Yeah, obviously, it was a good place to start from.

They came to me and it was like 'Well, we've let you do this for a bit and now it's taking up all of your time so you should either do this or concentrate on 4AD. At that point I just thought that I wanted to give it a go and make something of it. I've always known that I could go back into that environment and work for a record company if I wanted to, but fortunately I haven't had to do that yet.

The reason I ended up at 4AD was because I was a big fan of the label in the first place. It's not that I've copied that from 4AD, if you like, but that was always an influence on me. It was that sort of aesthetic of producing something that was an artefact in its own right, rather than just being some disposable piece of plastic. I'd like to think that most of the work we do is a nice thing to own and feel.

Visually? Not really.

I guess so. We listen to a lot of music in the office and it's very broad because obviously between City Slickers [who share the office] and us [No.9 Publicity – Tony Morley's PR company] there are a lot of different tastes. Far too much dodgy indie rock from their side of the office I must say! I don't buy that many records, and those I do are mainly old. I do buy some new stuff but not in huge amounts. I listen to everything I get sent and it all influences things in some way. It would be nice to have more time to listen to music but I don't feel that I'm missing out on things. Some things pass you by, then later you hear them and think 'Wow that's really good', but my record buying habits are usually second-hand, junk shops, absolutely anything – just exploring it. There's so much music out there and I'm not interested at just looking at this tiny little corner of it, and though Leaf is very broad, it's very narrow in the greater scheme of things. I like to think that I'm open to pretty much anything.

It was much more tribal than it is now. But there's no tribes anymore, so kids don't grow up into indie rock or into dance music. People are much more open to different influences in different kinds of ways. That's part of the problem why, doing the sort of thing that we do, we're selling less records than we used to — significantly less. There's too many records out there. There's this barrage of fundamentally useless information that people have thrown at them all the time. You have to filter that out, and I think the way that some people deal with it is to go back and listen to old records, whether it's a comfort thing or a nostalgia thing, going back to old music that they weren't necessarily into but feel that they can relate to with their lifestyle or whatever.

There's more new records sold now overall than there has ever been. But you have a small number of artists who sell an awful lot of records and everybody else just kind of bumbles along and doesn't sell many at all. There's a big gap between the two. Compared to what it was like, even in the seventies, pre-punk, when there wasn't this proliferation of people doing their own thing... it was too expensive to do it anyway. So the filter mechanism was the major labels' A&R department, which whether you agree with that or not, was a filter system and basically meant that every release had been through that filter — whereas now there is just this deluge of releases all the time. I think everybody suffers because of that – we certainly do.

Definitely, I'd say so, and I'd like to think that I'm doing something about that. In some ways I think that I'm just part of the problem, releasing all these little obscure records – what's the point. But on the other hand I feel that what we're doing is quality driven – though that sounds like horrible marketing speak – and I'd like to think that in ten years time that people will be able to come back to it and think 'Yeah that's a good record'. Stuff like the Eardrum record, so it hasn't sold tons, but there are a lot of people in music who like it anyway – a lot of musicians are into it heavily. I think it's going to be one of those records that influences a lot of other peoples work, and I think people will come back to it in ten, twenty years time and think that was a good record. There might be a million records out there that are selling more records than we are, but they're disposable. There's nothing wrong with disposable music in some ways, but that's not what I'm interested in.

Very much so. That was something we suffered from when we started. There's a lot of labels whereby someone can walk into a record shop and pick up the latest release on that label and they know what they're going to get. In the short term that's great because the label gets very cool and they sell loads of records if its all good, but people will get bored of it after a couple of years – like, where's the next thing. We've never suffered from that and I still don't think that the label has been adequately pigeonholed. I'm always trying to move the goal posts a little bit, deliberately. It's always easy to fall into that trap when you are being successful with something and we very consciously decided at the start that we wouldn't do it that way. In some ways it is narrower than the original brief, which is that we would be able to release absolutely anything, and we've got to the point now where there are some things that I don't feel that I can release, for whatever reason.

We're doing this record by Rob Ellis, who's PJ Harvey's drummer and producer, and when I was first presented with that I thought, 'yeah wonderful'. It's basically a modern classical record, but I said "I think this is really good, but I don't think we're the right people to do it. I don't think we'll be able to get it to the right people". It's that we wouldn't be able to sell certain styles of music.

Yeah, that's true, but that's not the reason why I wouldn't put it out. That's just a practical reason why I don't put it out, which is not necessarily the same thing. That's coming back to this thing where technology is much more available to people, which is a fantastically liberating tool for an awful lot of people, but at the same time does mean that there is an awful lot of shit out there.

Maybe!

Go listen to Osmosis I guess. In some ways that's a good reason for doing a compilation like that. It was a really good thing to do — we did it a year ago and everything has looked up since then. Although it was all over the place, — it's very diverse — it holds together and I think it works really well as an album. That's definitely a good place to start.

It went down really well. It was an odd experiment and not one that I'd probably repeat, though I'm not quite sure why I say that. I was really really excited by what Speedranch and Jansky Noise were doing. It was a 'not giving a shit attitude' — a real breath of fresh air when things were feeling quite stale, as arguably they still are. What I wanted them to do was basically a document of this glisseral, energising energy that they have when they DJ and play live – really exciting.

No, I don't. So in that sense it was a bit of a disappointment really, but it went down really well and we sold a decent amount. We never expected to sell shedloads, but we sold alright. I think there's always been that group of people who will seek out brutal stuff; I don't think it's anything new, but it was new in the way it was presented.

Kind of. Again it was this real punk attitude to it, not giving a shit, and I definitely like that. In some ways that's the ethos of what Leaf is about. It's very punk in a way, in that we don't curtail to industry trends, doing something because it's going to be commercial or whatever. Surely that's what the spirit of punk is all about. The original ethics of punk, rather than the act of just putting a safety pin through your ear or whatever. That was the thing, punk came and went so quickly, and it had become something to attach yourself to, conform to if you like, before it had really even burst out into the mainstream. That's why it just died so quickly. The whole point of it in the first place was to do what you want and dress how you like, and it became a lifestyle very quickly and therefore very boring.

I think so yes, both in terms of the design, the music and the ethos. Increasingly so with the music. What I find most exciting in electronic music, or in any kind of music, is the stuff that lies in this weird kind of middle ground where you can't really tell if it's live or if it's programmed. Stuff like Burnt Friedman, I think he's an absolute genius. You just cant tell with most of that stuff and have no idea how he does that. It could all be live or it could all be just off a sequencer. There are elements of both and he makes up these fictional bands to cloud the matter further, which I really like. Eardrum is something again that does that, Yakota is somebody who does that. Freeform, who's stuff we'll be releasing as of next year, is an absolute genius in the way that he works. Nearly all the sounds on his records are recorded live, then fed through a computer and turned into something else. It's not a kind of music that's ever been possible before. Obviously there's been the whole sampling culture that's been around for ten/fifteen years but it's never been used in the way that it's being used now. I think people are much more sophisticated with it now and that's the stuff that interests me with contempary music.

Yeah, but fusion is a dirty word…

That's something I got into a couple of years ago, listening to Miles Davies, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report even, which again is a dirty word, but they did some phenomenal tracks which again have that, well... fusion! If you go back and listen to some of those tracks, they're just astonishing. Herbie Hancock's Sextant, now that's one of those records that you discover something new every time you hear it. I think it's track two, done in 18/7 time or something ridiculous — it's just blinding.

No. I've done a couple of remixes and a few experiments but that's it really. I'd like to, but I don't want to do it unless I can dedicate a significant amount of time to it – which I can't doing what I'm doing — and really master the skills and the kit to do it properly.

Yeah. I don't for the most part think the label is particularly experimental. Something like the Speedranch record probably was, but as a general rule, most of the stuff that we've done in the last year or so hasn't been. Something that's really important to me is that things need to have a purpose for being there, musically. Again, there's so much much music around which contains no hint of funk or has no melody to it. Fundamentally, I think I'm rediscovering pop music as well. For music to connect with people it needs one of those elements. It needs to either have melody or it needs to have a good rhythm – a good beat. There's too much music around that doesn't have that. It's either making a noise for the sake of it…

It's difficult to find an alternative to it. I guess it's not kids music. I hate to be quoted using words like grown-up, but it's music that does require not necessarily concentration, but listening to. It's not music to have on in the background. There's an element as well of needing the reference points to understand it. There's people who say to me 'Why aren't these records selling millions of copies? Surely everybody would prefer Yakota's album to Celine Dion'. But actually I don't think that's true, most people don't want that. They've got more important things to worry about perhaps. It's not such a big deal as it is for people like us, our tiny fragment of society. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't mean anything at all does it?

A lot of the music that affects people the most is pop music. Again it comes down to the melody thing. People like a tune. I think most of the stuff we've done over the last year or so, although it's been trying to do something new, it's still got that element of melody in it, something that people can latch onto and learn to love. If you're just throwing out random mad shit at people, like a lot of these sort of laptop types, it just doesn't connect with people. Though there is that element of punk rock, of extreme, I'm not into that kind of idea of making this music available to people that perhaps wouldn't be otherwise that exposed to it. I'm not interested in being in some indie ghetto, I'd much rather the music that I'm doing was selling to a lot of people. Now whether that's realistic or not I don't know.

Absolutely yeah. Some of my favourite records this year have been things like Destiny's Child or Craig David's Fill Me In. That's a work of absolute genius and I'd loved to release a record like that. I haven't heard the album yet, though I've heard pretty dire reports about it, and I haven't liked anything else he's done, but that single is like an old Mowtown record — it's got that kind of boy meets girl teenage thing.

Genius pop music – it's great! That stuff really appeals to me. What else have I bought recently? Destiny's Child – Say My Name, that ODB single with Kelis on it... wonderful record. The fact that that's in the charts is off it's head, the guy's obviously a complete psycho but it's a pop hit, and why not? Why not do that? Why not make these bizarre records? The stuff that is trying to do something new is all these r'n'b records, Timberland and stuff like that. It's commercial and conforming to certain rules, verse chorus verse chorus blah, blah, blah, but it is doing something new. Whether it's intelligent or not I don't know, but they're not holding back, some of the R&B producers — they just go for it.

It's all leftfield fairy specialist stuff at the moment but there's not reason that it has to stay like that.

Yeah I do, and that's why I want to alter the perception in some way of what the label is about. Whether I like it or not, that's how it's viewed. I want to make it accessible to people. I don't want to turn people off by looking like we're difficult or whatever, because I don't think we are. To me the Beige record…

Yeah, sounds like a pop record. It's got electro, it's got techno, it's got funk, and it's just great.

No, I don't think so. Everything is with a view to longevity. It's not throwaway music, and hopefully will stand the test of time. Even with five years of hindsight — some of it doesn't, but I think most of it does.

I do now, definitely, because it's the only way that it can be viable. You just don't make money on singles. Everything has to have a slightly more long-term plan. I think what we're doing lends itself more to albums anyway, though we've put out a few singles this year I suppose.

If there was only one word that sums up the label then that would be it. That fusion of synthetic and real, or whatever, it's electronic but it's organic. I think that's true for pretty much everything we do.

We get sent quite a bit of indie but it's not because of the 4AD connection. I think it's because some stupid people think 'oh there's a record label – we'd better send them a demo'. It just wastes everybody's time and is so annoying.

It's difficult to say, but on a lot of the stuff I don't think it really matters. I've cut back on the amount of DJ promo I do, but there are records – like the Beige record, that is being played by people like Richie Hawtin, DJ Hell, Tanaka, Weatherall, Orde from Slam is playing it in Ibiza, and it's on the radio — as a single it's working really well. I don't know how much DJ response means to record sales or anything, or whether you're just giving your records to people who'd buy them anyway, but if you can spread a bit of word and mouth by doing it…

This is another thing about the label and my way of working. I had this long discussion via email with a guy who was basically saying that I was just part of the establishment, just like a major record label with the way that we were promoting stuff. Yes I am, but whereas his records might only get heard by 500 people in the world, I'd like to think that ours might get heard by 30,000 or whatever. It's a small-minded mentality working in that way. You just have your gang and that's it. To make music available to people you have to take those routes, by doing marketing, press, radio and club promo.

I wouldn't like to say that. I nicked the idea off of Brian Eno and Barry Adamson, so it's not like it was a completely original idea to me. At the time it was just a way of getting to work with people I wouldn't normally get to work with, giving them a brief to do something — and people seem to enjoy working to that brief. It works and I think that CD is one of the best we've ever done. And I enjoy putting them together, though it's fucking hard work. Getting something that sounds like a cohesive unit rather than just a collection of tracks.

It's a nice idea but I don't really have the wherewithal to make a film. We've had bits and pieces used in films, but it's getting the contacts to do that. I think a lot of the stuff we do, not just Invisible Soundtracks, lends itself to film use and I like to do that more. It's also very lucrative. For instance, The Sons Of Silence, who I've released an album, mini-album, and five singles by, and however much work that entailed, we made more than that overnight by licensing one track to an American series. It's made us more money than any record that we've ever done, which is fucked really! But that's where the money is – licensing and publishing.

Cash flow is always a problem. It's always hand to mouth, which is why we do the press stuff as well, because that does bring in some money.

Not necessarily abrasive, just a bit more dynamic. I said that about the last one and it ended up being fairly ambient anyway. The next EP comes out in October and it's got the Sofa Surfers, who have done a track that sounds like it's from a chase sequence or something – it's a bit more in your face.

Yeah, but that's what I did At 4AD — I was a press officer. It's a way of keeping myself afloat when I couldn't make the money off the label. That's basically why I do it. I don't run it as a charity, if you like – stuff has to pay for itself. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise!