ambient sound, with the work from Javier Lopez Gallery in 1995 that recorded the private sounds of the gallery, including the toilet and the director’s telephone, and transported them to the public part of the gallery through an amplifier. MC Yeah. In both cases – with the guitar or the gallery – it is a matter of trying to just let things be. One of my favourite quotes that relates to this is from Michelangelo who said he thought that a sculpture was already in the marble it was just a matter of trying to find it. AC I’ve heard that too. I wonder if he really said it – or whether it was someone in the sculpture department at the Slade in the 1950s and just got passed along. MC If it was Michelangelo, he must have intended it as a kind of fake modesty. But I don’t mind why he said it, I just like it and I think it relates to what I do. AC Right. One of your early songs, ‘Circle,’ establishes a literal relationship between your music and your art because its hilarious lyrics are actually about the artworld. The lyrics go: ‘Stephen Willats thought that Art & Language were ripping him off Art & Language thought that Joseph Kosuth was ripping them off Joseth Kosuth thought that Lawrence Wiener was ripping him off on a recent trip to London Lawrence Wiener saw a show by Stephen Willats he said, “Fuck me this guy’s ripping me off.”’ MC Aye, that was me trying to do a collaboration with Patrick Brill from Bob and Roberta Smith. Patrick wrote those words and I liked them so I wrote music to accompany them. We performed it a couple of times together with him singing but after that I always sang it. AC It’s an interesting one because the song structure and even the precise sound of the rhythm driving the song is cyclical. It repeats itself over and over again – making the lyrics increasingly hilarious as they are repeated. MC I always enjoyed playing that piece. Even though they are not my words, I was one hundred per cent behind it. AC Now that you have dissolved the band name, and with it the concept of a band, it places more emphasis on you as a figure. Where many musicians and artists hide behind the screen of what they do, you stand in front of it. I would have thought that this would help – in the most obvious sense – critics see the two activities as part of one continuous form of practice, but it doesn’t seem to have. Some people still don’t seem to get it. MC Doing gigs under my own name now I think makes it easier because there is no confusion about what I’m doing. But I still get asked whether the music is different to the sculptural work. In response I always say no – no, it isn’t! Doing a gig 39
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