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Emmerald: Have you had any formal musical training?
Somatik: That's a long story. Music has been there from the beginning, really. I started piano lessons at the age of 4, did all my grades before I left school, and learned a few other instruments during that period. I learned classical guitar and clarinet through proper lessons and electric guitar, drums, and bass guitar 'in my own time' by watching old rock concerts on video.


After A-levels, I went to college in Manchester where I did a degree in 'Popular Music and Recording.' That was a wicked course, though I'm not sure the degree version is still running. We were only the second year to actually sit the course. It was great, they taught you the whole range from composition and arranging, performance, studio technology, and even history of popular music from ragtime and blues right through to rave which was just kicking off while I was there. They had some great teachers there and some incredibly well-planned components to the course like Latin American Percussion in the first year with this serious session player called Dave Hassel. He took us right back to the African Bell Pattern, and eventually had us samba-ing up and down one of the lecture rooms in the dark. One of the other wickedest components was improvisation with Jan Kopinski (he used to play with John Zorn and had his own ridiculously dope band called Pinksi Zoo). It was a proper breeding ground for mad musicians and by mixing up players, writers and tech-heads from all walks of popular music we all totally broadened our horizons.

That was the 'formal' bit anyway, from there it's all been about learning from experiences.

Emmerald: It seems to me that there are a lot of non-musicians out there making music now. I reckon that's easy to do because there are so many different kinds of software available that make musicmaking a 1-2 step that anyone can do. Do you think that music quality suffers because of the availability of the technology? That is, you don't necessarily have to know how to play piano or guitar or anything to make a song. Does having training on an instrument makes a difference in the quality of music?
Somatik: Training in music or computers or whatever can obviously help when it comes to realising your ideas, but I don't think it affects the 'quality.' It's an individual thing ? everyone I know who makes music does it in different ways, and that's what keeps it interesting. If we were all trained in the same way, learning the same system then I'm sure the range of music out there would be diluted. Even the way people use software is different. Logic is my program of choice, but sometimes I see someone else's computer and I don't even recognise Logic 'cos they've got it set up in some mad different way. At the end of the day it's all about ideas and seeing them through with focused conviction. I think it's great that there are all these new programs out there ? it's giving people a chance to experiment when before they would never have tried. Sure, it is bound to mean that there are zillions more people 'having a go,' and yeah you gotta sift through tons of nonsense to find something good most of the time, but the creative possibilities which have arisen due to the new generation of software are awesome. I do sometimes think it's sad that when there are such crazily powerful tools now available, the so-called 'mainstream' music artists have started to sound so manufactured and formulaic. But I guess that whole concept goes beyond music and into marketing and business... I don't go there!! Anyway, I just got two of my foster sisters on Logic and they're LOVING it! Our household can get kinda noisy.

Emmerald: How did the Visioneers project come about? What is the idea behind that project? What's its future?
Somatik: Really it was about Marc, myself and Luke (Parkhouse) wanting to jam in the studio and make some recordings we normally wouldn't have the outlet to make. Marc had a vision for the Omniverse label, and we started recording totally free-styled music for it without really consolidating the 'artist' or project name at first. It definitely started as a real 'freedom' sort of thing. But very quickly we could see where it was going, and since then we've been building a catalogue of material. It's a chance for us to be experimental in a live-playing kind of way, based on the feel of some of the jams we used to have at Dollis Hill, and growing out of the close musical connection the three of us have. Some of it is out there already on the Omniverse 7"s, and some of it isn't yet. We've recently been working hard to finish an album off, but I won't say any more than that. Except "WATCH OUT"!!!! Soon come.