Interview held in Sheffield on the 2nd November 2006 Interview conducted by Mark Kenyon.
TEJ: How did you both meet?
JH: Well, we live very close to each other.
MD: We were both going to our local infant school to pick up our daughters, and in the middle of the afternoon at 3 o’clock guys wonder what each other’s jobs are. I just said a friendly hello and I asked have you got no work today and he said (John) I work for myself I’m a flute player, and then we just started talking about music. A couple of weeks later it was my birthday around winter time and I was cheeky enough to ask John if he would come and put some flute down in my home studio for me. And everything sprung up from there. That recording session turned out to be the track The 39 Steps on Red Planet Rhythm which we are really pleased with.
TEJ: So that was the first track that you recorded together?
MD: Yes, and it was for my 39th Birthday.
JH: It just sort of grew from there really. We did that track and a few more and it just seemed to build up and I found it very very easy to work with Moodi, We seemed to get on really well and to be on the same wave length, and the track kind of built up and I said to you (Moodi) I think there is an album here and we could put it together as a CD.
MD: Yeah, John said, and my friends who have listened to the sketches they all started saying “Wow! I could listen to a full album of that”, John kept saying it. It kind of felt really good to go for it. And before we knew it we had nearly a dozen tracks.
JH: I think I enjoyed it particularly because it is very different to stuff I had done in the past, I realised that from the flute side of things that it was all completely improvised. There’s nothing that’s actually written down, nothing is pre planned, it was all just me playing along either us at the same time together with Moodi playing some guitar or mixing my flute live and me playing to a sampled beat. I have done some improvisation in the past with Symbiosis and Clive Williamson on a number of albums music for relaxation and for radio programmes and I got into the improvising in that way, With Moodi it was different, the style of the music, because of Moodi’s background in dance music and experimental music, without putting words in his mouth “Noise” music...
MD: Rock.
JH: ...and Rock, so there was quite a different style and approach and it clicked really.
MD: I have been recording my own stuff for a couple of years and I have some solo stuff out as well, I look at all of the different jobs I have done and the different interests and it’s honing into this one thing instead making music, music production it’s a full time thing for me, I’ve set up a little events company and a Record Label and I have done my own solo recording amongst other projects one of which is a little improv (improvisation ) Trio and we actually make lots of noise in my cellar, We have sound proofed the cellar and turned it into a proper music room. It’s a big honour to have somebody (looks at John) who can actually play an instrument (laughs).
TEJ: Are there any plans to perform Red Planet Rhythm Live?
JH: Well, we have been kicking around the idea we haven’t really come to any firm decisions. We both have quite a lot on at the moment. I am about to do a tour of Japan and I have got my rock album as well that I have been working on for some time which is coming along, so there is a lot of things to think about in terms of if we are going to try and reproduce the album live because of the way it’s a mixture of sampled sounds and live playing or unless we do something else.
TEJ: So you haven’t ruled out a performance then?
MD: I think you’ll have a job hearing that performed live, to be honest. It was studio made album.
TEJ: Kraftwerk manages to perform their work live.
MD: Kraftwerk stand in a line behind laptops wearing luminous suits - can you see it? Can you see John and I standing there in luminous suits?
JH: Don’t you think I’d looking fetching in a luminous suit? (laughs)
TEJ: Well in this day and age there is more machines as in samplers and drum machines on stage than live playing. Wouldn’t that make it easier?
MD: To be straight with you, I think it’s inevitable that John and I will do something live.
TEJ: It would be nice to hear it.
MD: Be there
TEJ: I have seen many musicians play songs that you wouldn’t have thought possible live
MD: There was a time when you wouldn’t have questioned if it was live or not because that was the only time you’d hear it.
MD: I see music as a process. We only met just over a year ago. To have an album out in that space of time from only just meeting in the street, an album that is gaining quite a lot of attention relatively speaking.
JH: it’s quite an achievement actually.
MD: It was recorded in a home studio; we would love to perform live.
TEJ: Although it was recorded in a home studio, it has a very professional feel to it almost as though it was recorded in a commercial studio.
MD: Well, equipment and software is so easy to come by now in this technological age. You don’t need to go and pay £30, £40 an hour or whatever to hire a studio. You don’t need to do that anymore.
JH: I think that’s a tribute to Moodi’s skill he took care of the production side of it and I just leave stuff with him. It was great I never had to explain the flute needs more reverb, it needs more of repeat or it needs to be backed off in terms of the volume and the mix because he understood that from the outset and it’s really important. I think he does have a really good contemporary ear.
Moodi and John share a joke with us (Photo Credit Mark Kenyon - Editor)
MD: And a good sound card and a good pair of speakers and a good microphone.
JH: And a good kettle for all of the cups of tea we consumed.
TEJ: What inspired the album artwork, who came up with the idea?
JH: It’s Moodi’s department.
MD: Its just one of those organic processes, I had done a little bit of art college and had always been a bit visually artistic. Whether I am skilled or not is open to discussion, but graphics I love playing with. I just feel as though, if you’re open to influences, that an idea can come before you actually conceptualise it, you can put something down and play with an idea and then suddenly you have got something of ultra significance. To get a picture of Mars all ties in with Red Planet Rhythm which goes back to a track I recorded with my sister. We were drinking red wine one evening and we named the track Red Rhythm and then John suggested Red Planet Rhythm. Then we had a friend come and take photographs and we were talking about bricks and the planet and it started to tie in.
MD: What is the music of the earth? Which is the red planet? I look around me and there’s red house bricks everywhere where we live. This is the real red planet. There’s something very deep for you to think about.
JH: We were talking about Mars and it stuck in my mind. We talked about Mars being in outer space and Moodi said actually we’re in outer space, and I always thought with this album and the music that it was all of the sounds of the earth drifting out into outer space. You’ve got these noises, urban noises, sounds of traffic you’ve got a lion roaring you’ve got this guitarist wailing away and drums thrashing around and speech and its all of this Noise/Sound/Music drifting out to outer space.
MD: There is so much emphasis on outer space at the moment. Is there life on Mars? Is there life on Earth? I ask the question - I’d like to think we were producing something for people to contemplate.
JH: One moment in particular is when I was playing the album on a Walkman and I was sitting outside my house and I heard this siren and I heard some bird song and I though “Oh, I don’t remember that being on the album”, and I just put the headphones off for a minute and I realised it wasn’t a sound on the album. It was the sound of something going on outside and I realised then what Moodi had been getting at all the time, making all sound very acceptable and to try and make music all embracing.
MD: I had a part time job in a new age shop in Glastonbury going back a
few years ago in the office, and they were taking delivery of these giant
gongs, proper Chinese gongs, 3 or 4 feet in diameter and the salesman was
trying to sell them to the shop owner and he was demonstrating them on the shop
floor and they were all talking about it and tapping it and looking at it.
I
was about six feet away from this giant gong and the salesman of these gongs
looked at me and he just started hitting them with these beaters giving off a
massive shimmering noise and I couldn’t believe the experience and the sound
made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my whole body started
vibrating and he and I communicated something and the other two guys were
talking about prices, and as the sound died down he said that sound will be
half way to China by now and that moment for me was an incredible moment the
power of sound, like John’s quote “Where does sound end and music begin, where
does the noise end and music begin?”
JH: Well John Cage did a piece that was silence. The one where the pianist goes on stage and sits at the piano and doesn’t actually play anything for four & a half minutes, but the piece of music is the sound of the audience reacting to that.
TEJ: What equipment did you use on the album? There are obviously keyboards and samplers on there.
MD: We used Cubase and Acid Pro a really basic studio mic, an Antoria guitar... The Antoria is a Les Paul copy. They’re owned by Ibanez and it’s quite a nice guitar, there are various effect pedals...
JH: You used that digital delay pedal. That was interesting for me
because it was Moodi’s suggestion to put the flute through this digital delay
pedal and so what you get is this building up of layers of sound of the flute.
Where it goes from Red Planet Rhythm to Free at Last there is a bit where it
starts with me doing these patterns on the flute and what happens is they carry
on and carry on.
It’s almost like a piece of classical music by Ravel called
Daphnis and Chloe where there is a whole section of flutes doing these rippling
scale passages up and down. It’s amazing how it gave that kind of effect; I’d
never achieved that before with the flute and to me that was very exciting. We
used that sound of me playing with Moodi literally twiddling the knobs (Live
Mixing), changing it so the notes are swooping up and down while I’m playing
and that was live, it wasn’t added on afterwards.
MD: Experimentation is very important. Record it, that’s my advice. Forget about format and guidelines and restrictions, record whatever you’re doing and experiment. That’s why I am so much into improv...
JH: Moodi promotes a lot of concerts these days here in Sheffield.
MD: I had a year of putting experimental gigs on of all different types. Noise artists, basically feedbackist’s and Dronist’s, Jazz improv and I’m giving it a rest. It takes up a lot of time and I need to focus more on my own music. I am going to turn the Freenoise website into more of a magazine. Sooner or later John is going to be corrupted enough to experiment on stage (laughs).
TEJ: What genre does the album fit into?
JH: It was funny. When we were putting the album up on iTunes you have
to put the music into a category and we thought is it Rock? Is it New Age? Is
it electronic?
As it happens at the click of a button we put it in the new age
section but I think it actually crosses over quite a few boundaries
and I am
quite proud of the fact that you can’t just pigeon hole it and its not just
another electronic album or another flute album of French composers or
whatever.
I am really proud of this album. It goes over these different boundaries with
elements of dance music, rock music and you get passages which are like modern
French flute music.
TEJ: Listening to the album its everything and the kitchen sink.
JH: We forgot to put that on there (laughs).
MD: That’s the title for the next album.
JH: Yeah, Kitchen Sink Rock.
TEJ: The album seems to be full of ideas and styles of people like Erik Sartie or Kraftwerk and even Jean-Michel Jarre. It feels like a combination of so many different people and influences and yet it’s from the minds of two people.
JH: Hopefully it creates something that’s original shall we say. There’s no such thing as spontaneous generation in music. What we do grows out of other things.
TEJ: Yes there are musicians who have recycled there own music to a great effect, and it’s good and healthy.
JH: Its been nice because some of the emails I have had from people who I have sent the album to have said “Oh this wasn’t what I was expecting at all”. They were expecting a follow up to Checking out of London or maybe Velvet Afternoon or a Classical thing and I think it really did take people by surprise but then they said they liked it (laughs).
TEJ: To be honest with you I was expecting a follow up to Checking out of London.
JH: There will be one; this is a completely different project.
TEJ: This collaboration with Moodi marks a change in your career. How do you feel about that?
JH: I think its nice not to be too predictable.
MD: So he’s like incorporated challenge in the music.
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