I started making noise in 1993 – the year I became involved with the kRkRkRk Recordings collective. The sonic detritus from broken instruments and other sound-generating devices was recorded on equally dodgy 4-track gear in an effort to vaguely emulate music I admired in the areas of punk and industrial rock. No small inspiration was provided by classic DIY NZers such as This Kind of Punishment, Bruce Russell, Xpressway et al...

As well as noodling away in the corner of my room, I also played in various bands, the most notorious of which was leonard Nimoy - an aggressive, industrial noise-rock outfit (very much in the mode of early 1980s Swans and Einsturzende Neubauten) that endured from 1994-97. Following the demise of the Nimoy, I started a solo project called Drawing Room. This traded drum machines and metal bashing for a more introspective kind of music based around an Ensoniq ASR10 sampling keyboard. Although Drawing Room was initially devoted to song/lyric experiments (think Peter Jefferies or Scott Walker), after about 2000, I largely abandoned writing songs (due to acute embarrassment and technical ineptitude) and focussed more on abstract music in what you might call electro-acoustic mode.

On a purely formal level, this involved combining various found sounds and acoustic textures with their digitally sampled and processed complements. In hindsight, I can see that the lure of abstract music was its promise of untrammelled freedom – especially in contrast to the structural constraints of songwriting. However, after tinkering with and within the medium for several years, I’m now inclined to see ‘structure’ and ‘improvisation’ as reciprocating currents within the same field of creativity. If my current musical activity has a ‘goal’ at all, it lies, perhaps, in seeking to illuminate the co-dependence of these seemingly incommensurable elements.

Thanks, in no small part, to the example of friends and collaborators in the scene, the way I make music has changed a lot over the years - for the better I hope. In my earlier work, much time was spent laboriously constructing palettes of aural textures and assembling these into compositions that admitted a degree of chance and free-play, but which were, also, inevitably pre-conceived. By contrast, my later music is much more purely improvised and spontaneous. Textures are collected with a minimum of fuss, usually drawing on only a single sound source (e.g., a murmured voice, the decay of a struck piano key, a ringing sheet of suspended stainless steel...) and then unceremoniously committed to 'tape.' What is finally released is a serendipitous product of intuition, accident and editing. This is an unnervingly uncertain way of making music, but it also feels tremendously liberating.

My primary collaborator in leonard Nimoy was Peter Wright, with whom I have continued to work ever since. Our first post-Nimoy project, in the company of Justine O’Gahdra-Sharp, was DiS (1998-2000) – an electro-acoustic, performance art trio. More recently (2002-03), Peter and I teamed up with ex-Aesthetics drummer Rustle Covini in The Beautiful Losers – an improv, avant-rock project somewhat inspired by music released on the Kranky, Constellation and Young God record labels. Collaborations with other artists have included the Morricone-inflected, folk-noir trio BOCCTAHNE (1999-2000), with Megan Gallacher and Ed Wilson, and MiG-21 (2001-03) – a wilfully playful & tasteless industrial-glam-pop outfit, which also featured Ed as well as ex-Nimoy Mikel Goodwin & kRkRkRk co-founder J-mz Robinson. Since mid 2005, I have continued to work with Rustle and Mikel (kRkRkRk has always been so incestuous it’s a wonder we don’t all have two heads!) in zerO – an experimental rock project that combines Nimoy-era intensity with the pop aesthetic of MiG-21. In latter 2008, Peter, Mikel, Rustle and I began collaborating on a new endeavour, swiftly exhausting two labels of convenience: Not The Beautiful Losers and Oh Mental Hospitals. Whilst OMH has run its course for the time being, Peter and I have continued to play and record throughout 2010 - recently adding the talents of Antony Milton to the mix in projects like Kannazuki and Hi-Asobi. CDR collections of most of the above have been duly released to deafening silence. However, even if our early (and naïve) fantasies of fame and fortune have faded away almost to nothing, the fascination with strange textures and noises remains undiminished.