I'd been collecting different ethnic instruments here and there, and then I started making little bell type stuff, looking for weird little sound toys.

It's really hard to find materials. Also, prices of metal have gone completely through the roof, insanely expensive. And if you go to a dictionary and look up starving artist, you'll see my picture.

Every once in a while I'll find a new way of playing something, it will suggest itself. But generally speaking, there's a set sonic potential, and that's in concert with a set instrumental technique.

The majority of my training was as a drummer, and drummers are basically accompanists.

You have to be loose enough so that when you listen to what's coming, you can follow it. In that sense I am improvising, but I don't think I'm experimenting. I have a problem with the whole term "experimental music."

When I was playing with synth players, I was still within a conceptual framework of playing music. When I started playing solo, I became much more aware of the acoustic phenomena that the instruments were producing.

In L.A., I called every scrap yard and surplus place that was listed, about 50 or 60 places, and only at one of them did the owner get intrigued and let me go around the yard to find stuff. Because the insurance regulations are such that you can't go into the places anymore.