Totally understand that…. But look, as you said – your roots were in black music and all the earthyness, soul and funk that made it what it was. And then suddenly you’re doing all these very abstract, out there bleeps. Was that a conscious change in musical direction or a result of experimentation with new technology? It was basically down to the sounds that started spilling out of the synths. But some of the most interesting creative breakthroughs happen entirely by accident. And it got picked up on and shaped into something tangible. Rudimentary sounds being put together by people who weren’t musicians to be honest.
Did that give it a certain edge? Because all the ‘black’ music was very – well – musical. How did this new, basic loop based stuff fit with the more musical end of things? Well the progression of our DJ sets was really defined by the bpm’s. So we’d have a lot of deeply soulful and melodic stuff that had been fantastically well produced and then move into this industrial bleep house zone. You have to bear in mind that just getting into a studio was difficult back then. I remember going down to The Who’s old studio – the Town House (which Virgin had bought off The Who I think a few years previously) for a cut, and all the sound engineers were actually in white lab
Artist - System Street Art