FP: So I guess one thing led to another, and I assume before long, armed with a sampler, you were playing at parties and stuff like that?
AT: Well, I was doing a photography course when I had my first sampler. I was just putting together jungle beats, you know, and some blues-influenced hip-hop as well, doing stuff for Nine Bar records. I didn’t know anybody in the music industry, I wasn’t down with the scene, you know? I was doing this stuff, and eventually I picked up a magazine that had a load of listings in the back, of record labels that were looking for artists, you know, independent record labels. So I sent a tape to Nine Bar, which were in the back in the magazine. They put out my first stuff, them and HOS–which was a bizarre label –then Ninja Tune caught wind of that.
FP: Did you perform this kind of thing back then?
AT: No, not at all. I really just made a load of songs and sent them out. Like I said, I was doing my photography course, and I felt pretty lucky to be at that school there, it was a hard one to get into. I was just doing loads of music, going up to London and spending more and more time there, sleeping at the Nine Bar studio. They had this wicked studio, which it turns out was pretty heavily subsidized by the drugs. It was a sketchy scenario. But whatever, you know, it was a way to get out, and go and make music. I was really surprised that people were really into instrumental music at the time.
I didn’t know much about the scene, I guess back then they were calling it trip-hop. Or the kind of instrumental hip-hop stuff, which I just started making because I was into using the blues samples, putting them with hip-hop beats and that kind of thing. So when it turned out there was a market for this kind of stuff, I thought, “wow, great, I’ll put out this album with Nine Bar.” So as time went by, I was spending more time in the studio and less time in the darkroom doing my photography.
FP: It’s interesting; record collectors especially would notice that there are cycles where instrumental music comes in and out of vogue. By the early 90’s, it had been a long time since instrumental music was consumed en masse by younger listeners.
AT: That’s true. I really didn’t know there was an audience out there, who wanted music without singing. It was a good revelation.
FP: Did you ever perform with a combination of a sampler and live musicians?
AT: No, I’ve always resisted that. If I made the tracks with other musicians, then I would have felt justified going out playing shows with them. But the reality is I make it all with a sampler. And I’m not going to take a sampler on stage with me, because it’s boring. I’ve seen other people do it, it bores me. So I’d rather just DJ, do something that’s kind of alive, you know? I’m really trying in my own way to keep it real [laughter]. I think if you’re honest about what you are doing, you should represent it that way… not try to be everything to everyone.
FP: When you set about making a piece of music, do you set aside a batch of sounds and samples that will be the raw materials for it?
AT: Actually, no, it’s not that organized, it’s much more intuitive. I’ll have a vague sense of the sounds, like sometimes I’ll have a memory of a song that I really love. For the longest time, for instance, I had the sound of the intro to Venus in Furs in my head. The droning sound throughout that track was rattling around in my brain, and I couldn’t get it out, you know? So I kept going like I say to these types of sounds that reminded me of that, on various records. It’s almost like an automatic thing that happens, creating this music, and I try not to fuck with it or mess with it or question it too much. If I feel a surge of interest to somewhere, I’ll follow it, and I’ll take all these sounds back home and I’ll twist them up and squeeze them into whatever boxes and shapes that I need to fit them in. I can’t say I have like a database of samples or anything.
FP: I guess you’re using such small bits or manipulating the sounds so much that I assume you haven’t had too much trouble over the years with licensing of samples.
AT: No, I haven’t. So far, I’ve been really fortunate that whatever stuff I’m using is so out of context that it’s not really an issue. And if you look at the question of sampling as sort of a moral issue, I think it’s a very interesting argument, because you’ve got all these musicians who are playing inside these pretty restricted set of parameters of what chords or what notes you can use, they’re just making various permutations of those existing things. And because it’s physically played on a guitar, somehow it’s owned by them. And I really don’t think that’s true, you don’t own any of that stuff, whether you play it or you record it and use it. Unless you’ve invented a new chord or a new note, you’re using existing material that you’re interpreting in your own way. Everything else is just a means to an end. You’re showing them a route to get to wherever you need to go in this piece of music. I think it’s more of an opportunistic scenario, as far as sampling, for people to claim ownership, rights, and ultimately money from this.
FP: I think maybe in extreme circumstances where a big chunk of music is being used, that might be justified.
AT: Oh yeah, well that’s a whole different subject, you know, I talk about sampling in the way that I understand it, which is already very different from the P. Diddy type of thing. I’m not talking about what are essentially cover versions.
FP: I’m suspicious that some of these artists on major labels are actually sampling material from that major label, so everybody involved can make more money.
AT: Yeah, none of that stuff is out of bounds these days. To be honest, when I started out, I was taking out much bigger chunks of music than I do now. But it has to be understood that there was a novelty at the time of taking, say, something that you recognize, and putting it in a different environment, and it was like “Wow, that’s really cool!” And obviously now, ten, fifteen years later, you can’t get away with that anymore as the basis for a track.
FP: I guess the novelty value has worn out.
AT: Exactly, you’re less reliant on the shock value, you have to really make music now, which I think is a good thing.
FP: So was it strange, making music from records, holding a record in your hands for the first time that was yours?
AT: Yeah, it was very strange. I spent a good deal of time switching it from 33 to 45 and spinning it backwards and all that stuff. It was very, very weird. It’s even weirder when you see one of your older albums in the bargain bin, right? That’s the really cool moment when you realize, hey, it really is all full-circle. Like, somebody’s going to be picking it up, maybe sampling it, you know? It’s like you’re just part of this great big record bin, at the end of the day. Which is sort of cool, it levels things out in the way it should be.
FP: I assume you’re more attached to the vinyl versions of your albums than the CDs.
AT: Well of course, if you’re really into sound, and you’re really into music, you’ll always be more attracted to vinyl. For many different reasons: sound quality first, and then of course there’s just the lushness of it. It’s like a photo album or something from a time of your life, something deep and memories– I just don’t get that from a CD, you know? It’s just this plastic thing [laughter.]
FP: When you started with Ninja Tune, did they approach you or did you approach them?
AT: Well [with mock pompousness] they approached me [laughter.] They had heard the first record. It was actually good because that record was a real sold-out-of-the-back-of-the-van type of affair, and the impact would have been pretty minimal, except certain things came out of it– people like DJ Food and Funky Porcini heard the record, and wanted to get me onto Ninja so it was really good that way. It goes to show, you don’t have to sell loads and loads of records for it to materialize into something else.
And this was before the Internet was everywhere– I sound like an old man saying that [laughter.] But it’s true, though, and I was certainly much less aware of how many like-minded people there were out there. For however obscure what you’re doing is, there are people out there who share that interest. And I don’t know, maybe it’s a better time for that now, communication seems a bit easier. But it was certainly surprising to me at the time.
FP: Well, we’re certainly all happy at how it turned out.
AT: [laughter]

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