(KAA) hello Andrew. are you guyz all ok after the storm last night?
(AMM) shaken, but not stirred
(BKr) i kinda got caught in it but im ok ..
(BKr) well, lets say its not the storms fault im not ok :>

<BKr> Andrew, we need some history first of all. How did The Hafler Trio get together, what "triggered" it all?

<AMM> I made a record when I was 12 years old, and eventually, I wanted to play live. So I hooked up with a guitarist, name of George Handleigh, and we played support to various people in Newcastle. The Clash, The Fall, and Cabaret Voltaire. So that's when I met Chris Watson. He left Cabaret Voltaire, and then moved to Newcastle to work as a sound recordist for the local TV. We got to fiddling around with tape recorders together.
Eventually, a guy called Rob Pierce, who had a cassette magazine called Morocci Klung (correct spelling!), asked Chris if he had any material that he could broadcast on his pirate radio station. He was doing 1 hour specials. Monte Cazzazza did one, and some others. I forget. Anyway, although Chris was wary about getting back into the "music biz", he agreed, and we put together all the tape stuff we had been doing, and sent it to him as a programme. So we had to come up with something to call ourselves, and that was it. We were going to be called "Radio Fore" (sic) at one point =)
The name comes from the name of the man that invented it, David Hafler, in the 1940's (or thereabouts), a three speaker system, later appropriated by people like Brian Eno.

<BKr> Your first release was BANG - An Open Letter. By then you had met Edward Moolenbeek. How did you get together?

<AMM> He came into the picture because he heard the radio broadcast, and wrote to us telling us about "real" research that our experiments were approximating. It grew from there. He wasn't around much in person.

<BKr> Some of your earliest stuff (BANG included) relates to a sound laboratory in Sweden called Robol. What exactly was (is?) Robol?

<AMM> That's complicated. Next to the Western Works in sheffield, the studio of CV, as was, was a small terraced house. In it, was a man claiming to be German and Scottish, who had several businesses there. He had three or four women sewing jeans and stuff in there, and he used to sit around the "office" wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes. This was utterly ridiculous to start off with. There are some promo photos of CV with him playing the bagpipes in the background.
So, he was named Robert Sprodgeon (or something close to that), and one of the compainies named on the blue plaques on the door was "ROBAL NUCLEAR FALLOUT SHELTERS". So we HAD to use this. So we changed the name a bit, and used it.
LATER, I started reciving letters from a guy in Manchester who HAD books by Spridgeon, as we had called him. Then he started send me xeroxes of them, which was REALLY creepy. You see, people always used to be annoyed when they couldn't find his books in the library, but we said on the insert of the first LP "all material by The Hafler Trio" and we never lied. Unless you can say that a novelist is a liar.

<KAA> What were the books about in brief, and did you save that material?

<AMM> The books were about sound research, and yes, I have it all. It's going onto the planned CD-ROM re-releases. It's being OCR'd as we speak.
But this was the beginning of realising that what you do happens if you think it strongly enough. So you have to be careful what you think =)

<BKr> From then on you did a few titles with Chris. Approximately when did he leave and what made you go on?

<AMM> Chris was very reluctant to do stuff. He had a difficult living situation, and he really was very distrustful of anything to do with record companies. But what actually made him leave was a VERY stupid incident involving the long lost Cabaret Voltaire album, Chance Vs Causality. I was very interested in releasing it on Touch. We were going to get stills from the film, which it is a soundtrack to (I had found the film maker in Amsterdam) and print it up beautifully, as we did with everything we did with Touch =)
Chris was dragging his heels about talking to Richard and Mal (CV) about the release. Now we had a mutual friend, one Alan Cook, who I used to visit in Sheffield (he's a book in himself). And one time, I went down to see him. We went for a bit of a pub crawl, and were passing Western Works (now demolished). So we went into see them. Bear in mind that we all knew each other.
I casually asked Richard if they had thought any more about releasing the record. When I got back to Newcastle, Chris wrote me a most unpleasant letter telling me that he was severing ties with me, as I had "used one of his best friends to get access to Richard and Mal", which was completely untrue. And there he went. So it still hasn't been released, and now the film maker has disappered. Will probably never happen now *sigh*
I went on because I had things to investigate that I thought were worth investigating =)

<BKr> So, we have one Andrew with a "band" called The Hafler Trio and without his collaborator Chris. What was the first record you did on your own?

<AMM> I used some of Chris' tapes on "A Thirsty Fish", but he wasn't involved in making it. Seven Hours Sleep he has very little to do with, actually. So really, he was only totally involved with BANG, An Open Letter and the 12" Alternation, Perception & Resistance.

<BKr> From there you have made quite a few releases, among them two trilogies. The first includes Kill The King, Mastery Of Money and How To Reform Mankind. What is that concept all about?

<AMM> That one is me growing up, really. Becoming honest and responsible for the results of my actions. It's like a diary. It's really me finding a coherent "voice", I'd say. There are many, many layers to those records that might take years to uncover. It's a very complex thing, therefore, and doesn't lend itself to easy explanation.

<BKr> I recall Bullbaiting being from that trilogy. You are quite keen about mentioning it is good to blow speakers to. What exactly DID happen when you performed it live?

<AMM> Oh, but that track has been used many times to get people to realise what sound can do. People stop talking, no matter how inattentive they are, for a start, and they stop going to bar. it's a real alcohol suppressant! When people see their shirts flapping, even though they can't really hear anything, they know something's up. The walls shake, all sorts of things start rattling, and hopefully, their subconscious is deprogrammed at bit =)

<BKr> Adi Newton (who we will get to later) called one of his TAGC (The Anti Group Conspiracy) tracks "Teste Tones - 40 Hz". He never made the 40 Hz but you did, what is the difference?

<AMM> Because he tried to do it digitally, and because of a phenomenon called the Nyquist Frequency, one cannot. So what you hear on his record is just the overtones, not the fundamental. I used a WW2 sine wave generator. Huge thing. Took two people to lift it. When it was mastered at Abbey Road, they called a guy down from upsatirs that hadn't been in the cutting room for 25 years, who said it was, quote, "impossible", and then they cut it =)

<BKr> What was that whole booklet that came with Kill The King about, especially that line it in at the very start that reads "If you can't fix it with a hammer, it's broken"?

<AMM> The quote is from my father, who has a bunch of them like that. The two photographs are found. One of them in a hotel room drawer in Stuttgart, the other, on a street in Belgium. I could look at either of them for hours. They are just impossible to fathom. The rest in the trilogy are like that too.

<BKr> Your second trilogy is as of now incomplete, starting with Masturbatorium and continued with Fuck. What is THAT all about?

<AMM> Sex. Mainly. And the uses of it. And the different approaches to it. All started with my association with Annie Sprinkle.

<BKr> Who is Annie, and how did you meet her?

<AMM> She calls herself a post-porn modernist. She is a writer, pornographer, artist, photographer, journalist, and all-round sex-worker. Many other things too. And a lovely, lovely woman.

<BKr> How did the two of you meet?

<AMM> I met her when she came to do her show in Amsterdam, which was basically the story of her life and tells the story of her "sexual evolution". At the end, she does a sort of ritual, where she demonstates some of what she has learned since becoming a "new age girl". So she had this rather inneffectual "new age" music at the end of her show, and as she was staying in the same house as me, I was talking to her about what I do, saying that I only used natural sounds, etc - no synths or whatever. And I suggested I make a piece for her. So we spent an afternoon where Annie made all sorts of sexual noises (not faked, but on her own), and I recorded these sounds and the sound of her skin being rubbed, breasts slapping together, hair rustling, etc, and put these together for her show. So when she was onstage doing the ritual, she heard herself, a wall of her sounds and orgasms and this really, really worked. So that got released, an I thought it was a bit unbalanced, so I had to make one for men =)
By this time, she had triggered off som sort of "sexual evolution" in myself, and so, if I was going to do this properly, I had to make the sounds myself. And I spent an odd evening doing just that (everyday ways of avoiding MTV). So, eventually, when Annie went on tour, I was her sound and lights man, as well as bodyguard etc, and we ended up making a recording session where we BOTH were involved. And this release will be the record for EVERYONE. I've been working sporadically on that third bit for something like 8 years =)

<BKr> All sounds on Fuck are your own human sounds, how many layers of yourself did you actually use?

<AMM> I think at one point there are something like 333 layers of my breathing, for example. There's a LOT in it. The things that sound like drums aren't. They are treated breath, mostly. Skin on skin, squishing noises made by lubricated skin and so on. There's a list on the sleeve, I think, which is on the website somewhere.

<BKr> You obviously prefer to use natural "found" sounds. what do you hear in those that cannot be synthetically recreated?

<AMM> Well, it started off that those sounds were just more "interesting" to me. But that grew into the idea that one should only use what is yours to use, that you in some way "pay" for their usage and are aware of what was happing. So that if anything untowared happens, it's yer own fault =)
This was around the time that sampling just came into vogue, and I violently reacted against all that. After my previous experiences of using "found" sounds that didn't "belong" to me. It's just dangerous. Chris attributes his diabetes to a kind of alchemical process rebounding on him related to this. I also have first hand experience of this. Islam regards the taking of photographs, or the making of "graven" images as unlawful. Actually, so does Christianity, but no-one seems to have noticed recently.

<BKr> Jeremy, netfriend of mine, talked to a guy in Toronto who said two of the biggest pain in the ass acts to book were Whitehouse (because they're not allowed in the country and also want $2000 to play) and The Hafler Trio. He said The Hafler Trio wanted $2000 to play (which I guess was a fair bit 10 years ago) plus a whole setup of 3 projection TV screens and some other stuff. Is this true?

<AMM> No. I have never asked for a) that amount, and b) that equipment. Clock DVA, have, however, as that's their standard set up. Was, anyway, when I used to do sound for them.

<BKr> Your latest concept is the 10 inch vinyl box called Who Sees Goes On. What is the idea behind that?

<AMM> Inspired by David Jackman, or Organum, who does nothing else but, actually. What I was going through was that I was sick of the attitude that the visual arts were allowed to make limited edition prints, or even one off paintings / sculptures / installations, and that these would be unique. Now in the business of making records, you can't do this, and people say, "oh, it's $10. how expensive". So I thought, ok, I have something here which I think is not to be spread around in the usual manner, seeing as how it's all very, very personal stuff. And I wanted it a) to be looked at and listened to more carefully than ever, and b) to screw around with peoples perceptions of this. And my God, it worked.

<BKr> So you made the box set going at $70 per 10 inch single. Is this purely out of making the people who would pay that amount really appreciate it?

<AMM> To challenge them into examining why they do so for this, but not for that. To bring into question the whole mass production of the "work". Now that distribution of this material is not a problem (because of the Internet), we can get to a situation where the works ARE unique and don't need to be reproduced.

<BKr> I heard some of Hafler Trio's stuff was put under different names to help promote some other company. Some people said it was a fabric company or something but that sounded pretty ridiculous to me. Any truth to that bizarre rumor?

<AMM> I can neither confirm nor deny any such rumour. I can ENCOURAGE them.....=) I have done many things that I'm never going to talk about, as it would negate them. I have a number of "stealth" projects, let's say =)

<BKr> You rarely perform live, how come?

<AMM> Nobody asks me =) .. I was going to do a US tour last year, but the people organising it didn't. This happened about 7 years ago too. And what I do is much more like an installation than a "gig", anyway, so they always have problems finding places.

<BKr> When you DO perform live, is it just Andrew and his Mac notebook or do you use a lot of gear?

<AMM> Now, it's just me and the notebook, a DAT player or two, a CD player or two, and maybe a Minidisk. And a bunch of mics. I generally get some sort of mad happening to go along with it, though =)

<KAA> Do you perform naked? (wink)

<AMM> I have done, yes. In Stockholm. There's a picture of it on the back of Fuck.

<BKr> How would you describe your own music to people who have never heard it?

<AMM> I've been trying to answer that question for about 20 years, in about 4 different languages, but I haven't succeeded yet =) .. What I usually say, when people ask me what I do, is I say, I'm a Mood Engineer =)

<KAA> Then tell us what it isn't.

<AMM> It isn't punk, but it has some of that spirit (the original punk. none of your Green Day in here, thank you =) ..). Sometimes (a lot of times) it has soul. It's odd, and it's provocative, and it DEFINITELY isn't background stuff. I'd say 90% of it cannot be put on "in the background". I would like to think that it helps people to stimulate their listening muscles a bit, as most people have forgotten, or have never learned how to listen. Just as I am of the opinion that most people don't know how to "read" a painting these days.

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