Patrick Wolfe

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I started making music when I became conscious. I started recording when I got a stolen four track tape recorder from my sister's school aged 12. I was so excited, that four track tape recorder saved my life. It was my best friend and confidante throughout my teenage years. My dad told me that the Beatles had recorded an album on a four track tape recorder so I tried to make my own album. It took me seven years to finish.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
My misery and tendency to want to delve into the most dark and dangerous places externally and internally inspired me most, I have only just begun on that journey... there is a lot more pain to come. I made no contact with the outside world for months while making this album, I was dead internally. There is a tradition in singer songwriters to kill themselves. I decided I would write an album.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I write and produce most of my work myself... internally. Then I give birth to it in public - with all the touring and promoting, it feels like giving birth. I have no womb so I make albums instead.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Joni Mitchell, Diamanda Galas, Tracey Emin, Salvador Dali, Bob Dylan, Jayne Country and the electric chairs, Genesis P-Orridge, Kate Bush, Bjork, Nomi, Britney, Bowie, PJ Harvey, The Raincoats, The Breeders, The Amps, The Rentals, Madonna, Thin Lizzy, Henry Purcell, Nic Endo, Gavin Bryars, Leonard Cohen, Buffy St Marie, Judy Collins, Buffy St Marie, Elvis Presley.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Make sure you are not listening on MP3 format because it cuts half the bass out of a mix. Be alone at first, somewhere comfortable, with a strong drink beside you and your phone turned off. Headphones must be expensive and you should maybe be half undressed. Be prepared to move and feel or be uncomfortable at first. Be unprepared for what happens next. Don't tell anyone the secrets you might have discovered over the last forty minutes about yourself or me.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Always the goal of my albums is to be make them with zero compromise to artistic integrity, and one thousand percent ambition, strength and success to deliver my music and messages across the world. I never know what's going to happen... I have no crystal ball, but I have a lot of songs and stages ahead of me.