Ikue Mori

I really didn’t intend to be a musician when I left Japan.

Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

The way I create music is maybe like a painting, to compose in a more visual way. Basically it’s the music that I want to hear- that’s my inspiration and bottom line. I just try to get ideas from books, movies, paintings.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they’re all great.

I always wanted to get out of Tokyo and in 1977, New York seemed like the most interesting place to visit. I didn’t intend to live here- I just wanted to get out and see what was happening. I just happened to stay here then.

I was playing in other rock bands. Any of those bands didn’t last long.

The most important thing is that it’s much more fun to play in a band than to be in an audience in a club. That’s the main thing I think, that you can do it.

With a rock band, you play the same things over and over and over.

I’ve done some music for films and I really enjoy doing it.

Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around ’84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn’t make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.

So now I don’t have time to practice drums. It’s been five years since I’ve touched the drums.

Come to think of it, the way I play is like a drum machine- very mechanical.

Blood and death. That moves me.

Somebody gave me this drum machine and somebody else asked me to program something for a project. I really liked programming and I was really interested in using the drum machine.

Because it’s dance music, you can’t really have a lot of changing in there. It’s really not for me because there’s too much repetition. I like more diversity.

I got tired of different drum sounds so you buy different effects for more manipulation.

I still think that I’m playing instruments, not just pushing buttons and there it goes. It’s interactive and alive with the sound and the manipulation and it plays like instruments.

I’m interested in stories and the dark side of peoples’ minds.