Was your music electronic or sample-based in the beginning?
Yeah. I started to get into guitars, and I gravitated towards musician-types. I started getting into looking at all these music magazines. I used to go to a shop called Turnkey in London they had all the newest gear. Growing up in Cambridgeshire, London's an hour away, so I'd go by train. I remember the [Roland] D-50, Korg M1, and the AKAI S950 had just come out, in '88 or '89. There were a few of these bits of gear playable in the shops. Eventually, I got a little bit of money from my grandma, so I got a [Shure SM]58, a Fostex 4-track, and an [Alesis] MidiVerb III. Later I got an AKAI sampler. I remember thinking, "What do you do with a sampler?" I didn't really have anything to interface with it. Word got out that I had a sampler, and some guy was like, "I organize raves and events. Do you want to open up for The Prodigy?" So, I opened up for The Prodigy when I was 16. That was a life-changing experience. All I had was my shitty equipment, using my Fostex as a mixer. It was terrible! I was sampling The Muppet Show. Everyone I saw that night were people from school on ecstasy. I thought, "What's wrong with everybody?" I was pretty naive about drug culture. Then The Prodigy came on and just blew the roof off. I thought, "Their equipment isn't that different from mine. But listen to how different it sounds." I went through school trying to make songs and listening to Aphex Twin. I got into hardcore rave. The energy of the late '80s and early '90s was special.
Like Primal Scream [Tape Op #96]. Rave morphed into something different.
Oh, man, Screamadelica was such a big album for everyone. That's what I was listening to. I immersed myself, and then I got involved in making records. My first release was a pretty dubious bit of electronics called Manfish not a name I came up with! I had been making demos at college and went to get a job at Strongroom Music Studios in London.
Yeah. I've been there.
It's a great place. I met up with Mick Shiner, who subsequently worked with The Streets. He heard a cassette demo he'd gotten from my friend. I wasn't trying to get anything from this. He said, "Why don't you get into the studio?" He threw me into a room with an SSL [console] and I didn't know what I was doing. I look back at that point and think my original demo felt better. It lost a lot of its joy. But through Strongroom I met these guys, Jason Leech and Phil Wells [of Subhead]. They were cheeky, really funny, compelling dudes who would hang around, and they wanted to make techno. They were record collectors and DJs; they had parties on a submarine and a disused office space. They introduced me to the music of Detroit and Chicago. At that time, in the '90s, it was an amazing time for electronic music.
Some of the technology was new, and older gear was being repurposed.
A piece of technology could come around and revolutionize music. We started making records and did ten EPs in a year. That was Subhead. Through doing that, I really got into the music of Cristian Vogel. He was using OctaMED the tracker on the [Commodore] Amiga [computer]. That was the serious way to program. That shit was futuristic.
You finally could have parts programmed in the computer, via MIDI, and change them as well.
Exactly. It's been to my detriment now, because I can't really play much. I spent my entire life programming!
But it's also arranging and sculpting sounds.
It is. That's exactly it. Cristian had his own thing, so I went to Brighton to find him. Like an idiot! But the first day I was there, I bumped into his girlfriend who had a record bag. I was like, "I make music with Subhead." She said, "Cristian's a big fan." I fell straight in. We got into the studio together and made two records as Super Collider. I got back into singing. I was a singer all through my early years, before my voice broke.
Did singing give you a different angle to wrap around Cristian's work?
Yeah, 100 percent. He was better at programming. He taught me how to program. I'd signed a deal with Warp Records whilst I was in Brighton. I was a big Squarepusher [Tape Op #89] fan, and I wanted to be on Warp as well. That was the highest honor. I did a record for Spymania Records first, called Muddlin Gear, which then got signed to Warp and licensed. I had a song on that album called "Daddy's Car," where I was sort of doing an R&B song. Nowadays it would be fine, but this was '98. It was very unpopular. I did music with Cristian in Brighton for a few years, and then I moved to Berlin with a dwindling advance from my Warp album, which was not a lot of money. Cristian was already big in Europe. Going to Europe, and playing with Super Collider, we were very welcomed. I was like, "This place is so much more advanced! England is a bunch of fucking hooligans. I need to be in Berlin. These guys get it." Berlin was unbelievable. From 1999 to 2008 was such a cool time to be there. I did another Super Collider album there, in the Funkhaus Studio.
Oh, is that the place where Nils Frahm [Tape Op #126] has his studio now?
Yeah. That's where my studio was, from 1999 to 2005. It's like a long corridor. The clocks were set to midnight and wouldn't move.
How did your music change back then?
I needed to work out how to do a live show. I started doing looping, because I was really inspired by Matthew Herbert [Tape Op #58].
What devices were you using to loop live?
I had the Boss SP-202 [Dr. Sample]. I had the green Line 6 [DL4 Delay Modeler]. I put my voice through a bunch of pedals. That was cool, but it hit a limit quite quickly. I used to live with a guy who was my visual artist, and we'd do these live shows together. But I needed to evolve it, so I taught myself Max/MSP and I spent six months on my own in the lab in Berlin building a looper in Max. I came up with quite a nice looper, with five channels. I used five fingers on the black keys, recording with the left and muting with the right, and had a two-octave keyboard. The mod wheel was the speed of the looper, and it could go in reverse as well. I opened for James Brown and Björk. My whole career came from inventing that looper.
Was it something that was being sold, or was it just you using it live?
It was just me. That technology was not really available at that time. Not in that way! I had an RME soundcard with super low latency. I remember doing a show at Sónar [music festival in Barcelona] in 2003 or so. Matthew Herbert was there with Arto Lindsay; they came on stage at the end and we jammed together. It was a really nice moment. I was booked like crazy. I was touring like a beast after that got going. Then eventually Mocky [Dominic Salole] got me back to recording. I made some records, Multiply and Jim, in Berlin and Paris with Mocky. Working with him was a big deal for me. From Muddlin Gear to Multiply was like five years.
Did it help you to have someone else to focus on getting an album done?
I couldn't do shit. To this day, I'm my own worst enemy in the studio. I'd gone off, and five years later I came back with my record. It was 2005, and I handed Multiply in. Warp Records was expecting my big album; the first one was only a license. I didn't hear anything back from the label for a couple of weeks. When I finally did hear back from the label, they were like, "I don't know. We were expecting it to be more fucked up." I said, "That's the whole point of this record. I want it to be a lot more straight. I want this to be a successful record." They didn't really go for that, but they put it out. I had one woman who really believed in me who was working with the PR company. She single handedly put Multiply on the map. It didn't go ballistic; but compared to what everyone expected it to do, it really hit the zeitgeist. It was like soul music, and a year later Amy Winehouse came out. I've always felt I was super lucky to make a life. I bought this house. I opened for Prince, Elton John, James Brown, Björk, and Beck. I've worked with Nigel Godrich. John Peel played my songs. That's almost like, "Retire, happy style!" A lot of my life goals. Softly, in a way, sort of in the background. I love that.
It's just the right amount of fame.
Yeah. It's just enough that I can keep going. It feels so vain to talk about that. It makes me a little uncomfortable.
