Chris Clark is in a strange position for an emerging artist to find himself. In many ways, a lot of people have taken his limited output -- two full lengths, the newest of which was released this month, and one EP -- as an indication of where the Warp Records label is steering its sound of electronic music.

In many ways, Clark has been given the responsibility because his work does allow for a shorthand comparison to the big names on his label -- Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada, especially. But given that immediate familiarity, there is a hell of a lot more going on in Clark's music than just a tame genuflection to electronic composers from the same label he's found himself on. Especially on this newest record, Empty the Bones of You, his compositions have developed towards a wholly dignified and fascinating style of his own.

You have these full-on sledgehammer thunks and all these kinds of wicked digital hand-clap sounds, and everyone in the world loves them. Are you willing to reveal something about how your discovered this splendid thunk?

The drums were made from a combination of domestic sounds -- scissors, doors, chairs -- that created a backdrop for other 808 and 909 hits. Then these were put through the mash factory several hundreds of times. The bones were baked, the brittle ones were sorted from the juicy, tough ones. No, but seriously, I think most of the drums were put through all sorts of things that changed the dynamics and made them more fluid. Most "tidy" engineers like to separate each drum track out and have it perfectly EQed. Although this is admirable in a sort of old skool watch-your-grandma-knit-you-a-nice-beige-sweater sort of way, I find it doesn't excite me. What I tend to do is just jam stuff through as many boxes as I can, until everything sort of bleeds into itself and all its surrounding parts.

You can combine the artifacts introduced through the mess of all these boxes, like the background noise and the crackling desk, etc, and then just remove it all until you end up with some weird goblin drowning in an acid sort of squawk. Then maybe you could feed this back into a microphone, put this through a compressor, then put this through another noise gate inside of the sequencer that is being triggered by the delay of some granular pad sound and then maybe when this delay has it feedback rate changed it might trigger something else like a hi hat or a toilet flushing or a sample of someone having an orgasm or something. So, you see, it really ends up being quite a grey area and it can be hard to remember how or why I made my sounds in the way that I did. The processes lose their novelty, and thus lose their importance as singular, autonomous techniques. They feed into each other and often are contradicted by other "themes" within a track. So they inevitably become tiny bit parts in the wider picture of the work that I am assembling.

I'd like to riff on the cover art for a moment, as a way to access the emotion of the record. It seems the Designers Republic [Warp Records' design firm of choice] is doing some serious bombs over Baghdad style death and war art that is incredibly evocative and troubling and powerful in combination with your heavy, intimate melancholy. So I wonder where the melancholy on the album comes from...

Yeah, of course it comes from an awareness of the outside world. I think it is more indistinct than having some muse that you consciously turn to for inspiration. I don't feel like I have specific "creative" moments or, indeed, "non creative" moments. I think if you take what you do seriously enough, I mean to the point where it almost eats you up, then everything that you experience gets filtered into your work. So my music almost makes itself. It's always there, kind of reordering or structuring itself inside my brain.

I think I am basically impressionable. Whether it's a sense of melancholy or a pang of hatred for a political regime or eating a really tasty, juicy omlette or having a decent conversation, or whatever, it makes its impression on my brain then it is bound to in some way influence my work. Or at least, it should influence my work. If I'm not working as well as I should, then maybe it doesn't go in there, but the point is I recognize that it should go in there and I'm willing to dedicate an awful lot of time making sure that most of it does.

That little bit of piano on the song "Tyre" is really pretty. Did you ever take piano lessons?

No, I never had lessons on the piano, and while that track sounds good to me and good to you, there are a hell of a lot of wicked piano players out there who would laugh at its simplicity. In many ways this would be fair enough, but at the same time I don't really care because it sounds alright to me.

Do you listen to stuff by people like, for example, Richard Devine or Sachiko M or Pita or Aphex Twin and think to yourself: Okay, this is what my peers are doing, what should I do as a kind of response? Are you curious about contemporary electronic music, and do you feel like there's a dialogue between the artists that you want to add something to? Or is it much more personal for you?

To be honest, I don't really have much to do with any other artists on Warp. I know Plaid a bit. They're decent guys... good tour buddies. I used to feel like I should make a point and try and be as separate from any outside musical influence as I could, but this was partly just a defensive neurosis. I have met a lot of other musicians, but it's never like you get the chance to completely connect, just mainly due to circumstance. Perhaps this is a shame, but it's also quite healthy to disconnect. To condition yourself to not care. Maybe you chat about software, or whatever, but it can often be quite clipped and formal, and it's not something I seek out. I've got a few top mates in Birmingham who I have wicked discussions with and have learnt a lot from, and any need for outside opinion comes from them really. I'm not a networker at all, and whilst I'm musically ambitious and have very high expectations from myself and my music, I've got no desire to climb any hierarchy of social/musical coolness.

Are you interested in randomness, or do you prefer to be in control?

Well, nothing is really random, because although you may choose random elements, you still sandwich these random elements between the need for control and choice. You first decide to do something "random" and then decide which bit is the best, which bit is the strongest gene, if ya like. So, yes, I am interested in randomness, but I prefer to be in control.

I'm always curious what kinds of things inspire a person's art outside of the art they make. Is there something you turn to when you need a good big dose of fresh inspiration? For instance, I want to suggest a feeling I get between your music and the artist James Siena. There's something really quite raw and obsessed about your work that when you listen to it with your ears wide open you realize just how difficult and mesmerizing it is, it comes to share something, for me, with the optical obsessions of Siena.

I have never heard of James Sinea, [but] it would be good to see some of his stuff. I guess I always try and research stuff that I don't understand. But only if I feel I could take something from it and make something new from it. Maybe not new but different, a different interpretation of an existing idea. Like I would never research how Daniel Beddingfield manages to sound like such a complete cunt, but I would definitely research how Ligeti managed to get such momentum in his music or how El-P makes his bass so fuckin' warm, because I could benefit from that, I could exploit it.

I know people have often compared you to Aphex Twin in music reviews (I did it once, and I knew you'd hate me for it). Do you find it interesting to hear what people have to say about the music you're listening to? Or as a musician, are you reminded every day how unnecessary words are to the creation of music?

Yeah, it can get under your skin. I just think it is a shame the way the whole industry operates with reference to such a narrow spectrum of unchallenged opinions on music. It's the way the more mainstream magazines combine such swagger and verbal ineptitude. They espouse misinformed, glib and insincere praise to a record that in reality they probably hate. This temporarily perpetuates the myth of some narcissitic rock star DJ's "musical greatness", and for a while the press allow this to float. When the public have eaten and shat out this product of "genius", they learn to resent it for its lack of depth. The media exploit this and knock the aforementioned "genius" off his pedestal. Thus the public have no choice but to listen to the next crock of shit that the industry, for all its lack of vision, allow to seep through and infect the mainstream market. This allows radio DJs to snort more coke and have more disposable friendships so that they can mindlessly walk towards an early, loveless death.

Perhaps I'm being a little over the top. But it is a shame that there is no real platform for artists to talk openly and honestly about what they do without being pushed into a corner by someone who is probably just a failed musician himself. This implies that I think of myself as a "successful" artist, which I don't. I hardly feel like I have scratched the surface, but at least I have the conviction, and discipline, to give it a go. Like if you read some of the interviews with the less fashionable academics ( I mentioned Ligeti before), then these are really informative insights into how music can be explored in fresh and exciting ways. The music itself is what is being discussed rather then any outside materialistic concerns. But with the crack written by "critics" today it becomes less about making considered evaluations of the music itself -- the point where the sound makes contact with your eardrums -- and more about these terrible, empty-headed identity props that insecure fashion victims need to define themselves by.

Do you work on your music every day? Do you have a regular schedule, do you wake up and make coffee and get to work?

[Laughs] In an ideal world you should only work when you feel like working, but to me this is a cop out. I feel like I love music more than anyone I know, and this allows me to spend time doing it but I also suffer from guilt at not doing enough. I never feel like I am doing enough, and quite often don't know when to stop or when it is inappropriate to be writing music. If I don't write for a few days, then I start feeling like something is missing. I feel a bit displaced, and when I get back into the studio I am reminded of why I get excited by music so much and this is all good. It is an addiction, I suppose. Like I know that if I stopped doing this interview now and said, "Sort it out and do eight bars of mental drum programming", I would probably not leave my studio for about seven hours until I had made a new track or something. This is always the temptation, to runaway and escape into music.

Will you tour your ass off for this record? What can audiences expect from you live?

Well I hope to get some drums involved at some point and am looking to get this software that means I can record loops and play with them real time. So I could then do some improv stuff. Kind of building a new track in front of the audience. It would be quite a challenge but would be wicked, I reckon. Also might build a six-note scale out of TDK tapes and six Walkmans. Each tape would have a note on it looping and each Walkman would have a channel on the desk. This sounds good but logistically would be a bit of a nightmare

Don Keye
September 8, 2003