Q007:
Can you remember your first big musical discoveries? What impressed you the most and why?
A007:
When I was about 10, I heard Indian classical music for the first time on TV that came as a massive shock to me. If I think back now, just hearing those drones on the tamboura probably ruined my entire life! From when I was a kid I'd always hear these phantom ringing sounds in my ears, and I was convinced that it was UFOs trying to communicate with me. I'd often run to the window when I heard those sounds, scanning the sky for any sign of a UFO. Anyway, the sound of the tamboura was really close to what I used to hear. I was just really surprised to find out there was an instrument that sounded like that, but it wasn't until many years later that I actually found out what instrument it was.
Some time after that incident I came across musique concrete and Stockhausen's electronic music on the radio. In terms of actual musical content, this was the first thing that really shocked me. Friends had played me Beatles records and so on but I was never able to get into them. But hearing electronic music was a real culture shock. It was just like someone had turned the ringing in my ears into music. I rushed off to look for records like that, but of course no one in the rural record shops nearby had ever heard of it. In the end I wound up taping stuff off the radio and listening to it over and over.