How did you first get involved with recording your own music?
I started out in a band in high school, let's say in a noisy pop style, and of course like every band in the history of music we tried to record ourselves for demos. I suppose that's when I first found out that things weren't so easy and that capturing sound was a difficult process often involving the loss of some of the sound's better qualities. After that, my first solo experience of trying to record myself was through a 4-track tape recorder I got when I was 19. Very quickly and without any knowledge of other people's work using these kinds of techniques, I worked with the pitch and also reversed things quite a lot. Of course these two techniques are the most commonly used so there's nothing extraordinary about me using them, but I really tried to make strange music with very few tools: my guitar, an old Bontempi organ, a microphone, headphones which I would use as tweeting birds by putting them close to the mic, plastic bags for a bit of rhythm, glass pots, my toilet's flush. In my album I used a recording of Bontempi organ from that time, and that's the only instrument that is actually played by me on the album. I also recorded works for organ by Bach and other sad classical type music with a microphone in front of the speakers and then slowed down the whole thing drastically by playing the tape directly onto my hi-fi system, and in a way that was my first attempt at using other people's music to create my own. I think I was vaguely aware that sampling existed, but I didn't even know how to switch on a computer, had no money anyway to buy either a computer or a sampler, so that settled the matter.
But you did use a computer to create the songs on your album Everyone Alive Wants Answers?
Yes, an old PC that I originally bought to write my Master's paper, and tons of CDs borrowed from the media libraries in Paris. Of course the advantage of sampling already existing material is that the music is already produced, so even though some people think that the overall album feel is lo-fi, especially because there's so much hiss on many tracks, it's actually not lo-fi at all, because the sound is very deep and warm.
Coming from your experiences playing guitar in bands and composing on your 4-track, how did you hit upon your unique way of sampling and reworking old recordings?
Perhaps the one thing that made a difference is that I discovered music from all styles and periods at the same time. I spent roughly two years borrowing between five and ten CDs every week. So as I was discovering classic electronica stuff I was also discovering lots of acoustic music, and gradually I realized two things. First of all that just as I had never been gifted for rhythm when I played acoustic music, I wasn't gifted for it either when it came to making music on a computer. This feeling was made even stronger by the fact that I loved Autechre and so couldn't see the point of trying to make rhythms when these people were already doing it in a masterful way. So the fact that I ruled out rhythm changed my way of working, since my first year of working on the computer with samples did involve beats. Secondly I realized that at the bottom of my heart I didn't really like modern electronic sounds, found them too cold, with some exceptions. That set my second criterion for sampling stuff: It had to be acoustic.
I'm really fascinated by how you got the majority of your sample material and your music education through trips made to your local library. It made me think about how technology has given this generation such access to the best of both contemporary and historic music and yet most of us take it for granted. In what ways do you think listening to all that historic, neglected music affected your songwriting?
First of all I have to say that I feel incredibly lucky to live in a country where many cultural things can be accessed freely. I think it's really great and I don't see why only rich people should have access to CDs. It's all very well to talk about how mp3 and CD burning kill the music industry and the smaller labels — and of course I'm not denying that there is a problem — but the truth is that CDs are still incredibly expensive for people earning average wages, and even if you make a decent living like I do you might want to spend your money on something else. As far as I'm concerned I'm into instruments, and I can't afford to buy both instruments and many CDs. It's a choice I've had to make and yet I don't see why I shouldn't have access to all the music which I'd like to discover. I'm always pleased to see that my album is very easy to download. It's better for lots of people to have access to it than not to have access to it. Maybe they'll come to a live show, maybe they'll buy the next album, or they'll do neither, but as far as I'm concerned I'd like my music to reach as many people as possible, because I don't think my music is elitist, so I try to see the positive side of it, and also I don't want to be double-faced: I discover a lot of music that way too. To go back to your question, I think it has affected me first in my listening habits: the more you know about music from different periods and places, the more aware you are of what other records really brought to the world of music, or didn't bring. By this I mean that for instance it's good to know old electronic music from the '50s and '60s because then you realize that sometimes what passes for incredibly daring today is actually not that daring at all. Of course listening to music shouldn't be an exercise in musical criticism, that's not what I'm suggesting and I'm certainly still far too ignorant about the history of music worldwide to claim that I could do it myself. But what I mean is that sometimes I've been amazed at how current bands sound like much older bands, and of course this is not a crime in itself, and can very well be unconscious, but still it's good to know that many things have existed before us. It also makes you much more modest. When I see what people from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were doing with the means they had, I feel ashamed of myself and of the way I sometimes feel limited, whereas the tools I have at my disposal are many times more powerful than theirs, but then again imagination is the most powerful tool of them all. I also feel really humbled when I listen to music from non-Western traditions, because they often sound a lot like the music I dream of making, and again this music is made completely acoustically.
