Lost And Sound

Alexander Tucker

• Paul Hanford • Episode 184

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Alexander Tucker sits down with me to explore the twists and turns of his sound on his new MICROCORPS album "Clear Vortex Chambers." Our conversation takes us through a creative rebirth, sparked by crucial production advice from Regis (Karl O'Connor) that transformed his approach to electronic music and helped him to scrap a years work and start again.

Like Sudan Archives last week, Tucker is fundamentally a visual thinker – "I feel like I'm a painter and probably never should have got into music" – yet this visual sensibility is precisely what gives his soundscapes such distinctive character. He describes creating music as "digging up a modem or electronic equipment that's all rusted and covered in earth," where "nature has somehow moved in and mutated it." You can feel this fusion of organic and technological elements seep across his work, creating something both familiar and otherworldly.

Growing up in Kent surrounded by ancient forests and sandstone formations, Tucker absorbed the layered history of his environment. This sense of "peeling back the past" continues to be an influence, whether working with an acoustic guitar and a 4-track or modular synthesis. We delve into his creative partnerships with Stephen O'Malley, Nick Colk Void and others, with Tucker beautifully describing collaboration as "giving each other these chunks of your life."

Whether you're familiar with Tucker's extensive catalog or discovering him for the first time, this conversation offers remarkable insight into an artist who refuses to be confined by genre boundaries or conventional thinking. Listen now and journey through the clear vortex chambers of Alexander Tucker's musical universe.

Listen to MICROCORPS:
🎧 Bandcamp | Macrocorpse – 2021–2024 | XMIT

Follow Alexander Tucker on Instagram:
📸 @alexandertucker_oldfog

If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Want to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.

And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.

You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Speaker 1:

Alexander Tucker makes strange and beautiful noises. Sometimes he does this with a four-track and an acoustic guitar and other times with a modular synth and beats, and sometimes he even makes comic books to go with them, and he's my guest on the show today. Hello, welcome to Lost in Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up. But before we get going, lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica. Over 60 years old and still a family-run company, they make headphones, microphones, turntables and cartridges. Their gear is studio-grade, affordable and built under the belief that great sound should be for everyone. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, let's do the show. Thank you, hello, and welcome to episode 184 of Lost in Sound.

Speaker 1:

I'm Paul Amford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the podcast where, each week, I have conversations with artists who work outside the box about music, creativity and about how they're navigating life through their art. So, whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, it's great to have you along. I'm speaking to you from outside a cafe along a street in the district of Neukölln in Berlin where it has been really rainy, the sun's sort, the sun's sort of popped out for a little bit. So I'm also popped out from the cafe to quickly get this bit down to talk to you before it starts raining again. And yeah, you're about to hear a conversation I had with alexander tucker, who's actually a returning guest on the show, but more of that in a in a minute or so.

Speaker 1:

Um, he's known for building otherworldly soundscapes that draw on folk, tradition, noise music, experimental electronics, drone, and over the years he's released a string of albums under his own name, collaborating widely across art and music with tons of interesting people, and he's carved out a very singular voice. Um, so I remember first hearing his music, getting a copy of his 2006 album Furrowed Brow, um, which I think I probably bought about the time it came out. I didn't know anything about him or what he did I. I remember going into what I think might be Monorail the record shop in Glasgow and you know those descriptions they used to have on the front of certain CDs and vinyl, that telling you a little bit about it and being really drawn in and getting home and listening to it, and the whole album is this folky, but also free, jazzy, droney, something that starts out very acoustic but then builds into all of these kinds of layers and has this total vibe about it and I remember being really into it immediately. And the reason we have this conversation today is because he has an album that initially has a completely different approach to it. It's under his micro corpse project, which is his more electronic project. The album is called clear vortex chambers, which is out on 19th of september. Um, and it's very, very, very, very, very much made from like modular stuff.

Speaker 1:

He talks in the interview about how, I think for the first time, he started using Ableton with this album. So initially it's a very, very different beast from how I got into hearing about Alexander Tucker's music and about a lot of the music that he has up until a few years ago, done for the last 20 years. A lot of the music that he has up until a few years ago done for the last 20 years but theme something deeper connects it to to him unrecognizably to him, um. So yeah, we had this chat and yeah, there was a really interesting thing that we talk a lot about like visual stuff in it, like he is also a visual artist. He's made a comic book for this album and it reminded me a little bit of what sedan archives was talking about last week. I asked her because there had been this quote about her that she is a. She describes herself as a visual artist. That happens to work in in music, and a few pieces of conversation come up with alexander tucker that very, very, very much echo this, that continue that theme on anyway, so this is a really good chat.

Speaker 1:

Um, oh, yeah, I was gonna say as well, wasn't I? But yes, he was a guest on the show before. This is when he appeared in june 2022, uh, with nick colk void. It was a double header interview that that did, because he did a collaborative project with nick colk void. That's nick colk void from factory floor and they made a collaborative improvisation electronic album, brood x cycles, which was great, and had them on the show at the time. But, um, it's a very different beast doing a double header interview to a one-on-one interview. So I was really excited to get this opportunity to speak with Alexander again.

Speaker 1:

But anyway, bit of housekeeping, if you like the show and you haven't already, please do give a subscribe. It really means a lot to me. If you have five or ten minutes spare on your hands and you fancy it, you can leave a review about the show on your streaming platform of choice. Again, really, really appreciated. But yeah, generally, I just really appreciate you listening. So we had this conversation this is Alexander Tucker talking with me, paul Hanford, and we had this conversation on the 10th of September 2025. And this is what happened. Hey, alex, how are you doing good? Thank you, great to see you again. You're actually, like um, one of the few returning guests on the show.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm very honored, likewise likewise, because you, you're on the show. Um, I think it's about four years ago now, with nick colt void with brood cycles, stuff, gosh, is that four, I think. So I might be right, it might be three, it might be four. I think time gets a bit funny, doesn't it?

Speaker 1:

indeed yeah, so how? I mean there's a big question. But how have things been for you since then? Because I think at that time it was like we were just coming out of the pandemic. It was probably a bit of like a one of those masks on type eras still yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, since then, I don't know, it's kind of been worse in a way, hasn't it? I know I know that was actually quite a lovely time in a strange sort of way. I was just like totally stuck into working on the new Microcorps stuff or the first album and that came out over lockdown and I think Nick and I had worked on Brudex Cycles a bit before that and then I think it just took us a while to edit it down. But yeah, yeah, I felt like last year was kind of really tough.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, life does feel a lot like you. Remember the whole game of Thrones thing where people were like, oh my God, you know, characters can just get killed halfway through a season, and you know, and like that, the red wedding or whatever it was called it feels like, life feels like that like it just feels like we have one bad thing, then something else, and then something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, no, totally, I mean it feels a lot easy, kind of a bit easier now. I was just saying to somebody the other day that I feel like I've come out of another level of the pandemic and lockdown and just feel like that's that little bit further away. Um just feel a little bit kind of calmer. But yeah, I think trying to finish um this new album was like really tough for me.

Speaker 2:

I mean um, well, since the last album, I'd been working on new material and I just kept listening back to it and I was like I'm just like it was mostly the production. I was just like I hate this.

Speaker 2:

Right, just like whatever I do, I can't get it to sound how I want it to sound and just felt really frustrated by that. And then I've been meeting up with carl o'connor you know regis um, every now and again for a fryer and we'd meet up down in voxel and go to a greasy spoon and just kind of chat about things and carl's always like really reluctant to talk about technical things and just starts taking the piss. But when he does give you advice it's always really sage and really kind of spot on. And he was just like just get Ableton, you can multitrack your modular system, like really really easily get these plugins, you know. And yeah, I just followed his advice and just got able to and got plugins started, multi-tracking the, the modular, and then immediately just sounded, sounded so, so much better.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, and then I I just kind of been I would not been there on a hard drive somewhere, but you know that other material I kind of binned. Well, not binned, they were on a hard drive somewhere. But you know that other material I kind of let go. But the other material I'd been using lots of cello samples where I was hitting the cello with mallets and so I was doing like a hit with a mallet, like a pluck, a bow, and then like a bass guitar hit as well, which I kind of lined up just to make these short, these short samples.

Speaker 2:

And so I brought though I think I made some new ones once I'd got this new setup going and then just started using those as like the basis for for new tracks. And, um, yeah, immediately it just started sending more 3, just fuller and just better. So yeah, and also I got some advice from a friend of mine called Freddie Lomas, who does a project called Kin and we've become friends over the last few years and he just gave me some more advice just on modular system as well and just kind of I think the first album I I was kind of just basically like what happens when you plug this in? What happens when?

Speaker 1:

you do this the first micro corpse album yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then I was like, oh, that's, that sounds good, you know, I'll go with that, and kind of I think. I think there's something about when you get something new, um, some kind of magic happens. Yeah, you know, and then the more you try and use something, that magic somehow goes away.

Speaker 2:

And then you have to actually learn properly how to do it how to use it you know Just different like routings and different kind of forms of synthesis and ways of doing things. Yeah, I'm pretty good at taking just like a little bit of knowledge and then running with it. But I think I've done that a lot in my life and haven't done a lot of just sitting down and like properly learning something. So I feel like, so the modular system's the first time I've actually sort of done that. You know, I still feel like with guitar I'm still kind of using the same set of things that I picked up like 20 odd years ago, you know. But, um, that that's fine, but you know yeah, so much I could.

Speaker 1:

I can relate to with that. Like I think I've always been someone that shies away from, uh, for whatever reason, I don't know why getting too technical about stuff. Um, yeah, I feel like sometimes some sometimes I can put it down to just like a boredom with having to commit to like a precise way of doing it, and then I sometimes I sort of masquerade that as being like, well, that's, an artist is supposed to just pick something up and you know, um, but I think that there is sort of like there's a bit of a happy medium between sort of, you know, actually diving into the technicalities sometimes and, and, uh, keeping that sort of naivety to, to what you do, you know definitely, you know, and it's just like a balance kind of between those things.

Speaker 2:

And I think I think I was, yeah, over the years I have kind of deliberately been like I don't want to learn that, I just want to draw from this immediate place and make something out of that. But I think, as I'm getting older, I'm kind of realizing that a balance of the two things, like you can have the two things, you don't have to be, you know, this um artist just grabbing things out the ether. You know you can have both.

Speaker 1:

So you know, yeah, I mean. So you got like, what was it about? A year's worth of work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it was about a year. Yeah, yeah, because I think I've been had quite a few gigs through that period and stuff I was developing live with the cello, mallet samples, but I think that's the first time I've ever done that, because I think most of the time my process is I'm working through ideas, I'm working through learning new things a lot of the time, and the process of laying those down is often the album right yeah, you know so that was the first time I'd actually been like yeah, I'm really not happy with this.

Speaker 2:

You know, and I guess with you know, I guess with electronic music there is there's a certain degree of technicality that you need to know and that you need to learn, whereas I feel like with using effects, pedals and guitars and cellos and things to my voice, it's all just something I can just draw on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know just whereas, whereas I think with electronic music it's it kind of you need a basis to start on and techniques to start with and then you're on your way yeah, I mean, was it, was it hard to let go of that year in any way? Not really, because I was just so unhappy with the uh, with the, with the results and I just feel like the newer things I did were just so much better, I think, musically.

Speaker 2:

There were a few nice like sort of weird vocal melodies on some of those things that I was a bit sad to lose, because those things are more on the day, something suggests something in music, because microcorps isn't particularly melodic, but there are things I hear in there and I can pull in, you know. So there was a few here and there. But then I was just as happy with some of the new things that I put on the current album.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, it was all good, All worked out, all right in the end. Yeah, yeah, I love the album and I feel like it's so interesting because, in looking at like your broad career as a whole, because there's like obviously, like, obviously, like everyone that does stuff has a sort of consistency to them, you know, um, and like it's always a consistency to your work. But in in a lot of ways, like on a sort of surface level, the new micro corpse album, like all the micro corpse stuff itself, is, you know, very different from, say, grumbling fur or solo stuff and some of the collaborations you know that have gone across the years.

Speaker 1:

you know I'm thinking like particularly like some of the kind of more folk leanings or acoustic leanings, you know, is there something that, for you, you feel unites all of the work together?

Speaker 2:

I think I mean often my voice, um, but I think even I think there's this thing that I've always really loved and brought into my music is this balance between something quite rudimentary and then something kind of like technological, even if it was kind of lo-fi technological.

Speaker 2:

I think it was it that sort of comes from, I think, in the late 90s when I was getting into a lot of the new zealand experimental music and I bought this incredible compilation called the jazz non, which was on corpus hermeticum, which was the label run by bruce russell of the dead sea and Sea, and I think previous to that I'd been into a lot of like Japanese noise stuff and American noise stuff, and there was something just really kind of very sort of delicate. It was almost like digging up some beautiful sort of thin, crazed glass covered in mud or something, and I think a review in the wire said it. This means it sounds like it's been recording onto like wax cylinder and, um, yeah, so I just immediately kind of always have that in the back of my mind. You know, almost like my current kind of imagery I have in the back of my head is. I love the analogy of digging things up.

Speaker 2:

But, I was digging up like a modem or a piece of just electronic equipment, obscure electronic equipment that you can't really figure out what it is. It's all rusted and covered in earth. But you're able to kind of plug it in and somehow access what's inside. But what's inside is kind of mutated so you're getting kind of these electronic tones and sounds. But it's almost like nature has somehow moved in there and mutated it and created kind of like a new environment for it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that idea of the merging of nature and technology, but also, like the, the thinking visually about music, like you've got a background in fine art, yes, and do you, you know, describe it. There's something else you said a couple of minutes ago as well about, like, when you first heard this music, do you feel like, um, what I mean, I guess, like what role? Do you feel that sort of like a visual, visual culture, or just like a maybe not even visual culture, but just like your own visual culture?

Speaker 2:

plays into your work. I mean, in a way, I feel like I'm a painter and I probably never should have got into music. I think Derek Jarman said like a similar thing. He was like you know, I think it was more about gardening. He was saying, like gardening's the thing he's like filmmaking's for fools, you know. But I think it's that thing that I've always wanted to sort of try and push myself. I still like to paint, you know, every now and again. But, um, I still feel like, yeah, I am drawing from a, a visual world when it comes to making music. Like that's always in my peripheral vision or in the back of my head. And it's funny how, on a number of occasions as well, I've implanted imagery into instrumental music and reviewers or people have recounted that image back to me. So I love the way that you can implant visuals within. You know, oral music.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think that's like that's a really must have been a really interesting thing, because I imagine those reviewers were, you know, feeling something, experiencing something, but not necessarily imagining that that would be what you were actually your intention was so mad that that tallies up really yeah, yeah, I remember with the alexander tucker stuff one review was like I just imagine that alex tucker sort of wanders the kent coastlines like endlessly sitting around and kind of rotting sheds and I was like no, that's like literally kind of what I do.

Speaker 1:

I mean I, I really correspond to that, that concept of folk as well. There was another critic that wrote, and I'm going to just quote here, if that's okay uh tucker sounds like he's following a tradition that has long been neglected, focusing on ageless song, focusing not on ageless songs and ideas, but on ageless feelings captured through his droning miasma of acoustic guitar and mandolin.

Speaker 1:

Obviously he's talking about a specific record there yeah, yeah, um I I really connect with like and going into like the quote that you mentioned about the sheds and and kent is this sort of like.

Speaker 1:

I guess like there's a sort of a kind of a folk horror, folk history, a folk that to me resonates not so much in the like, I guess like the kind of passing a song on kind of folk in a literal, like the news passing from town to town, but more like a kind of, I guess, what they used to call oh fuck, I've forgotten the name of the word and I'm going to have to edit that hauntology like a sort of hauntological approach to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's the thing, because I really dislike kind of traditional English folk music. Like I really can't stand it. And Morris dances and all of that that nostalgia for that time and just that sort of particular sound I really hate and I kind of you know, in the past I have got really annoyed with the folk tag you know, because for me it was.

Speaker 2:

I mean, for me, like, musically, I felt like I was drawing on bands like faust, you know, which is kind of hybrid music, you know, and they're not trying to be all like, hey, nonny, nonny, you know, they're just kind of they're not saying it's this or that, you know. Yeah, and I think in a way I was all. I guess I was drawing on kind of folk music a lot of time, but it was often like american folk, like harry smith's anthology of american folk music. That was like massive for me and really sat next to like the, you know, this kind of new zealand music and all that underground new zealand stuff. For me I was like, well, that's real folk music. That's still kind of just somebody sitting in their flat house with just some broken effects, pedals and bits and pieces and a crappy four track and and and, just like documenting their, their life, their feelings, uh, whatever was going on that day. So but yeah, like you say, I felt, you know, I felt like I was.

Speaker 2:

I do always feel like I'm drawing on something like underneath me, sort of in the, in the earth, and even, you know, and often people talk about like a pastoral element with my work and that kind of is in there.

Speaker 2:

But in a way, like for the years I was making those albums, it was really. It was really london that I was documenting. For years and years I would go down to central london and stroll around all the back streets, all along the thames, all these, you know, all these kind of nooks and crannies and just obsessing over the architecture and just the feelings that I was getting off of the city, like probably like running away and escaping from things I probably should have been kind of focusing on in my life, but it was kind of a way of catharsis that I used to get out of, out of that, you know. So, so, yeah, yeah, in a way I have been delving into kind of hauntology hauntology, sorry, you know, for a good chunk of my life, but once again, you know, I never put a name to it. Really, do you know this project I did in Bogodum?

Speaker 1:

I don't actually no.

Speaker 2:

Which is I recorded three albums. It was BBC Bush House that had the World Service in it at the time and a friend of mine, new Zealander actually, daniel Beban, used to work nights there, so we used to go there. I'd meet him about 10 o'clock at night and then we'd go deep, deep down into the bowels of this building, into these amazing BBC studios and get out these Studer tape machines, these Revox tape machines, and make kind of long loops on them, which would feed back the machines into the desk, make kind of long loops on them which would feed back the machines into the desk.

Speaker 2:

One of us would go and play in the um, in the uh, yeah, in the in the whatever so cool, the yeah, the studio the studio. That's it because, yeah, because in radio context.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what that would be cool. I know exactly room a, room b, the exactly. Yeah, so we, so one of us, would be in the don't know what that would be called. I know exactly Room A, room B Exactly.

Speaker 2:

So one of us would be in the control room one of us would be in the studio playing instruments or using our voices or whatever, and then the other one would be manipulating the tapes. And so those albums are mixtures of, you know, sort of our love of BBC Radiophonics Workshop and also just trying to forge songs into those places as well. And just you know I love music concrete and electroacoustic composition but I really feel like those albums is very, very much kind of trying to pull something up from the bowels of London, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, also it did remind me then. I remember, I think in Cosi Fanny Tootie's Re-Sisters book she talks about how Delia Derbyshire would go in to the BBC studios at night when she probably wasn't being like hassled by some man and that would become her time.

Speaker 1:

you know, that's sort of the secret hour, the secret hours of night time to go and do stuff, you know, and uh I think there's a sort of rich history of all of these sort of things to tap into, like maybe, maybe like in in like cities, like in london, like I definitely remember feeling that when I first moved to London, of just like walking around Soho and you know you go in those pubs in Soho where you go to like the toilet, and you climb a stairwell and it's tiny. The stairwell is tiny, it feels like it's so old, it's designed for people from a time when people were just smaller. You know, and feeling that go in, you know, in some way or other?

Speaker 2:

Definitely, definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just, I think it's just the way of also just sort of peeling back the past, isn't it? And just that enjoyment of seeing the layers of the past laminated on the present, yeah, yeah, and which?

Speaker 1:

element, which layer of that is more faded? You know, and I think with music you can perhaps play around with which is the more faded or corroded element of those things you know Exactly exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and sort of like talking about the past, sort of segueing in. You know, I just wanted to kind of ask some questions about in. You know, I just wanted to kind of ask some questions about, like you know, your formative entry into things really. So did you grow up in Kent?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I grew up in a small town called Southborough, which is between Royal Tunbridge Wells and Tunbridge, so it's like, yeah, there's loads of gorgeous woods all around it, loads of fields. It's really beautiful. It's a really beautiful place. It's funny because that area Tom Ridgewells is known for being very sort of posh.

Speaker 1:

Yeah right.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, that wasn't really my sort of experience of it. But well, I saw it, I experienced it, but I certainly didn't come from that kind of background. You know um very suburban yeah growing up in just sort of 60s 60s house and but there were like woods nearby and lots of ways for the mind to sort of unravel and Tunbridge Wells had a really great venue called the Forum as well.

Speaker 1:

I remember it was an old toilet.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

My band in the 90s played there once.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you did.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the stage I think I remember the stage kind of folds into almost like it's like a really particular angle.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's right, the stage goes towards the bar, really particular angle.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right, the stage goes towards the bar, which is that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 2:

My friends ran that. Um. So goku jason dorman sort of started that place. Um, I recently just wrote an article on his band, joey fat, who were like a really important band for me, like a sort of cross between sort of fugazi, the fallen talking heads, and my great, great band.

Speaker 2:

So that's where I did my first shows yeah when that opened up, um, me and my friends formed like a hardcore band, um, which I was singing in, and then, um, then I formed a about with jason jason dorman called unhome, and that was more of a sort of post-rock kind of flavored thing and that once again, that's. You know, tumbridge wells is like a great, great place for like peeling back the past, past and the present and beautiful architecture and the pantiles where the? Um spring waters come from, you know, and once again, loads of amazing woods and all of these incredible um, like stone formations, sandstone. That was kind of left over from prehistoric era when that whole area was like huge rivers and um, so, yeah, it's, it's definitely, you know, I was, I feel really lucky, it was really it was really magical around there and I and I feel like, just you know, when you grow up in like a smallish town, you're always trying to pull magic from wherever you can.

Speaker 1:

Really definitely, yeah, I grew up in a small from a small town in dorset and um very, very similar like ethos, and I can move back there, like my family moved back there when I was in my late teens and um, I remember like, yeah, there was a high concentration of stoner rock which I think think kind of, you know, electric wizard, yeah yeah, yeah. They were like they used to live in, like the local stoner's house where we'd go get our little bags, our little, you know, eighths of hash. Excellent.

Speaker 2:

I remember there was.

Speaker 1:

I felt like everyone. There was a lot of people that were making music and it was all focused around, yeah, like you said, this sort of magicalness. You know like, yeah, you could just draw. Maybe we were like also, apart from electric wizard, we were all very, very unconnected to any kind of sophisticated scene or yeah, like urbane you know, cosmopolitanness you know exactly we just drew on what was around us, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally, it was quite sort of fantastical stuff.

Speaker 2:

And I was really lucky that there were so many kind of like-minded people in such a kind of conservative area, both politically and just socially. And like in Southborough, there was like Nathaniel Mellors, who's quite a well-known contemporary artist, and there was a brilliant band called Repeater, A band called Simon Johns who played bass, went on to play bass in Stereolab, A band called Grant Newman, who was in a band with a band called Ashley Marlowe and Grant Newman as well, called Cone Melt, who were a really great electronic band. So yeah, there were kind of lots of heads.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, luckily, definitely, these things are so formative, aren't they? Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, you name-dropped a bunch of people, though, and, looking at your collected work, it strikes me that, like, collaboration reoccurs a lot of times, you know, does it? I take it like you know, and also, when you mentioned to me about how the microcorps album came out, I know it's got a lot of collaboration on it and also just really how you know you took advice from, from people around you on this you know I mean what?

Speaker 1:

what do you sort of see as the role of collaboration? Has it always just been something that's just been unquestioningly there, because you also work solo as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's funny because throughout my life I've always felt quite solitary and kind of always like at school I was kind of friends with everyone but kind of at the same time was kind of a bit of a loner as well, and I kind of still feel like that to a certain degree. But I feel like I kind of like appear in people's lives for kind of a short time and then sort of disappear a bit as well, which I don't sort of really mean to do, but it sort of just sort of happens. But yeah, I guess you know in a way, yeah, I don't really think of myself as a serial collaborator, but I guess I am yeah, yeah, I mean just working with other people. It just to me, me it's always just like. It's like a wonderful gift they kind of give you and maybe that you give them as well. You know, yeah, giving each other these, these kind of chunks of your life here and there.

Speaker 1:

You know, which is pretty, pretty important yeah, it's a real commitment as well, isn't it? Even if you can sense this, I think collaborations can go into them in a very natural way. You know, just because maybe something feels right or something's interesting, you like this person, but then you're putting your names together for something that you know in a sort of very pragmatic way is like foundational to like your career, career, you know yeah, it is a though it is a sort of like uh, I don't know marriage in a way, even temporary little marriage sometimes oh yeah, no, no, totally totally what was it like?

Speaker 1:

what was the one like with um stephen o'malley?

Speaker 2:

yeah, that was, um, I think it was the first in this series called Latitudes that Southern Records were doing, where they'd invite you into the studio for one day and so you'd spend a good chunk of the day just recording things, and then into the evening, into the night, you'd then mix it and then it was done, you know. So, yeah, it was a really, really special day.

Speaker 2:

One I still think about kind of a lot and Stephen's always been really supportive and you know, yeah, a really great, you know great guy, great friend through the years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and what does the role of I mean? Because Stephen's such a sort of linchpin of a certain kind of I don't know, I don't even sound or but you know, a certain kind of way of looking at music. I guess, uh, and, and you are yourself and uh, what would you feel that like in terms of like you know, I guess like the sort of network of people that are like playing a certain kind of way of music, approaching music as a certain kind of art or a certain kind of way of music, approaching music as a certain kind of art or a certain kind of gesture. Do you feel like a connection to like other artists that do like you know it could be anyone from like cali malone to you know, like sort of people that are kind of like making story that you've never met. You know that. Um, do you sort of feel an affinity to people's music when you hear it?

Speaker 2:

oh yeah, no, no, 100 percent like um. Oh yeah, oran and barchi's always like someone that I'm thinking about in the back of my head. That was kind of that album, hubris. That really kind of got me thinking about kind of electronic music actually, whereas I don't always think of Orin as like an electronic artist, but he kind of is, he just uses the electric guitar, guitars like a conduit, you know, yeah, um, actually, another collaborator of his um, arnold dreblatt, I was really like the the new microcorps album. I was really thinking of that as um I was. What would it sound like if arnold dreblatt made like a techno track? You know, it's little things like that, like forging those, you know, sort of those imaginary fusions, you know of things yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and just like, and just sort of like.

Speaker 2:

I really love the way Stephen you know it's just he's so sort of direct and minimal but with what he does, but he is able to kind of stretch that out over so many recordings and and and live shows and I think that's really inspiring. Just to, like I was saying, just taking quite a small piece of knowledge and then just being able to expand on that is really inspiring knowledge and then just being able to like expand on that is really inspiring, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I always wonder like how much of these things just come about and how much of these things are like intended. And and I feel like the more I speak with artists and the more I kind of reflect on stuff I've done.

Speaker 2:

The best stuff is is doesn't really have that much intention beforehand you know, no, exactly, exactly yeah yeah yeah, it's like, it's literally like I'm here in this moment, I have these tools, I have this knowledge. Let's see, kind of what happens. And obviously there's certain obsessions and I always have, like you know, like david lynch is always here, yeah, you know, in my peripheral vision, like constantly, like pansonic is always here, I'm always. You know, it's like it, like those t-shirts and memes, like what would, what would mika and ilpo do? You know?

Speaker 2:

it's kind of like that's. You know what would lynch do? And I mean it can be. You know, it can be kind of a bad thing to get, you know too hung up on kind of other artists, and I've definitely. I remember like the second year when I was at the slade uh, I think lost highway came out and the lynch on lynch book came out and, um, I remember buying the lynch on lynch book with my first pay from doing the door at the bull and gay and I just couldn't make any work. I mean I was making work but it wasn't really going anywhere. Like I just wanted to be lynch, you know. So I think that's why over the years I've been like, yeah, you, you keep your influences like just in view and you don't necessarily completely like put it in your music.

Speaker 1:

You know just the, the, just the essence of it I mean I love what you're saying there, like I think that's like something I think I've definitely had trouble with like back in the day. You know probably still do a bit. I mean, what do you think is for you that like is bad if the the influences get too close?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think it just polarizes me yeah I don't think I I don't feel like I'm kind of almost like skilled enough to like take a genre and make a piece of music around that, like you know, sometimes when I think I'm doing like a straight techno track and I listen back or I play it to somebody and they're just like you know, it's not the weirdest thing I've heard.

Speaker 1:

You're like, I definitely have that where it's like someone. You know I think that this is it. This is like this is really weird. I've actually accidentally written like a pop song, you know this is a straightforward pop song and then someone else is going. That's fucking weird exactly yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, someone asked me to do like a um, kind of like a dub version of my kind of work at a club locally, and so I worked on something and brought it along and it was just like you just kind of looked at me afterwards it's like, yeah, all right, alex, you know and I think, I think I saw, yeah, I've got these kind of beats going through delays, yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2:

And then, yeah, I have like total drone noise guitar. That's dub, isn't it? And I'm like I think some of the locals from that club night were just like what the fuck was that? You know, so I don't, you know, I don't know if I'm, like, capable of actually taking an influence and making it sound like that influence.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know well, we don't need to now anyway with ai, like that is, what ai does is just literally take my interpretation, isn't it just like we'll literally take a bunch of clear influences and sort of make a weird hall of mirrors version of it yeah, yeah yeah, is that something that, like, is ai something that is a sort of concern to you, is like a sort of uh, you know both an artist and a sort of professional musician artist not, not really.

Speaker 2:

I was messing around with mid journey recently and quite sort of enjoying it. I made loads of images of um. I really love like like behind the scenes photos of films, especially horror films and sci-fis, and so I was like inputting lots of text around that and it's getting some like really like cool imagery from it. But then at the end of that I was like what do I actually sort of do with this? Because ai always looks like ai, like you know it. Yeah, just your monkey brain is like that's not real. Yeah, you know, or that's not. You know an image of an unreal thing you know, like someone doing makeup on a zombie or whatever you know it's like I don't know. You just know there's something about the surface of things that just doesn't corroborate with something in your brain. You know um. And then obviously, when ai is doing styles, a lot of the time it just kind of just kind of looks horrible and I, but maybe at some point it will kind of look amazing and it will be like a really cool tool that you can get, like you know, some really fantastic imagery from and and I do like see things like quite a lot.

Speaker 2:

I'm like you know those like those really kind of sick ai videos of some horrible, like some dog that's face splits open and those eggs fall out and you know, like it's kind of really amazing. But just, I think, just when you know what something is and obviously that's kind of a stupid thing to say because, like a painting, you know it's oil on canvas, you know it's like, you're not like yeah, I'm really looking at a face or whatever, but there's something, just yeah, I think you'll never get away from just the, the humanity and the social structures and whatever that just went into kind of making those pieces. You know, but yeah, I'm not, I'm not down about it. I'm like you know it's fine. You know I've kind of made me feel worse for sort of professionals who are, you know, doing illustrations for magazines and or illustrations for whatever. And then you know, I kind of I'm noticing more and more people's album covers, using it and being like I know what it is, whereas other imagery I'm like I'm not so certain about how they've made it.

Speaker 1:

You know, so you know.

Speaker 2:

I mean obviously, you know, when CGI came along me and for a lot of other people were just like oh, it looks like shit, you know. But now. I love CGI stuff and some artists use it to you know great effects and filmmakers, you know.

Speaker 1:

Definitely. I mean like David Finchercher, for example. I always think is a the person I think of that uses cgi in a way where I, unless I've watched like an explainer youtube afterwards I haven't even noticed it like just making like the era look a little bit more era specific or just 100 like.

Speaker 2:

So, like zodiac, you know, I've watched that about 20 times and it took me a while and I was like, oh wow, that city view there. That's cgi, isn't it? You know it looks great, you know, I mean, I'm in there you know, definitely, definitely for that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think on that front, I mean talking about like illustrations, um, I I was given like a pdf anywhere. I'd love to get like um, like an irl version. Like you, you're releasing a comic along yeah, yeah, microcorps, I'll send you one I'd love that fantastic um, what was the?

Speaker 1:

I mean, looking at the comic, it sort of really, you know, is evocative to me of like perhaps and I'm not a comic or an illustration expert, but just this kind of bleak dystopian, when I was growing up reading comics in the 80s, 2000, ad and stuff that even felt a little bit too dodgy, forgy for me, you know, too visceral perhaps for me to sort of take on board. You know, I mean, what, what was? That was just my interpretation, but what, what about for you? What was? What was the sort of intention for? Was this is it supposed to, like, marry up with, you know, because obviously you're an artist that thinks about music in such a visual way? Is it supposed to marry up with the music? Or?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it can and you know it can be separate as well, but like, yeah, I mean like so, like things. Like you know, 2000 ad's like in my dna and all those artists. And you know I do worship at the altar of alan moore. Um, you know I do worship at the altar of Alan Moore, you know, and have done since I was about like 13 or something when I got into Swamp Thing, you know, and I still draw on Swamp Thing and I literally like think about it probably like every day almost.

Speaker 1:

And so I have ever since.

Speaker 2:

I kind of got into it. But no, I mean, it is all the same world. I mean, you're right, it is a way of just physically bringing those kind of ideas into something visual. I mean like the comics I've been working on recently, you know, really really influenced by like twin peaks, three twin peaks, the return. I love that. Yeah and um, really obsessed with that character, judy, the sort of sumerian, sort of demon, you know, that sort of basically controls everything and everyone, and I've always loved this.

Speaker 2:

You know sort of idea about extra-dimensional entities, because I sort of encountered one when I was a little kid.

Speaker 2:

Oh really, I was in the house, top of the house rolling around playing guns, and I rolled into my sister's room and I go, and I bumped into something and looked up and there was just this huge solid black figure looking down at me like a muscular like almost like a cliched muscular, like superhero kind of figure.

Speaker 2:

But it was no face, like just dense black, you know like dark matter, black and um, and just ran out the room, ran down down to my mom and I couldn't speak. She was going, what's wrong? And I just couldn't get the words out yeah and um, and you know, I think there's uh, I've spoken to a few people who have had these encounters with these kind of dark matter entity figures and there's kind of a lot of accounts of those. And you know, I think especially these things happen when you're young, when you're still kind of fresh from the source and tap into the world, to sort of really tap into these things. You tend to see them a lot less and have a lot less of these experiences as you get older, sadly, I feel.

Speaker 1:

Was this something that you felt you had to uh rationalize away? Or you? I get the impression that there's. Perhaps you haven't. You've decided not to uh because I think you know there's a lot of pressure to sort of rationalize these things yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, I feel like I just kind of knew that it was from the other place, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I knew it was from behind the veil, the thin veil, you know, and I still feel that, you know, I still kind of feel like I know that you know I'm somebody who's like, yeah, kind of life is kind of meaningless and at the same time, completely and utterly unbelievably fantastical, and just like even the fact that we kind of live on this rock, we're kept on the ground by this giant force field, you know, in this like unbelievably gigantic thing, the universe, you know, is like none of that fucking makes sense. It's, it's sci-fi already, you know, like so to believe and to see things which are outside of our understanding, it's like totally understandable, you know, yeah, and those things are real, you know, and it's like it's like, you know, hallucination, you know it's like it is, it's real to you, you know. So that is a form of reality, and I'm not trying to say it's extraterrestrial or I'm trying to say it's God or the devil or any of those things. It's just things that are outside of our understanding, just like everything is yeah, everything is yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think the moment people start prescribing definitions on these things, in a way, are much like, much like music it becomes. It opens up the ground to sort of charlatans and you know, because ultimately we don't fucking know. I mean, someone might know, I don't know I hate the.

Speaker 2:

You know the current world of experts. You know everybody being a fucking expert. It's just like you don't know anything at all. You know yeah we don't even understand how we got here in the first place. So like, how can you be so sure? Ever is there any, any, any form of absolutism I really dislike. Yeah, obviously the classic one. You know religion and doctrines and whatever you know, and obviously there are amazing and beautiful things within things like religions as as well.

Speaker 2:

You know all sorts and idea different ideologies, you know, but I'll never be somebody who's like, yeah, that's it, yeah, that's the way you're supposed to do it, and I suppose that's why I kind of do move around quite a lot with my work as well right, because there's always some of a potential avenue and you like.

Speaker 1:

The attachment to one way of looking at things isn't really appealing.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like there's no truth in, in, in any, any form that you're taking at one time, you know. So why not move around and why not create these characters and and worlds as you go along?

Speaker 1:

and that that also, like, reminds me of what you were saying a little bit earlier on about like being this mixture of being, like, perhaps a loner but also having lots of friends and, you know, feeling connected like that, like um, are you one of those people that does like, uh, the, the quiet exit from the party? I know, I am just to say, but you know that it's three o'clock in the morning. It's like, am I gonna say goodbye to everyone or am I just gonna like you know?

Speaker 2:

I definitely have done that, yeah, but I know and I would like to do it more often, but but I'm often not allowed to these days.

Speaker 1:

Fair enough, I have to behave myself. It is better behaved to say. It definitely is nicer to do it, but I feel like, yeah, this.

Speaker 2:

I've definitely done it a lot, though, you know, in the past.

Speaker 1:

Alex, thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

No worries.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that was me, paul hamford, talking with alexander tucker for the lost and sound podcast, and we had that conversation on the 10th of september 2025. Thank you so much, alex, for sharing your time and thoughts with me there. The new micro corpse album called clear vortex chamber is out on 19th of september on downwards records and it's well worth a listen if you've not, uh, previewed it already. Yes, so there we go. Thanks so much for listening.

Speaker 1:

If you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. And if you like what I do and you want to hear a little bit more of what I do, you can check out my radio documentary the man who Smuggled Punk Rock Across the Berlin Wall by heading on over to the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC World Service homepage. And if you fancy reading it and you've not done it so far, my book Coming to Berlin is available in good bookshops or Violent Publishers website. The publishers are Velocity Press Audio Technica they're the people that sponsor Lost in Sound, audio Technica, the global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges and microphones. They make studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of lost in sound is by tom giddens, and so, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1:

I hope, whatever you're doing today, you have a really beautiful one and I'll chat to you soon. Thank you.