synthesisers and they don't really know anything about them, they know the specifications and everything, but they don't really get to know them.
When I only had one or two synthesisers you learn how to do everything on those things and you know them inside out. I think that's the best way to be with them.
I'm not saying I don't ever improvise because I do that quite a lot, especially with other people, but generally I've got an idea in my head and then I'll pursue it 'til I get there.
As a person who has a pretty short attention span I think of music like that, completely. That's why I can quite happily change genres mid-song.
If you saw my musical collection it's absolutely horrendous, I've got everything from Stockhausen to The Beach Boys to Gina G, all sorts of terrible things and other people come here and look at my record collection and go, "Ah, you can't possibly like that - how embarrassing!"
I don't really worry about whether things fit into a genre or not, it's whether I like it and whether the two things sit well together, that's my main criteria when I write.
I do take a computer to do some processing live and I might use a couple of plug-in synthesisers, 'cause obviously you can take quite a lot of power in terms of sound generation on a computer that I can trigger from a couple of keyboards. And it means I don't have to take some of my vintage stuff and have it trashed by various airlines which has happened in the past. But I still take some vintage stuff with me, I'll take that risk because I like using all that stuff.
