Origins
I would call amongst my greatest influences, in terms of their presence inside my creative space, David Bowie, The Cocteau Twins, Rachmaninov and My Bloody Valentine, though to reduce this army of ghosts to such a select few seems ungrateful somehow for the magic left behind for eternity.
I was born and raised in a small town in Yorkshire, England. My earliest memories are of the stacked albums from the favourites of my mother and father. I remember being entranced and somewhat freaked out by the cover of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane which I would take out of its sleeve and examine, and place delicately on the turntable when my parents were not around. The music within seemed from another world and gave me a rush to the head I still look for today when engaged in the obsessive hyperfocused process of creation I call my Flow Bubble.
Silence is my favourite inspiration, because working on a piece of music is like holding still and listening for whispers from a magic place. It feels presented- discovered rather than created.
I remember there were also vinyl “LPs” from artists like ABBA, T-Rex, Roxy Music and Donna Summer, Queen, ELO, and Iggy Pop. I can still smell those cheap plastic sleeves and feel the textures of the grooved vinyl on my fingers.
The first song I remember discovering for myself was Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, which is now my favourite record of all time but it was not for quite a while that I rediscovered the Mighty JD; maybe even 15 years went by before I turned again to that detached otherworldly voice and those insistent metallic rhythms which I now find oddly so warm and comforting.
Genre is a starting point, not a boundary. The music that truly moves me often feels like it originates from somewhere just beyond my grasp. There lies that magic place.