SA: The Hafler Trio sound, since his origins, detaches itself from those that were in to become the industrial music clichés, as, for example, a certain mannerist brutality. Which were your sonorous imaginaries, so different from the industrial panorama?

h3o: well, some of them. but it was very rarely just for the sound. I was interested in what was happening with the ways that all medias and ways of doing things were being used together, and force from one was allowed to affect the other. as far as I was concerned, it was rare and a special thing when this had happened before.

SA: The Hafler Trio, in comparison with other Sheffield bands,

h3o: I don't thing The Hafler Trio could be called a Sheffield band. I've never even lived there.

SA: regained a certain playful grace from a dada memory,

h3o: from other places than that. I don't think of Dada as very playful most of the time. Quite brutal, in fact.

SA: that maybe in the beginning of the movement was a shared heritage..

h3o: first of all, there really was no 'movement' - just a bunch of people that knew each other and knew of each other over England and in some very limited cases abroad. This was a time before the internet, where finding people and facilities even vaguely similar to your own was a very difficult and rare thing. What *might* have appeared to be a 'shared heritage' was basically, in many cases, what could be gotten hold of concerning non-mainstream "things".

SA: thinkin'about Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire,…

h3o: TG and CV knew each other, and played with each other several times. So they were closer than some, perhaps.

SA: nurse with wounds

h3o: nurse with wound were never part of anything to do with TG or CV.

SA: and, on the other ocean side, about the Residents,

h3o: they were seen as outsiders, one might say: because they didn't share anything, and they were unapproachable. For many other people, they were simply a rather bizarre joke.

SA: we guess we've found a common affinity.

h3o: I don't think you have =)

SA: did this attitude create an urge to explore with your music new experimental forms?

h3o: well, the 'attitude' was to see what could be done with what was available. Which wasn't much, in most cases. Some of that might have been 'new', but in most cases, ignorance of more difficult to access history was the only reason it appeared so.

SA: what happened with Watson, we mean, what's the story? Did you have any connection with Cabaret Voltaire before the birth of Hafler Trio? Would you like to explain to us something about that period, crucial for electronic and avantgarde music history?

h3o: I was never really involved with any of the people from "avantgarde music history" (which is a nebulous term to me, but for the purposes of this writing, I'll make an easy assumption), but knew a number of them personally, or as a fan. Or something like that.
I met CV (and thus Chris) when I played support with the two-man group I had at the time on a bill that included the Fall as well as CV. we were talking. There was contact on and off. Then, Chris came one day into Virgin Records where I was working in Newcastle, having quit CV. we got talking again, and everything started from there. Very boring, but true.

SA: we have known The Hafler Trio as a project intrinsically changing in the rush of time: is there a guideline for different collaborations and changing atmospheres?

h3o: of course it is in many ways in constant flux; however, as evidenced by the name never changing, I think it has an underlying set of "aims" or "goals" that get worked on perhaps in different ways, but arrive at the same fundamental processes and concerns. It is also true, however, that many of the people that work and have worked with me and the framework that is The Hafler Trio do not actually know even a part of he whole story. And in many cases, this is necessary for the successful outcome of a particular stage of a process.

SA: how does Hafler Trio evolves, considerating the meaningful mutations of electronic music you've passed through? Now you've collaborated with Autechre, one of the most important and expressive group, in the last 10 years of music...

h3o: I continue to work with AE on a volume two and possibly three of e project you mention, which in itself will almost certainly come as a surprise even to the people now familiar with the first part. The Hafler Trio evolves as it can, and that is perhaps too big a subject to be tackled within the context of this piece. However, perhaps it is sufficient to say that evolution dos not proceed automatically: there is great struggle and large amounts of work to be done even to *see* the possibility of it.

SA: how does The Hafler Trio contextualize the dada in 2004? Is it a key for interpretating reality, or a necessary provocation?

h3o: no, I would not term it so; it is a useful peg to hang a hat on for some 'currents' that have now almost come full circle, and need a last, almost superhuman effort to attain their true completion.

SA: we really like "psychophysicist", it sounded to us as a sharp return to Hafler's first works. It’s full of sci-fi.. Is this a thing you've shared intentionally with Adi Newton, even thinkin'about his past as a member of Clock Dva?

h3o: sci-fi? I'm not even vaguely interested in Science Fiction. I don't remember Adi ever having mentioned it as an interest of his, although that doesn't rule out the possibility that he had some affinity with it.

SA: as a founder of drone music school and as one of its nowadays more critical discloser, mainly in your last works, what's your opinion about the drone scene of these years? Do you think there is a future for this kind of experiments?

h3o: I must absolutely reject any claim that I am the founder of any school whatsoever: especially that of the "drone school" (whatever that might be). As to the "drone scene", I have no idea what that might be at all. I honestly do not consider myself to be "working with drones", but aspects, sometimes, that they initiate.

SA: you have worked for many seminal labels, now you play for the newborn Dekorder, together with many young musicians.. How do you stand in a project collecting so many different experiences, so interesting and not so easy to classify?

h3o: well, here we have, with your questions, an attempt to classify them from a 'meta' position of 'the interview'. Classification can be useful in some aspects of work, but ultimately, the semi-blindness it causes is something to be guarded against vigilantly. I stand as I must, trying for as much as I can to develop the proper conversion of energies that are available and necessary.

SA: but why do birds have to be eliminated? Would you give us a key for interpretating your last record?

h3o: well, I'm not really in the habit of explaining things point blank. Try thinking about what birds do that they are unaware of, and what arrogance our interpretation of that might be. And how that could help us to begin to see that we have much to do. Best…./a