I made an electronic record in the vein of Cluster. I was programming synthesizers and drum machines and that sort of thing.
I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer.
I was always fascinated particularly with synths: how they looked and stuff that when you're a kid you're like this is the most incredible thing in the world just to play.
I thought we had opposite visions of electronic music. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk had a very robotic, mechanical approach. I had a more impressionist vision - a Ravel/Debussy approach.
I'm also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O'Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.
I'm trying to fly the flag for the days of electronic music where people who are making it are also building the gear because that was what was happening in the very early days of electronic music. And that spirit is one of the things that really appeals to me about electronic music so I'm putting this forward as a way to keep that.
This current round of gigs, I'm just doing it using pure electronics.
I took to the synthesizer. My cousin had some synthesizers, and I'd always make stuff on those things.
Ironically I think this is what sparked my interest in and passion for the NOAH, which is capable of creating all these old weird and wonderful sounds.
I had been building electronic musical instruments since I was a kid.
I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.
A lot of the early Washed Out material was done on a couple of synthesizers that did most of the work, but that's the great thing about synths - you can recreate sounds or make an entire record with just one piece of gear.
By the time I got to building synthesizers, I had perhaps 20 years' experience building electronic musical instruments.
