...from the interview with Jon Wozencroft
by Barry Nichols

...I was obviously inspired by punk, as were most people of my age. When I was at University, I had known Andrew (McKenzie), who was one of the few people I met at that time who understood its ramifications implicitly. I was involved in promoting concerts at University which brought me into contact with a lot of music biz types, and you would think that the obvious points of contact were there, but no. Andrew was 15 and working illegally as a shrink-wrapper at the Virgin Megastore in Newcastle, where I used to hover about with promotional posters, on the look-out for strange items. We shared similar tastes in music - Pink Flag, Metal Box, The Scream, Cabaret Voltaire etcetera - which might seem obvious now, but not in the North East in 1977/78. Heavy Metal was what real men listened to. Punk was just about OK, as long as it was Stiff Little Fingers!

At the time, we were both frequent tapers of John Peel sessions and we'd make swaps. I knew Andrew was involved in tape experiments of his own - Ben Ponton, now of Soviet France, used to work on the singles counter there, and they used to bash it out in their bedrooms. Andrew also had his own band, Flesh, who ended up supporting The Clash at the Mayfair. The Clash crowd in Newcastle were like Reservoir Dogs with bad haircuts; their previous concert at the Poly had caused a riot, Richard Hell got a bottle in his face - that sort of audience reaction was quite common. Anyway, when I left University and went back down to London and the LCP, we kept in touch. Soon after, Andrew got fitted up by Virgin on some trumped-up charge which culminated in him getting compensation for unfair dismissal and enough of a pay-off to buy a 4-track tape recorder....

...Anything was game: I sent Andrew absurd items on Survivalists or professors talking about drug abuse, he matched it against Molly Sugden or a noise made by some tapelooped tenth of a second. One thing Punk musics had largely overlooked was the possibilities inherent in Steve Reich's 'Come Out'. Do you know that one? "...open the bruise blood to come out to show dem to come out to show dem...". Andrew did one with the line "It's almost nothing you just hardly can see it" - repeat that to yourself 50 times and you'll see what I mean. There's a lot of strange humour involved.

...It makes me laugh when people say '"there are too many Hafler Trio releases" - it's a bit like making a blueprint and then accusing the builder of using too many bricks. People don't get it. The Hafler Trio is not a group that puts out its new album once a year. Why can't music, or more accurately sonic information, be published, even as if it were a daily newspaper? Imagine - you don't read about the situation in Bosnia, you hear it. There's a recipe for instant revolution. People would know.

...One of the things about The Hafler Trio that people rarely get is that they are conjurors - here's the rabbit, oh look, where did the rabbit go? Ignotum per Ignotius is a serious joke. It's not a con-trick, as some people have thought. It's about illusions, perceptions, energy. Reviewers are worried that they might look stupid. So what do they do?
Ignore it?
Exactly.

...As Gurdjieff rightly said, art is not for liking. Or shouldn't be, exclusively. Sometimes I really don't "like" it: for instance, some of the things that The Hafler Trio have done I think are brilliant, but I don't immediately like them. How could anybody say they "liked" Picasso's 'Guernica'? Would you listen to Xenakis while you're having your dinner?

...Andrew could write a book on each and everything that he's put out. The best state to be in is one not of unthinking, but one where you just don't have to think, and you follow your intuition. We all tend to think too much, or too rarely as the case may be.

...The thing is - it's impossible to imitate. You take the surface off it and say "well, I'll copy that idea" or "like the recordings The Hafler Trio make, so I'll have a go myself, it sounds a bit like traffic noise" but not what lies behind it, it's impossible. So it's like a carefully prepared set of circumstances with the random factor built in.