Sleeping States

"This picture is of Aldeburgh beach. Aldeburgh is a small fishing town on the east coast of England in the county of Suffolk, where the composer Benjamin Britten lived for many years, with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears. It's also the setting for Britten's opera, Peter Grimes, about a fisherman who is accused of murder. It's one of my father's favourite pieces of music and he took me to visit Aldeburgh several years ago, when I was studying at university in that area of the country. The sculpture in the picture is The Scallop, which was commissioned as a tribute to Benjamin Britten. There's a song on Gardens called On The Beach At Aldeburgh, which recollects the visit with my father, as well as referring to Britten's own music.

I generally listen to music most when I'm walking around. I think because of that I recorded Gardens with headphones specifically in mind, I like the way the music blends in with the acoustics of the environment. There's this album by the band Charalambides called Unknown Spin, which is very sparse and quiet, and I loved listening to that while I walked around as the music blended in so well with the surrounding sounds, rather than blotting it out like a lot of music does. I think I tried to achieve some of that with Gardens.

I think my music is very influenced by my environment. My writing is largely observational, I tend to describe what's around me and go from there. I took some creative writing classes when I was at university years ago, and I discovered I was very much one of those writers whose stories were all description and no plot, and so for me song lyrics seem a good format for my style of writing - I mean, I think I'm more happy writing vignettes than epics.

These days I do tend to listen to music on my ipod most of all - I walk to work so I listen to it a lot then. My record player died over a year ago and in my current place I don't really have room for another one, but I've promised myself that when I move again in the next few months I'll get a new one. I still really enjoy listening to LPs and there are certain records that even though I love them I definitely wouldn't buy or listen to them as mp3s on my ipod. Like Gastr Del Sol or Silver Jews and stuff, I'm not sure why, they just seem better suited to vinyl to me.

[On London and Brighton] It's true that a lot of musicians and artists flock to London to be part of that community, and I thrived in it for several years. But ultimately I think because there are so many musicians and so on trying to get themselves heard, there's this competitive edge that I didn't really like. Making music is a love of mine but it's not a career, and that distinction is very important to me - making music is an end in itself, not a means to achieving something greater, and while its great that people like what I put out, that's never been a driving force. And in Bristol I think the music scene is more in keeping with that mindset, and there is a very supportive and creative scene here. Because the vast majority of the national media is based in London and is predominantly concerned with what's happening on its own doorstep, the regional communities (such as Bristol) seem freer to create without the pressure of trying to get noticed or whatever. Also, there were other reasons for moving to Bristol not related to music, job and so forth - but that seems to cover the creative side of things I guess.

There's a place in Bristol called the Cube Cinema that's really great. It's volunteer run and has one screen that they screen arthouse films and stuff and they also put on bands in the same theatre as the screen is set at the back of a stage. It's really tiny, like I think there's only about 120 seats in there, but there's always a great atmosphere, either playing or watching other bands. I did the Gardens album launch there which was really fun, my drummer and cellist covered the stage in branches and leaves and flowers and things, it looked pretty rural. I saw Carla Bozulich there a few weeks ago and she was amazing.

I am a true bedroom musician, 90% of everything I write (and many of the recordings, certainly the earlier ones) is done there, mainly because I have everything to have here and if I get a musical idea in my head I like to act on it quickly. Also I'm therefore surrounded by my books and record collection and so forth, which really helps to draw on while I'm making music. Although I'm now living with other people again I did live on my own throughout the period of writing and recording In the Gardens of the North, and I was grateful for the space and the opportunity to spread my stuff out a bit.

Because I'm very into recording atmospheres of wherever I'm recording the songs and keeping them in the mixes - I often even put a microphone by the window to capture what's going on outside. So in that way the locations become more than just the place where I made the recordings but an active layer in the recordings. I've always liked music recorded in this way. The Swedish singer Stina Nordenstam's album of covers (People Are Strange) was a very influential album on me when it came out in the late nineties, particularly in terms of recording. It doesn't really fit in with the 'lofi' tag, but it sounds very homemade in parts and she leaves in all sorts of atmosphere recordings throughout the songs. Her cover of Rod Stewart's Sailing gives such a wonderful impression of the room she recorded it in - it sounds like she left the window open."

Thanks to Markland for the interview. Check out Sleeping States here: http://www.sleepingstates.co.uk/