Graham Massey - Electronic Pioneer
A very special extended interview with electronic music pioneer Graham Massey, best known for 808 State, and whose credits include producing and co-writing with Björk, remixing a who’s who of contemporary music and film soundtracks including It’s All Gone Pete Tong.
Graham sat down and spoke to MTF director Andrew Dubber about his life and career in music, some things that are inspiring him in music and tech today - and why he keeps showing up to Music Tech Fest events around the world.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
music, people, tech fest, bands, record, musicians, electric violin, punk, electronics, sound, mtf, instance, called, point, manchester, equipment, technology, instrument, important, graham
SPEAKERS
Graham Massey, Andrew Dubber
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m director of Music Tech Fest, and this is the MTF podcast. This one’s a really special one. It’s an extended interview with one of the legendary pioneers of electronic music. Graham Massey is a multi instrumentalist, producer, DJ and broadcaster, chances are you’ve heard his music, as well as being a central figure in 808 State who are one of the most influential acts in electronic dance music history. Graham’s remix and production list is an absolute who’s who of contemporary music, including his work with Bjork, co writing army of me and the modern things from the album post. He also has numerous side projects and collaborations including sisters of transistors, and tool shed. While 808 State were responsible for the first full length album of dance music and were early pioneers of acid house. Graham’s taste extends far beyond with influences and interests ranging from Hawaiian ukulele to Sun Ra, his solo endeavours are filled with surprise and complexity, while still being perfectly at home on the dance floor. And of course, at MTF as an avid collector of both unusual and vintage music technology and a regular face at Music Tech Fest events around the world. Graham is interested in the intersections of innovation and creativity, with the unusual or unexpected can happen. There’s lots to talk about, and there’s so much more we could have discussed. It’s an absolute privilege to welcome Graham Massey, to the MTF, podcast, enjoy. Graham, you’re a pioneer of electronic Music Tech Fest, how does that label sit with you?
Graham Massey
And hilariously, because like, I’m not that techie, when it comes down to it, and I’ve managed to bumble my way through with music tech. But I would say that because I’ve come from the punk era was really important to be you know, so that’s, that’s where I came into music where it was about. And there was a chaos to it. And there was no formal training in terms of my musicianship. I was obsessed with sound. And it was a period when the non musician was a character in music, you know, people like Brian Eno came to the fore in, in my teenage years where you didn’t hear a formalism in his kind of music, you’re just thinking like there was a mystery in what those people were doing. And I was very attracted to that. So when I first joined the band, my instrument was electric violin, and I had no training in violin. So it’s about making a noise with this thing. But during during punk, you could do that thing. You were encouraged to play the instrument you could play least, you know, so people would swap instruments regularly. And it was all just the bow and the joy of noise. For a while, we had a DIY band called Danny and the Dressmakers. And we simply just used to get in a basement with a blank c 90 and fill that C 90 up. That was the important thing about it. It was not anything to do with songwriting. It was not anything to do with scale. It was just this exploration of noise and sound. That was truly liberating. And at that time, had some traction in the culture.
Andrew Dubber
But electric violins are not typically thought of as a as a punk instrument.
Graham Massey
No. But you know, I don’t know why I’d got that instrument other than the fact that, you know, I used to listen to Mahavishnu Orchestra and things like that, that had the idea of a new electric violin, it seemed really exciting. And I just bought one, honestly from a small lats. And it was like a passport into a band because everyone had guitar is everyone drummers. No one had electric violin player, apart from the bad dad joy and actually hit that did have an electric violin player. He was really good, who I actually still play with these days, a guy called Graham Clark who is an amazing jazz violinist. But at that time, we were into space rock and making kind of all kinds of outer world sounds. You know, we’ve grown up in the Pink Floyd era, we’ve grown up with bands like Gong Faust. You know, the early Virgin Records was such an important part of British music culture, you know, when Virgin Records, the labels started, and they’re eclecticism and Europe facing view. You know, a lot of German bands, a lot of French bands, It’s an interesting mixture of music that we were exposed to through our local record shop, which was the virgin record shop, again, a very grassroots and mailorder system that started out as it was a gathering place for the punk community of Manchester. They had three listening booths in there, you know, with the headphones. And there was usually about 30 people in the three listening booths, you know, it was a place for exchanging ideas. And a guy who was in our band, his Auntie managed that shop, so he had a Saturday job guy called Colin Seddon and he used to bring home the all this fantastic music that was coming through that shop from America, you know, first hearing, you know, bands like the residence and Divo. And some of they and more EU trade stuff of the punk movement, you know, we got sick of the three called thrash got really boring tours really quickly, you know, all of a sudden, like pub rock a lot, you traditional punk. But once you add, like the New York thing was filtering through into Manchester, we very much sided with that there was bands in Manchester, like a certain ratio, for instance, that were very on par with that, you know, they were taking sort of folk and dance elements, alongside electronics and deliberate lack of skill. You know, people would always play the trumpet in these bands. You always had to have somebody that couldn’t play the trumpet playing the trumpet. In a post in a post punk band, no Throbbing Gristle has it 23 Skidoo has a Cabaret Voltaire has it, you know. And we had a trumpet amongst the two bands that shared our rehearsal room, and we used to pass it around. And, you know, it was these non in non instrumental players playing instruments was part of that scene, so long as you had the the processing and that that was a point when also about post punk is it became a very much a studio craft thing, you know, you could get in a room and make this music, but it really came to life when you got in the studio, and could apply the latest digital effects that were coming in at the end of the 70s into the 80s. A lot of new studio technology that was exciting and new at that point in time, you know, so I rip if we ever got a studio and everything came to life.
Andrew Dubber
And
Graham Massey
I couldn’t wait to get back into studio. So at a certain point, and when the studio we used to use took so calm the shape of the school called the school sound recorded in Manchester, it was one of the first recording courses in the country. And I signed up to that in the mid 80s. And as the best thing I ever did, and that intersected with the time when Atari computers and samplers were first coming in. So and so I have access to that that equipment at that point in time. And essentially, before that it was all millionaires toys, and he could never even have the ambition of getting near that equipment. And and then then all of a sudden, the price point was different. And it all existed. You had access to it at certain point in time. And that was, you know, it was kind of unruly, chaotic, people getting hold of that equipment was definitely different to the millionaires that had previously done the pioneering work with it.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Right. But that’s that’s sort of explains the time and how it sort of came about, but it doesn’t explain necessarily why it was you what tell tell me about the child, Graham Massey, and what were parents like and what was growing up that led you to the kid who bought the electric violin,
Graham Massey
and well, and growing up in the 1970s it was a very fertile time in music. You know, I had two older brothers that were at university coming in with their prog rock. We had a, you know, a musical community in the street, where I grew up where there was a couple of really good stereos one guy had built his own stereo was very proud of it, you know, so we’d gather around that stereo with this week’s hot releases as it were, and they could be seven inches or they could be important albums remember gathering round when a Bowie album came out. It was a You know, an event where people would gather together to listen to it, you know, which which is odd for a street really, I don’t know whether that’s just a personal experience or whether that was going on up and down the country. Well, you know, it’s hard to explain somebody was doing a documentary recently on Lindsay Kemp and those interviewed about the importance of Bowie in that 70s period in in the UK. So you would go to school and like the the people we care at read aloud insane hairdos and school uniforms on it, you know, this, the non conformists so but with the last vestiges of conforming, you know, this odd hybrid of, you know, to be a nonconformist in the 70s was really hard. Only the tough kids did it. You know, so those would became the punks. And somebody was saying like, Did punk. You know? Did it all come from things like The Rocky Horror Show? And I’m like, no, it really did. It was this. Punk in the northwest of England wasn’t a King’s Road kind of postcard version of punk. It was all the different subcultures and hanging out together, you know, you went to a punk gig in Manchester. And you can see it in old photos that is, you know, a load of hippies, a lot of the West Indian community, and all kinds of misfits all in one place at one time, you know, and it was much more blurred, and much more eclectic. And but Manchester was a very eclectic musical city where your brother could be my brother was a mod. So there was a lot of like, you know, black music coming, coming through into the house. And then my older brother was a university student. So it is all all about the prog and
Andrew Dubber
yes, albums appeared and things. So all these things live side by side, you know, were you one of these kids who would take things apart to see how they go and, you know, tinker with electronics, or,
Graham Massey
yeah, I mean, tape tape recorders, or any musical technology back in those days usually came through and came through at Christmas and birthdays, you know, so there was significant purchases, like a tape recorder, everyone down the street had a tape recorder. And sometimes we used to gather and put them all together and then record three tape recorders with with another tape recorder, and you could get really interesting and jams that way. And then somebody told us how to turn the race head off, you know, by covering it in silver paper. And then that’s would then tinker and put a switch on your erase head. So you could make you could turn it off and on and make loops and make cassette loops and, and of course, the old tape recorder technology became something that you could then tinker with, because previously to that, they were very proud pieces of equipment that you weren’t allowed near, let alone to start jabbing biros into it and messing with the tape speed and things. So all that became available to you. And then my dad had a background in electronics it been in the era in working with radar in the 50s so his shed was full of IT equipment. Like for instance, my first guitar amplifier was a PA system from mcvities biscuit factory and it had this huge glass map of the world on it with a with a with a shortwave radio receiver in it and and then the speaker was like something from a gym karner or something like a massive magnet with a horn on it right well this made an amazing sound for you put your electric violin through that and it’s a weapon you know, so he would build the force boxes for a rod we get practically electronics magazines were handed around at school it was the electronics club at school where we were making circuits we bring those home and get our get my dad to do it. He was much quicker and his soldering was way neater than mine. Well and that culture still goes on I I think it’s very much having a hate and return to its heyday at the moment. So many musicians I know make electronics now you know they handy with a soldering iron and and this hobbyists culture of of making electronic instruments is very much existed back then. Or it’s way way more every day these days, you know, so it’s interesting to connect those two areas. Have that character in electronic music and we once relied on the manufacturing companies for that that character within synthesisers. But it’s much more open to individuals now you know, where people are making personalised electronics. And there was a whole movement a few years ago for tinkering with old Casio things and rewiring them. And, you know that that things developed into something quite sophisticated them. And particularly with all the modular scene that goes on around the world now, where it’s helped with synthesisers now because there is a lot of hobbyists. And yet, you know, I don’t hear a lot of music from that sector, there enters the social situations, you know, it’s kind of lives in its own world. There was a friend of mine puts out obscure records, Andy Votel, he’s got a record label called Finders keepers. And he put a series of these sets out that it found from Alaskan oil rig workers who got into modulars in the seven is because they had all this spare money. And one of the guys was just a synth not. And then they were all sat around, trapped in Alaska for a period of time. And they had a bar there that that this module seen developed their campus, and they made these tapes, and they got out and I love that. That’s social enforcement and connection to electronics there makes it a lot more interesting than the the wide ranging kind of guy in a bedroom by himself thing. You know, I think this where music meets social situations is always very important.
Andrew Dubber
Right? Is that, like, sort of wrapped up in the politics of, particularly the music at the time when you were getting started? Obviously, there’s a lot of stuff going on politically. Is there a kind of a political dimension to the the musical story of Graham Massey?
Graham Massey
Yeah, I think, I think so in that the establishment bed in music, when I started has always been a sort of bedrock of an attitude to making music we never make wanted to make music. That was easy, you know, that fitted formats, like first chorus and middle eights, you know, we’d never dabbled with that. It was always started from an outward looking music, as I say, grown up in the 70s with a sort of psychedelic, then starting with the sort of UFO club in in, in London, and the Pink Floyd thing. And we really gravitate to this band called Gong. Again, who were on Virgin Records that that idea of a band that had a bit of everything in it, it had tape culture in it, they used a lot of collage they used there’s a lot of jazz in it. There was a lot of synthesisers for the first time, but not in a, in quite an interesting way, in a very textural way. They’re just a fascinating band, really. And I think their music is aged really well, out of that period of the of the 1960s experiment is that they did their back catalogue really stands up. And then there was bands like foul stout or Germany that, again, were effectively music concrete, but in a formal way, not in an academic way, you know, in a way, way where you could and sing along, in a way. It’s kind of our version of a. Everyone had that record, because again, that was a kind of 49 pence record that they put out called files, tapes, and when we formed bands in the 70s, everyone had it as a reference point. Because because of the economics of that, how did
Andrew Dubber
that find its way into something like 808 states or chart toppers? 808 state if you like, Well, yeah, what’s the thread there?
Graham Massey
Okay, well, I like to see like, Well, once the the rave scene started happening, and that again, was a point where technology changed. That was really just as important as the cultural context. What the social mix changed in the clubs. That was one of the things of the rave thing it was about. People from different backgrounds all meet you know, or in, you know, the bigger clubs like clubs like the Hacienda that wasn’t about, it wasn’t as tribal as other clubs that were around in, previously leading up into the 80s, where there was like gay clubs, black clubs, and, you know, clubs for copying off kind of thing. And there was the barriers were coming down as a musician as well, because we used to sell put the back of the hall when we were performing, largely because, again, because of the technology, we needed a lot of wires. So you needed to be there, the mixing desk, because we know, we didn’t perform on stage and the stage broke down, you know, you see a happy moment escape from back there, the stage is full of the audience, and the band was in there somewhere. And it didn’t really matter, people were facing backwards and sideways and the performance space broke down. And it’s saying with eight, early eight to eight gigs, you couldn’t tell who was on stage, you know, and you couldn’t tell who the audience was. That that was some kind of Mancunian socialism and in action, it was like, that’s what what I think about when I go back to those early rave gigs, you know, and warehouse parties, you know, where you couldn’t tell when a DJ came up from the live music began, you know, it’s very blurred, people didn’t care, you know, people who, you know, there were so engrossed in the community situation, that the idea of pop stars really went out the window, you know, so it’s interesting when we start getting success without waiting, because we really didn’t know how to present ourselves. One minute, we’re doing these warehouse parties, and, you know, shuffling around with everyone else, and the next minute, we’re doing something like the gym, etc, in Manchester, which is like a, like a 10,000 people x railway station, and you had to put on the show. And that was problematic, it was really problematic for us to be on the stage and for an hour with essentially some boring technology, you know, because we’re pumping out this music, but it’s not about check my skills, you know, it was it. You know, so what do you do? And we struggled for many years to feel comfortable in a performance situation. And you’d have to go on TV, for instance, you know, going on top of the pots and things where it’s like, how do we present this music? And if the BBC started having helpful suggestions, you know, of everyone clapping along to your rave record. Oh, it’s awful. Always this this awkward situation, remember the or been on there and just playing chess? Right on Top of the Pops, you know, just as any any way to get around this presentation of electronic music, it took years to kind of find a way to make that. audience. Yeah, that audience. Bam thing comfortable again. So what
Andrew Dubber
was the point at which you kind of thought, right, this is this is clearly my life, this is not just something that I’m doing. Because I don’t have a different job. This is my job. This is my career. And this is what I’m, this is what I am now. Was there a point at which you sort of clicked on that?
Graham Massey
Yeah. Well, I just like to say there was a huge period where, where it wasn’t like that. And so you always thought when when we did get, like signed up by a record company, you didn’t know how long that would last. So there’s, there’s never been a point of the lack of anxiety of being a musician. And there’s a lot of anxiety that goes with being a musician and how you’re going to make it through the years, you know, and as you get older, you just think, you know, there really is no alternative after I’m a lifer. I have to do it. It’s, it makes you into a weird person, I think, you know, and like all the musicians I know. And they have a kindness within the community of musicians because they know what it takes to be in that position. And well, I would say when we did get the backing of a record company and the cash that went with it, you know, the cash advance, and nobody explained advances to us and how much would be taken out and how to manage money. And we were chaotic bunch, you know, from different backgrounds, and how to move out to be a band and a business. Being a band is one thing being a business is another and that we have made some terrible mistakes as everyone does with that. But that confidence of somebody, just go like go for it, you know, with cash. Which doesn’t exist anymore? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I can imagine most bands only last a couple of years, these these these days, you know, they’ll have a crack at it. And if it doesn’t work, they’ll let it drop kind of thing. Whereas back then you could maybe keep that going for like five or eight years, based on publishing deals, and, you know, bits of tracking, convincing people that you were worth it. Anything, right? If you
Andrew Dubber
were 18. Now, yeah, what would you be doing? You get
Graham Massey
you’d make music, you would value it in a different way. Yeah, you would, you wouldn’t put the same ambition on music, it would be part of your life. And it would maybe connect up some of your friends. Well, as I’m saying, this now, that’s how music was before. When I was growing up, really, it was about music was very colloquial, you know, Manchester bands played to Manchester bands, and compared themselves to Manchester bands. Right? They rarely got out of town, if they got to London, that was like some major, you know, excitement, you know? And then what then? And if you got abroad, that was crazy, you know, if you I mean, so we always got to Holland, and Belgium and places like that were very liberal and encouraging and had their governments that gave out grants, you know, this, right? Like, this is terribly exciting, that we got to go and play abroad, you know, but it was just terribly colloquial. But we were lucky to have people like Factory Records in our town. We came from the town where punk had beans. There was some role models within our town, you know, for instance, you hormones records was the first record company I got involved with, who did spiral scratch by the Buzzcocks. And they gave us enough money to record sidewall of an album, then they run out of money. And then, about two years later, they gave us money to do side two of an album, and then they didn’t have enough money to make the record. So we sold it to another record company. And that’s so it like an album took three years to, you know, that wasn’t the punk ideal. Right?
Andrew Dubber
You’ve become quite prolific now that I guess, yeah, I mean, working on a lot of projects.
Graham Massey
Yeah. And, yeah, I was, I feel that, you know, being in a band for 30 years, comes with some baggage. And therefore, that baggage sometimes gets in the way of how you make music, you know, just that having a complete openness to the way you make music. And so I have a number of projects, or was like a sort of portfolio of projects, in order to be able to sort of manoeuvre around the music or really want to make you know, so I make music for films, which is completely different disciplines, as far as I’m concerned to creative music making, I also it would be a creative space to expand your music, making imagination, but it’s quite constrained. And but constrained is good. I find you know, it’s kind of like, the, one of the issues for modern electronic musicians is the Chinese menu of logic and all that kind of thing. Now, you know, it’s he so many options to go with music making on the computer in front of you can really short short you down, it’s sometimes to go down to a little bit of kit. And, and, you know, just a time constraint or a set of rules. And I really thrive off that sometimes they’ll just just change. There’s too many options, sometimes with modern music making. All these other platforms become interesting again,
Andrew Dubber
yeah, I guess you’ve got a rack of, you know, lots of sense and lots of gear and that sort of stuff. Do you sort of ever restrict yourself to a few bits and pieces or?
Graham Massey
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, for a while I’ve had this huge man, man shed in the old Granada TV studios, where for the first time in my life, I’ve been able to lay out everything I have, in terms of all the equipment I have hoarded over the years. And I kind of got that out my system because it made me realise how little of it I use, right you know, and and how there’s just like a romantic idea about having every kind synthesiser and, you know you, it’s not how we started out and some of the best music was done with very primitive and limited equipment. And so yeah, there’s a discipline to get into know certain pieces of equipment inside out. And I don’t think I could be one of those modular people for instance, you know, I mean, I think that I just go up some small alleyway and, and get trapped by the technology sometimes the technology needs to be about back to basics you really realise this when you start doing gigs when you’re on the gig circumstances. What synthesisers work in, in, in field conditions, like something like something like an old Moog just works perfectly in those conditions it cuts through, it’s always focus is just you can visually look at the panel and know exactly where you are with the sound in an instant. It’s a beautiful instrument like the old mini Moog, for instance. And then we went through a period of everything, what we used to call painting through the letterbox, which is like, you know, that the where you had little LED screens, and you had to go through menus, and they were just useless, like, you know, for the for being spontaneous. You could maybe pick a preset and go with that, but Well, I think instrument manufacturers are beginning to feed back into artists now, in an interesting way, you know, we’ve been working with the road people for a number of years now. And they were an example of a company that that used to be all about, we won’t look at the past, whereas some of their best instruments were the ones they made by accident. Right. And, and they would refuse to revisit some of their great successes in favour of just the engineers just moving on. Well, what they weren’t taking into account is how musicians use equipment, and the different genres of music that spawned off their equipment, right, you know, it took a while for that to feedback. And now you have the people that make the Roland air equipment, have regular feedback sessions with musicians and, and it’s great to see so many beginners with this equipment, you know, going out there and being able to make spontaneous electronic music with something that’s on the 500 pounds, you know, it’s become, you know, the electric guitar of its day. Do you
Andrew Dubber
think that some of these electronic music manufacturing companies like the the instrument makers, heaven and blandness, of the heritage, and the same way that guitar manufacturers might
Graham Massey
do now? But he’s taken years? Yeah, you could go back 10 years, and they wouldn’t have that, right. Particularly people that I remember, when we first went to a state first visited Tokyo, we were met by a delegation from Roland, and presented with a boss watch. And some socks. And, and this, this cassette that they made in their lunch hour so that the engineers made a bunch of cover versions of sort of our tunes. That was that was so sweet, kind of thing. But it was it was not the the the executives, it wasn’t the executives that did that. It was the workers that come You know, now, that was fantastic. Awesome. Yeah. But yeah, it’s much, much more the synthesis between the engineers and the musicians, and that is more of a community talking about it.
Andrew Dubber
Right. But you’re not just an electronic musician, though. It’s, it’s part of your palate. But you’re often seen with a wind instrument, for instance.
Graham Massey
Yeah, I mean, so, uh, yeah, I’m not an electronic music purist. And it’s funny how many people are, you know, particularly when you’re a band, like a th state that’s seen as one of the synthesiser bands, people get really upset when they get the guitar out? You know, they get really upset with the saxophone and things, you know, it’s like, they just can’t compute it. It’s that that no, it doesn’t belong there. And that, but to me, yeah, as I say, I see this long line back to, you know, underground, creative music that, that has always had those things. You know, it wasn’t a big deal for me to put saxophone on Pacific state, for instance. I mean, I didn’t play the saxophone when we made that record. But I was doing another project the night before. Where the saxophone, saxophone player, it left the saxophone in the studio, but that was electronic as well and we use electronic with brass on it was what it was like kind of like a sort of, almost like a Fela Kuti record with no, no nine drum machines that we were doing. The night before, obviously hugely successful, but all those experiments of trying to fit and genres together that we’re doing back then, you know, some of its stock loads of it didn’t. Well, we really liked that point in time people like Adrian Sherwood and the audio sound label that we’re using an electronic format, but with highly skilled musicians from the Sugar Hill gang, you know, like Doug Wimbish and Skip MacDonald, who were obviously new Zoey. Yeah. Well, you stick that with the drum machine stuff, and you get in a real? Yeah, you know, it’s just exciting records. We’re making Batman. And we were inspired by that. And that we were also inspired by the fact that these take that format, and just do it as a sound system. So they turn up in Manchester, and Gary played with setup in the middle of a club, not on the stage again. Yep. As in the format of a reggae sound system. I guess you know, that he would he come from, you know, Bristol and the reggae sound systems. And that’s the way they did it. And they played stuff off cassette. Yeah, that was it wasn’t dex It was like, I’ve made this. I’m not going to get an acetate. I’ve got cassette. So we just had a bank of cassette players. And this was really inspiring to us. That’s how we settled originally, it’s a state around the Bixi death. With some, you know, we made the PA system quadrophonic by just adding two more speakers to it, then, and yeah, we said, it probably sounded dreadful, but and socially, it was, it was a dance, you know, in the style of, you know, in the style of a blues, it wasn’t a performance, you know, it was a, it was a whole night of stuff. And it wasn’t like, you know, beginning middle and end it was like it just splurge together. Yeah.
Andrew Dubber
And there’s a whole range of influences, obviously, going around. I mean, the new sound thing is interesting to me, because I was on you sound collector, that’s like one of the Oh, yeah, one of the big things for me, and that’s sort of late 80s, early 90s. But But going through today, but also, I mean, you sort of touched on sunrise, and then you suddenly working with with pop stars, you know, you sort of working with Bjork, and you’re sort of associated with john hassel at one end, and Quincy Jones on the other, you know, how do you sort of tie those threads together? Or is it just sort of curiosity,
Graham Massey
it was that period of where the remix was the big thing amongst major record labels. And everyone knew that this format of getting things into clubs were where the culture was really moving in clubs and significant records could be thrown up, out the blue overnight from a club situation was really interesting to major major labels. So you know, how can we get this artist to we don’t quite know what to do with, you know, if you get like some a&r guy, or it’s just like, get it get remixed by this guy, I know, kind of thing is like, he was doing his job somehow, you know, plugging these patch leads into the culture. So you know, it was great for us, because like, every week, I mean, a ball. The amount of remixes was turned down back then, you know, I come across cassettes in the cellar of things that like, you know, shame and move any mountain and I probably just were too busy or whatever threw it over my shoulder, you know. And, but but then, you know, we say working with pop stars bill wasn’t really a pop star or she I don’t know, sugar cubes. Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of that that birthday was known. There were seen as like, indie, indie darlings at that point in time. And when when we met Bjork, and she arrived, she wanted to do an electronic formatted thing. She wasn’t essentially wanted beat sport into her music because she’s such a musician. And bought all the music on the cassette that she played is was a brass band quartet from like, her college mates, you know, so it’s like trombone and trumpet. And it was things like anchor song and aeroplane and you had to have a huge imagination to, to then think how that would play out as electronic pop. Mm hmm. Because even then, when you listen to that album, it’s pretty strange. So there’s like a saxophone quartet of it. You know, one of the first sessions I worked on it was Oliver Lake who’s like, one of the members of the world saxophone quartet who were like, very esoteric, you know, like, saxophone quartet from New York. And there was a whole jazz culture that walked into the room of like, you know, respect and things that had to be and it wasn’t pop, nothing was pop, you know, One Little Indian with the biggest pumps on the planet, you know, flocks of pink Indians that you Eric ran the label they’re there. They’re on power we crass, you know, though, yeah, so was comfortable on all these levels of like, loved all the jazz loved all the punk stuff, you know, and we singing off the same hymn sheet she she’d lived that life to a theory. Also, not the chaotic nonsense on stage you look back at sort of the early bands, you know, and it’s it is complete parallels we what we were doing, you know, just making that den and then at a later point in life organising that den but with a very informed and record collection. Yeah.
Andrew Dubber
So it’s, it’s really obvious why we want you to be at Music Tech Fest, what do you get out of it?
Graham Massey
The village green aspect of Music Tech Fest is incredibly important. Because people have assumptions about who everyone is, you know, before they meet up somewhere, you know, be electronic musicians, people from the, you know, for instance, me from the rave thing, you know, people are perhaps a bit kind of suspicious of it, whether it’s, you know, true music or not, or there’s a lot of neat music, money instrument manufacturers or leading up there. So when I can only go off the experiences that I’ve had at Music Tech Fest, which is usually even driving from the airport, in a taxi with somebody you’ve just met, who’s going to Music Tech Fest, they’re all these Venn diagrams start intersecting immediately, and you find you have, you find out what you’ve got in common, you find out your common passions, and there’s always something that connects between all the people at Music Tech Fest, because they’re all got an exploratory mind, you know, they’re all looking to, to take ideas forward. And so it’s easy to have conversations there, you know, you, you know, you’re there to, to have that attitude. and openness occurs immediately. It’s, it’s, it’s part of the brief, really, is that, you know, you leave you leave you, you leave stuff at the door, and you you start listening, you start tuning in, and you know, that time is not to be wasted there, because there’s all this information coming up here. So, I’m quite happy to sort of sit and listen to the talks until my bum goes numb, you know, about eight hours into this thing. And you really, yeah, there’s been times where it’s like, right, I should, I should really go, you know, go get some food to eat now kind of thing, but you just, you just, they’re fixed. As all this information is happening, you don’t want to miss anything. And then all the great stuff happens in this in the social space of afterwards, at the hotel, at the breath, the breakfasts are amazing, you meet all these these people. And, and they’re are able to hook people up together, you know, this is brilliant, like, have you met, you need to talk to this guy over here, again, anything and that kind of social exchanges is physically in the air, you know, where ideas are just people’s ideas have fed, and, and bolstered by the energy of a collection of inventors? Well, they’re not just musicians, that’s the thing I like about it as well, you know, I mean, I even as a musician there, you know, you kind of feel like you should develop all these other skills that are that are in evidence there. Because it’s about to link up for the future. You know, it’s about going off, I had that guy on my team, you know, and this knowledge, everything would move forwards, I could help them, they could help me and everything could move forward. And it was saying about, it’s the most sort of perfect version of the European community at times when there be a lot the ones I’ve been to I’ve been in European places. And I know you’ve done them all over the world, but you just get a sense of this global community that’s interested in, you know, a better version of the future. Yeah, in terms of not just politically but culturally, all rounders that, that. It’s just one of the it’s just a very positive experience, particularly when we’re in this sort of weird Brexit kind of England at the moment. And I wish I could take people over and convert them. With just one weekend, Music Tech Fest, and the word Music Tech Fest is slightly misleading sometimes because it is not just about music, it’s about bigger ideas. And that, you know, it’s about future communities, and the way the world might work. And stuff used to read about when, you know, the Global Village idea that I grew up within the 60s, is, you know, there should be some big geodesic dome that we sit on that we actually brought
Andrew Dubber
a couple of geodesic domes to MTF labs.com and set them up as little playgrounds. But yeah, it’s a good start.
Graham Massey
I say I ran into Leon the other night, who was doing the dome thing. Yeah, who I met at Music Tech Fest, and we’re out doing doing gigs. And the thing is you, you attend these things, and then you bump into them in real life all the time, for instance Jason Singh, who lives 500 yards from where I live, I’ve never really spoke to him, until I met him in northern Sweden somewhere. And now we’re doing, you know, music collaborations, a lot more fantastic cause because of that, because of being isolated in some place, and, you know, surrounded by that atmosphere, amazing.
Andrew Dubber
mazing, you mentioned, when we spoke earlier about sort of being surprised by some of the opinions coming off the stage. Just just talk a little bit about that.
Graham Massey
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s great. One of the aspects of Music Tech Fest that is surprising is as you get sort of the head honchos of some of these sort of technology companies, who were in my head, or the sort of distant figures, they were all dealing with the finance of things, what how passionate, they are actually about the things that they make, and how now they see the world as it is, which is, you know, with plugins, no. is this idea that people buy them is, is, you know, it’s not the way people first encounter plugins, you know, they, they get them from other people, they’d see the model of people’s doors, there’s a culture of word of mouth about plugins, and, and which ones stick, which ones are useful, which ones fail. You know, there’s a whole culture of technology that takes time to play out and see in the heads of those companies understanding that they have to communicate with each other. It’s not about rivalries. I mean, there obviously, were rivalries at times, but that has to break down now, you know, because people have to accept that, you know, people are multi format in their computers, you know, it’s no, no one is gonna be able to dominate something as wide as music technology, it’s about being able to make things that complement each other as well, you know, so that that becomes a community, community of inventors. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it also builds a sort of respect for you know, if you get to meet the people, but you understand there is a people game, you know, there is years of research and skills that go into to move in this thing slowly forward.
Andrew Dubber
Tell me about the sort of the journey that you’re on you, you’re sort of, I guess, at a mature stage of music making, you’ve kind of done a lot, you’ve laid a lot of groundwork, you’ve kind of, I guess settled on a way of doing things. How does the sort of, you know, being I guess a grown up now change your approach to music making? Is it is it different for you?
Graham Massey
Yeah, I guess a lot of the ambitions have changed in the music making and the biggest successes when I look back on it, are points when you can get your music uncompromised into the general community. I always think that sort of the great success of what we did with a 808 state was to not compromise the music we’ll get it to the general public and be surprised that the general public on as narrow minded as people led us to believe you know, it, you know, people will respond to to to any kind of music if you can get it in front of them and breaking down media channels as as has been happening in recent years. Yeah, I think radio is in a really interesting place now with without them you know, the established radio channels and a lot digital radio where you can have to have really strong curate curation. If you can trust the people people’s taste, you can move quickly through and get access to great music. I think that’s really exciting in recent years, that the radios become this open ground. When we were back in the rave days, radio was incredibly important to us, we had an eight to eight state radio programme that took American input dance music through the record shop that we had Eastern Bloc, and put it directly out into the community. And that changed the the musical landscape where we lived, you know, people used to record our cassette and exchange the cassettes and everything moved quickly. And that’s when change could could happen. That’s happening again, you know, the equivalent of, you know, radio is insanely important today, and people might have written it off, but it’s not.
Andrew Dubber
Yeah, but you’re doing it now yourself.
Graham Massey
Yeah, we have various programmes just go one on MTF, Labs weekend, like a two hour Space Race special with a DJ called Calvin Brown, that’s the look on mixcloud. And do what another one called just cruise lifeboat assembly, which essentially is a jazz show. But again, jazz is one of those words is too got too much baggage. But yeah, if you listen to it’s just about music we’re into at the moment. And that can be really electronic, it can be stuff that’s just been cooked up 10 minutes ago, down the corridor, it’s got a real life, what’s happening now quality to it, it’s not about but we’ll throw in lots of things, you know, plastic stuff, and it’s just about good music, that’s moving move, pushing all that together in one one space. That’s, that’s important. So as I was saying, you know, I’m just interested in doing projects, that, that an expanding an audience really, you know, trying to build an audience in, in the digital age is difficult when you have so many things to you don’t want to stay in one place, it would be easy for me to be a rave musician, and just tread that path. But I didn’t come from there, they don’t want to stay there, you know, instead, like, I mean, we’re out touring at the moment, playing gigs. And, you know, I understand the the structure of how to bake a crowd, go for it, you know, but you want to mess with that. And we do mess with it. And you know, people get a better reward out of it when they’re surprised. And I think we get a lot of good feedback, because people we do the unexpected and new unit was a lot of new music in there. Oh, you know, that’s trying to move it forward a bit, you know, not just be a nostalgic thing. And it’s very important to me, to to be free as a musician to try things out.
Andrew Dubber
It’s quite hard to pinpoint what a grand messy piece of music sounds like, for instance,
Graham Massey
yeah, exactly. I don’t I don’t hold well together on Spotify, for instance, all my music scattered on the different pseudo names. There’s no one thing that will bring that together. There’s not an algorithm for that will do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’m really suspicious of algorithms are really, you know, and it’s interesting those conversations that MTF about algorithms and the way and music will go over you like this, you will like that, is this can, I’m so against that. But that’s the place where you can have that conversation, and almost come up with something that is the opposite of that, though, there might be developments in the technology, that send that in the opposite direction, that that will be really interesting. You know, I’ve just, you know, just that thing you used to get when you got into albums, and you read the names on the back, and you follow those names of musicians, that algorithm from from my teenage years. I want a version of that. Yeah, really, you know, yeah, it’s about Pete people version of it.
Andrew Dubber
Absolutely. Although the algorithm of the grumpy guy in the record shop saying your music taste is shit. You should be listening to this instead. Yeah, yeah. And making recommendations on this
Graham Massey
got out the record shop where we were born Eastern Bloc, and they had such a reputation for that. People used to go in there quaking well, but it was from a good place because that guy really was even Martin price. He was in evangelical, about getting the good music across. And he would like literally be giving copy. If there was a great record, it’d be giving people copies of it, you know, he was like, you know, like a preacher for people used to come out there. You know, I’ve been leading tranquillisers tranquillisers. So, yeah, those things are missing. Fantastic. Well, maybe we’re being robot. We’re being romantic about it. But you know, I mean, but it’s great Music Tech Fest is discussion is the exchange of these ideas and people that go in with an idea could go in with an idea that idea might be complete changed by the time to come out of there. Nope. Because they’re dealing with such a mix of disciplines and such a mix of people that that really works for me, you know, Come out there. It’s
Andrew Dubber
just amazing. So great to have Graham as part of the MTF community and you will no doubt catch him at MTF to come. But that is the MTF podcast and that’s us for 2018 have a fantastic new year and we’ll catch you next week as usual with something extra special from the MTF, tracker Fon and some really big news for MTF 2019 until then, if you can think of anyone you know who might find this of interest, please do send them a link. Cheers and Happy New Year.
