James Saunders

This is the interview I did with Phill in 2007. I rang him from Huddersfield using the biggest piece of conference call technology I’ve seen – completely preposterous corporate boardroom style. As with all the interviews, I wanted to know more about how Phill worked, and in his case in particular I was curious about the decisions he made as well as the technical process. I’d met him for the first time in Ostrava in 2001. Bryn Harrison, Tim Parkinson and I soaked up a morning (Niblock in the morning!) of non-stop 115 dB and then dragged Phill into a lecture room and made him tell us about it. I think he was a little reticent over talking about his work then, but seems to have developed more of an appetite to discuss it since. It’s been great to catch up with Phill on and off since then, either as part of his annual travels across Europe, or when John and I visited him in his loft for a performance in 2009. Hearing his work in that space was a wonderful experience, compromised only by one of the audience members turning up wearing only trainers.