I was recently invited by broadcaster and writer Stuart Maconie to compile a special one hour mixtape for his Freak Zone show on BBC 6 Music. This is a place where you are absolutely free to let you ears run wild with all kinds of sonic possibilities.
I thought it would be of interest to put together a collection of music that in many ways formed the way in which I create work myself, influencing my own direction or offering a new way of thinking when I stumbled into a blind corner. Having recently released Fibolae it was a way to consider a mix of artists that all in their own way offered me a special way forward. And especially when making a new album.
Thirty tracks in sixty minutes
Now sixty minutes is not a long time, so I had another challenge – how to fit everything I wanted to in such a compressed time frame. I decided to reflect the way in which many of listen and remember music, dipping in and out of tunes, as if plucking them out of the water, then swiftly exchanging them for something. Or how often one sound in a song can remind you of something, how the wires connect to something else, when you least expect it.
Like many others my listening tastes are thoroughly eclectic, so you can hear a range of music that crosses from progressive experimentation, free form improvisation, avantgarde, cinematic, industrial. All connected through a heartfelt belief in the power of music to change and alter. From Robert Fripp to Demdike Stare, Mika Vainio to Swans, AMM to The Virgin Prunes, Glenn Branca to Coil.
This mixtape was originally on the BBC website for a month after broadcast, but since then I’d received so many folks interested in hearing the full mix that I have uploaded it to Mixcloud. So now listeners can continue to enjoy an hour inside my musical imagination. I hope you will enjoy the sonic tales it tells.
Originally commissioned for Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on BBC 6 Music February 2018
