London time travel report, mid-90’s. During that week we (Olaf Saddeler, the photographer, and me) made a lot of interviews for three 90-minute episodes for Michael Naura’s „Jazzlaboratorium“ including meetings and tea time with David Toop, Max Eastley, Robert Hampson (Main) a.o., at their homes or record companies. As these names may tell some of you, Naura let freedom rule and allowed us to leave well-defined jazz fields and dive into the experimental London „underground scene“ (not exclusively, we also talked to a street musician playing, well, „Heart of Gold“, which I think, is the no. 1 evergreen in London tubes and railway stations). Olaf says it was 1995, in my memory it was 1997. I’ve always loved long dark coats, and had been wearing one seven days – it was nearly always raining. When we came to David Toop’s place, there were thousand records, uncountable book shelves. Discreet sadness lingered in the living space – not long before his wife had died, and I’m quite sure writing and listening and making music were essentials in his survival kit – we talked about „Ocean of Sound“ which broke so many frontiers between the ancient and the avantgarde. It was the time when coffee shops in big numbers seemed like being built over night. We had a knack for Indian restaurants, and finally, for the rain. We loved wet clothes, wet hair, wet microphones. We loved walking through Hampsted Heath in the rain. Though it was London, we felt like living in two fucking genius John Fogerty rain songs. P.S. David Toop is in Kristiansand giving a lecture these days at the Punktfestival. Normally I would be there, too, sitting at Mother India with my old friend Christoph Giese sipping Mango Lassi and eating Tandoori chicken. (m.e.)
„This book was extremely important to me, like finding the key to a puzzle that had eluded me all my life. Basically, how to write up weird ideas without losing readers in the first page and how to make connections that had been deliberately disconnected. It was written in a half-mad state during impossible personal circumstances but the response gave me a confidence I’d never had before. This week it’s re-published – new cover, new subtitle, new author’s note from me and a new forward by novelist Michel Faber. Plus, those typos that have been driving me crazy since 1995 are now corrected.”
David Toop