Ochre

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“When did you start?

I suppose I started writing properly at around 1999/2000 while I was at college, but I’d messed around with free magazine cover-disc sequencer programs and other rudimentary programs since getting my first PC while I was at school. I had an AWE32 soundcard, which I tinkered with to put together a few tunes, which I had on tape until recently - I accidentally threw the tape out along with all my old commercial cassettes when I had a massive clean-out last year, but it’ll be no surprise to hear the tunes were nothing special.

How did your earlier works look like?

Musically, not too different to my current output, although it sounded very rough from a production perspective, obviously, given the tools I was working with - very dry and General MIDI sounding, with the odd sample thrown in. There are a few early tracks floating round on the internet, which come back to haunt me now and again, but it is fun to hear what I produced a few years back, on a nostalgic level.

Were there a very big change in your music making method?

Not really. I’ve always made music primarily with computers - I’m not old enough to have been faced with no other option than to use hardware, plus I’ve never had the money to go down that route. I started making music more seriously when software synthesisers were getting more powerful and flexible, and so I’ve gradually built up my software tools throughout the years following their development. I did own an Access Virus Indigo last year, which I won in a competition, but I sold it to buy more software, as I’ve always found software more convenient and flexible to work with. Being 100% software, my ’studio’ is rather understated, consisting as it does of a computer, monitor, controller keyboard and loudspeakers. Banks of hardware looks impressive, but I’d get frustrated working with tiny displays and convoluted menus, not to mention the hassle of wiring everything up correctly and being able to recall patches when working on different tunes. Too much hassle.

I have read in the Milk Factory interview that you learned music… I was wondering, what do think about electronic artists who did not ever learned music or to play an instrument?

It’s not an issue for me. I mean, as long as an artist can string together a few notes to create an interesting melody, then that’s good enough for me. I don’t need or want artists to prove their musical worth with academic qualifications, as if it sounds good, then it is good, regardless of proven academic ability. There’s always the danger with classically trained musicians that if something can’t be appreciated on an academic or technical level, then it isn’t musically valid. Music on an academic, formal level caters to such a small slice of music. How, for instance, could you score a piece of electro-acoustic music, when consists mainly of timbral changes rather than discrete note changes? They’re two different worlds. There’s so much music that simply cannot be dissected and studied through traditional means. Other than on a basic level, music theory probably won’t be applicable to most electronic composers. Look at Autechre’s music, for example - their music is more about timbre and atmosphere than melody and harmony, which although are there, it takes a back seat.

However, I don’t feel that learning a little music theory is a bad thing at all - there’s no such thing as too much knowledge. If it’s relevant to your music making, then learn as much as you can.

What do you listen to nowadays?

Not a lot, to be honest. I’ve actually just cleared out half of my CD collection to Oxfam, as I know I’ll never listen to it again. There’s so much music coming out of various net communities and mp3 labels that I need never buy another CD. As clichéd as it sounds, I find that as a musician silence really does take on greater value, so when I’m not writing or listening to my own music, I’d rather just relax without listening to something - give my ears a rest!

How did you get to Toytronic records? It is said that it is hard to have a release there…

Really? I just sent them a CD and followed it up with an email to see if anyone liked it. If they didn’t like it, then I kept writing new tracks and repeating the process. I thought my music would suit Toytronic so I’m glad they decided to put something out.

A Midsummer Nice Dream… How did the title come up?

Although writing titles around puns is a really, really bad idea, as long as it works and makes sense not as a pun then I think I’m safe. I just thought the title’s optimism would, by and large, suit the music. It was originally going to be released in the summer, but having it released in the depth of winter now seems far more suitable.

What was the best feedback/comment to your album so far?

Oh, I don’t know. As far as reviews go, I was very pleased by The Milk Factory’s opinion of it.

How does the scene look like in your home country?

There are small pockets of enthusiasm here and there that seem to thrive for small amounts of time, but I’ve never really witnessed anything I’d call a scene. I don’t think there’s the level of interest required to support such a scene on any scale, at least not in the real world. There are great enthusiast sites on the net though - that’s the only place anything resembling a scene exists, in my opinion, for this type of music.

It is interesting to hear that in your opinion there is no scene there… What would you really call a scene then?

Well, I suppose I’d class any club nights that run for longer than a few months as part of a scene. I’m sure there’s more going on in somewhere like London , but I haven’t really noticed anything going on in Birmingham , near to where I live. There used to be the Default nights, which were really cool, as they featured performances from guys like BrothomStates and Mr Projectile, which were cool. I miss that. There are the odd nights now and then that feature decent music, but there doesn’t seem to be anything with any momentum, regular events, at the moment. I studied up in Newcastle for a few years, and there was nothing but the smallest occasional gig that catered for electronic music. It was difficult booking decent venues with decent P.A.s, as they tended to be rather expensive, used to dealing with superstar DJs and popular R&B or Drum and Bass nights, so any event we put on or attended was very low-key, usually with the crappest P.A. known to man. To be honest since I’ve been up in Newcastle I’ve lost touch with what’s going on in Birmingham, so it could have improved in the last couple of years.

What do you use for making music?

Software - Cubase and various plugins - nothing esoteric. I think I’ve got all the software I need for the time being.

I see that there are quite a few oggs on you site.. What is your attitude to online music formats?

I’ll use whatever sounds good - which .ogg does. I don’t have a lot of bandwidth for my site, so being able to shave a few more kB off file sizes helps. Seeing as though the free tracks I offer aren’t on a release, I may as well offer them at as high a sound quality as I can, while maintaining small file sizes. I have had a couple of people complain that they can’t play the songs on their iPods, and if I get a few more I’ll stick mp3s up, but for the time being oggs seem to serve their purpose well. (Chris has already changed his files to mp3s. ;>)

And what is your attitude to digital music formats? What do you think: what are the advantages and disadvantages?

It’s superb being able to distribute your music so easily to so many people with so little effort - this is the main advantage to mp3s etc., and the reason they were created. The level at which we can share our music and download new music is incredible, and obviously this level of mass-propagation of music is seen as a headache for the large music labels - it’s almost too easy to get hold of whatever song you want, for free. So naturally the music business is now trying to turn a file format primarily created for distribution over the net, into a commodity alongside CD and vinyl, which disturbs me. I don’t think we’re quite at the stage yet where we can treat these various digital file formats as replacements to CDs, and I don’t think I’ll be buying any mp3s in the near future from the likes of iTunes, or even Warp’s Bleep service - not while superior sounding CDs still exist at a very slightly higher price. After all, there’s nothing to stop you buying the CD and ripping it to mp3 for use in your iPod etc. For a format that sounds inferior to CD, that doesn’t even tangibly exist as anything but data, I wouldn’t think about paying for it unless it was sold at a fraction of its current price. These formats, such as mp3, ogg, aac etc, were created with a balance between file size and sound quality in mind, not high quality formats for retail purposes. Until internet speeds increase allowing us to download whole albums at quality levels matching or exceeding CDs, at a lower price point, I won’t be buying music files.

There are also so many different formats that digital music files can exist as. I mean, there are mp3s, oggs, aac, wma, FLACs, apes, all at varying quality levels within their own formats. Just imagine if we had that kind of variation in quality with CDs! What we need is a set standard of file format and audio quality, for sale at much lower prices than CD. Even though you could say that iTunes would probably set the standard down to popularity, there are Digital Rights Management issues, as well as fundamental sound quality issues that stop me from considering buying music in this way.

So yeah, these formats are great for previewing albums, distributing unsigned artists’ music, netlabels etc, but not for sale, in my opinion. Not yet.

Playing live.. what is “live” for you in electronic music? Do you play live?

Yes, I do play live, now and then. What is live for me in electronic music? A balance between familiar material and live experimentation. If I go and see an electronic artist I know, I don’t want to just hear tracks as they are on the CD, but I also don’t want to sit there while an artist goes off on a heavily improvised noise-jam for an hour.

What are you working on now?

The follow-up to the album. I have about seven new tracks which I’m really pleased with, so hopefully they’ll be part of a release, although I’m not sure yet whether to go for an EP or push for another LP later in the year. We’ll see what happens.”