Sound as medium has an incredible elasticity. So, of course, it is tempting for artists of other fields to try something with sounds. Why not? We are living in the age when there is no limit in gathering all forms of art and music to mix it together if you so desire.
An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.
By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.
I was greatly influenced by musique concrete when I was, like, 10. I was completely mesmerized by the idea that you could make music out of sounds. So that's been a constant influence on all my work.
There are three different modes: playing piano, just me at the microphone, and me at my effects units. And I can mix those up in different ways.
But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.
First, I'm trying to edit down about 7 hours of material which I made prior to the Cop days and find some way to get it out. This stuff is pretty out there, mostly sonic collages and tape manipulations.
Radio 3 shows such as 'Between the Ears' also make the kind of podcasts that draw the most from your noise-cancelling headphones. The programme commissions ideas that make adventurous use of sound.
I'm a painter in sound.
I made a lot of different experiments with tapes at that time, until I finally realized around 1995, that sound is an interesting subject for me. Ever since then sound got more and more integrated into my art works, musically as well as physically.
Sometimes you do a sound installation, and the first day or two it is very exciting. Then you are hearing this every day for a month, and it becomes like a torture.
You can get so many sounds out of one record. Every record can be used in some way.
The project which we developed, however, was for a sound piece and I was initially curious that a sculptor should be interested in working with a musician, especially on a project for radio.
The idea of 'Badlands' was creating a space with sound, which is a really difficult thing to do.
I consider it a great honor to be part of the dissemination of hearable art.
We tend to mistake music for the physical object.
Radio is immediate and experimental. It's really lo-fi - you can have an idea, go out and record something, come back in and just put it on air.
I always like spoken word records.
Music doesn't have to sit within the confines of pop structure, you can really make stuff that's more visual.
