Clock Dva - The painter of electric pictures

It's hard to sum up and pick just one, since there are so many important books, each offering different ideas to learn from and understand. I prefer not to focus my whole attention on a single book. The fact is there's so much knowledge that no book could ever contain it all. Every religion has tried to encapsulate all knowledge in a single representation or metaphor, but knowledge and truths shift from generation to generation, while certain aspects of how humans understand things remain constant. The internet is perhaps the closest paradigm we have to the idea of knowledge being accessible even to a single mind, but the problem becomes that the conscious mind, at this stage of evolution, is only capable of taking in so much information at once, while also having to sift through so much untruthful data. The mind and consciousness are overloaded, unable to assimilate so much information into a single meaningful whole. The same goes for Chorozon's magical theory.

Critics have often linked your music to Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and other artists from the first wave of industrial electronics with strong punk overtones. Yet I've read that you began your career with free experiments in electronics. So my question is: how did you actually start? Were you more of an experimenter who gradually arrived at the Clock Dva sound, or was it a matter of breaks and reformations that led you into electronics?

I began my sonic and musical experiments, as I've often stated over the years, with tape manipulation techniques, drawing on the discoveries of electronic music pioneers like John Cage, Ilhan Mimaroglu and the French GRM composers. I became very familiar with these artists and their experiments, which I often encountered while studying art, especially during the period of the abstract expressionists in the mid-1940s. Starting from those premises, I began devising my own experiments within the collective The Future, out of which the Human League later developed. I used loops and treatment processes on recordings with The Future, but those strategies later became the foundation of my solo work. I recently released a six-LP vinyl box set titled "The Future Of Radiophonic Dvations", which documents all my pre-Clock Dva experiments.

As I just explained, my experimental process has always been decidedly solitary. Starting with tape manipulation, I wanted to create a sound and develop it using synthesizers such as the EMS Synthi, which was built specifically to work on acoustic sources with electronic treatments. These experiments and early compositions were the foundations on which I built my sound. After working alone, I began being part of the Clock Dva duo with Steven Turner, later joined by other musicians to expand our horizons and possibilities. During that period, through these experiments, the right sonic formula matured a great deal. As founder, I've always remained at the center of the growth of any particular sound or musical style. Although I use intuition as a guide, every choice is always based on knowledge and a conceptual understanding of the structure I want to achieve/realize. For this reason, every record is a dialectical synthesis of intuition and a conceptual approach to creativity.

I returned to the UK from Italy after all the problems with Contempo and a year spent in Milan trying to secure a new recording contract; once I got it, I also managed to reclaim all the rights to the Clock Dva catalogue. I was developing a new record for the project with Brian Williams, Graeme Revell and Paul Haslinger. After spending a great time collaborating with them in Los Angeles, everything seemed really positive. When I got back to England, the Italian company that had signed the new contract got hit by the same problems as Contempo and had to close down, leaving me without a label. It was a truly disheartening and stressful moment, so I decided to take a break from the music industry, intending to return at some point in the future. It was around 2009 that I decided it was a good time to get going again — I'd found the energy to record and play live once more.

I'm a figurative artist before I'm a musician. Before I got into music, I was, from a young age, a painter and draughtsman. My approach to music and other art forms has always been intrinsically tied to that background. Human nature is guided and influenced in many ways by visual stimuli: signs and symbols are embedded in our communication, and the patterns for recognizing them are part of our consciousness. We recognize meaning even where there is none, in order to make sense of things, as if we wanted to turn nature itself into a simulacrum. Live shows are always a theatrical stage for me, where the audience is focused on the aesthetic frame as much as on the music.

This year's Unibeat concept is built around the central theme of the famous British series "Black Mirror": the relationship between man and technology and its consequences. What's your personal take on it, and what do you foresee for the future we're heading toward?

I have a negative view of that kind of relationship. Artificial intelligence and robotics are rapidly developing the classic problem of AI systems, ready to transcend morality and bypass it like a virus. In doing so, we create something completely opposite to human emotion; that's the essence of what separates us from machines, since it's our innate intuitive knowledge that makes us specifically human. The problem, as Philip K. Dick predicted many years ago, is that empathy is being eroded. On the positive side, we can develop a human consciousness capable of managing and harnessing the spectacular discoveries technology offers us day by day, helping to profoundly improve human life.

In your latest records you've been exploring a much softer, dreamier kind of electronics, moving away from the geometric, angular tones of your early work. What were your intentions in releasing "Post-Sign"?

"Post-Sign" grew out of material I was working on right after "Sign". At that time, as I mentioned earlier, I was laying the groundwork to collaborate with Brian Williams and Graeme Revell. Those tracks were based on ideas drawn from certain cinematic moments, such as the intros of Saul Bass's "Phase IV" and "Stalker", Robert Wise's "The Andromeda Strain" and others. The initial idea was to create an album of soundtracks based on various films that would inspire us both visually and musically.

Which contemporary electronic artists do you feel are capable of musically influencing your work?

I've always followed my own interests directly, so it's very hard to single out one artist over another as having had a particular impact on my ideas and my work. Besides, for me it's a broader conversation about art as a whole: painters, sculptors, directors, writers, philosophers, musicians are all part of building "form" (in the strictly aesthetic sense), regardless of how aware we ourselves are of it. Art is never isolated. If I had to pick artists — strictly in terms of music — who still have the power to amaze me today, I'd say Jon Gibson, Jon Hassell and Tony Conrad.

Is the transition from industrial music to computer music a tangible process, or are they two separate worlds?

I'd tell you that, in any case, the industrial music I started out with, as an experimental form, upended the traditional use of electronic instrumentation. The techniques derived from the 50s, 60s and early 70s were nothing more than developments of those uses of electronics, and I don't see why there should be any distance between that and contemporary digital instrumentation.

Meanwhile, how's the TAGC project going? Has it stopped or is it still moving forward?

Absolutely not. We recently did a tour of the United States, in Columbus, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Austin and New Orleans. Under the TAGC name there have also been sound installations for the Dimensions Gallery in Austin, with a special organ called the resonant lung ("The Resonant Lung"). The last TAGC performance in Italy was at the Cinema Classico in Turin earlier this year. We also worked with Mark Fells on some shows a couple of years ago. I'm still working on new material for the project, which will definitely become an album in 2018, and I'm organizing new shows. It's a very active and dynamic project, still very much in progress.

Let me close with a couple of more personal questions. First of all, I'd like to know from you what kind of atmosphere there was in Sheffield in the early 80s.

I imagine that famous ferment was caused by a whole group of artists (myself included) who were particularly active from the late 70s onward, both creatively and socially. When new wave broke through, it was an exciting time to be a young artist, everything seemed to invite you to experiment with new ways and techniques using new technologies, which in the past had also been very expensive. There were no rules, it was a period when you tried to do things with no idea of selling them or thinking about the economic return of your work, which is why the work from that period is a purer form of experimentation. But it lasted a very short time, the commercial side soon crept into the idyllic picture.

Do you think music has changed you, or was it you who changed over the course of your career, with consequences for your music?

Everything changes, and so we too, with time and experience, develop different tastes and interests. Music and art are very sensitive to change, showing how certain interests become marginal while others become essential. For me, painting has remained a constant since I was born, and these are the things that will remain forever, because it means they're connected to our essential nature.