9. Spiritualized Electric Mainline Pure Phase Tones For D.J.’s
I’m fortunate enough to know Jason [Pierce]. On a kraut tip, ‘Electric Mainline’ was a big song for me. There’s a live album version of it that blows your head off. I loved that album [Pure Phase], but I was much more impressed with the version of the record that was these phase tones. It was a tone set to the song and the Hz were listed and you could play it at 45rpm. It was genius. I was so in heaven. An album of tones! It’s a constant inspiration. I have a plug-in-the-wall drone machine at home that I sometimes leave on for three months. You get a good drone going and you leave it for a while.
We worked with this guy called Dr Subramaniam on Scorpio Rising – he did all the string arrangements. At the time I was going to India a lot because I’d twisted my spine, so I was having ayurvedic treatment because I found it really worked. During that time I got really into traditional Indian music and that was when I discovered Dr Subramaniam’s stuff. We got to work with him and he used an electronic tanpura. So he’d get his drone going and then build up the orchestra around it. It was unbelievable to watch the way he was working. When I was out in India me and a couple of my mates got these drone machines, battery-powered ones, and we were on a boat trip with three different drones going on, different octaves… It was amazing. One of my mates still phones me up to give me a little blast of what his drone’s doing in his house.
