M: It's probably snobbism! I don't want to be a member of any club that will have me as a member. I love the idea of vicarious symbiosis, of 'elective affinities' (ie we choose our cultures in the manner of consumers, rather than letting them form us in the manner of citizens). I remember a note Kafka made in his diary about 'revelling in the grass'. He was napping, and he woke up and overheard two ladies outside on a summer day. One said to the other 'I'm just revelling in the grass!' Kafka felt that such simple pleasure was not something meant for him, and not even something he was supposed to overhear. It became a symbol for him of vicarious happiness, lightness, simplicity. I suppose these women were the same as the ones who say to Josef K in The Trial: 'Your trial has something -- how can I put this? -- something fine and complicated about it, something impossible for a person like me to understand'.

A word I keep coming back to is 'otherness'. I am always trying to gatecrash otherness. To find myself in a truly inexplicable world. But repetition and cognition (which it's impossible to avoid) make everything explicable in the end. 'Oh yes,' we say, 'that's that Paul McCarthy piece of a man fucking a tree.' Or 'That's where those two gigantic buildings used to stand.' Even the most outrageous things become unremarkable. 'Habit,' said Beckett, 'is a great deadener'. So I move around a lot, to keep myself mentally fit. But of course less and less astonishes me.

J: Also, do you actually have any plans to try fiction–or branch out into any other mediums? (Clearly the web and computer-based ventures have almost superceded your music as your primary activity of late)?

M: I think I would make either a very superficial author (something like Toby Litt) or a very crabby, cranky, bad-tempered one (like Peter Handke). If I made films I would probably be Patrick Keillor. Or I'd end up committing suicide like Jean Eustache. I wouldn't mind being a painter, but I like time-based, story-telling media.

I've started getting tinnitus when I'm exposed to headphones or loud sounds too long, and I'm totally paranoid about damaging my hearing. So I do sometimes think about this. Writing is probably the thing I'd turn to first. I mean, I already do other things: I've published articles in several magazines in the last twelve months, and am just about to launch an interactive artwork (made in collaboration with Florian Perret) on the LA MoCA site. I have a New York gallery, LFL on West 26th Street, which wants to do another art show at some point. But I think my 'master role' is always going to be 'musician / songwriter'. I'm more likely to head more in the direction of film soundtracks (I've just made one for a new Japanese film, Bambi Bone by Noriko Shibutani) and instrumental music than over to other media.

J: Your family had roots in the Plymouth Brethren, a heavily evangelical, Puritan sect. And I looked it up and it turns out the other luminary to come out of that group was the magician Aleister Crowley, who was raised in it in the late 19th century. And it may seem an odd comparison, but the two of you seem to have quite a bit in common–global bohemianism, a certain anti-Puritan occupation with sex as politics (he wrote homosexual porno poems in White Stains, you wrote "Coming in a Girl's Mouth"), a preoccupation with transcending "socialisation processes" as you mentioned above, certainly shamanism and construction of multiple selves for fun & art's sake. I wonder if this is a parallel you've ever drawn.

M: No, I didn't know that about Crowley. It's exciting to learn it. I must look into his work. There probably are parallels.

J: So, your next album. Spooky Kabuki, yeah? Was this brought on by your new residence, or is this something you've been working on for longer? Can you offer any specifics on what it'll sound like?

M: It relates directly to what I've been saying. The categories of the 'uncanny' or the 'spooky' interest me because they suggest worlds beyond our narrow frameworks. I get this very strongly from the sound of kabuki or Noh or Cantonese opera. This was music created in very different societies from our own. I want pop music to be as richly strange as that. I'm living in Japan right now because, since my first visit ten years ago, I've found this the strangest island I know. And I certainly want to incorporate strangeness into my work.

The tracks I've done so far are disappointing to me: they're not nearly strange enough. They're basically the same old Momus vaudeville songs, with some exotic instruments. I want to do something much more radical, to try and capture the utter otherness of, say, Noh theater.

J: It sounds like it'll rule, actually. If you're attempting to deal with that much utter otherness, as you say, what does that do to the Momus character? Does it put a hesitation into your voice at all?

M: Only by throwing away the comfortable style you reached do you stay alive as an artist. It's my job to give 'Momus' (as MI5 gives James Bond) new and dangerous assignments. Without danger and risk, there is no Bond movie and no Momus album. Of course, it's only a film / record, and we know Bond / Momus won't die in the end . . . unless he bores his audience to death and nobody wants to see / hear the next one.

J: I really want to go to the American Patchwork show in San Francisco but it's at a 21+ club, and, well, I'm a year shy of 21. So I dunno, I was wondering if there's some way to circumvent this!

M: If I got $5 for every time someone asked me this question, I'd be a rich man . . .!

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