Vicki Bennett: People Like Us

Vicki Bennett, Stockholm 2011. © Carl A

UK artist Vicki Bennett and her project People Like Us visited Stockholm in January 2011, to take part in something called "Art's Birthday Party". Although the event had some interesting artists present (Bennett being one, Lustmord's Brian Williams another), it was basically a showcase of predictability and art for art's sake. Anyway, I first met Ms Bennett in the UK in the late 80s. We were at that time both involved in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and its ultra-creative environment of pro-chance attitudes and the cutting up of artistic (and other) preconceived notions.

Given this long chronological relationship, it was extra pleasant to actually meet and talk again after a hiatus of some 20 years. Not only to reconnect on basic levels but also to fully realize what a great artist she has become. Her show/performance at the beautiful old Södra Teatern venue, containing video clips and a live mix of various sound sources, was synaptically staggering and blew me away. And I don't think I was alone in being heavily titillated by her juxtapositional tour de force, which was so furiously funny and sensuously serious at the same time.

Vicki Bennett really strikes me as someone who is able to both dumbfound and elevate people's minds with her work. Her restructuring of sound and video is intensely funny and occasionally truly mind-boggling. Audio-visual collage, in itself such a worn-out and predictable technique, in her hands becomes something vitalized and energetic.

One thing we can say is that your work is always full of humour and playfulness. But I was wondering if there is something serious in that too. 

My idea of success is to be engaging with the audience. The way I choose to do that is through collage, with sound and moving image. I figured that is the way you can incorporate several levels into your work. Someone could appreciate it on a very simple level or they could look at it on a very intellectual, complicated level and they are all right. Everyone is correct in their own assumption. That was the method that I chose for doing my work. But I really want to create a total world that people can step into. That sort of magical world where people can... 

Enjoy? 

Enjoy! Yeah! I want to create a magical world that engulfs people’s imagination in a wondrous way, by using humour as a language, which isn’t just English. It is human. Also, the thing about humour is that you can’t explain it. You can’t pin it down. It is incomprehensible and so it can’t be intellectualized. That is something that is magical as well. I want to create a magical world where humour is a way into that, because people connect through a sense of humour. 

Was that something that dawned upon you slowly or something that hit you like a rock? 

I've always been the same. I've always made collages because I don’t know how to do things any other way. I am not academically trained. I can’t play instruments. I am average with everything I am trying to do except making collages. It is actually by default that I am doing the things I can do and have always done. It is a very intuitive way of working, and also it was a monetary thing. When I first started I was using tools available to me, like records, cassette decks, radio and TV. I recorded things with cassettes, so I was making sound collages. To start with, I saw it as a sort of DJ-ing thing. I wasn’t aware of the scope that I later found out about. That you can release things like that and that I have got contemporaries, that there are movements and genres and so on. I did not know any of that. So it has been more like I have gone on this journey, and along the way people have told me things about what it is that I do, and I believe them. It is not really me trying to do anything. I am just ambling along and finding things out along the way. 

There is an analogy to cooking, I think. You don’t necessarily have to kill the animal in question. But you can use whatever ingredient to make a dish. 

Yeah, it's in the ingredients. Alchemy. I think it is a very natural way of working, to be gathering and processing and transforming what is around you. It's a folk art, I think. Making collage and working with found imagery and sound is very much the natural folk art way of working, for they are the tools of the modern times. Whereas before that, people were using instruments and poetry. But they were transforming things as well. Bob Dylan was playing a song that was being sung two weeks ago, just two blocks away. He changed a verse. That was before concepts of ownership got really entangled with copyright. It was seen as folk music. Whereas now, it's become complicated. It's a bit stupid, the way it has become complicated, because it is actually folk art. 

In all of this multifaceted creation which is your work, have you ever felt tempted to try to focus on one specific thing? For a longer period of time, I mean. Let’s say that you try to decide and work strictly with video, in the same manner, but just work with video for a longer period of time. 

In the amount of time I spend a year, I probably do video 80 % of my time and music and sound about 20 %. I can make an album in about three months, whereas making a longer piece of video takes a lot longer because it's a lot more difficult to make a video than it is to make music, as far as I am concerned. I want to make feature films and I am actually endeavouring to try to get funding to do that at the moment, because the longest films I have made at the moment have been for my live concerts, which are 45 minutes long. They have a narrative going through them that are like sketches. So actually I am doing a lot of moving image work. 

For a while, you were the only artist with, sort of, complete access to the BBC Television archives. 

Yes. 

Is that still the case or has someone else come after you? 

There may have been one other person last year. I was first though. It was crazy, because there's like a million things in the archives. We had 16 weeks to access them, me and one other artist. It was insane and basically, when we got there in the summer, they said that they realized how crazy it was, but as long as we were gone by the end of the year it would be fine. And so we just kept going back. They let us stay on and I did make a film out of it, about five minutes long… It was based upon the Festival of Britain. I like world fairs, expos and festivals because they celebrate the goodness and ingenuity of mankind. I also like modernist architecture and that kind of forward thinking. World fairs and expos, they are all about the best and the most forward-thinking things. And so I found a lot of footage from The Festival of Britain. It was held in 1951, at The Royal Festival Hall in London, which was a hundred years after the great exhibition at Crystal Palace. The Festival of Britain was about coming out of the war and everything being colourful again. I found a documentary about a chap called James Gardner, and he was one of the people, three or four people, who had to put together and program a "Festival of Britain". He said that they had no idea what they were doing and they had to do it really fast. I like the approach, and I used him as the talking head in the film. He said that he approached it like a child might. Imagine you are building a castle and that is your castle. "I like to imagine that I could do it and I just try and do it and start..." Just like playing. 

Is that the clip that is on your website, where someone is holding some dancing people? 

No, that is a different one. That is the film called The Remote Control, which is all about controlling things by turning knobs and remotely controlling people. So it has, kind of, got a slightly sinister edge to it, but it's also a self-reflection of you trying to make a film, of you trying to edit a film in the first place. To try to animate these people who are controlling things. All my films have got the same kinds of things going on in them but yeah, the James Gardener clip was all about, "You just have to try and do it." Don’t worry about how you are supposed to do things, because a lot of the time it turns out to be a load of rubbish anyway. Get on with it, you know. 

One thing that strikes me is that not only does the humour play a part in your work, but it is also very, very psychedelic. In your case, has that been an active ingredient or has it been a real inspiration for you? Because it's a way of looking at things and a way of presenting things, and it is also an aesthetic. It must have been important for you. 

I am guessing that it has been an integral part of my personality. The artist notices things more than the average person on the street. And I think it has something to do with focusing intensely on things, and then accumulating things in a way that a magpie might go and fly and find a piece of colourful silver foil and put it in their nest. You know, I think that is what I am doing. I am not saying I am like a magpie, but I like to get lots of goodies and put them together, which can make things look a bit like an overload sometimes. And I know that what I do is quite dense sometimes. But I don’t even notice, to be honest. To me, it's totally fine but for a lot of people it is too much because the normal way to compose in any medium is that you don’t mix more than about three elements. Otherwise it's too much for the outsider to take in. Whereas for me, it's normal to do much more than that, and changing direction as well. But it's also a lack of skill. In a traditional sense, everything that I've learned to do has just been by accident rather than knowing how to do things properly. So once again it is that trying-things-out ethic which could make things seem psychedelic, because you are actually being quite chaotic. But then I try to keep things in repetition, going through things. It is like the idea of the middle eight in music. Really the middle eight in music is that you have a beginning and an end with anything that you do. I don’t have to make a piece of music that is the way you are supposed to do it. You can make the most of not knowing how to do things, which means you can do anything. Which can come across as being a bit chaotic. 

I'm curious also about the work for the radio station WFMU. How does that work? Do you mix that at home and then upload the shows? 

I have been doing that since 2003. I collage it at home on "Pro Tools" and then I upload it. I can’t do it all year around. It is too much. I upload it and when the show is actually on the air, we have a live play list with comments and I update "blog-style" every minute, and we are writing the titles in the chat. So it does have a live element, in my being there with the audience. They are commenting and then know that I am actually sitting there while I am doing it. I collage pop with avant-garde because I think all music is pop. I think everything is pop. I don’t think one thing is listenable and one thing isn’t. I think it is just about the way you introduce things to people. I think you can make people like anything or not like anything. And it is all the same. It's all about education, context and environment. 

Can you remember a distinct point in time when you just decided, "I want to be an artist"? 

Yeah, I think when I was about 13 or 14. When I was a child I was always emulating what I wanted to do as an adult. I used to make tapes and I made a radio station which was just tapes. I had a pretend group. I used to collage pictures of me on top of other things, so I was dreaming of all these things that I am doing now as an adult. I didn’t realize that was what I was doing but I emulated everything that I always dreamed of. You know, like making music. And the video things, I don’t know how that happened. That was when I was about 16. It was when I was 13 or 14 that I suddenly realized that you can make those dreams real. So I started thinking, "I am going to really focus on this". I realized that if you actually do keep focusing, then something is going to happen. 

Just keep at it. 

Yeah, exactly. And I wanted... I mean, that was essentially the (Psychic TV) Force the hand of chance-album. I was a big Marc Almond fan then. That was my way of thinking, and him singing "Like a biker in the summer heat...", from the song Guiltless. That song really is about "See it and go for it". That really made me think. 

Those two first Psychic TV albums are so seminal. I think that if it were possible to scan people’s minds, I would say that those two albums would pop up very often. Instigators of young will power. 

Yeah. It really clicked in my head. I have to say taking LSD as well, probably when I was 17. 

We talked before about the confluence of creative input. 

Sometimes I go in as a visiting artist and talk and occasionally I do workshops. And I think, every now and then you're going to affect someone and you will make an impact on them, possibly to change their lives. Because when I think about it, it has taken very few people to really change my life. 

We're living in a world or a culture where it is possible to appropriate everything, "collage culture" or whatever you want to call it, with sampling and downloading stuff. All of it is basically about a sense of freedom. But it is also a risk. If you work within those parameters, then what is the essence of the creator? Can you pin point something that you can see is specifically you in your art? Where is Vicki in all of your work? 

I think it is way I tie it together. It is a patchwork quilt, and when you stand back from it, you don’t see all the parts, you see the whole. I think that I create an atmosphere. That is the essence. You have got this essence or atmosphere in it that is you. I am always surprised when I hear music or see stuff by people and I can’t see the personality. I think my personality is an integral part of this thing. It is just me talking. It is just me. It is me. All these things I am using are just parts of the quilt. And they exist in their own right. The original doesn’t die. It still exists. Which is why I find it amazing that people can get annoyed and say that you are doing damage to the original, but I am just paying homage to it. Unless you are being negative. 

But you are not really negative. 

No, I am positive. I never use anything that I don’t like. It is always paying homage to it. It is a celebration of the content. It is finding ties between things that are disparate and incongruous, showing that everything is actually the same, because I really do believe that. I try to make things humorous, but everyone tells me my work is really dark. 

Oh, really? 

Yeah, people get disturbed by it sometimes. 

Maybe it is because we are so jaded that we don't notice it? 

I am trying to do the light and dark thing, to show that they are the same. Not the same, but they are reflections of the same thing, in the middle, you know. So yeah, I probably answered that question somewhere in there. 

Would you say that you prefer working with stuff in your own confinement or taking it on the road like this, and actually performing? 

I prefer working in confinement. My idea was working in confinement but in collaboration with people who can realize the project. Whether that be other people or artists or producers, distributors, everyone playing a role where it feels real. So I don’t work in complete isolation a lot of the time, not by choice, just because no one is around. But doing gigs and stuff is the way. Is the way that people see things. As quckly as possible. You know you can have two people or twohundred people see your gig. You can have a lot more people download your stuff, tens of thousands of download but you don’t get to be part of the experience. But it is really important, because I get all my gigs and everything is through the Internet. I never ask people for gigs, they come to me. And that is through the Internet. You know UbuWeb or my site and things like that. I did an online album, Abridged too far, which had 25.000 downloads in the first month. That was fantastic. 

What is the weirdest thing that has ever happened in a live situation? 

I have lots of horror stories. There was a funny one in Norberg, also in Sweden. When I played a festival there a couple of years ago and it was mainly noise people there. That was when I was still playing stuff from DVDs. I use a laptop now, but anyway, a DVD got stuck. So my gig was actually never going to end. It was a bit into my concert, where a robot was singing: "Music alone shall live, music alone shall live, never to die, we will all die..." He was stuttering this all over, this robot. People started to realize it was not made. And it was going on and on and on. In the end I just had to press stop. That was the end of the gig and I threw the DVD into the audience. That was a really nice experience because everyone though that was really funny and cheered. I have had loads of technical horror stories as well. I can’t remember any of them actually. It's been more than I care to imagine. But I am sure I have had strange things as well. I have had really strange atmospheres. I work with Ergo Phizmiz, who is another collage artist, and we made a joint concert last year called The Keystone cut-ups. We mixed early avant garde film with early comedy, to show how important the people in them were to each other. They were both very influential to each other. It was really intense because we had eight weeks to make 45 minutes and Ergo concentrated on the music and we made 45 minutes of film on dual screens. I was doing twelve hour days, seven days a week. I was working really intensely with all this footage, particularly with the Marx Brothers. And I got this strange feeling about Harpo Marx. I started feeling fixated about Harpo Marx. When we did the concert, it was in a hall just like tonight but bigger and old and grand. I swear Harpo Marx was there. There was an eerie atmosphere. He is in the film as well. Everyone said it was very strange. In the end we both turned around and watched him playing the harp on the screen and then raised our glasses to him. And I thought, he is here. I'm sure Harpo Marx was there. 

If we get back to the humouristic attitude, have you ever considered it to be a kind of defence mechanism? 

Yes, because you can put yourself down before anyone else does. Humour is one way of dealing with uncomfortable feelings and taboos, and also confusion. People laugh at things involuntarily because of nervousness. I laugh a lot. I'm a nervous person. But the main reason I use humour is because that's the way I want to connect with other people. I find it difficult to get on with people who don't have a sense of humour. It's a way to get deeper with someone. It's vulnerability that makes you get on with people. 

If a communication is completely straightforward, it's also quite boring. 

Yes. You need to get surreal. You need to get off the main path. Surrealism and humour are very similar, in that you can't explain them. They're a parallel way of looking at something. 

When it's time to put something together, like a video for instance, do you have a very clear vision in your mind of what you want to do, or do you look at the material at hand and just go from there? 

In the past, I've looked at what's available. With found footage, you only have what they did. You can't work with what they didn't. In the past it's been a case of looking at things instead of looking for things. Just recently, I've been waking up at 5 AM with ideas and just writing them down. My brain's changed, in the way I work. I think it has to do with that I want to do things for spaces, like installations. That has changed my way of thinking. I think it has to do with that I've realized I can work with the space itself, rather than just the screen. 

What's a perfect day like for you? 

Having lots of ideas of my own and then seeing other people doing them. A lot of the time it's just either or. A perfect situation for me is to have a communication with the outside world, but also to do work. I love working. I'm on my own a lot of the time. I want to be part of a community but I don't see people that often and that can frustrate me. I know more about the imperfect days. I start wondering if other people have more perfect days than I do. But I don't think they do. 

For more on People Like Us, please go to the project's homepage. There's also a lot of PLU/Vicki Bennett material available at UbuWeb.

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Warpaint: Post "The Fool" 2011

Warpaint, 2010. Photo © Mia Kirby

Once in a while, a new band comes along to disprove the often very correct assumption that everything was better in the past. For me, Warpaint have been one of those bands. Their debut album, "The Fool", was released in late 2010 and completely knocked my socks off. Although dripping with both a pleasant new wave-ish punch (with some UK references being heyday Siouxsie Sioux and the highly underrated Pauline Murray) and a hypnotically lysergic sensibility, the overall sound remains uniquely their own.

I'm not so bold as to say that these four young women from Los Angeles are the future of mind altering rock'n'roll, but if they carry on in the vibrant tradition of "The Fool", they will certainly become key players in the colourful chessboard of contemporary psychedelic music.

Portrayed in the above photograph (courtesy of Mia Kirby – Thanks!) are: Theresa Wayman (guitar, vocals), Emily Kokal (guitar, vocals), Stella Mozgawa (drums, vocals) and Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass, vocals). Jenny was kind enough to answer some of my many questions via e-mail, and for this I'm most grateful.

What have you been up to late 2010/very early 2011?

We have been catching up with our loved ones. We've been away most of the year, on and off, and this was the first "real break" we've had in awhile... Time to play catch up with life's chores as well... And when all that's said and done… Make some tea, and go play music… Write some new material for the future! Woohoo!

How did you all meet, originally?

Emily and I met at a GAP commercial casting! Ha! What a joke… However, we instantly hit it off. We had mutual feelings about not wanting to be where we were, which was in line waiting to be rejected by GAP on a cattle call. 'Twas like love at first sight. We kept in touch. Then later I was introduced by Emily to Theresa. They grew up in Eugene together. They have been besties since they were 11. Oh wow! And about seven years later, after being a band for about five years, we met darling Stella… We opened up for an instrumental improv group that consisted of Stella, Josh, John and Flea (from The Red Hot Chili Peppers)… We all fell in love with her as a drummer that evening. Tossed around with the idea of her joining our band for a year or two, and then got up the guts to finally ask her. It was all fairly simple the way it went down… Simple and easy.

How did you decide on the name?

Emily thought of it one day. Everyone loved it but me… It took about three months or so to convince me. I think I may love it now, more than any of them. Ha! Go figure...

How would you describe your own musical vision? Has it changed from the early days?

To always be true to my mood… They're always changing. So the music will do the same… By remaining true to my mood, I find it rather easy to create sounds of authenticity. Thus making music I love to hear. I think my approach to music has always been the same. As I grow, it too moves forward. It's part of my process. It may even be the core of my evolution.

What did you do for work when starting the band? Did it take a long time before you were able to quit?

I was a bartender, cashier, I worked at a vegetarian restaurant, I worked at a rag house pulling vintage clothing for a clothing company in Australia. I worked at a medicinal marijuana clinic, I did production work. Jeez Louise, I worked everywhere. Anything and everything I could find to get by. Luckily, Los Angeles is overflowing with odd jobs. Nobody here wants a real one.

What do you think is the key to your sound?

Honestly? Our friendship.

What do you think is the key to your success?

Our diligence and patience.

Would you say that your different individual ”creativities” are of the same kind or that they are different and thereby complete/replenish each other? If so, how?

We are all very different, and express ourselves quite differently, however we like to use the same mediums. For instance, we all play music, but my song won't sound anything like Emily's, Theresa's, or Stella's song. Theresa and I like to make clothes, however our styles are vastly different. Catch my drift?

Can you see any dangers with being ”hyped” too quickly? Have you in any way experienced that?

Of course… Nobody wants their music to be spoon fed. It's so much more rewarding when things happen naturally. I don't think we've experienced "hype" on an extreme level. And hopefully it stays that way.

What kind of an audience do you have in LA? Does it feel like home in that sense also – musically?

Most of the audience seems to just be our friends, and/or people we have met through playing so many shows in LA for so many years. We're always super nervous playing home shows. It's good though. Gives us a little kick... Keeps us on our toes.

How do European and American audience reactions differ (if they do)?

At first, we were better received overseas, and now it seems to be evening out. The people you will find at our shows are there because they really enjoy the music. It's a wonderful energy to collaborate with on stage.

Female vs male fans’ reactions: Is there a difference?

Not so much… Generally, people either really like it, or they don't get it at all.

Looking back at ”The Fool” now, what makes you really, really proud about it? And is there something in there that bugs you?

I'm proud that we finished what we started. There were many opportunities to abort mission, and we hung in there. That required an ample amount of patience. And I try not to be disappointed with anything on the record, because we can't change any of it. What's done is done, and we better learn to love what we can't stand, because that's it. For this record at least… It's all part of the process and evolution of Warpaint. We are constantly learning from our mistakes.

What’s the second album going to be like? Have you started working on it?

We have bits. Any chance we get we are writing. It's a mystery as of now, but that's good, because I love surprises.

What’s more pleasurable – working in the studio or playing live? Do you all feel the same way about that?

They're both equally magical but extremely different. I enjoy taking my time, and creating on the spot in the studio. And when we play live, I love the energy exchange with the audience. Both of these experiences are invaluable, and quite an adrenaline rush.

If you ever get into a fight with each other, while on tour for example, how do you (re)solve things and conflicts?

We've gotten extremely well at communicating with one another. The fights aren't very big, and last a short while. We usually start laughing, or crying, within moments… Then it's followed with a dramatically long hug, and about 50 "I'm sorries".

What do you like to do when not working with the band?

Perfect my musicianship. Exercise, catch up with friends and family. Hang with my band. We can't seem to get enough of each other. Watch movies, eat yummy food, and joke around with my boyfriend.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an all girl-combo?

I don't know anything else, so I wouldn't know what to compare it to. I don't really ever think of us as just being an all girl band. I see us as musicians like any other musicians. So I would like to think the advantages and the disadvantages are fairly the same. I'm sure that's not true in its entirety, but I like to think so.

How do you relax while on tour?

I take walks, and try and squeeze in a massage or two. Other than that… Drink lots of water, and sleep as much as possible.

Favourite books, films?

"Henry and June" by Anaïs Nin, the Twilight Saga, Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", and "A New Earth". Films: "Muriel's wedding", and many of Hal Ashby's movies… "Harold and Maude", "Being there".

What kind of film would you like to make the soundtrack for?

A tragic love story, with humorous bits in between. A film pouring with a wide range of emotions. Funny and sad and mad, etc.

Finally, what would you say makes Warpaint unique as a band?

As individuals, we all have a creative vision, and in this band everyone is heard. This isn't the easiest way to do things, that's for sure. However, I think we've got it down to a T thus far. We just wouldn't be our band if we did things differently.

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Lustmord: Brian Williams, Stockholm, 2011

Brian Williams, Stockholm, 2011 © Carl A

Brian Williams is a highly gifted sound person, armed with sensitive ears, ditto fingers, and a creative musical mind. Over the decades he has created a body of work that usually gets tagged “dark ambient”. For the lack of a better term, let’s stick with that for now. Williams’ music is certainly dark and its strong evocative potential (as in “stirring up inner images, fantasies and daydreams”) is there all along too. No wonder he’s been busy working on both independent horror films and occasional live performances in really odd places (The Church of Satan’s 40^th birthday bash in Los Angeles 2006, for instance).

After having worked with proto-experimentalist collective SPK in the early 80s, Brian Williams drifted on to an ambitious productivity under the Lustmord name, including many fruitful collaborations (with Jhon Balance, Jarboe, Clock DVA, Chris and Cosey, to mention but a few).

Behind this almost legendary enigma we find the Brian Williams who is also a very normal human being. Williams is a fast talker, funny, and likes to downplay any morose states of mind or sinister agendas. For Williams, it’s all about the sound and about fitting the sounds in question into a context. When that happens, it’s all good – albeit dark and, yes, ambient too.

Stockholm was blessed with one of those rare live Lustmord performances in January 2011. On the day before the actual concert, I met Brian Williams at “EMS”, an old but hi-tech studio-cum-hangout for scholastic/electro-acoustic composers. In a way, he was then literally a dark star “hanging out” in this pretty dusty environment. As that’s also the title of my favourite Lustmord album – The place where the dark stars hang – I thought that could be a good way to begin our conversation.

Where is that place, the actual "place where the dark stars hang"? 

Well, that's an interesting question, I'll give you that. I haven't thought of a deep meaning as to the exact location, because it was never meant to mean anywhere specific. I mean, I don't have anywhere in mind for exactly where that place is. It's just a fact that there is a place, that's what it's about. Pretty much all of my work alludes to things I don't always point any lights on. Sometimes it's deliberately not vague, more enigmatic, and also some of the times it’s very specific. It's where you go, that’s where the place actually is. I have a place, there's an old concept behind it, and actually all these albums are alluding to each other. They can look back on each other. There are some ideas that I often explore and mainly I tend to not go too deeply into detail on purpose. Sometimes there is not much detail and sometimes there are a lot of layers of information, but I kind of like it to be your interpretation of the record itself. That album is at that place where your mind takes you when you listen to it. Most of my albums are about creating a space that only exists when the music is playing, quite often a literal space. Well, actually it is a literal space, that's the whole point of what the music is, and when the music ends, that place is gone again. And you can enter into it in your own way if you wish. 

You can perceive space in different ways: it could be an emotional space, an audio space or a visual space. I'm curious, when you concoct the music, when you put that together, do you also get emotionally involved? Do you get images or visions? 

No, I don't really get that, because I'm very much about the sound. I was going to say "painting with sound". But if you call it that, it sounds really pretentious. You know what I mean. But that's how I approach it. For me, it's always the sound, and actually I fail often. It's a perfectly sensible question, but no, I don't really. I'm always working with the sound, and I'm aware of that, that some of that sometimes conjures up images in people. But for me, I know it's about the sound. I'm also going back to what I was just saying earlier: the structure of the album is in fact in this journey and this place, because they are always conceived. I always know how my album is going to be. Before I even begin working on it in my head, it already exists. I always work on albums as albums, and there's always a beginning and you go somewhere and it brings you back out again.

The big picture, the concept, is already there in your mind?

Yes, very much so. When I'm working on a project, the actual recording building site is the boring site. I've already planned the house and I actually know how it's going to work and now I have to actually dig the trench. When I'm digging the trench, I'm already thinking about the next phase, and the exciting bit is the planning and the ideas. 

Is that also valid on the detail level, like one structure in the concept, like one specific sound or track? Do you work and rework and rework or is that already clear in your mind? 

I don't rework when I record albums and there's nothing left over because I know this is where things will go. And yeah, in the process of working, something will come up, like another idea and then things evolve in a different way. But generally speaking, it pretty much follows the plan. Not in a kind of strict plan, it's not strict at all. When I think of these things, it's really interesting planning and having these ideas and then actually doing them. I do enjoy that process but usually in that process I'm already thinking about the next one, and it's really interesting. That's the bit I really find stimulating. 

I find it very intriguing to hear also, because of all the people I've talked to that are involved in similar kinds of music, I'd say that most of them are very spontaneous, spur of the moment, kind of “try this and try that”... But it's interesting to hear that everything is already there in your mind. 

Well, I can imagine doing it the other way myself. I don't have a problem with that, but for me it's the plan that matters. I'm also a bit anal about this. I'm very much a concept kind of guy. Yeah, I like coming up with concepts, that's the bit I really enjoy. The album is always a concept. There are all kinds of really little details in there. I even put in things that are very specific, but it's because the detail is really important to me. 

That leads us onwards to where the concepts come from. Where do you get the inspiration for these details? Where do you think it all comes from originally? 

Well, again, I think inspiration… That's a tricky one. I know I like being around creative people. I like creativity. I find creativity very inspiring. I enjoy the stimulus of being around people who create. That's about as specific as I get for my inspiration actually. As far as where my ideas come from, I honestly can't tell you. I mean obviously I absorb things like we all do on a daily basis. I read a lot, I watch things, I talk a lot. So they’re always bubbling under the surface, these ideas. But as far as specific concepts, I can't say I can point to any specific thing. It’s who I am. I don't really think about it. 

My impression of you and your way of working is also that it is a lot of work. There's a lot of discipline, and that you're also sort of fertilizing it with commercial work in that sense. I think my own take on it would be that you're “honing”: you're flexing your creative muscles. Whether it's your brain or something else, you keep it alive and thereby you get benefits.

I enjoy creating. I like to create this stuff, this is why I do it. That’s what I very often say. My music is not commercial and I wish it was, cause it'd bring me money and a decent lifestyle and that kind of stuff. But, you know, I do what I do, this is who I am. And it's great that there are some people who are interested in it and who are listening to it. That is very flattering, but this is what I'd do anyway. I can't imagine not doing this. If nobody were listening to it, it would still exist. And I will keep doing it. I mean, I should really get a real job. But this is who I am. I don't really think about it that much, it just is. 

In terms of the movie work and the soundtracks, has it ever happened that the producers have come back and said: “Well, Brian, no, this is too weird”? 

Oh sure, it has happened. It's very common.  

How do you adjust?

There have been quite a few times in movies and commercials and little things for TV, that they've come to me because they want “weird and fucked up”. “We want something really fucked up and industrial and fucked up and dark. You can do dark, right? Dark!” And then we have this dialogue: "What would you mean by dark? What would you mean by fucked up?”, and they go, “It has to be really fucked up!” And then you give them some stuff and they come back and say: “This is so fucked up, this is too fucked up!” "Well we've had this discussion, you wanted it to be really out there so..." And then you give them industrial and you give them some stuff and they say, “This is not industrial! Oh, we were thinking more like Nine Inch Nails”. "You didn't say anything about Nine Inch Nails, you said you wanted more avantgarde industrial." This happens quite often. Especially the dark… “We want dark, this is too dark! We can't use this!” Well, for fuck's sake, what do you want? 

Are there any directors that you would like to work with? 

I'd love to work with David Lynch, for example, that would be great, but I don't know what he's really doing these days. I don't think he's as interesting as he used to be, unfortunately, but he is an interesting guy. A David Lynch movie would be really enjoyable. I like the way he approaches sound. I think David Fincher is really great. I love Korean and I love Asian directors. David Lynch comes to the immediate mind but actually there are a lot of people doing interesting stuff.

So it's not like you have a wish list, or your agent has a wish list?

I don't have an agent. I don't have a manager or anything. I saw a movie recently called “Monsters”, which I really enjoyed. It wasn't great but it was really good, you know, and after watching it I thought I would really enjoy working on something like that. I just like interesting work and working with interesting people. 

Was that one of the original reasons for you moving from the UK to Los Angeles? To be closer to the movie world? 

If you want to work on movies you have to be there. The first time I went to America was on a tour with Chris and Cosey. They are really good friends of mine and they were touring America in the late 80s. They just asked: “Why don't you come with us? We are going to be traveling all across America and why don't you come with us?” And then we came, and I really enjoyed crossing 10.000 miles in six weeks. It was great and as we went further and further West we enjoyed it more, because it's more and more different. It was really interesting because you're European and looking at America from a distance and not being a big fan of it culturally – it's a love-hate kind of thing. Anyway, going over there I realized it's completely different from what I thought it was going be. The “Have a nice day”-stuff which I really hated… When you get there you realize they actually mean it, and it gives you a whole different perspective of what it's really like. And culturally hating things like McDonald's and Coke and advertising and going over there and finding there's stuff like jazz, stuff like blues, a lot of really interesting cultural stuff. Anyway, going over there, I just really liked America, especially the West coast and California. Arriving in California really felt like coming home.

Something I often talk about is growing up in Britain. It's a generalization but it's also true, that things tend to be very negative in Britain. So being in America, being amongst Americans, you feel much more positive about things and doing stuff. I always liked the idea of the ideal world, that it would be nice to live in America. But it was kind of impractical. There were a lot of things getting in the way. It's not an easy country to move to, as far as the barriers they have. They just don't let anybody in. But then I was there on vacation and a friend of mine there, Graeme Revell, was a film composer at the time. He was having some problems with his Mac and I fixed it for him. I was good with that stuff. This was around 1988-89 and he was working on a movie and he was having trouble with some sounds. So when I got back to London I sent him some stuff he could use, which he did, and he really liked what I'd sent him. It was just a few weeks later that he called me up and he said, “You'd be really useful if you were here doing this for me.” So he offered me some work there and I moved to LA to do that. I didn't plan that. Like most things it kind of just happened. I stumbled into it. 

Do you think that the vastness of the space in California has affected you musically? 

Well, it's inspiring. We have a big four-wheel drive truck and we love to go off road, miles away, to places that are difficult to go to, miles and miles away from the nearest person. I love the desert, it's just a great place to be. Someone was asking me last year about living in California, how has that changed my work. I don’t really think so. It seemed to be like an idea that would change everything. But my music was called dark and stuff before too. People have responded to my music in just the same way when I'm living in sunny California. It's changed things in the sense that I like what I am now. Los Angeles, where I live, is a great place and it's also like most of the big cities, in that it has plusses and minuses. I like Southern California more than I like living in Los Angeles. I'm happier living in California than I was before I lived in California, as far as being somewhere. So in a sense, it's changed things, as I'm more comfortable now. 

If I wanted to describe your music, the absence of rhythm creates a very slow moving flow feeling, and I was thinking: have you ever thought of that as having almost therapeutic qualities in regard to the times we're living in, that are so fast, rhythmic and fragmented? 

No, I haven't actually. It would be nice if that was a fact but…

I can vouch for that. I get very relaxed and calm when listening to your music.  

Well, yeah, I guess it could do it for some people. It would be nice if it did. But it's a very deliberate approach. My music is what it is. It's kind of ironic, but it exists because it exists. I was feeling a lack of it, of the stuff I wanted to hear that didn't exist, so I had to go and create it myself. Of course the irony is that when you create anything, the last thing you're going to do is listen to it yourself. I'm assuming it’s as if I'm reading a book, I'm just not going to read anything that I've written myself. And this has become a style that other people copy, and of course I'm not going to listen to their stuff. The things that I listen to are completely opposite to what I do, which is interesting.

If we step outside the musical world, can you find any audio memories from childhood that you think have affected you? 

Yes, but actually they'd be more synthetic in a sense. When I was really little, there were a few TV shows that were kind of stranger, more electronic. It was something different and, you know, even the tune on it, there was a song called “Telstar”, which was great. There was all this singing and people using stranger sounds, and by strange I mean things that aren't real, but synthetic machines. As a kid I wasn't really aware of it. The only thing I'm aware of in the end is that it's just something different and most of the stuff just happened to be electronic. The fact that it was electronic wasn't the factor. The factor was that it sounded different from what you normally hear. That's actually quite good because it's a reflection. It's kind of interesting because I don't do it a lot, but when I'm trying to do it my approach is that I like to create a sound that you don't actually recognize. Over this, I might suggest something too. It might be something that you actually do recognize. But a lot of the time I like my work to have a sound that you can't recognize, even though I have used strings and drums and whatever. Most of my sounds is stuff that I like to think that people can't tell what it really is. People may think they know, they might suggest something, but usually it's not really the case. I like to create sounds that don't otherwise exist. 

Given that you work with music technology in a very cutting edge way, I assume that you're very interested in it. Does that inspire you too, I mean that technological development in itself? Or is it merely a tool?

It's a tool. Or both actually. It's definitely a good question. I always get asked by people who want to do something that I do, what tools do I use and the answer is always it doesn't really matter. I'd be happy to tell you, but it doesn't matter what my tools are – it's the ideas. Technology’s something that makes things easier but that isn't always a good thing. And a lot of the times I think about when we didn't have this much stuff. Then you would have to use your imagination a little bit more maybe. I think that's the best way to go. But yeah, I have a lot of tools and I love playing around with them. When I moved into using computers for recording and manipulating, that made a huge difference for me, because that's how my brain works. Before that, the things I wanted to do I couldn't quite do and in that sense it has been hugely inspiring. But that’s not to say that I wouldn't be doing things anyway. Modern technological tools have definitely helped me going into the direction I wanted to go. But at the same time I don't think it would have stopped me if it didn't exist.

Have you ever felt tempted to try out any other creative expressions? 

I thought I already was. 

In terms of writing or painting or...?

Well, I actually went to an art school for a short while. I was good at art, especially fine art, drawing, and it seemed like a natural kind of direction to go. As I often say, there was a mutual agreement that I should leave. I didn't fit in. I thought it wasn't my place at all. That was really interesting: what art school did for me was stop me doing art. I haven't drawn anything since. I've been doing work for albums and stuff but more like creative, directive stuff. It really took it all out of me. I actually thought for quite a while that art school took it away from me. I'm not bitter about anything though. One thing art school did for me was making me not to want to paint anymore. 

Or maybe it just set you free and focused to work on the sound?

I didn't realize that until many years later, ironically enough, because I should have realized it much, much sooner. At the same time that was happening, I was in art school and I was getting fed up with all the bullshit and all. This was when punk rock was happening and Throbbing Gristle, the first album came out, so I was being drawn to that. And what actually happened, without me realizing it at the time, was that part of my mind became focused on sound as opposed to visuals. I'm dyslectic so writing is always a pain in the ass. I've had fun working with some friends on ideas, now especially being in LA, but not pretentious work like making movies, but we've had some ideas. I enjoy being around creative people, so there are always ideas and things. Most of my own ideas get focused in the music but there's always these other cool ideas going around. 

In terms of the performances, do you feel an increasing temptation to go on doing shows?

Well, I want to do them. That's the plan. I've been interested in doing live things for a long time. But I really didn’t think of them as being a live thing, especially early on, from the technical aspects. And also I didn't think it'd be interesting live, for me, especially early on, because I would have to do something really wild. Also from a technical point of view, and especially early on, the studio became an instrument for me. The idea of actually doing that live was not very practical. It'd be boring, it'd be me tweaking sounds and it's not very interesting. I like the idea of something live but it didn't really occur to me how that would be interesting. So I never really seriously thought about it. And then years later, as technology improved and it became more popular, I thought about maybe doing some of the computer stuff live. Then I realized that more and more people have used laptops in that context. There was a combination of a couple of things. Firstly, I wouldn't pay to go and see myself standing on a stage with a laptop. So why would I actually do it? That's how my thinking has been. Then, quite a few years ago, Kraftwerk were playing in LA and I'm a big fan. I've always loved Kraftwerk. I saw them live, and they are these four guys with a laptop. I love their sound, but just standing there... Maybe I should have realized this before, but… As long as the sound is really good it can be a good show. That's the second part of the answer. Now I just say I can do a live show in a place with a good sound system. Otherwise I'm just not going to do it. 

I don't want to be fully booked either, I just want to do a few shows here and there, just to keep it interesting, to make it more of an “event”. I won't go on a tour because that would be stupid. I mean, if it's not interesting for me, why should I do it? People think of Lustmord as being more like an ambient thing but for me it's not very ambient. There's actually quite a big sound in there and a lot of people don't hear that, because a lot of people don't have really good sound systems. And I've done some visuals for it too. I want people to look at the visuals and have the music do the rest.

Do you do the visuals yourself? 

I'm using a lot of stuff for HD that has been manipulated, also by other people. It has taken me more time to do the visuals than the music because I have had to learn things like “After Effects”. It became a technical nightmare to do it. But it worked. 

It sounds like it's really going to be like a state of the art show.

Well, I'm using a laptop and I'm using Ableton Live, which is fucking great. Each show is going be a little bit different because I'm kind of improvising. I'm blending elements from different tracks in different ways, depending on how it feels at the time. I go by feeling very much too as I'm working on things, you know.  So these live things, I'm doing them by feeling. There's a lot of a making up as I go along. I want it to be improvising, but it's not really improvisation because I know exactly what I'm doing. Because first of all that's more interesting for me. And also, there's a chance that it might go wrong. When I'm doing these shows I'm deliberately not rehearsing. I do a kind of run-through so I feel early on if I'm playing this sound, then this is what it's going to be like. I tend to forget, because there are so many of them. It's hard to remember which is which. I want it to be actually live and I want it to have the chance element in there.

Have you ever felt tempted to be in a band again? To be in that social dynamic? 

I love collaborating. I much prefer collaborating. I love being in a room and just throwing ideas around with people. New ideas come up and your ideas get taken to a different place. But as a combination there are few people I've been lucky to work with. There's a few people I'd actually like to work with but they are always on tour, they're recording and they have a lot of commitments, so that's tricky.  And when you narrow that down now, there's a smaller group of people including the ones who aren't available but would like to be available so we include those for a while, but then there's this, “are they in a same town?” That kind of helps, you know. Of course, these days you can collaborate over a distance but it is really nothing if we're not actually in the same room. There's a friend of mine from Limp Bizkit who’s interested enough. We've talked about doing some stuff together but he's on tour with them for about a year and a half. And then another friend of mine, Sasha Grey, who is a real porn star. We've talked about doing things together but she's really busy with her career. So there's people we've actually talked to about doing things together but there's always the scheduling thing and it's often more difficult to juggle than you think. And when we're actually in the same place at the same time we think “let's just kick back with a beer”, and it's nice to just catch up as friends. And that's a more important thing than work. Sometimes it's nice to just kick back and relax. 

What do you do to kick back and relax? Your ultimate relaxation? 

I hang out with my friends. The thing I like the most is to sit around a table with a small group of good friends with a couple of glasses of wine and just have a good laugh. The sense of humor is very important to me. Just good fun, laughing out loud with friends. I watch a lot of movies, and in the evenings we just sit in front of the TV with a movie on. We have a really big TV and a great sound system. The dog loves to be on the sofa and we all just get on the sofa at night. I also like to read. I'm just like the normal people, and at the end of the day it's nice to relax and switch the brain off. Sometimes I watch bad TV, just not for long because it's fucking annoying. But sometimes you just want to switch off. I go on hikes with my dog too. Nothing too pretentious nor profound.

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