How did you meet Gary Numan, and what is your working relationship like?
We met through a mutual friend 15 or 20 years ago. I had quite an established career as a DJ, playing the DJ circuit, and had a couple of techno labels. I always loved listening to music, going back to Cabaret Voltaire and all sorts of weird music. I hadn't thought at the time to make non-dance music. I started making tracks and playing them for Gary. I think he probably expected it to be crap. He didn't get what I was doing in the techno world at all, but he quite liked these. When he was writing his album Jagged, he had me produce one of his tracks. He ended up really liking it; he signed me up for the album, and we've worked together ever since. We have a fantastic personal and professional relationship. I guess with people who work together as friends it sometimes gets in the way, but it actually helps that he trusts me personally and professionally, and likewise. He knows that if I have a problem with something, or if he has a problem, we'll go with whatever is best for the album or track we're doing. It just works. A couple of years ago we had a little bit of a break with one another because I was working on a project. When we got back together for Savage, we both felt like it might be tough to get back into the swing of things, but it was just ridiculous. From day one it was fantastic. We spend very little time in the studio together. One of the main reasons is because he's in Los Angeles and I'm in the UK, but with technology the way it is now, we'd be swapping arrangements in real time with high-speed internet. We'd use FaceTime, Dropbox, and figure out in two minutes if we liked something or not. It really is like being in the studio together. We got together for the final two weeks of the album to tweak and keep on improving it, but most of the time we actually did work remotely.
Do you prefer to work in isolation in the beginning?
