Interview with Anthony Osborne

1. How did it all begin. What was your way towards making music? My first experience was as a teenager in a punk band - punk was what first inspired me to make my own music, that opened up the possibility of making music. It was very basic stuff, I played guitar, badly, and sung, very badly. We never performed live, we were literally a garage band. Around 1980, an interest in No Wave introduced me to musicians such as James Chance and Ted Milton, who were making a racket on the saxophone, and it sounded good to me. I bought a cheap sax and my punk band broke up due to musical differences, to put it mildly. 2. How do you feel about reed instruments as a personal way to express yourself? Why sax? The saxophone was the first instrument that I made a sound with that was close to what I wanted to do - although I had enjoyed guitar, I never really felt I was doing anything that exciting. The sax just felt more natural to me. It feels very personal, my breath animates the thing, what comes out is a direct extension of my physicality. It is a stubborn instrument, some days it flows, some days nothing comes. It remains the sound that I hear in my head, when I think about music, the platonic ideal of what music I wish to create. 3. What bought you musically towards improvised music? That would connect very much with the previous question, and my answer. When I first began exploring sax, and listening to sax players, free jazz seemed very much the sort of music I was drawn to. I could see parallels with the bands I loved very much, the Velvet Underground for example. There was a sort of tone, an imaginary chord, that I dreamt of. The sound, the tone, that Albert Ayler or John Coltrane had just seemed to me to be very beautiful, human sounds and, also, were achieved most fully during the completely improvised sections. I had had very little experience of improvisation before, really, and learnt it was a whole other universe of sound and way of thinking. It seemed very conducive to how I thought about music. 4. What's your recipe or a formula towards creating an interesting improvised piece? If I'm playing solo at home, whether recording or not, I may occasionally have a phrase in mind, a few notes, but usually it is a case of starting and seeing where it takes me. Every time, the air, the atmosphere is different, and the way I respond is different. It is the process that interests me. I do have a kind of sonic architecture in mind when playing, of creating something with a definite if improvised form. I believe very much in chance, in spontaneity. If I'm playing live, I more often than not play with other musicians so there it is a case of listening to the others, and trying to move with some common purpose. The venue I play at most often is organised by a very interesting musician who always stresses we are not there to jam, but to attempt spontaneous composition. This is an approach I very much like. 5. These times are very difficult for musicians. What's the idea of a healthy wellbeing of being one and how has it changed over the years for you? Have you had temptations to become a fully-fledged pro? I think the healthiest mode of living for a musician is to trust in music and believe in it - you need to believe in what you do, and despite discouragement, stick to your guns. This will sound like Utopian thinking, but I believe music, sound, is the vibration that unites the universe. A living thing. In purely practical terms, I was, for a long time, able to practice and make music without needing to worry about employment. I was in a domestic situation that allowed me immense freedom. That has now changed, and the stability I took for granted, perhaps, is gone - so my situation is much more precarious. I have money worries, I'm having to find a new place to live, everything is very precarious - althiugh throughout a period of immense upheaval I have continued to make music and actually get out and play more. I would very much like to be a self-supporting musician, to generate enough income to survive solely as a musician, while at the same time recognising that the music I make, which is loud, often discordant free jazz and low-fi electronics, is a very niche art. It is defiantly non-commercial. 6. What inspires you outside the world of music when it comes to literature? I am a great admirer of James Joyce, who is an author who seems to appeal to musicians - his books were organised along musical rather than narrative models, they are quite operatic. His work seems very conducive to artists from the avant-garde, of any medium, in its determination to find new forms and new procedures, to strike out for the frontier. And as an artist he is a great inspiration - someone who had to fight to be published, who faced enormous hostility and censorship, who experienced extreme poverty and a great many setbacks but whose dedication to his art never faltered. 7. Plans for the future. I want to achieve some kind of stability in my personal and emotional life, and indeed practical concerns like living space and income, to allow me the freedom and security, and time and peace of mind, to keep creating - yes, I'm asking for the Moon! I want to play live more, I want better recording opportunities. I want to meet and interact with more musicians - on a good night when things are flowing well and you believe you have achieved some kind of communication with others in the music, it is a magical feeling. I just want to keep playing, and hopefully improving.

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