Robert Ashley - Improvement

This one is special to me because I listened to it as a kid. My dad had it on CD, I still have his copies. I remember the first time he showed it to me. I found it so ugly because the aesthetic of it and the voice, I found terrifying. I also don’t think I was understanding what was said at the time that much. So for me, it was just adults talking.

Sometimes, there are things that you see artistically that stick to your mind, even if you don’t like it. I think it had a blueprint on my mind. Fifteen years later, I rediscovered it, and I found it so extraordinary. Everything: the development, the fact there are so many paths, with not so long tracks, the story.

It’s an opera for television which I love, because it’s smart, but it’s also very open to everyone. And I love the Radiophonic Workshop. I would love to do a TV opera. Today, TV wouldn’t work, but I don’t know – an Internet opera? That’s an idea…

I remember seeing you used to listen to it weekly. Is this still true?

No, not anymore, but I think about it. Especially with the extract, ‘The Airplane Ticket’, I always ask myself [sings]: “Do you have the ticket? Yes!”

There is humour in his music. And the distance he can have with himself, this kind of irony and at the same time very profound thoughts, that’s something that I find so difficult to find in music: irony in a good way. Not cynicism, but real irony. And humour is something of spirit, and is something that I find really interesting in music – and very rare.