Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish.

The trouble begins with a design philosophy that equates 'more options' with 'greater freedom.'

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

I think audiences are quite comfortable watching something coming into being.

Of all the things you can now do, which do you choose to do?

A studio is an absolute labyrinth of possibilities - this is why records take so long to make because there are millions of permutations of things you can do. The most useful thing you can do is to get rid of some of those options before you start

I'd rather hold one note for an hour and modulate it so that it means something than play 3,000 notes in 15 seconds.