System 7's Steve Hilllage on Derrick May and George W Bush

Vastly experienced musically and politically conscious since his early years of playing guitar with proto hippy/ ambient 70s gurus Gong, Steve Hillage has always been an unusually thoughtful musician, living his life through music for almost 30 years. Remaining at the cutting, experimental edge throughout his career, he's become rightly recognised over time as a serious pioneer of electronic music and rave culture, finding support and respect from fellow latterday pioneers including Alex 'The Orb' Patterson and Detroit's mighty Derrick May.

Alongside Derrick May and his long term partner Miquette, he recently released System 7's Mysterious Traveller, a compilation of joint productions from the last ten years. Unsurprisingly, techno and progressive house in style (System 7 remain leading producers of ambient tinged house and techno) the album's a rare and much anticipated beast, since Derrick May's produced so little else during the same period. Skrufff's Jonty Adderley asked the questions.


Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): What kind of reaction has Mysterious Traveller had so far-

System 7 (Steve Hillage): "It's been really positive so far and I must say I'm really happy with the album; I think it's a fine piece of work, musically speaking. The way we've integrated the old tracks with the new mixes has worked well and I think it was an inspired idea to stick (Derrick May's) Icon on the album. We were originally hoping to get Derrick over to do another track but it was difficult to arrange and in fact, it was following discussions with him that we decided to stick Icon on; it's a bit of extra Derrick."

Skrufff: Derrick May is a producer in his own right as are you two in System 7; how do you physically work together-

System 7: "In the past, we've just basically met in a studio somewhere and started working. He has a million ideas a minute and I'm pretty good at recording them and fixing them down. I think one of the reasons he hasn't produced so much music in recent years is because his creative mind goes faster than his ability to capture stuff. I'm able to catch the ideas he has and turn them into tracks and that's basically how we made these tracks."

Skrufff: So, is he presumably saying things like 'I want a dark sounding, strings based section here..-

System 7: "He just grabs a keyboard and does it. It's just a matter of getting into a recording situation quickly enough to capture him before he moves on to the next bit. Derrick's completely unique and completely special. I suppose everybody is in their own way but he's particularly so."

Skrufff: Paul Oakenfold recently suggested that negativity from dance magazines could seriously damage dance culture, how do you see the state of dance music right now-

System 7: "It's in a constant state of flux, though I think the heavy glossy superclub media approach is reaching a point of decline but that doesn't mean the music's arriving at a point of decline. People still like partying and dancing and sounds coming out of really good sound systems and it's hard to do that with rock & roll. Some aspects of R&B and hip hop are definitely picking up on some of the dance music techniques and taking their sound to a different place but that's more about a confluence of ideas. Missy Elliot had a recent hit, for example, with a Basement Jaxx mix."

Skrufff: How much attention do you pay to other producers generally-

System 7: "I've become a big fan of Timbaland and I keep finding really interesting R&B and hip hop tracks on the radio, loads of which are done by him. I listen to Kiss FM a lot, and have done for years. They've got a very strange playlist with some great shows in the night. I like DJ Hype and John Digweed's shows in particular but in the daytime they have a really strange list, though every so often something special jumps out. I prefer Kiss to Radio 1 because Radio 1 people keep talking all the time, I want to hear music (chuckling)."

Skrufff: The l Tags

• steve hillage
• system 7
• derrick may