4. Harry Bertoia

JM: I suppose you could use the term renaissance man here. He’s mainly known as a furniture designer, and he made a lot of that mid century modern style, sculptural furniture. But he also made sound sculptures, and made ambient music with them. I picked up a set of 11 records – I didn’t even know who he was, but I did recognise the name. I picked these up in America – it must have been about 30 years ago now. They were very cheap at the time – they cost me about 99c each, still sealed. They predate Eno, they predate a lot of those ambient artists, and they’re wonderful. I had a particular interest anyway, having been to art college. I liked this guy called Jean Tinguely as well and various other bods that used to make sculptures. Some people call it classical, some people call it experimental. I collected records that artists had put out. so now I have several albums by Salvador Dali, Le Corbusier. In most cases, these records are just talking. Some artists made musical albums, or worked with other artist but in most cases, especially with Dali, it’s basically classical music in the background with him ranting in French over the top. I’ve got Henry Moore talking about his work. I loved spoken word records, but back in the day, they weren’t really collected. People didn’t really want 20 minutes of a dog barking. A record like that was supposed to work as a form of security, as a way to make people think that there was a dog in the house when you go out.

The Quietus Digest