Jochen:

I think they really adore you.

Green:

I've never looked at one. My girlfriend looked at them but I refused to look.

Jochen:

There's one really great site...

Green:

The Archeology Of The Frivolous?

Jochen:

Yes!

Green:

I've never looked at it, I've read about it.

Jochen:

You've got to look at it.

Green:

Really?

Jochen:

Yes, really.

Green:

I-D magazine said it was very, really a great site, or something. But I...It's not for me, you know.

Jochen:

No, it's not for you, that's true. [Short laughter of both of us.] Okay.

Jochen:

Maybe we could do the interview like this: first I'll tell you what's my idea about Scritti Politti...

Green:

Okay.

Jochen:

And you, maybe you will do me the favour of commenting upon this [unsure but happy laughter].

Green:

Sure, I will do that.

Jochen:

And then I ask the questions I've got to ask as a journalist.

Green:

Okay, okay, fine.

Jochen:

So, my idea about Scritti Politti is that it has something to do with...love, of course.

Green:

Yeah.

Jochen:

But in a very special way, which I find very interesting - and I think it's more or less like this: it's about finding...yes, I know that you've been very much fascinated about Aretha Franklin and Soul Music.

Green:

Aha.

Jochen:

And this complex of faith.

Green:

Aha, ja.

Jochen:

And I think that the love you are describing has very much to do with this kind of faith.

Green:

Ja.

Jochen:

In the sense of building up worlds, or something like that.

Green:

Ja, it's very good.

Jochen:

That's good?!

Green:

I agree with that.

Jochen:

Fine [truly relieved laughter]. So we are ready.

Green:

Ja. 10 out of 10. Exactly right. Yes, it makes perfect sense. The next time somebody asks me, I shall use your very words. Cause that's...Yeah, you're right, the love thing is a lot - both, I guess, on a metaphorical level and on a...hm, for lack of a better word, emotional level - then it would be true that this...I guess the abiding metaphor - there is one throughout the whole thing - or concern, would be about, you know, a fall from grace, a fall from a privileged place.

Jochen:

Mhm...

Green:

And the fall has been...it's the fall from love, it's the loss of love, it's the loss of: truth.

Jochen:

It's in a way the loss of everything, isn't it?

Green:

Ja, it is.

Jochen:

There's no sense after...

Green:

It's to do with a profound and essential lack.

Jochen:

Yes.

Green:

And loss. And that would be both my lived experience in the world and, you know, otherwise, intellectual or whatever, I feel this lack, this absence, this lacuna, this gap, this void. And, you know, floated love, the love floated, the love lost, the love craved for - all of these things are really...love and the truth would be interchangeable.

Jochen:

Yes.

Green:

And...which is good, because it kind of enables...it both, it feels that way, if I can put it like that, it feels that way...it's a bit like, mhmm, if you were...after being in love, I think, it's like the absence of truth, it's both like a very painful thing but a liberating thing.

Jochen:

Do you think so: a liberating thing as well?

Green:

Ja, I think it's - you know, it can easily be both of those things. It's aching but it's liberating. These are the very romantic terms I use. And in the same way it's like losing or failing to find love but being alone. And being alone in those situations is a liberating, aah...it's a liberating isolation in some ways. You don't mean to be alone. I think after being in love, you know, being alone is the next best thing.

Jochen:

But what, ahh, can one do being alone. Is there anything to do? Or is there anything to live for (something like that)?

Green:

Good question. Ahh, I don't suppose there is anything to LIVE FOR other than life itself.

Jochen:

Okay.

Green:

Other than the possibility of reverie. You know what reverie means?

Jochen:

Has it something to do with religion?

Green:

No, not necessarily. Reverie would be - really hard word for me to define.

Jochen:

I will look it up.

Green:

[Like a shot] Okay.

Jochen:

[Laughter] No, define it for me, please.

Green:

Oh shit, oh shit! [Laughter] I thought: Wow, I escaped having to define reverie! Reverie: it's not exactly a trance like state, but it's a state of, ahmm...it's not a mesmerized or hypnotized state or trance-like state. It's not exactly that, but it's something like being lost in the m...

Jochen:

In the moment?

Green:

You know, maybe it's a Zen kind of thing: being lost in your surroundings. I mean losing a sense of your edges, your limits and your identity in the appreciation, or the engagement with the lake or the sky or whatever.

Jochen:

Okay. Simon Reynolds, this music journalist, wrote in these terms about techno, about rave.

Green:

Yeah, I think so.

Jochen:

Do you...

Green:

I don't like techno or rave culture which is partly a function of, partly a function of not being, ah...it did happen during a time, that's quite a ten years, when I went into exile, a self-imposed exile

Jochen:

You call it like this?

Green:

Yeah, yeah, totally was. I mean, you know, I split with my girlfriend, I split with my management, I split with all my friends, and I went to live very much - alone.

Jochen:

Did you?

Green:

I had other friends, but they were - it was a different world, a completely different world.

Jochen:

A completely different world.

Green:

So to that extent it was an exile.

Jochen:

So it's true that you spent all these years, or more or less all these years, in Wales?

Green:

Ja, and so that's one of the reasons why I was kind of out of rave culture. Because I was just somewhere else. But the other reason was - I mean, at the beginning of rave culture I was still in London and I did my, you know, fair amount of ecstasy, warehouse parties and what, you know, began with ACID HOUSE. I kind of did that. And it was fun for, like, eight weeks.

Jochen:

Okay.

Green:

And then...

Jochen:

Then it was time for a more...

Green:

Then it was like: 'Okay, this was fun - what next?' But the music was, the music to me was not very appealing. And this just is an aesthetic judgement of mine in part, that house music - whether it was acid, then became techno, trance, garage, you know, ambient, handbag, any of these things that grown out British club culture, fail to ignite my enthusiasm aesthetically. Drum'n'Bass is the one exception, possibly. But that was the real...

Jochen:

Maybe because of this Hip Hop link.

Green:

Ja, totally, the Hip Hop and Reggae link in Drum'n'Bass.

Jochen:

Off course, Reggae!

Green:

But that's really, that's when I was...I had my eye off the ball, you know: I was in Wales and Drum'n'Bass was very, very much a London thing to begin with. So I have no regrets about missing any of rave culture, club culture.

Jochen:

No, I didn't think about it in that way.

Green:

You know, I didn't like it.

Jochen:

Yes. For me, I don't know in what way, but - I think the most mysterious album you ever did is 'Provision'.

Green:

Really?

Jochen:

Yes, and I would like to know if you still like it.

Green:

No, I never, I didn't like it.

Jochen:

You NEVER liked it?

Green:

Nouo. Well, I never heard it.

Jochen:

You never heard it.

Green:

I know that sounds absurd, I have been hearing it while I was making it, but from that last day when I walked out of the studio I didn't ever play the thing again. I may have had to listen to the odd bit of it at the odd radio stations or whatever but I left the studio having already decided that it was a failure of a record. That it wasn't good work and that, ah, I had...

Jochen:

On a personal level or in musical sense?

Green:

Both, both! That it was an unhappy thing, became an unhappy thing and...

Jochen:

The album IS unhappy, a very unhappy record.

Green:

Yes, it's very unhappy...But it also failed to be inventive enough. I feel it should have been a very different kind of record and I just took my eye off the thing. The work wasn't good enough and it wasn't as different as it should have been from 'Cupid & Psyche'. So I left the studio feeling very unhappy about it. And then you have to do the kind of promotional thing, like we're sitting here now. But, I mean, imagine that particularly in America, that's where your soul really dies, when you go to the radio stations. They have you do a radio station tour...

Jochen:

Really hard work.

Green:

And you're in Westbubblefuck, Arizona, you know, somewhere, and it's: 'And we have now Green from Scritti Politti!' and they play something off 'Provision' and then you really just have to hide your ears in your hands cause you need to like the song they're playing. You know, it's like: 'Should have done better'. And then you have to be bright and cheery and like: 'Hey, how it's great to be in Bubblefuck!' You know, cause it's childish not to be, there's no point in going and doing this and being horrible. But you are just the next guy, there are two other guys...

Jochen:

Waiting.

Green:

Waiting with their CDs coming on the show after you. You're just the next PROduct. So, if all you are is a product, if you're reduceable to your product and you don't feel good about your product then it's a horrible feeling. And I felt really horrible which is why I gave it all up.

Jochen:

And what do you think about this way of producing - I think the very specific thing about 'Provision' is that it has not very much of, so to say, let's say this word again: Black Music. It's really, and that's what I in a kind of way like about this album, it's a very, really synthetic kind of music.

Green:

Ugly synthetic.

Jochen:

And because of that there is no, really, there is no world in it or something like that.

Green:

No, you are absolutely right, I feel the same way. And ahh...Whereas I thought 'Cupid & Psyche' kind of lay that point a little more joyously. And a little more affirmative.

Jochen:

That's how I see it.

Green:

And a little more thoroughly. 'Provision' was the cold dead end of that in a way. It was really all about an obsessive attention to...you know, it's like the syncopation that we were very into. The syncopation that I've learned to get into - you know syncopation?

Jochen:

Sync...

Green:

Syncopation, you know, rhythmically: syncopated.

Jochen:

Ahhh, okay.

Green:

Was a very important part of those records which is the influence, the first big influence of contemporary black R'n'B on me. Whether it comes from Quincy Jones' arrangements or Shalamar, you know, Leon Sylvers' work on Solar Records, or other great articulates of time, if you like. Do you know what I mean?

Jochen:

Yes, I know what you mean.

Green:

People who articulate time very, very skillfully.

Jochen:

And that's what you were interested in?

Green:

That's what, that was a lot to do with that. But what happened was that you have to really...partly it's to do with those experiments in...And then, of course, the technology of Midi afforded you the ability to assign different voices, you know, to this syncopation and to the, ahh...Whereas before, you know, your palette, ahh - I hate painting analogies - a number of TOOLS with which you could articulate SPACE and Time - oh, no, not time in that way - were very limited, MIDI meant that, you know, you could have two sixteenth notes here played by something that sounded very different from the next two sixteenth notes and you could have little - The whole thing was like a pointillist painting, you know, to use another bad painting analogy. But if the subject of your painting, if your...or you're IN, whatever, if your root is not...You know, I think 'Provision' may have had...You know, it was expensively articulated but it had nothing to say. And that was partly by design, but partly by lack of - It should have had nothing to say in a more beautiful way.

Jochen:

Mhm, okay. What do you mean by 'design'?

Green:

Design, by design? Like a purpose, planned.