“I don’t really like being on stage, y’know?”

I saw some footage of you doing a live set at Sonar (yearly festival in Barcelona). How have you found the transition from making music in your bedroom to being on stage?

Hmm…depends really. At Sonar it was fun, it was a really big crowd and I’d been there for four days so I wasn’t nervous or anything. I don’t really like being on stage, y’know? I prefer being in a dark club in the corner. At Sonar they’re more open to it [electronic music performance], they’re not expecting you to get up there with a guitar, they are used to people with laptops on stage. But sometimes you get people standing there, just like (pulls face of bemused disapproval).

In a recent interview you said something interesting - ‘Making music is a pleasurable experience for me, but releasing it into the world isn’t’. What were you referring to?

(Laughs) It’s just like, when the label says “Ok we’ve got all the tracks now, we just need the final mixdowns and stuff”- it’s releasing this thing you’ve been working on, and deciding it’s the final version, this is it. It’s quite fun working towards the album, but it’s hard knowing that that’ll be it forever when you’ve submitted it.

Do you find it easy to be objective about your music when you’ve written it? Do you send any demos out to friends for feedback?

Only after giving it a bit of time. There’s three or four people I send things to. They’re probably quite annoyed with me, ‘cos I’ll send them twenty different versions of the same track. It’s quite a good way of getting a track finished. Once you’ve mixed it down and sent the final mp3 to someone, it’s another stage in the process.

You said you’re not much of a hardware man, but your sound has a lot of analogue warmth to it. How have you achieved that?

Yeah….I dunno, it’s just working with sounds until I’m happy with them, just recording stuff in really quietly and making it a lot louder in the computer (laughs). Layering stuff up as well, having lots of noises in there…just doing the work really. I don’t really like it when you listen to someone else’s track and you can recognise the plug-in or effect, I like it when there’s a bit of mystery.

You went to the Red Bull Music Academy in Barcelona. What did you take away from it?

It was amazing. I got to use a lot of equipment I’ve never used before- lots of Korgs and stuff. I came back with loads of equipment I wanted to buy, but I just got back into my little Dell laptop world (laughs). But it was more about the contacts I made really. I’m still involved with them and they were the guys that got me into Sonar. They keep you in the loop, it’s really good, it’s like you’re part of the family once you’ve been there. I went to Sonar, went to Oxygen in Ireland through them, and they have barbeques in London that the other participants go to.

Was it music 24/7 at the academy?

Yeah, and…drinking….There was no sleep. You’d go in, have lectures, then you’d be in the studio, then out to a club. Then back to the hotel for two hours sleep.