Cornish has numerous projects in the pipeline, including a collaboration with Vessel [see zweikommasieben #10] and a track alongside one of EVOL’s on a cassette tape curated by Ruben Patiño of NMO. His music, occasionally warped by probing vocals, sometimes hovers and more often drops an omnipotent, high-definition rhythmic cell. It’s always rigidly contoured and arrestingly declamatory. Here, Mr. Cornish speaks at length with Annie Gårlid of CTM and zweikommasieben.

Annie Gårlid What’s your musical or artistic background and training?

Dale Cornish Well, I don’t really have one. My grandfather was a professional musician—he was a classical musician and did some jazz.

AG What instrument did he play?

DC He played everything. He learned how to play the violin in about two weeks when he was age sixteen, and the saxophone in about five days, which is quite amazing, and basically from then on he did orchestral work and a few film soundtracks as a player. He would play at places like the Ritz and the Dorchester in London. He could do all of these tunes off the top of his head. For me music was always around. One of the first things I remember was that my father had a Deutsche Grammophon recording of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. It’s the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and they’ve got actual canons firing. I remember my dad would put it on in the car and would say to me and my brother, “listen up, the canons are going to come up.” And then he’d play stuff like the Pet Shop Boys and Whitney Houston and The Stranglers. So I’ve always had an interest in music. I went to a Church of England school, and we’d sing hymns every day.

AG Were you in a men and boys choir?

DC No, the whole school would sing. The headmistress would play the piano. And because it was two minutes away from this church, sometimes we would go in the church and sing. I’m musical in a way, but I don’t have any formal training. Somebody showed me what a chord was once [laughs]. But without the formal training, you’re not aware of these rules and stuff, so you can just kind of create things and you’re not worried about the fact that it’s in a conflicting key, or whatever.

AG Yeah, and I think that allows you to think of sound more spatially, in a way, rather than as something that needs to be developed according to a strict framework. You’re maybe more free to manipulate it as you would a visual project…

DC Definitely.

AG What were the circumstances under which you started making your own music?

DC So, about 2000 I started DJing. That’s really the background of my music. There was this club that’s gone now that was called Gummi. It was a gentleman’s club. I would play four- to five-hourlong sets, from when people would get in there until when people were leaving. It was really good—so I would play really slow stuff, and then towards the end of the night more techno. I’m quite aware of the narrative of my own music, if that makes sense, as well as the spacing of it. So you might have one track and it’s brilliant. But when you’re doing an EP or an album, you have to be quite aware of how it fits into the next bit, and I think DJing was really quite good for that. And I’d always play really random things, like book launches and stuff. The best thing I ever did, though, was a couple years ago. So there’s this toilet called the White Cubicle in the George and Dragon pub in London, and each month an artist does something to exhibit there. An old friend of mine called Sico Carlier had a launch night for a piece called Marquee 2 that was about the Soho nail bomb and the Bethnal Green nail bomb. And Sico said, “can you come and play some really weird, industrial, experimental, really rhythmic kind of stuff?” So I did, and after I played, the guy who’d been on before me and who’d been playing like, Kylie, and stuff, who was the resident DJ, came up to me and said, “I think tomorrow you’re gonna wake up and realize what you’ve done tonight.”

AG What is that supposed to mean? Was that a complement?

DC No. He looked at me like… whatever. I was given a brief and I fulfilled it. So… that’s my take on it.

AG Ok, so you started making your own stuff after having DJed for a while.

DC Yeah, I started DJing around 1999 or 2000. I was briefly in a Croydon hardcore band called Squashfox, which was based on Mr. Bungle, which had Mike Patton from Faith No More in it. And I basically just did one or two performances where I just kind of shrieked and dressed up badly. I also did these things called “gabber birthdays”, which is where I’d get a Venetian Snares track or something else and have it played in the club for somebody who was having a birthday. It would have to be under a minute, and I would just shout “happy birthday to you” over the top of this track… [laughs].

AG Like, shriek it?

DC Yeah, and also try to get as close to them as possible and point in their face.

AG That sounds amazing.

DC So the track would be on the club PA, and there’d be a microphone, and I’d basically just shout it at their face into the microphone… I only did a few of them. Even I thought it was a little bit disturbing.

AG [Laughs] The most confrontational happy birthday wish ever.

DC Yeah. So I went to lots of kind of electroclash clubs, like Nag Nag Nag and The Cock in London. Nag Nag Nag was really quite legendary— people still talk about it. Apparently—I was told this recently—apart from the regulars who were there almost every week, I’m the person along with DJ Hell who’s DJed there most. That’s an electroclash fact.

AG Really? That’s great.

DC Yeah. So there was also a club called Kash Point. About 2004, I was given a CD by this friend of mine Susanne [Oberbeck]. She was in a band called No Bra.

AG Oh, yeah.

DC The guy who was in No Bra couldn’t do shows anymore, so she sent me a text message saying, “can you sing?” and I sent her a text message back saying, “of course I can sing!” We did one gig for the Nag Nag Nag Salon des Artistes. So I was there for two years. I co-wrote the music and the words to a song called “Munchausen,” which was kind of an indie disco thing. It was played by Pete Tong on Radio 1. He’s this famous British DJ. I really wanted to do some music of my own, but I kind of felt like the time would be right where it happened. I left No Bra due to rock n’ roll differences, and after that I started what I called an ecstatic noise band Baraclough.

AG Sounds great.

DC Noise stuff was always a little bit negative, a little bit miserable.

AG And macho?

DC Yeah. So there were three of us who started this band. We were called the gay Whitehouse.

AG [Laughs]

DC So I got to shout at people and point in their faces again, and separate a crowd by sort of walking backwards while singing… you know—this kind of stuff. And then that kind of fizzled out when Paul [de Casparis] from Baraclough moved to Spain, but I’d been making these tracks of my own, and about 2011 I started sending them to Allon [Kaye], who runs Entr’acte. I sent him one and didn’t think he’d even reply. But he sent me a reply, going, “oh I really like this; have you got any more?” And that’s how my first CD, Glacial, came out. And here we are today, basically.

AG Cool. And was there a specific reason you approached Entr’acte?

DC Before him I’d never sent anyone any demo tracks. I really liked Entr’acte. This guy called Phil Julian—we’re actually friends now and put an album out together last year [Two Warhol’s Worth, on The Tapeworm]—he used to record as Cheapmachines, and he had a CD out on Entr’acte called Secede. So I had this track and I’d finished it, and I’d spent some time on it, and I was like, “what should I do with it?” I literally picked up the Phil Julian CD and thought, “send it to Entr’acte.” So yeah, that’s sort of how the CD Glacial came about.

AG So equipment- and technology-wise, what did you start with when you started making music?

DC So…I use a MacBook to play my stuff, because I think ultimately it’s a bit like a guitar. You can go on a stage with a laptop and people aren’t curious about it. When people like Jim O’Rourke were using it in the nineties, people were like “what?”. But I think in the last decade people have become more blasé about it. I think people know now that you’re not checking your email.

AG [Laughs]

DC Most people have a computer or a laptop, so it’s kind of democratic.

AG Do you have background in composition at large? I.e., in visual art or any practice that might have shaped your ability to create a “piece” in a certain medium? It seems like you have a really good sense of balance and development.

DC I really liked my secondary school because there was this massive metal staircase with a handrail. I’d go and bang that when there was no one else around. I’d go for walks and go to the local woods, and I’d kind of go and sing and do weird stuff with my voice. In terms of art, I did GCSE and A-level art, (like Abitur in Germany or Baccaleureate in France), but when I did A-level I was always getting told off. I had a fantastic teacher called Becky Shepley. And she basically said to me, “your work’s really good, and conceptually it’s really strong, but what you’re doing is suitable for work for a degree.” The thing that really made me interested in making music was… when I started with my A-level when I was about sixteen, I had this teacher called John. He used to work with Jonathan Moore, who was in Coldcut—they run Ninja Tune—and he was an art teacher. And he had basically said to my art teacher, “we’re making music just on laptops” and John told us this and I was like, “God, that sounds brilliant.” He didn’t go into detail, but it sounded like a way for someone without a lot of musical background to get into it. Maybe it’s a bit cliché, but there’s a certain sculptural aspect to what I do. There’s one track on my album Ulex that took about fifteen minutes to do. There’s one track that took about two years to do. Nobody knows which one is which. I’ve spent a few days wondering about the exact position of a kick drum. When it’s done you just kind of know it. So that’s an interesting point—it’s not just about the musicality of it but about the form of it, as it were. Not just about the sounds but about the structure, and the narrative.

AG Yeah, and I think having a sense for when something is done, and how long something needs to go on before it starts changing or incorporating new elements, or how long something needs to go on altogether — I don’t think that’s a kind of sensitivity that can be taken for granted… What are the texts that you use in your music? Are they texts that you wrote?

DC Yeah. So there is one track each on Glacial, Xeric, and Ulex that has words. The words in the first one on Glacial aren’t mine—that’s a cut up of vocals recorded from the radio. The vocals on “Xeric Pattern 1” is just a few words that I cut out of something I wrote. The one on Ulex with the really distorted voice is a recording I had made of some words that didn’t fit in anywhere but seemed to work in that context. I sent it to Phil Julian and he said, “it’s a bit like the IRA on World in Action, sort of 1981.” [For many years during the eighties the voices of the IRA and also British loyalists were restricted from being broadcast, and often had their words re-recorded or voice filters applied]. If you listen to someone like Brigitte Fontaine or Jacques Brel, or Hildegard Knef, or Jun Togawa, you might not understand the language that they’re speaking, but… I really like Maria Tănase, who’s Romanian. No clue what she’s singing about, but you still interpret something from it.

AG That reminds me of Leslie Winer’s “We See 3 Deer.” The first time I heard it was on that Blowing Up The Workshop mix of yours. It’s such a good example of the potential of the spoken voice to be incredibly emotive, even when you can’t make out the words.

DC Yeah. I just love her work. Leslie hadn’t had a full release album since Witch, in 1993. And so some years ago she put out these unreleased tracks on her website, and my friend Philip, who runs The Tapeworm, got in touch and said, “I’d really like to do a cassette with some of these tracks on it.” And from that the idea was that Leslie would do this compilation, which became &c. So I kind of helped Philip structure that—suggested a few tracks. “We See 3 Deer” was a total ‘100% got to include that.’ It just sounds totally otherworldly. It’s one of my favorites by her, definitely.

AG She hits it out of the park.

DC She’s had such a life. People may know that she was one of the first supermodels, but she was really good friends with William Burroughs — was his recording assistant, helped him out with stuff. She’s had a real life. If I read something by her, I hear her voice.

AG Are there certain musical traits that you feel fit well with vocals? Or is it more relative and situational?

DC I think it’s based on the track. It’s that inspiration thing. I was really late coming to see my family last week, because I started making this track. I don’t remember what the inspiration was, but it’s impulsive; you can’t plan it. You can always put a rough vocal on top of something, and if it doesn’t work, you just get rid of it. With a computer you can do myriad versions of stuff. Like Zomby apparently does fifty versions of one track.

AG So it’s not necessarily the sparser tracks that are the ones you feel need vocals. It doesn’t seem like that—it doesn’t seem like you’re afraid of empty space, which is great.

DC Yeah, and people are quite challenged by it. But fuck ‘em [laughs]. If you find it challenging, there are always other options.

AG Absolutely. You can always take it down a notch.

DC There’s always Céline Dion…

AG Or Nicki Minaj.

DC I don’t know, it’s a bit like heroin or something, isn’t it? One day you’re in the car listening to Whitney Houston, and the next minute you’ve got lots of LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela albums and you don’t know how you got here…

AG Exactly—“which was the gateway drug and when did this happen”? I was playing the first track from Ulex for a friend of mine, and she said, “oh wow, it’s a really slow build-up.”

DC That’s quite cute, though—I quite like that.

AG I was like, “the bass doesn’t drop. It’s not going to come.” Your music is made up of these rigid rhythmic cells, but there’s no spoon-fed euphoria. What’s the rhetorical or cognitive or emotional value of repetition for you?

DC If you listen to something on the radio or a techno track, it’s repetition and reiteration of certain structures or sounds, and quite often it’s only the lyrics or vocals that distinguish development.

AG Yeah, and that’s one of the nice things about repetition—it allows for the small changes to be more transparent. It’s a control.

DC Repetition is a human thing. Most people have the same day Monday to Friday. It [repetition] is often seen as this Kraftwerkian, robotic thing, but it’s actually just really human. You know, we’ve got to eat three times a day. And what I do anyway is I kind of fuck things up—even when it seems like it might be repetitive in exactly the same way, I do slightly change things, just to be a little bit awkward. I shift things very slightly.

AG So this shifting—does it involve a lot of code and stuff?

DC I don’t know what code is.

AG [Laughs] I’m glad to hear that. I’m afraid of code.

DC You know, Max MSP is fascinating, but I think that if I were to use it, I wouldn’t be doing crazy Autechre kind of stuff.

AG Right—the stuff you’d be doing wouldn’t be that different. I’d been wondering if you’re like a tech guy and a code guy.

DC “Code? Nein, danke!”. I’ve released a lot of music without coding. Someone like Phil Julian, or Autechre, or EVOL—those people do that kind of stuff better, but I’m just quite enjoying exploring what I currently have. Never say never—I might turn into the biggest geek this time next decade, working at Cycling ‘74. I don’t really talk about how I make my music, technically speaking. If you look at the modular synth trendiness, people like Phil Julian and John Macedo… those people have been using modular synths for years—they just haven’t mentioned it. My pet hate is when people say, “I recorded something in a really interesting location, like a nuclear power plant off the coast of Sweden,” and then you listen to it and it sounds totally dull—the only thing interesting about it is the location. I kind of work the other way around—I’d rather give no information about it because I think you die by that description.

AG Yeah, the listening experience is defined by the knowledge that it’s in Sweden, then. It takes pressure off of the material itself.

DC And the other thing is field recordings. It’s a digital technology thing a bit like coding. People now have digital recorders or they have smart phones and they can record stuff. You know, it’s like, “well this was recorded in the jungle in Paraguay.” It’s like, “mate, it sounds like my back garden.” Or not even my back garden. It sounds like my local park.

AG “It sounds like the fly buzzing around my kitchen.” Concentration on the means by which things are made can be escapism. Do you enjoy the solitary working conditions of making music? Do you enjoy and are you comfortable with collaborations?

DC Yeah, definitely. I love working with other people, even if it’s a remote kind of thing. So I’ve done some vocals for a collaboration with Phil Julian. I did vocals for These Feathers Have Plumes, who’s my friend Andie [Brown], who plays with amplified glass filled with water and bowed.

AG Sounds beautiful.

DC I also recently released an album with Adam Asnan called Mounting. We may consider doing another. And I started speaking to Vessel. Do you know him? He’s on Tri Angle? We’ve been in touch online for a few years. We are talking about maybe doing a track together. I think when you’re an artist, you do need solitary time. But at the same time I like collaborating with people. And it’s nice working with Entr’acte and The Tapeworm. I know I can discuss things with them—like how the CD or vinyl should look. I don’t send out demos. The Internet has made it possible to put things out that you’ve just recorded, but I think there’s strength in working with a label because there’s an editorial discussion about the work.

AG That makes a lot of sense. You call your tracks “patterns.” Do you know Morton Feldman? He talked about using patterns because they’re complete, in no need of development, only of extension. Can you relate to this?

DC It’s funny—last week I was listening to “Palais de Marie,” which is about twenty-two minutes long. I’ve known that piece for years and I still find it totally unfathomable. It’s almost improvised, but it’s clearly very musical. It’s quite similar to repetition in a way—you can slightly rearrange…

AG Yeah, the sounds are like building blocks. What drew you to using numbered “patterns” for the track names?

DC It kind of reiterates the title. I think it’s lazy to call something “untitled.” By calling it “Pattern 1” or “Pattern 2,” it frees you from any kind of association—it’s just about the sound or music. It’s about iteration and reiteration. And I call my tracks “patterns” because I think there’s a visual aspect to them. By looking at the waveform alone you can tell that the sounds are repetitive or similar. Morton Feldman has “Patterns in a Chromatic Field”…

AG And “Why Patterns.”

DC Yeah. I have Give My Regards to Eighth Street [collection of Feldman’s writings including “published articles, program notes, LP liners, lectures, interviews, and unpublished writings,” published by Exact Change]. His writing is beautiful. Something that he refers to in his text is his interest in Persian Iranian carpets. And it is that handmade quality—there might be a slight kink in the stitch. You can tell it’s human. It’s not machine-made. Sometimes I draw my pieces out like scores beforehand to work out how I’m going to structure them. Most of the time it’s totally intuitive, or based on what the sounds are, but I have done graphic scores to consider how to structure a piece.

AG Why Glacial? Is this a theme?

DC Yeah, it’s a personal reference for me as well, but it also worked really well with the music.

AG Ok, onto the last question—what have you been listening to lately?

DC So, I’ve been listening to Beatrice Dillon’s [see zweikommasieben #11] Face A/B. I really like the Róisín Murphy track “Exploitation,” which is about 9 minutes long and belongs to a genre that I would describe as “batteries in the synthesizer about to die.” It’s also a little bit like “West Coast” by Lana del Rey—this dying synthesizer line. I quite like the new Health album. The track “Dark Enough” is a perfect pop song. And I quite like the new EVOL 12” on Diagonal.

AG This has all made me want to ask one more question: do you like dance music? Do you like clubs?

DC Berghain’s brilliant, but I’ve always kind of liked everything. I’ve always liked house music and techno, but I also like noise and experimental. I used to go to a club called Trade, which is a legendary hard house club in London. I go to this night called Kaos, which I DJed at a few times years ago. It’s run by performance artist Lee Adams who DJs as Choronzon and they have done collaborations with performance artists like Ron Athey, but I believe they are currently focusing on their monthly club night. I’ve got one foot in experimental and one foot in dance/techno/ club culture, whatever you want to call it. In No Bra, we released Munchausen as a 12”, and I commissioned two remixes. One was electro, and the other was 156 BPM acid techno. Ten years ago, a lot of people would bat their eyelids and wouldn’t understand it. Now, maybe it’s an Internet thing, but people don’t seem to stick to just a few genres anymore. Even a few years ago, experimental people wouldn’t do anything percussive, with beats or rhythm. Now it’s everywhere—it’s kind of hilarious. A few years ago people would stick their noses up at what I was doing, and now everyone has undergone a Damascene conversion to techno, and they’re suddenly talking about Basic Channel and stuff on Ostgut Ton. I don’t know if it’s a British thing.

AG I doubt it. In Berlin it seems like the scenes are all somewhat attached to venues—Ausland people don’t tend to set foot in Berghain or OHM, and vice versa. But there is increasing overlap.

DC Yeah. People are comfortable with ambiguity. And it’s about the promoters. People know that there’s a real appetite for things that haven’t been seen before. I mean, if Adorno thought we were at the end of music when he wrote his thesis, we’re definitely at the end of music now, in a conceptual way. People’s eyes have gotten bigger.

AG So your timing has been good.