Geoffrey Burton – interview

As a guitarist I have always had the luxury of being involved in the music of the artists I played with(Iggy Pop,AlainBashung,Arno...)and very often I have been asked to follow my ideas. But of course, when you play music that is not yours, there will always be limits as to where you can go with your imagination. That’s why I had to release my own music one day or another.
Somehow it was already the case with the two albums and two ep's of Hong Kong Dong, the bizarre group that I formed with my wife Sarah Yu Zeebroek and Bolis Pupul(Deewee) and with the theater and film music that I have had the opportunity to compose.
I didn't necessarily want to distance myself from my past, but rather create and play music that lives in me, but that I haven't had the opportunity to play yet. Music that inspires me, that motivates me. I am thinking of the electronic music of Lucrecia Dalt, Sugai Ken, Laurie Anderson, Charles Cohen, Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, the Cretan music of the Xylouris family, the film scores of Tarkovsky and Kurosawa and others ...
At the start of the process I felt that I needed to distance myself from my main instrument. For a long time I didn't use the guitar as an instrument for composing. But when the group Gamelan Voices asked me to participate in a concert organized by themselves (lasting an entire night) with a solo guitar performance, i found my love for 'MY' instrument and the key for what became my first solo release. Me Ta Podia (“by foot” in Greek) is an album with a performance approach, rather than production. An approach that can be found in some experimental electronic music, but without synths, samplers, computers and plugins. I wanted to limit myself in my possibilities to go as far as possible in the performance with the sounds that were at my feet and in my hands. Everything is recorded live. No overdubs (except on Bababachable).
With the title of the album I wanted to pay homage to Crete, this island that I adore and which inspires me and where I feel free. ‘Me Ta Podia’ also because it refers to the very "artisanal" side of the record. Even though the ten tracks on the record have their own titles, they ideally play as if you were listening to a story. It is as if the listener is going through a strange world and looking at the lives of the different characters he meets without himself being seen by these characters. I wanted to make a daring and naive album at the same time and I also wanted the listener to forget that he is listening to the guitar.