Taking it from the Man

I hear you've relocated to Iceland. How did that affect the sound of the new album?

"Iceland is the greatest place on earth. I still go back and forth between there and the US. It hasn't affected the way I make music. I make music everywhere, it's just like breathing for me. Even when I'm here in London you know, I get up, I don't brush my teeth, I watch Cash in the Attic. It's all the same."

My Bloody Underground is a defiantly un-commercial record. Why make a record like this now?

"I was kind of upset with some stuff in the world, so I took a massive amount of psychedelics up there in the great north, and me and my friends just whipped it out. We were done in four days. Everything is one take. I spent two of those four days programming musical algorithms - this stuff that I developed over time. It's just part of the way that I chose to weave this tapestry. It's like a Celtic knot or some crap. This is a video album - this is going to unfold over time. All the stuff's on YouTube right now, people can see the early versions. They're nuts."

The combination of music and image seems to be designed to bring about an alteration in consciousness. Do you have spiritual concerns?

"Of course, but I'm not really trying to brainwash people. You have to understand that I was on a massive amount of drugs. What I was trying to do was to create sonic and visual submersion environments that were capable, individually, of standing in the Tate museum alongside the rest of the crap. I think that for the effort levels that I put in, I really accomplished that. We will see. It's open to interpretation: it might be performance art, it might be sonic sculpture, it might be spiritual hints at deeper truths. I don't know. That's not up to me to decide. It's done, it's out there."

Do you see yourself doing more videos or even switching disciplines? Maybe eventually being recognised simply as an artist?

"Well, that would be a hope, wouldn't it? I've always been doing that. I'm an excellent sculptor, gardener, chef, all kinds of things. I'm just expressing myself, in almost a renaissance manner I guess - and also reaching out and making friends. I just want people to enjoy it. I've already put it out there for free. I don't care whether people buy the record. I'm not worried about that. The label isn't worried about that, obviously. I am the label."

The track titles on the new record are pretty aggressive. Are you poking fun at your public image?

"I don't care. Do you think I want to play Top of the Pops? You know what's aggressive? I wanna puke every time I open a magazine or turn on any TV show. Our society is completely, aggressively repulsive. I can't tell you how many soldiers have been wasted protecting oil pipelines and everybody's just dancing around like they're high on acid or something. You know? That's repulsive to me. I'm completely underwhelmed with people's grasp of what's actually happening to them, but that's another fish to fry I guess."

Do you have any plans to tour the album?

"I was planning our next tour to be just of Scotland. Even the small towns, like Echo and the Bunnymen did back in the '80s. I'm working on five albums right now though, so we're just looking to play a couple of festivals and one offs and fly back. I'm looking to continue to record. I'm working on an album entirely in the French language. I'm really gonna sock it to 'em. I hate their arrogance, so I'm really going to shut them down. It's not going to be a shampoo commercial Air song. This is gonna be really rough."

There's a song on the new album that you wrote when you were nine. Why?

"I think I was drunk maybe."