Tom Jenkinson

I'm always pleased with my work. Absolutely.

Because there's so much stuff I don't release.

Because, when I'm making music, I don't think about anything, you know? All I think about is what I want to hear. So that for me is what I want - I want my head to be constantly being rearranged.

But I always communicate with the audience. I never pretend like I'm just in my bedroom making a track. The whole point of doing a gig is, like, a feedback thing between you and the audience.

But I don't really listen to much be-bop at all at the moment.

Doing something like that, quite radically changing your approach to sound in one go, could leave you high and dry. It's happened before where people have changed direction and then everyone's stopped liking their music.

I couldn't find a group that wanted to do what I wanted to do. No one was really up for it.

I don't know how many records I'm selling.

I don't know that the best way to approach it is to try and keep up. When you're doing that, you're setting yourself into a one-dimensional sort of race basically.

I have a rough idea when I walk into a studio though.

I like my stuff 'cause I only ever end up with tracks that I really, really like. It always appeals to me.

I love traveling. I love just going about on my own, feeling I have no roots.

I make music to generate atmospheres, not to complement already existing ones.

I think the best way is to forget about racing people and just find territory that's fresh.

I was starting to feel really suffocated, using the sequencer.

I'd say that it's important for music to be there that gives you a challenge, that rearranges things in your head.

Yeah, my drum programming especially is based on my knowledge of playing a drum kit. For the bass too, definitely. It was the first thing that I translated any sort of ideas through. It must have shaped it somehow.

I'm basically a musician.

I'm into music for all different sorts of purposes.

I'm not that interested in what people make of it, or how people consider me. That's nothing to do with me.

I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar.

I've never really been that much of a fan of Ninja Tune.

It's important for that to exist in a society that doesn't present you with any genuine problems.

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing.

My history is really playing live - not writing or recording.