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I’ve DJ’d for a long time using a computer, and I gradually started getting into more hardware stuff, but I initially intended that for the studio. Then what happens is, if anything is really fun I want to bring it to a gig and use it. As soon as I got the first (eurorack synthesiser) modules I took it to a gig after a month of having it. I ran that alongside the computer and gradually it went further away from DJing, like a  hybrid type thing, into live. There was a point I realised the computer was a safety net for me, and that the safety net was the thing getting in the way of the purity of the improvisation.

It’s a thing about risk. I really believe that when a performer takes risks  they feel that and they connect with that and they participate with this risk that everyone is taking, that’s what makes it exciting. If everything is all set out and you are doing this perfect live set or DJ-set, it’s super boring and there is no risk involved.; That realisation was so important. When I play live it is so imperfect, but it gives a sense of things happening right there, rather than me doing these perfect sequences.

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Do you ever work within a strict conceptual framework when you are working on an album?

I think albums work much better within concepts. On the whole when you talk about the similarities between Communications and Luminosity Device, they work on many different layers on the same time, but maybe I’m exploring some of those layers more than others.

There are a lot of elements that’s within in the framework in Techno, but that’s what keeps it interesting. It’s possibly the most flexible style of music there is, because you can bend and stretch it so much, and you can add other things,  and it’s still Techno. If you compare it to Drum’n’Bass, if you alter it too much it’s not Drum’n’Bass anymore. Techno, when you stretch it out, it can incorporate Electro and even Dubstep, but it’s still really Techno.

People often ascribe signifiers like dark, sombre or melancholy to the kind of music you make, which is probably the same kind of thing they’d apply to a band like Coil. Listening to a track like “Syllable”, I’ve always been more inclined to think of it as quite upbeat and energetic.

I know no-matter what I do people are always going to say, ‘o yeah he makes hard, dark music’. It doesn’t matter what I do, I can release a pop country western album and people will still say he makes hard, dark music. I look at it more as intensity than darkness. It’s fun you can fuck around with people if they have a rigid idea.

The overall idea, when we are talking about concepts, the reason I do a lot of things the way I do, is to hope to show and influence people, and this is the really important thing; that if you think you have to do something a certain way, that’s not true.