This is the interview from Q magazine. The interview is from July 23, 1996. ---------------------------- Without "funny" Mike Oldfield ambient music as we know it might never have existed. Without ex-baldies Orbital the Royal Albert Hall might never have hosted a rave. Without cuddly David Quantick there would have been nobody to record their Ibizan chit-chat. MIKE OLDFIELD & ORBITAL. Instrumental music might have meant only The Shadows if it hadn't been for the influence of these two artists. One emerged in 1973, a 19-year-old former Kevin Ayers guitarist with a self-recorded two-sided composition that went on to sell 17 million copies and make a future airline tycoon´s fortune. He is Mike Oldfield, beloved of a) New Agers (whom he dislikes), b) the makers of The Exorcist and c) the Spanish, who buy his records by the villa-load. The other moved from playing his builder dad's parlour piano to making bedroom tape loops with his brother Phil and ended up playing the Royal Albert Hall. He is Paul Hartnoll, the wise man of Orbital, whose four albums (two of which are Snivilisation and In Sides; two of which are known simply as "the brown one" and "the green one") took modern dance music and ambient sounds in new and rewarding directions. Their "no verse/no chorus/no singing at all, actually" paths had never crossed. Hartnoll seemed unaware of rare Oldfield forays into singing (Horses: "Some are big/And some are small/Some bang their heads/Against the wall") but was happy to acknowledge that the Tubular Bellsman had at least introduced him to the concept of the one-man orchestra, while Oldfield was still listening to his freshly acquired Orbital CD minutes before he met one half of its creative powerhouse. The meeting itself took place, rather marvellously, on the terrace of a luxury hotel within blazing hot sight of Oldfield's still-construction house in Ibiza, the Spanish island home of English acid house xcess that, curiously, Hartnoll had never visited. Later Hartnoll would taste Oldfield's hospitality in the form of a ride on his jet-ski and a trip to an Arab prince's birthday party, but first... Q: David Quantick. MO: Mike Oldfield. PH: Paul Hartnoll. Q: What do you know of each other? MO: Not a lot. A friend went into Virgin to get me all the most modern and popular CDs, about twenty of them, and I've been working my way through them. I can't remember all the names. Don't ask me names of things. I'm very inknowledgable. PH: I never remember names either. I don't remember names of records anymore. MO: I don't know how musicians keep up with what other people are doing. I'm normally too busy doing my own thing to be honest. PH: I buy random records. MO: You buy random records? That's interesting. PH: What I do is buy two or three albums by someone I've never heard just to throw me into a random direction. If it works, it sends you in a direction your friends wouldn't have and the radio wouldn't have. MO: I get stuff out of curiosity. This is the first time for years that I've had the time. I've bringing out albums for most of my life. I finished all my commitments in March and I just didn't want to know about going back into the studio, so I thought I'd see what everybody else had been doing. Since coming to Ibiza, I've being going to clubs and then when I go to a club I just head straight for the DJ and hang around there. They're quite creative, they've got a vibe, they project in their space and they explore that very well. I've been letting other people mix my stuff, taking a back seat. I've previously been a bit of a bossy sergeant-major in that respect. Q: Let's talk about studios. MO: Naaah! Heh! Q: You're both famous for spending years in darkened rooms squinting at consoles. MO: Ooh, talk about it. Snare eyes. PH: The worst thing that happened with our studio was taking it from our parents' house with windows... MO: (interested) Ahhhh. PH: ... to actually getting a computer, because before there was a computer, you used to have to look at tiny little screens but your eyes were thrown all over these solid actual objects like furniture, but then all of a sudden you get a computer and you're staring at the telly again. My eyesight's got visibly worse. MO: It's all right when you're actually doing it, but to watch it is the most boring thing in the universe. Watching someone key in numbers on a screen and the occasional sample-burrdup! What the hell's going on? PH: I don't mind sitting in the studio because I'm the one with my hand on the mouse or the keyboard. But I'd like to build my own house. I envisage a round studio with a telescope-style dome that lifts off so you can at least be outdoors when do it. Q: What are the best places you've heard your music? PH: On a Ferris wheel in a fairground. That blew my head off. It was the B-side of our single as well. There I was walking past - and I won't go on the damn things, they scare me - and it was blaring out of this distorted PA system. I thought, I've arrived! MO: That's great! I heard one of my tracks, Moonlight Shadow, coming out of a Wurlitzer in an Italian funfair. The other thing is coming back to London airport, hearing it on the muzak system. PH: I once heard a remix we did for Meat Beat Manifesto on one of those, which was weird, 'cos we were going to America to support them. MO: At the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas they play Jimi Hendrix in the car park. Mmm. Whee... You know what I was saying about trying to distance myself from the actual nuts and bolts of making music? Looking at what it is, what it's saying and what kind of atmosphere it's got. Music that makes you feel good, it's full of energy, relaxing music, aggressive music. Gatherings of people are like that. I tried meditating in Pacha, one of the discos here, to try and feel what was going on. I can't really explain in words what it was like, but I'll try: it was ritual humanity, just celbrating being alive. It was a mixture of the music and the atmosphere and the whole thing. I was just trying to get the essence of something, rather that that hi-hat and that bass drum sound. Q: Is it hard for musicians to listen to music without analysing it? MO: Yeah! Yeah, well, I'm trying not to do that. PH: The fact that my mind tore music apart was apart of the reason I got into it. I listened to a band and I used to know there were eight members and I could hear these eight things. It must give some of the secrets away if you listen to music that sort of way. Q: Why do you still do it? MO: I try not to do it (mass laughter). But I must say that as regards talking about getting the essence out of music. I can relate to it a lot more than I could ten years ago. There's a - dare I say it? -growing spirituality about the music we hear nowadays. And also the science of rhythm is so mind-boggling now. Guys who've spent two or three days working on a two-bar loop. PH: Yeah, yeah. MO: We were in the biggest disco last night, Ku. There must have been seven or eight thousand people. There's a giant swimming pool in the middle of it, people jumping in the pool, and I tried a bit of meditation to feel the essence of the whole thing (Mike is overcome by the absurdity of it all). Ha ha ha HARRR! Paul? Have you ever meditated in a club? PH: Ha! Only by accident. The thing is, what you were saying about the feeling you get was one of people celebrating life on a basic level, compared to '7O discos. My memory and my older brother's of '7O discos was a place where you got beaten up for looking at the wrong girl. Whereas the house music disco was a place where people went to say hello and laugh and smile to each other. It would all be jolly. MO: I'm just curious. Do you think that because most people are taking Ecstasy, it changed the vibe of clubs? PH: Well, I'd be a liar if I said it didn't. MO: HA HA HA HA HAAA. PH: I don't think people are doing anything particularly bad if they're being supplied with the real thing because before, when the were beating each other up, they were drinking x pints of beer, plus whiskies and vodkas. You're just substituting one drug for another. The one advantage Ecstasy does have over alcohol - and I'm not saying either of them are good, you're far better off if you can avoid everything - is the fact that with Ecstasy you can get five thousand people in one disco and no fights. I can't imagine that in the '7Os. MO: I agree. PH: I think people are taking less Ecstasy when they go out clubbing, but the atmosphere's remained, which is quite interesting. MO: When did discotheques start? In the early '7Os wasn't it? We were in Zimbabwe, watching these natives do their ceremonial dance thing and it occured to me that the birth of that ceremonial thing has happened in the West. It started in the '7Os and it was really naff, all platform shoes, and it's become like a congregation. It's becoming more and more spiritual. I think it's great. And if you look underneath the rhythm, the actual chord structure are very spiritual, almost New Age-y, not that I listen to New Age music, because I find it boring. But you're not going there to pull or to find a match. I suppose it's a replacement of the church. Q: It's a communal thing. PH: Oh definitely. I used to value a club apart from the quality of the music: often used to judge it of whether people were looking at each other on the dance floor, and smiling, yes, that was a good club. If no, then there is something wrong. MO: I've just discovered dancing and I like it. I met this Aztec Indian when showed me an Aztec dance. It's not like a normal dance. I've just discovered t'ai chi. That's another thing which I really believe in. If you look at it scientifically you're controlling all the muscles of your body. If look at it spiritually, you're playing with your body aura. If you imagine there an envelope of the spiritual you, the you can carry bits of yourself around and play with it. So you're surrounded by this invisible putty and when people are dancing they're kind of playing with their energy. I'm experimenting with dance. It's my vocation. Be the time I'm sixty, I'll be a dancer! (mass laughter) That's one thing I'm exploring. The other is skiing, I've got these jet-skis... PH: I'd like to do things like that but I'm absolutely terrified of water. Going out of my depth... MO: I know the feeling. PH: ... which is a shame. Q: Well, who knows? As time goes by... PH: Yeah, exactly. MO: Dee dee dee dee dee dee, dee dee... Q: Mike, you were known for being fairly introverted... MO: dee dee dee... Yeah, well, I've got extremities, I spent a couple of years being totally introverted and into my world. I would pop up like jack-in-the-box and then go back again. PH: I was introverted in my teenage years with my family, but I shout too much. Not aggressively, just shouting at someone whey they're next to you. Q: You've both worked with a sibling. How do you get on with them? MO: Well, I've got a lot to thank to my sister Sally for, because she got me out of school. I hated school. I fell out of school when I was fifteen and she was nineteen. We were this duo, going down the M1 in a little mini van which me and my brother had sprayed bright orange. She always supported me, still does. But it was difficult working together. You obviously have a different experience with your brother... PH: Yeah, it's fine. We don't have a problem, really. It's just like a point of discussion. I'll do something and ask, What do you think of that? He might say. Change that last chord, and I'll say. You do it! You do it better! MO: Ha HAH! PH: But I won't be angry, it'll be, I'll make a cup of tea, see if you can find a better chord. That's all be the extent of conflict. I like it, actually. Anything either one of us doesn't like we normally sit with over time and see if actually settles in or not. We try to put the controversial bit in rather than out. MO: There are different ways of approaching a project. One is: you've got a very strong idea and you make it like that. The other is to let if find its own way; be positive about everything, never block anything. You can make anything good, even the naffest idea, if you've got the right positive attitude. Q: Have you ever made a naff idea good? MO: Many, many times! I've also succeeded in making a naff idea really naff. I cringe when I listen to some of my things. It's very funny listening to things I made twenty years ago. One minute you're thinking, what the fuck's that? The next, God, that's great. PH: It is funny. It's got the point now where our first album sounds to me like somebody else wrote it, which is quite interesting, I suppose. MO: What do you normally ask people? The thing I found with musicians talking to each other is that we haven't got much to say. Working together is another thing, but I'm always very embarrassed when I meet other musicians. Not really embarrassed, but I don't know what to say. Nurrr.. what keyboard do you use? Q: Drummers get on with each other, apparently. PH: Yeah, that sound about right. MO: What do they talk about? Sticks? PH: No they've got it sussed. They don't talk about music, they just meet another person... (Paul looks at the DAT recorder he has been making his own copy of the interview with)... I knew I'd do that. I've just taped over half an hour's candid conversation with the bus driver from when we toured America. MO: I'm just to decide whether or not to do another tour. I couldn't handle it any more, this whole performing thing. But I have an idea of differnet kind of concert. Maybe it's the same kind of difference between '7Os dance music and now. PH: Well, there's a lot of band now who play to quite large crowds and there's no frontperson. It's like me and my brother sit behind our little bits of equipment and just improvise with the structure of our sequencers. MO: Yeah! Yes, that's what I want to do. PH: There's no focus for the audience... MO: I'd really like to come and see that. It's a similar kind of thing to what I was thinking of. Just be there and play for an hour, rather than going A-one a-two. I'm so bored with all that. It would be a kind of celebration, a bit more spiritual, a more meditative. PH: I don't want to play those big cattle sheds. MO: It's a bit dehumanising. It's like treat someone as a sex object, or a music object. Sometimes I feel like a music object. PH: There's an awful lot of people in electronic music, who are not doing music because they want to be in a band. Usually someone approaching them and says, You better do a gig, and they go, God! I never thought of that! I've got to get out of my bedroom. MO: Ha HA! That's exactly what I was like with Tubular Bells. I did it kind of in my bedroom. I go in the studio, made this thing and suddenly all those Virgin bosses are sitting me round atable saying. You've got to do a gig. I totally refused, I was having none of it. Until Richard Branson offered me his Bentley. Ha! it was a clapped-out wreck.