Robin Storey will probably be best known to you as key-member of the legendary collective ZOVIET*FRANCE, who were the pioneers of isolationist music. In 1992 he left the band to found his solo project RAPOON. Five CDs have been released so far, of which "The Kirghiz Light" is the most recent one; a marvellous double album combining both the ambient atmospheres of "Raising Earthly Spirits" and the etno-percussional side of "Fallen Gods". Besides a talented musician, Robin is also a gifted pictural artist whose paintings have found international recognition. We are very grateful to Robin, for the time he was prepared to free for us to go over our questions and talk so open-heartedly about his memories of Zoviet*France, the dark days of his drug addiction, his new hopes, dreams and ambitions with Rapoon, ... and the pleasures of fatherhood. We have truly enjoyed doing this interview, and sincerely hope you will enjoy reading it too.
TDR: Looking back at your 14 years with Zoviet*France, what do you think were the elements that contributed to its success?
Robin: "Zoviet*France evolved and existed deliberately marginalised, unlike most other bands "success" for its own sake was never an objective. I think it is only now, in hindsight, that Zoviet*France is seen as successful."
"When ZF began there was no real agenda, either musically or strategically. The music evolved from simply playing together for hours and hours. There existed a common desire to improvise and connect intuitively through music. There was a concrete objective as far as releasing material went; an open offer to release a single on Red Rhino Records had been made on the basis of a set of recordings done by a previous incarnation of the band when they were into 'punk'. I had not been part of this band which had broken up and devolved down to two remaining members, neither of whom wished to continue as a punk band. I joined ZF more or less by accident and came from a different musical background (art-school, music concrete, Stockhausen, etc.). One common element was that none of us were musicians in the accepted, classical sense of the word. This effectively left us without prejudices and pre-conceptions as to what constituted music and left us free to explore all kinds of possibilities with an open mind. There was also the very real need to create our own music and not to try and copy or emulate anybody else. To be a bit more succinct about it all, we created the kind of music we wanted to listen to. The single for Red Rhino was recorded in one day and became the first ZF-release; the album in the Hessian bag."
TDR: In an interview you had with Desmond K. Hill earlier this year, you said you left ZF because you felt there was a negative aspect of it, spiritually. How did you experience this and what do you think caused it?
Robin: "I can only talk about this from a personal viewpoint and it is difficult to say anything without sounding like an extract from "Spinal Tap". There were many reasons why I felt this way; it seemed to me that Zoviet France had undergone the inevitable changes that occur over time but somewhere along the way a kind of division had happened. Two separate aspects had evolved, one was the music, and the other was the espoused philosophy."
"I became more and more unhappy with some of the interviews which were published which didn't ring true with the actual creation of the music or the internal workings of ZF. In a way this was partly my fault as I had remained completely in the background."
"In the beginning we had been a true collective and the anonymity of the band had served a valid purpose: this wasn't music from a particular time or place, it was just music with no information attached. However, after a few years this began to break down. We were doing less and less work together and the production of the music devolved down to myself with five solo albums for ZF and the bulk of other work. At the same time a growing public perception was attributing the music, artwork and conception of Zoviet France to another founder member. I finally left when one solo album ("Just an Illusion") was credited (wrongly) by name to the other member. Something that should never have happened."
"Zoviet*France had begun, for me, as a lifelong project and paradoxically I felt I was no longer part of it. It is in this context that I felt ZF had lost its way and succumbed to the very forces it had idealistically set itself against. It had been a process of gradual erosion and seemed irreversible, besides, my heart was no longer in it."
TDR: Your dissatisfaction with ZF drew you towards native cultures... What is it exactly that attracts you in these primitive cultures and how do you mix these influences with your own Celtic roots?
Robin: "There was always elements of tribalism which existed within ZF's music, but it tended to be more disguised and disseminated. Music as a means of ritual expression has always interested me. There are common elements and phraseology which appear in every ethnic music and the more ancient and pure the more those similarities occur. It is as if there is a primitive, sub-conscious, collective attunement to music as a means of universal expression."
"I have always found it more natural to identify with the rhythmic and melodic structures of ethnic music than classical western structures. Music was denied to me as a child because of the way it was taught, which bored me rigid. I only started to play music when I was about twenty years old and taught myself through discovery. I still feel that this is the best way to approach anything."
TDR: I've always been intrigued by the titles to your tracks and CDs, and now's perhaps the time to unravel some of its underlying symbolism. "Dream Circles" for instance, your very first Rapoon CD,... is there a reference in this title to the Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, the circular designs symbolising the universe and man's striving for unity of the self?
Robin: "All the titles for tracks and albums bear some relevance to the music, but mostly in a very oblique way. I try not to be too literal about naming things but pick words and sounds which give a kind of Zen reference to the piece. To take your example "Dream Circle"; it does include the allusion to mandalas and a spiritual unity, it is also a vague reference to the aboriginal dream time and an ironic reference to the physical structure of the music. Others have the same multiple connotations. "The Same River Once" for instance, was a bit of personal humour referring to the fact that the same track appears twice on the album, although completely re-mixed. More seriously it is an indication that the music on the record is only one realisation of the parts that make up the whole. There are endless possibilities available using the same components and in that sense it is a reference to quantum mechanics, Taoism, and the nature of reality."
"The use of loops and layered sounds is also a reflection on the infinite possibilities that exist at any given moment. By focussing on a repeated segment of sound time begins to lose its linear perception and the mind relaxes into a different state of awareness that is more open and receptive to music in an abstract sense."
TDR: How exactly does a new track come into existence? What stages does it go through?
Robin: "The process for beginning a new track or piece of work is to begin with nothing, with silence, and then to just start playing. It could be any instrument or combination of instruments. Sometimes what is first played may appear as a single track on its own, other times it leads to a process of dis-assembly and re-assembly. Taking fragments, making loops, adding to these and recording more "live" material onto it. The whole of an album can evolve from a few phrases and rhythms which are discovered from within. It is a very direct and intuitive approach which generates its own momentum. There is nothing planned or pre-conceived. It is very similar to being faced with a blank sheet of paper. You make a mark and then another and pretty soon shapes begin to emerge or suggest themselves, and the relationships between the shapes form their own harmonies. The piece is finished when I feel one harmonic juxtaposition has been achieved."
TDR: Do you find yourself in a trance-like state while working?
Robin: "There is a kind of trance-like state that I aim for when I'm working. It is a kind of total concentration which excludes the awareness of self and taps into the sub-conscious processes of the mind."
TDR: I assume vernal crossing, your third release, refers to the vernal equinox - the time in spring when day and night are of equal length....?
Robin: "Actually, "Vernal Crossing" does refer to the vernal equinox in a kind of matter-of-fact way. The recordings covered this period, they also covered my 39th Birthday, so there was an ironic acknowledgement of that fact inherent in the title. The music also suggested to me a journey physical and metaphysical so it seemed an appropriate title to cover the work. There is also a veiled "tip of the hat" to Can, who did have a track entitled 'Vernal Equinox'."
"As far as "The Kirghiz Light" goes this is even more abstracted. That title is a direct lift from an epic poem which is itself fictitious and can be found in one of my favourite books: "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. The book is an odyssey of obsession and self-discovery. In a way "The Kirghiz Light" refers to the search inside for meaning and enlightenment. As with the title the drawings are fictitious icons of a race that never existed. Like aboriginal dream-time story telling can be imbued with a spiritual existence. I guess "The Kirghiz Light" was an attempt at that."
TDR: Merely judging from the number of albums you have released over the last couple of years, your pace of work is very high. How do you manage?
Robin: "I work every day on something. It is hard to get enough time to work so I take every opportunity. My young son is four years old now and going to school so I have a few hours to work each day between taking him there and picking him up again. It is impossible to work when he is at home, because he needs my attention. If I don't work I get frustrated and miserable so when I get the chance I tend to work at a very fast, concentrated pace. I have had to adjust to the demands of family life, but I wouldn't want to change things. My life has become much more enriched through becoming a father and looking after a child. Sometimes I get frustrated at the lack of time available and occasionally miss the days when I could work through the night and sleep when I needed to. There is always new stuff inside bursting to get out. Also I love what I do and although I am never completely satisfied with the results. It is a continuous spur to try to do better and improve all the time."
TDR: You also pay a lot of attention to the presentation of your work, which shows in the artwork and packaging of your CDs. Is there a particular reason why you do so?
Robin: "The presentation of the CDs is really important to me and I am very lucky that it is of equal importance to Staalplaat who give every assistance to realising ideas. Visual art was my first love and I still place equal emphasis on that side of my work even though I now spend far more time doing music. I want to produce something of beauty and depth and so I try to make the art-work and packaging reflect this. I don't really like the crystal cases that CDs come in but sometimes it is not always economically possible to produce something more satisfactory. There are many more packaging ideas that I would like to see come to fruition and hopefully they will become tangible objects in the future. There have been some hand-made sleeves for limited edition vinyl releases and I would like to do more hand-made packages if time will allow it."
TDR: As a painter and a musician, do you feel audio and visual arts to be complementary?
Robin: "There are strong parallels between the visual art I produce for exhibition and the music I produce. Oddly enough they do interfere with each other. When I am in the process of producing a body of work for exhibition I can’t do any music at all. For once this isn’t anything to do with time. It is as if some internal switch has been thrown and I can’t concentrate or focus on both mediums simultaneously. It is not something I can control and is a mystery to me. Both mediums require the same kind of relinquishing of ‘self’ yet appear to demand a different receptiveness even though the creative processes are very similar."
"I feel very sad that I can’t spend as much time on visual art as I would like to. I was recently encouraged that I could still produce something which was good, but it took enormous effort and meant re-learning from scratch how to draw."
"I feel that if I want to really achieve anything with my art I would have to stop doing music so intensely. I am not keen at all on taking this step because music replaced art as a means of expression when my love of art was almost killed off by going to art-school and coming up against the stagnant prejudices of the establishment. This was one of the reasons that I withdrew so far into myself, it wasn’t the only reason but it was a large contributing factor. After years of being mentally pushed around and bullied to conform at school and at home, I was dismayed to find the same prevalent attitudes at a place which should offer encouragement instead of hostility and scorn. This was why I chose to do music, which was beyond the clutches of the lecturers but at the time was still within the parameters of the course. This caused even greater resentment amongst the teaching staff and they finally managed to close this loop-hole. They refused to accept the two years music I had done as admissible towards my degree. I had to hurriedly put together some visual work for my finals. I had three months instead of three years so I quickly learned how to do etching and printmaking. Fortunately the print-making lecturer didn’t care what imagery you were making as long as you could understand and achieve results with the process."
"Printmaking is still a great joy to me and I am thankful to this one lecturer who gave me encouragement and enabled me to pass my degree. I don’t suppose he will ever see this but I’d like say thanks to him anyway. ‘Thanks Dave.’ It was, however, a hollow victory and I withdrew completely."
"Now I can look upon these times with a certain detachment and wry pity for the poor misbegotten creature I was. At the time though the world seemed like a stupid, hostile place. I struggled against depression and suicide for years. I became a heroin addict because I didn’t care if I lived or died. I read a lot, Camus, Sartre, Dostoyevski – the tenets of the outcast, the alien. It’s no surprise that one of my favourite books at this time was "The Idiot"."
"I don’t see this period as a waste, I was still painting and recording music although everything was painfully slow. Time had no meaning, a moment lasted years; past, future and present all existed simultaneously. There was nowhere else to go. Eventually, by chance, I moved to the countryside and worked with a friend, being a lumberjack of all things. The work was gruelling and punishing, my body grew strong and fit and I lived very simply, day to day. The friend I was working with was another misfit, but a happy misfit. I began to love life again. Working on the land was a kind of salvation. I had been born and brought up in the countryside and worked on the land before. The rhythms of the earth were familiar to me and a sense of belonging returned. To go back to a previous question, I think that during the years with Zoviet France the feeling of alienation returned and grew stronger, tipping the balance back to a sense of desolation. So I guess I was responsible for adding to the negative aspect of ZF. I think it still permeates the music I am doing now. Maybe it provides a kind of creative dynamic. Anyway, I can’t just shrug it off or disown that side of myself. Maybe I’m just a gloomy bugger."
TDR: Could you tell us something about The North Arts Collective? Are you still a member?
Robin: "The True North Arts Collective is a group I joined a few years ago. Basically it is a small group of people who get together now and again to organise our own exhibitions outside of the orthodox art-world hierarchy. Two the members are already prominent and respected artists within the closeted establishment but prefer to distance themselves from the incestuous nature that exists within this world. It is refreshing to come across such open-mindedness and I am glad to be part of such a group who all take their work seriously but don’t cow tow to the elitism of the "art" world. The two members provide the "key" of respectability, which is so sadly required, and gains us access to venues that would otherwise be denied. There is a kind of dadaistic attitude to the exhibitions which prompts a studiously tight-assed response from arts councils. It is an irritant to the po-faced academia. Also I believe in everyone who is involved and their work is genuine, not contrived to get noticed. I am still a member and hope I always will be."
TDR: Back to music… Only rarely we get the opportunity to see you perform live. Is there a particular reason why you don’t go on stage more often?
Robin: "Well there are quite a few reasons why I don’t perform live very often. Most of them are practical. I tried to work with a couple of friends but it didn’t really work out. The empathy that existed within ZF took years to evolve and it was unfair to other people to expect them to be able to improvise without any pre-set structure at all. I recently performed in London and Vienna. I did these two on my own using two four-track tapes and adding live vocals, percussion, etc. This worked well because it was completely improvised and required total concentration. I had no idea what was coming next and so had to react spontaneously."
"Another reason I rarely perform live is because being on stage is the antithesis of my personality. I have to jump over a huge psychological hurdle to just go on stage. In a way this helps to focus my mind on the music and shut out all other thoughts. When a performance is over I feel drained, mentally and physically."
"One more reason, and probably the most important, is that I hate being away from my family for too long. When I was in Vienna I stayed a week and missed my little boy dreadfully. Children are funny and I imagined that he had probably not missed me quite so much. When I got home it was obvious that he had been feeling it too. This was touching but a bit heart-breaking as well. I can’t bear to think of him being unhappy. I am currently trying to decide if I can go away for a month to tour Canada and the U.S.A. Someone offered to set up a small tour and I would love to go back but I’m worried how Jacob will cope. I don’t know yet, maybe."
TDR: Do you get a lot of feedback with respect to your music?
Robin: "I get quite a lot of letters from people all over the world and I am very happy and grateful that people take the time and trouble to write. It is really nice to know that something you have created has touched someone else. I am someone who loves to get letters and to write back to others wherever they are. I have made quite a few long-term friends through correspondence and it is good to know how they are doing and how their lives are. I welcome all correspondence, except bills, and hope people will continue to write and keep in touch. A letter from someone who has heard the music and enjoyed it means more than a review in a glossy magazine."
TDR: What project are you working on at the moment?
Robin: "I have just started working on some new material which over the next few weeks I hope will fall into shape and become another album. There is one already completed album sitting on the shelf and another of a recent live radio broadcast which I am hoping will eventually be released. There is much more material still to come; to not be working would be like giving up breathing."
TDR: I guess, this is the end of the interview. Anything special you’d like to give to our readers?
Robin: "Just a genuine thanks for your interest and support. I’m no guru so I have no pearls of wisdom to pass on which can give life meaning, I guess that comes from within. PEACE."
Interview by Qa'Taari, November 1996 (c)
TDR Magazine has risen from the ashes as Myotis Records
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