"striptease", Tear Down The Sky Volume 12, 1995
Annie

we have our visions of other people, whom we've never met and probably will never know. they have reached us with their deeds or their art. often we know they are disastrously imperfect and we do not envy them. but we uphold them, our own versions of them, for ourselves alone and gather armloads of inspiration and reassurance from them. they protect us from the drivel that sneaks in the corners and surrounds us sometimes- reaching their invisible hands out to pull us up from drowning in the overwhelming tides of banality that wash over with intent to smother. it is rare, for me that these people are not corpses. it is rarer still that they invite me to stay for a week and drink their tea and watch their telly.

but sometimes these things happen.

for me, listening to cindytalk has always been like listening to my soul speaking to itself- only far more eloquently. somehow, without knowing what all the words were, or what instruments the music came out of or anything about the people who made it, it was something i could understand so thoroughly and wonderfully in my own way that all else was irrelevant. all of the music of cindytalk is an amazing, mind-hugging, blissfully beautiful gift to hear.

and for these reasons, i have transcribed for you such an unusually long and uneditorialized interview with gordon sharp. i'm not sure how it could have possibly been otherwise, but upon meeting gordon, i discovered the person behind cindytalk is luminous. i found his conversation poetical and inspiring and i hope this translates on the written page. so, bear with the format, listen to cindytalk, and read on:

Part One:
Afternoon
Annie, Waxy and Gordon talk about Techno, Gigs, Goth and fruit

(for most realistic effect, read in the following accents:
W: = Waxy- Chicago/Indianapolis, tempered by a few years in Boston
G: = Gordon- a small town near Edinburgh, barely tempered by 10 years in London
A: = Annie- some abstract Boston preppy something, tempered by Toronto)

G: Annie's lost the plot.

[Annie looks offended.]

G: Only kidding.

A: Ok, i'll start. But i've had to revise the first question so you don't think the wrong thing.

G: Ask it anyway and see what happens.

A: Ok. Do you like kiwis?

G: Absolutely love them. Kiwis have done an awful lot for Cindytalk. Two played on Wappinschaw and three are in the band now, so I can't complain about kiwis.

W: We were talking before about Slimelight [a London goth club] standing still, and I think it definitely is, but there are also things to be learned from that time period.

G: I've never really been a club person. Slimelight was always percieved by us as a goth club and we've never particularly aligned ourselves with any any subcult, specifically goths. It always struck me as being a strange subcult, too miserable. We never ventured there- although apparently our stuff is being played there- and it cleared the dancefloor fairly quickly. Which I find quite nice. To send the goths running to the corners. But just from friends that work there or who have passed through, they say it's very very stuck in a set period. The period it came from, the early to mid eighties, there was a lot of good stuff happening then, but the good people move on and take it beyond. The thing about making music is to keep it moving. It's a fluid thing. If it becomes a static thing, it's a death. You have to move with it. Not adapt to the time but just be in control of its own time and space, bearing in mind what's around it but also finding its own.

W: Could Cindytalk be played at VFM [a London techno club]? What would happen?

G: It would really depend how it was done. There's a dj who is lined up for VFM next month, being March, called Terror Eyes, who we work with. He's planning on dropping Cindytalk into his set in one form or another. Now, how he does that I'm well intrigued to find out. I don't see how in our present state, in terms of Wappinschaw state, you could. It's not beat-orientated the way that techno is. You could use it as an abstract element, I can see how it would be done. But well see how he does it. But there are also two side-projects within Cindytalk, one of which is called Bambule, and that could definitely be played at VFM. It could be there quite happily.

W: Has anything of Bambule been pressed yet?

G: It's all just on tape. It's in it's early stages. It will be pressed this year.

W: Do Bambule work in a studio?

G: It's done in rehearsal rooms. We have a computer set up, and a port-a-studio.

W: As opposed to Cindytalk, when you go into a studio?

G: When we do albums, yes. We haven't since Wappinschaw because we have no money and we have been without a conventional record company. The Touched label is our own imprint, which means it's our name, we do all the press, but there's no money behind it. World Serpent pay for all the distribution and the manufacturing costs. But there's no money coming directly to us yet. For the next album we'll have to wait until we've got enough money to do it. So it might be a while. Which will be a drag because there's tons of material. It's all just sitting there waiting to come out.

W: Talk to me more about Bambule. Do you use samples at all?

G: It's a mixture of all sorts of things. It's sample based. I don't directly do much of the technical things, whether it be Cindytalk or Bambule. I'm not a musician, so I don't work equipment in a necessarily direct way. No technical questions. But it is sample based. We can create our own samples. Cindytalk is a band as such now, that we generate our own ideas we are as influenced by ourselves as anyone else. With Bambule being a techno thing that comes out of a band situation, we can make our own vocal samples. With the intention of using the voice in interesting ways. In Bambule we can have samples that nobody else will have. Creating a whole landscape... My role in it is less anyway. I write the words for techno- it doesn't have any words, but the titles, and the structuring. I'm just involved. Because it's an influence. We're collectively inspired by it, so we all play a part. But I wouldn't really want to get too close to the technical side. And that goes for Cindytalk in general. Which is strange, but I don't. Which is sometimes why we have a very different quality from a lot of things. Because our music is all channeled through somebody who's a non-musician. Musicians are channeling their music through somebody who doesn't understand it. And therefore it's like some kind of sieve. So hopefully it doesn't get too bollocksy and too bullshitty. If we're improvising, and working out ideas, because I'm a singer and not a musician, and I think there's a difference in some ways, if musicians start to get too wanky and diddly and things I usually bring it a halt and we go back. Like when we play live - our last live performance was 95% improvised. We walked on stage with a set list, looked at it and said Naaahh. And trashed it. We found a note and followed it for 45 minutes, literally. But we had an agreement, before we went on, that if things got self-indulgent, I would just scream, "Disrupt!" really loud and we'd all stop and start again somewhere else. But it didn't happen.

W: Improvised lyrics too?

G: Everything. When I improvise lyrically, both live and in the studio, a lot of it is non-lyrical. A lot of it is voice as instrument. I often wonder if people sit and try and decipher my words. They are therefore in eternity, because they'll never do it. When I'm singing, it sounds like words, but it's just play. I've been doing that since we first started. Born out of laziness. Sometimes that can take you to nice places.

A: Does that also have to do why themes and lyrics repeat from album to album?

G: What laziness?

A: Yeah. NO.

G: No, that's because I like themes. I like to play with stuff like that. I like the idea of Cindytalk dealing with memory and premonition. There will be something on an earlier album that appears again on a later album, so you hear a flicker of something. Maybe out of context, or abstract, but that theme will develop three albums on, or whenever we finish the next album. That's how we live, it reflects how we are as people. We remember fragments of conversations. Something triggers off and reminds of a situation. Like, when we were recording Return to Pain from Wappinschaw, somehow the mood of the piece, when I was performing it reminded me of Everybody is Christ, so I sung "everybody is christ". At that moment, it just came in and went out. It wasn't a lack of ideas and a need to regurgitate. It made me think like that, so I pushed it in. If anybody's really interested, it a nice thing to be inside something new and then suddenly find yourself back. Just fragments.

A: When Mike and I were listening to Wappinschaw for the first time, we started smiling a lot when we heard that music box again.

G: That's a Portuguese radio signal that we found around 1983 when we were looking for interesting sounds, as you do. Almost as it is, we looped it a bit. It's just this perfect sound. We wanted to use it on Camouflage Heart but we couldn't find anywhere for it to go. It just didn't seem to work. Which was right, since it was obviously meant to be on the next album, as it was. When we started rehearsing to play live in 1993, our guitarist's amplifier, almost every rehearsal, picked the same thing up, coming direct form Portugal. We hadn't heard it for 10 years. Then all of a sudden, following us like a ghost. It was there almost every time we rehearsed. It was like a fate. And we knew we had to go on, keep working. It sounds like a bollocks story, but it's actually true. It's gone now. But we only just needed it there then, as a guiding light as we got our shit together. We had tried to play live before and failed miserably. With personnel problems and financial problems and all sorts of things. But when that came on we just knew it was right, that we had to keep going. Now we can play live.

W: I asked about Cindytalk being played in techno clubs, how about a Bambule song making its way into a Cindytalk set?

G: It's happened already. We kind of surrendered our set to it. We stopped and went into techno, People didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. It was really weird. That's what we're all about. Few people expected Wappinschaw to end up with 10 minutes of bagpipes. We like to take people places they've never been before. The majority of people who hear our album will not have heard of Alisdair Gray, the Scottish writer, but we like to fuse these things into it. Things that inspire us. We do it because it's natural, but we know that by and large, when people listen to it, as they go from one track to another, they're going places. That's it. And then there's Cindytalk that's kind of in the middle and then to the left there's Bambule which is the techno side and to the right there's Macbeth which is acoustic-based. There was that track on Volume [5]. And we want to reactivate that and come up with simple song structures or maybe do some cover versions of other people's things. Just play. But what will happen is all of those ideas will go into Cindytalk. Although that will remain quite solid. We're not fad-based, we're not going techno because it's taking over the world. We're inspired by it, so we're not going to deny it. There was a Cindytalk gig recently entitled "Cindytalk meets DJ Terror Eyes". We had the dj playing all the way through our set. He just kept chucking beats in. That was fucking brilliant. It worked really well. Effectively, Terror Eyes is a part of Cindytalk, he is in the band. He's not every rehearsal , but he's involved, which is nice. It's a whole extra set of influences and ideas. It expands what we are and makes it all the better.

W: How often do you listen to Bambule for pleasure?

G: At the moment quite a lot. As much as I listen to anything else.

W: So Bambule is made specifically for clubs?

G: No. It's just a field. It can be anything. It doesn't even have to be beat-orientated. At the moment we want it to be, but it could be abstract noise or all sorts of things. And a couple other people in Cindytalk are doing something different. It's less techno-based, less straightforward. It's more experimental, where they almost improvise techno. And techno improvisation is quite a rare thing. But it works that way. You just put the machinery on and play with it.

W: Like early acid house.

G: I wasn't really into early acid house. I didn't like what I heard. It was too cold, possibly.

W: A coldness is kind of neat. It reminds me of the futurist bands and things.

G: That's what's pushed me away from that kind of music. And similar kinds of experimental music. It doesn't have much character for me. It seems to be people just fiddling with knobs and making funny bleeps and sounds. For me there has to be a little more human character in it. One of the reasons that Cindytalk appears to set itself apart from other things is that we've never been into any particular genre. We've never been specifically experimental, or industrial. We seem to straddle the whole area. People have difficulty placing us in record shops. They're not really sure where to stick us. We end up in strange places, and sometimes in the wrong places. And that's because no one really knows how to characterize us. I'm as likely to be influenced by Celtic folk music as I am by industrial noise. And not in the way that a lot of experimental goth music is going- in that folk element- it doesn't really work in that way. It's a purer thing. And I'm also as likely to be influenced by Patti Smith or Tom Waits, their lyrical, poetic senses. There's a warmth we try to bring to it. We're not satisfied just to make noise. We often make noise and then work above it and below it. We don't just leave the noise. It's our own way of doing things. The techno and experimental side only opens up for me when I can sense a kind of humour, a humanity inside it. Ultimately, it is machines, but it is people who are controlling the machines. They've got to add something of themselves to that, to make it work properly. If they don't, if they programme it, press it and leave it, then it leaves me by and large disinterested.

A: [On Cindytalk] Sometimes you use drums like drums- with a rhythm through the song, but sometimes they are more like melody- or they're gone and almost implicit- there's still a lot of rhythm even when it's a very abstract song. I don't know if that's a question.

G: Rhythm is subjective isn't it? It's how you perceive it. Something you can move and feel and sway and shift to.

Part Two:
Midnight to Sunrise
Annie and Gordon talk about Politics, Cinema, Music and Joy

A: How many people are in the band now?

G: Seven.

A: When did you start playing live again, in your new formation?

G: We began to rehearse with the purpose of playing live in the beginning of 1993. We played our first gig, under the name Lucinder, in December 1993. And we played 6 gigs under that name from December until March of 1994. We kept it quiet, and then at the end of that period, the last two gigs, we invited some people, to get some feedback. We were getting a good reaction, so we played our first show as Cindytalk, on the 16th of March, 1994. And we chose a smallish venue and tried to tell as many people as we could, expecting there not to be many people there, we'd been at the venue before and it was practicaly empty, so we weren't expecting too much. I hid in the dressing room until two or three minutes until it was time to go on stage and I came out of the dressing room and I practically couldn't get through the crowd, it was so packed. I was shocked. The atmosphere was electric. I could just feel it. I had been waiting 12 years for that moment, for Cindytalk to play live. Something in me had lost hope about it, didn't think it would happen. And so walking out, through the crowd that night, I know from my own point of view, I had been waiting 12 years, but I didn't expect to feel like a sizable portion of the crowd had been waiting that long too. It was just an electric atmosphere. It was incredible. It really effected a lot of people. It was really really special. I don't even know if I enjoyed it that much, because it was tense and so scary. But I know it was an important experience. I know it was really good. I wouldn't have liked to see it on video, or listen to it on tape, ever. It couldn't match the atmosphere I actually felt as it happened. Very special.

A: Can you talk a little about the cover art for Wappinschaw and the images that seem to go with it within the album itself?

G:The Wappinschaw is an old Scottish term for what was a twice yearly event, where the clan chieftan would come around the armies and inspect their personal weaponry. Inspect their claymores and their shields and things, and their spears to make sure they were in good order for when the rampaging foreigner would come along, whether it be another clan or generally the English, I suppose. That's what the Wappinschaw was. I wanted to play with that image, that idea. Originally, it was the whole band that was going to get to pick an object, a totem, something that they felt comfortable with, something that said something about them, whether it be domestic or a momenta, or whatever, just something connected. For me it would be poetic, didn't have to be for anybody else because it was from their perspective. With the fact that only three people followed the album through to the very end, I whittled down the objects to three and each object relates to a specific member of Cindytalk as a band on that album. Myself, drummer Paul Middleton and engineer, guitarist, sampler David Ros. The Feather on the front, which is an American bald eagle feather is mine. To me feather is very very special. For many reasons. It's not necessary to go into it, it just is. Obvious, and less obvious things. The eagle also happens to be a bird that is closely related to Scotland. Birds of prey. The hammer is something that David chose. Because basically he's a builder of sorts. He builds. So it's a simple symbol for him, something he does. Plus he was also allured by political connections, hammer feather. Hammer feather is something quite special to me anyways. I've always been keen on that and played with the idea of it reflecting life and how we see it. We're, as people, capable of violence and aggression and we're capable of being gentle, and sensitive and soft. Everybody is. By and large I don't feel that people use that within their art. They tend to find something beautiful and gentle or hard and abstract and go with that. They never mix, never play with all the areas between. And I do reflect that and therefore, and I was aware that we were as likely to bludgeon somebody as to carress them and therefore felt that hammer and feather was an interesting, if obvious (but that's irrelevant anyway) image. Inside the album cover is an African bell, which is again is a kind of obvious, well, not an obvious object because nobody knows what it is, but obvious in that it's a percussive thing and Paul was basically in countrol of the percussive side of things. Accepting also, that it looks unlike a percussive instrument. It's got a kind of abstraction, and a kind of harshness and a really strong beauty. And an interesting colour. I really like the colour, it's quite relevant to Cindytalk. A kind of rusty, muted reddy brown colour. I think that's quite nice. And texture-wise as well. That breaks down the objects. We thought, as a band, it would be nice to choose our objects, display our weaponry, our abilities, our ideas. Our weaponry is effectively our abilities, what we can do, that's what we fight with, that's what we play with. And hopefully it will connect on that level.

A: The feather comes back in the lyrics: flying and angels.

G: It's such an inherent, integral part of Cindytalk. It's just there. It's strange to mention an angel and not pick a whore. They're there side by side. It might have something to do with being interested in the feminine side of gender politics and things like that and hearing once the view that man can only see women as either angels or whores and thinking that's a very narrow view, which it is, but being strangely inspired by that negative reaction to those images and thinking there's a lot of truth in that, and trying to explore that, and finding myself in that situation. I don't even think they're opposites at all- they're put across as opposites- but for me, it's like everything else, it becomes opposites. When they get that far they touch. I think that's actually quite beautiful. I can see the negative, but I can also see the positive in it. Again, it's like hammer feather. And when I talk about hammer feather, I talk about angel whore at the same time. Hammer and feather caress, angel and whore together. It's playing with these things that are obvious yet not obvious at all. Hammer feather was quite good because during the celebrations for the lunar landing, one of the first things they did on the moon was, to show us gravity, they dropped a hammer and a feather and they dropped to the ground at the same time. Flying is just the best thing that we can't do. Or can. Depending on how you feel. Internally. Mentally. I'm flying constantly. All of us have flying dreams, but I fly daily. And when I sing, I fly. When I dance, I fly. And when I'm not flying I'm fluttering, and when I'm not fluttering, I'm falling. And when I'm falling, I fly. You have a choice. When you fall, you either crash to the ground, or sometimes, you swoop and fall and fly- it's about spirit. It's about the eagle who's turning shit into gold. Alchemy.

A: So, I notice you have a pile of books sitting by you there.

G: Don't look at the books. They're irrelevant, mere abstraction.

A: Ok. What's the influence of cinema on your music?

G: It's very large. We're as influenced by cinema and the structure of cinema, certain directors' work and certain visual aspects of cinema as we are influenced other music. I've basically structured the three main albums as I would have structured films. I can't include The Wind Is Strong because it is the soundtrack to a film, and that's a little bit different. In my head, in a sense, I'm a filmmaker as well. I make films in my head.

A: We were talking before about listening to The Wind Is Strong without ever seeing the film. It's interesting.

G: It's interesting as a by-product. I would prefer if people could see the film, but it's impossible to find.

A: What's interesting, having now seen the film, is how some of the sounds correlate with it directly, and some are interpretations of what's going on, and some relate only in abstraction or feeling- not as sound effects, unrelated to specific actions on film. How did you go about making this?

G: I made a decision early on, that we wanted to exaggerate some of the sounds that were being made, like putting a key in a lock, striking a match, to try to push those sounds out in front of us. Effectively, what is happening, because there is no dialogue, no spoken words between characters in the film, we decided to create the dialogue with sounds. Semi-ambient, semi-industrial kinds of sounds. Keeping an eye on the element of abstraction as well. But it was very instinctive. We had some fixed expectations and ideas, but we twisted and turned. It just seemed like a really natural process. It wasn't academic at all. There was also a lot of accident involved. We're just exploring. We see where it takes us. There's a certain amount of conviction that comes out of that.

A: Did you actually reproduce some of the sounds that the things in the film would have made in some cases while letting others be only interpretations of the real sound?

G: Yes. The question covers it.

[the film under discussion is: Eclipse subtitled The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide to Virus Deployment Gordon summarizes it as follows:]

It's about a character who secrets away in a building and effectively is playing with creating a virus and sending it off into the atmosphere- whether it be hijinks or bonafide scientific operation is neither explained or even relevant. It just is. It's just a moment. It may have a political point as well. The filmmaker is an activist in the area of animal rights and other areas connected to it...Being and doing is it, is what it's about, it doesn't really matter why or when or where or who, it's just the motion and the emotion and everything else is left to the individual to play with in their own heads, or even just enjoy.

A: Do you think you might ever have any children?

G: Yes. Very small ones though, to begin with.

A: So you think breeding is a good idea for humans?

G: I think it's important. I think it's fundamental. I think were not very good at it, in terms of looking at them. If you believe in the possibility of human life, of what it can do, the beauty it can create, then you have to be aware that the only hope it has for continuing that are to breed. The results of that breeding are ultimately to turn the earth into a better place to live. As long as we don't just make little versions of ourselves. We have to bring them up to be themselves- to change the world. We have to teach them all to fly. Actually, they can teach themselves, scratch that one. We can't teach them.

A: Some members of Cindytalk are quite young.

G: Four of them are between 20 and 23.

A: Tell me about your circle of friends that appear in Muster.

G: Well, Muster, in relation to the Wappinschaw, is an invocation of the spirits. Because I'm basically fucked off with the way our world is changing- in the opposite direction- and also pissed off at people's attitude, that they're not doing anything about it. And looking back over history, near and far and seeing how people with true soul and spirit and ideas and poetry try to reach out through their physical and artistic action to at least suggest change, in some instances to directly try to change things that might be forcing down upon them. That ranges from Ulrike Meinhof, terrorist...to Don Quixote de la Mancha who is the world's most wonderful cloud, who I am madly in love with. Each and every character is there for a reason. I wanted to find more women, and I looked really hard, but that was the wrong way to look at it, and I mention it because it's really quite important to me, it bothers me still. But I realized it would be very false of me to actively go and academically search for them- because that's not the same as being inspired by- they inspire me because they're there. They're just people who have some way affected me, in my life. I grew up always having some kind of oppositional attitude to things. As an adult too. It relates to anybody and anything that stands in a separate position instinctively, and creates their own space irrespective of the disruptions and destructions. So when feeling low, and in despair and wanting to conjure up ghosts, I think these are the ghosts I'd like to conjure up in spirit to come and galvanize people into thinking and acting and leaving behind apathy and trying to create beauty and ultimately joy. Because that's what we're after. Joy is the key.

A: What do you mean by apathy?

G: People not being prepared to fight for what they believe in. Not realizing that the world is going in the opposite direction- and losing touch with their souls. It has nothing to do with technology. Because we can shine through that very very easily. That's just a smokescreen for those who don't know what they're talking about. We're losing it because there are so many distractions. But you don't need to be distracted, you can shine. You can use all these distractions as tools or as torches with which to shine. People don't. They just slouch and sit back and except change as inevitable. Whether that be in this country, politically, because things are just going down, down, down, down- the corrosion of rights, or because of market forces, television programmes are getting worse and worse and worse. They're cheaply made, and they don't do them properly because they can't afford to do them properly- and it's easier to do crap game shows anyway. And people just go: [makes funny face at television]. People just aren't bothering. Seeing the rise of fascism in this country and not bothering because they are too lazy.

A: What should people be doing about it?

G: Think and act and talk and shine and fly and move.

A: Do you then have the same respect for someone who ceases to be apathetic through creating? Someone who just moves forward positively with their own thing rather than going out to political protests and all?

G: Probably more. I'm not a great one for protests. I'm not sure marching around with a banner does that much. It's better to do it than to not do it, because at least it's doing something. And at least, in the Muster sense, in the Wappinschaw sense, that is what I'm talking about. I have a deep respect, and a deep skepticism, of people who take it one step further, into direct action, whether that be direct action in the connotation of protest- and I don't mean just marching about- I mean actually physically doing something. We had a prime minister in this country called Margaret Thatcher who said civil disobedience must never be allowed. If she couldn't draw a direct correlation between civil disobedience and her being in power, than she must have been a very very stupid woman. I know that intellectually she wasn't stupid. She just had the wrong politics. Politics that would allow for her to accept the possibility, and the inevitability of civil disobedience and change. So, I have a very high respect for those who do that. But I have an equal respect for those who don't. Those who do not want to lie down in front of horses and trucks taking live animals into the continent of Europe as they are doing right now, in England, I have an equal respect for those people who don't want to do that, whose way of doing it is through communication- doing what I do, and what similar people do, which is to write and create and imbue your work with the spirit of revolution and the spirit of change, and the spirit of those who before us have done the same.

A: What's it like to live here in England these days?

G: It's scary. And it's getting scarier. I've been thinking about this lately, because I'd like to emigrate. I'd like to leave. I don't feel connected to the country at all. I realized recently that I've never been inspired by London musically. I like, at the moment, a couple of techno clubs, and find inspiration from them- and a couple pirate radio stations. But that's not really enough to justify living in a big city like London. I'm sure I could find something like that elsewhere. London is merely the backdrop for where we live. And it's not even a very pleasant backdrop. I think it's a city where people have just given in, given in to circumstance. There used to a city government, the GLC, the Greater London Council. It was the body beyond the government that controlled the transport and organized artistic activities and all sorts of things in London. But Margaret Thatcher, in her infinite ignorance, decided to abolish it because basically it got in her way. So she literally took it a way and left London to be one of the few capital cities, definitely in Europe, probably the world, that doesn't have any kind of body to take care of certain things that people need. It's all done through central government- who are guarding our money and fucking eating it or whatever they do. So, that happened, and basically nobody did anything about it. Nobody fought back. That's what living in London's like, nobody gives a shit. We've recently had the Criminal Justice Act through which means the police have various powers. They can basically stop you from having a party, a rave, they can stop you from demonstrating, for marching for or against something- they're bringing in laws through the Criminal Justice Act to make squatting illegal. [Annie: The first night i was in England, Gordon and Waxy and I and some other Cindytalk people and friends were randomly stopped by the cops on our way to a rave. We'd broken no traffic laws, done nothing wrong, but this big police van trailed us and when we stopped cops got out and shined bright torches on us and were extremely threatening and hostile and strip-searched the males amongst us and were thoroughly rude and ludicrous. My first experience of facism first-head and such a welcoming start for my English holiday...] Ultimately, it is an act against sub-culture. It's intention is to try and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze sub-culture out of existence. It's just not possible, but that's the intention. A number of us went on the last major demonstration which occurred. As we were beginning the march, we heard a tourist, an American tourist I think, asking a policeman what the demonstration was about, and the policeman said something like: oh, don't worry it's just the great unwashed marching against nothing. He basically dismissed everybody who was on that march as being unclean. It's a figure of speech, for sure, but it still has meaning- we're the great unwashed because we look different, because our lives our different, we create things that they don't understand. And therefore we're marginalized. And every single one of these laws that are coming in, in Britain are directed at the destruction of sub-culture. [Gordon, who has been watching the tv with the sound off throughout, suddenly gets excited:] VIDEO FASHION! my favorite subject! Can we talk about clothes instead of politics please? I want to talk about babydolls and wedding dresses. Much more interesting than bloody politics.

[For another half hour or so we talk about tv and other sundries. Eventually, Gordon starts asking me questions....]

G: Did you have any vague visualization or even thoughts of sexuality or gender in our music? Did it strike you as relevant?

A: Yeah. I think a lot of the songs have blatantly sexual imagery in them. And even though, in terms of my personality, i'm more likely to shy away from things like that, it somehow appealed to me. It seemed somehow very scary and completely safe at the same time. In terms of gender, i think, i move in circles where it's not that much of an issue. Some people are gay, some people aren't, some people cross-dress, some people don't....i don't differentiate that much. I'm more like to react in a reverse to usual way and be happy for people if they find something new and interesting to do with their sexuality. The boys i know that cross-dress...i'm likely to help them find clothes, i think it's exciting and appealing. From your music and images I didn't really know what was going on with you, but i suppose i was intrigued if anything. The only definitive thought the photos in the albums made me have was about what pretty photos they were.

G: During the Camouflage Heart times and after, we used to receive virtually no communications from women. Absolutely none. Nothing, dead. And still, for every thirty or forty letters we receive, only one is female.

A: If i can make a generalization, i think that might have to do with women's tendency not to write fan letters.

G: Presumably that would be across the board though.

A: No, in terms of people i know, the boys tend to be more...

G: Trainspottery?

A: exactly.

G: But we also had male friends who liked the music and their girlfriends couldn't stand it. Somebody's girlfriend or sister or someone said that it's just not music that women would listen to, it's too macho. But I can't think of music that's less macho. Even music made by women. To me, it just can't be macho. It can be violent, it can be aggressive, but macho is different. Macho is a celebration of maleness and there's just none of that in there.

A: I don't really understand how music can have a gender.

G: I don't really either. I can't write from a female perspective, I can't sing perspective. It's just not possible. I sing from purely a personal perspective. So technically, and biologically, it's from a male perspective but more maybe it's transgender. Not transexual, because that's when you physically change you're sex, and I have no intention of doing that, well, maybe if it wasn't so painful, and maybe if I could just press a button and be female, I would do it, immediately. I guess then I do probably have some transexuality inside me, because I make that choice, definitely, and would then, for the first time in my life be able to begin a song from the joyous perspective. But, transgender, that's someone who plays with gender roles, and I do that daily.

A: It's more taboo for biological men to do that than women. I see both aspects in myself, and i don't think it's weird. It's harder for men, because of society and conditioning, blah blah blah to cross those lines. I can wear trousers and it's nothing. When men wear skirts, it's something. It's totally society, not reality, as far as i'm concerned.

G: Somebody said to me, it's not an issue anymore, it's mainstream. Evan Dando or Kurt Cobain put on a dress and go on stage and that makes it mainsteam? It doesn't, it just makes it trendy. And people go: look, they're getting in touch with their feminine side. Bollocks. That's not mainstream. Mainstream is when people do it in every day life, and not as an act, not as if you're in show business, but taking your dog for a walk and going to the shops. I do that and it's still a fucking issue. When I do that, when the female side of me is more apparent, whenever it is, people tend to see a quite strong change in me. There isn't really, I'm not acting differently, but there is a glow that won't be here now. I think I do become more alive in those situations. As if the reality that exists within me is being allowed to communicate itself. It does come across as a very natural thing. People say: oh, I've done that, I've dated that. They do it sometimes as a gimmick. With me, it's not a phase. I'm well into manhood, but I still celebrate it, and I'm not going to turn back, I'm going to go foreward.

Reprinted with permission.