With over fifty releases in five years, Inigo Kennedy must be one of the hardest working techno producers in the UK. Since initially hooking up with Karl O'Connor from Downwards, Kennedy's hard-edged sound has evolved through the flurry of 12"s that have appeared on labels like Molecular, Instillation, Morpheus, Exhibit, Missile and Asymmetric . With his latest Asymmetric MP3 material being received incredibly well, and being played by many a DJ, We thought it was about time to get some information from the man himself.

- You say that your fist mixing was with tapes. Was this your first opportunity to manipulate and create sound, or had you previously played with other equipment?

I guess those were my first serious attempts to actually record something but if I think back then I was always manipulating sounds whether it was messing with an old record deck, cassette machines, endless hours in my early teenage years making my own edits on tape-to-tape dubbing machines, finding strange sounds on the radio, fiddling with a couple of cheap guitar pedals (and no guitar) and a home made mixer, etc. A bunch of old school circuit bending. As for other equipment well we had an old upright piano at home when I was young which I just sat at and played sometimes but unfortunately my dad didn't have a secret stash of analogue synths under the stairs. He was defintely a big influence as far as electronics and computers go though. In fact around home there wasn't that much music so I've no idea where it all came from.

- Would you rather fight an angry badger or a Shetland pony?

You mean Angry Badger, the Hertforshire based rock covers band? I'll go for the Shetland pony, more of a challenge.

- Some people think you come predominantly from clichéd hip hop roots, but its different to that. Could you explain how you ended moving onto electronic music?

Well hip hop, and we're talking back in the electro/breakdance days when it was predominantly a fresh and raw electronic form of music, was definitely a big influence but my route to electronic music and techno was largely via synth pop through the 80's, acid house and then on to the fringes of the industrial and EBM scenes.

- In 1996 you won the Fosters Ice Breaker award for on John Berry's Techno Show on Kiss 102 in Manchester, UK. This led to you having two days in a studio with an engineer, with a record coming out on the back end of this. How pleased were you with this release and did it open many doors for you?

Well I was pleased to win of course and I still remember the day when I heard my stuff on the radio out of the blue. It did give me the confidence boost I needed to then get my music out to the right people like Karl (Regis) and I guess it also led to getting some more gigs around Manchester (I was playing live as well as DJing sometimes) and from there I met Colin Faver and that led to Tim Taylor and Missile so it was the start of a few ripples. As for the release and the studio time of course it was exciting to be in a large studio but it certainly made me realise other people's studios aren't the place to make your own music! After that studio session I also ended up in a PWL studio in Manchester for a couple of nights recording some tracks that didn't get released. That was an awesome place but a similar experience at the end of the day. It tought me a few things about the process of producing music but attending a vinyl cut with a mastering engineer a couple of years later was maybe one of the most benefitial things to have done from that point of view. It'd be pretty hard to find one of those Foster's Ice records these days I'm sure although I did give out a couple of hundred of those bright orange things one night in Manchester so there's a few dusty copies knocking about somewhere I reckon. I've only got two or three myself I think. I did see a video from Berlin Love Parade later that year and saw an insane amount of people going off when that record was dropped. It was pretty popular at The Orbit in Leeds if I remember right too.

- People see your first release as your first record on Karl O’connors zet label? How did this release come about and how much was this release inspired by the early downwards sound?

Ah, the good old days of posting cassettes to people :-) The releases on ZET were really the first things I'd consider my own music too. I was certainly inspired, more so excited, by the Downwards sound as well as Mills and similar stuff. Being handed the first two Surgeon EPs from under the counter at Fat Cat one afternoon was like opening Pandora's Box. A lot of people seem to take the word inspired as to mean copy which is a pity. From my point of view I was just excited by what I was hearing on certain records and in clubs and I was making this raw music too. I sent Karl a bunch of cassettes and I think I followed it all up by email. After a few cassettes he pretty much gave me free reign to choose what I wanted to release on a record for ZET which he'd just started up alongside Downwards. I remember deciding on the tracks for the first release (ZET03) and then going down to Birmingham to hand them to Karl as I only had a DCC machine and we had to copy them to DAT. I took something new on the DCC that I'd done that week that felt like it was immense. I played it to Karl and there was no doubt and it ended up becoming the A side track. I'm still really proud of that one. The funny thing is all my early tracks were basically "mastered" from cassettes but had to end up on DAT somehow to then get onto vinyl! All very punk but that's what I liked about the whole thing.

- How was Asymmetric started? Did you have a concept when starting the label?

I'd been releasing a lot of music I was really proud of on ZET, Instillation, Exhibit and also with Missile and some other labels but that always felt something like fitting into someone else's agenda. Saying that though some of the releases I've made for other labels are pretty strange and distinctive too! Still, I knew I had a lot more music that felt more personal and more true to my spirit and I knew that this music didn't really fit into a mould very easily so with the chance for a P&D deal with Integrale the label Asymmetric was born. The concept was, and still is, to follow my heart and not the herd. To do that meant to release music that made my spine tingle when I made it and then even more when I listened to it some time later. I tend to apply that concept to more than just the label.

- Whats behind the names of your pseudonyms such as Tomito Satori and Helki Torsnum? Were you feeling a little crazy or are there more serious reasons such as seeing if it was simply the Kennedy name that was selling records rather than the music?

Well I was never trying to hide although it was quite fun and let's be honest the sales were hardly worth experimenting with :-) It was far more of a simple but important branding excercise i.e. developing different sounds under different projects. Tomito Satori, on the label Exhibit, was definitely the face of some of my most raw, brutal and industrial music. All made with an evil DIY distortion and filter box; "the box of doom" as I think it was known to a few people. Helki Torsnum was just a one-off but basically the same. Reducer, on the label Instillation, went on to explore a far more textural and cerebral direction and I'm really proud with the way that project developed. It has certainly become far more timeless.

- After the closing of Integrale Muzique, there seemed to be silence in the Kennedy camp. What were you doing during this period? How did it affect your music and your perceptions on the scene?

I suppose you could say silence since the releases stalled but that time was largely a period of disappointment. Don't follow the herd but the herd sure can take you down. So, having no doubt made far more money for other people than myself (hardly the point for me as I've always worked very hard outside of music) it did just cement in me that the money is irrelevant and dealing with everything around it is fairly soul destroying at the end of the day. But silence didn't mean I was being silent, I certainly didn't stop making music much as I was making it for years before any releases. It's the making and playing I enjoy; the stuff in between I can do without.

- Hows your relationship with Jaxx going?

I have no idea so I think that sums it up. A couple of great Asymmetric records got out though.

- Whats your favourite food?

South Indian.

- Over the last year, Asymmetric.Mp3 has become a very popular outlet for your more experimental stuff. What provoked your choice to release this stuff online and not on any sort of tangible media?

Well following the collapse of Integrale, and everything I said above, Asymmetric|MP3 seemed like a logical, enjoyable and liberating direction to take. I certainly wanted to continue the Asymmetric name and I've got plenty of other ideas knocking around at the moment to broaden it out with some other projects.

- Whats your favourite beer? Is it a nice English ale or have you gone all continental since moving to Prague and prefer those Imported beer types in very large glasses?

It just depends where I am. You can't beat an ice cold Pilsen for 50p in Prague but a pint of Bitter next to a roaring fire in a pub is top notch too. Ocassional forays into the vast world of Belgian trappist beers I can't deny but there is something very wrong about paying insane amounts for Czech beer in London that's for sure!

- Was one of the factors in moving to Prague the incredibly hot women?

No. Just one very special one. And Pilsen for 50p :-)

- There is an extensive kit list on your website, but what do you use at your core? What bits and pieces do you usually start out with, if any?

Of all the kit there are a couple of things that stand out and I use a lot - the Yamaha FS1R and the Nord Modular. They're both desert island synths although a shiny new Nord G2 would probably be the one thing to chose if I was heading for that island. The Allen & Heath GS3000 desk was one of my biggest descisions and investments too but it is a fantastic bit of kit and also essential since it's where everything comes together. I always tended to avoid the clichés of techno like a 909, 808, samplers (which I have but I'd hardly ever use unless making a remix), etc. I've tended to go for the less obvious somewhat impenetrable but to me more interesting bits of kit.

I've actually spent a lot less time in the studio over the last two or three years and I've inevitably been working far more with software and a laptop. Saying that though I've used music software for around twenty years and I've used a lot of fascinating stuff (starting with a Music 500 system that I had on my BBC Micro in around 1985). Things have really matured in the last few years as far as totally software based production goes. It's now a feasible alternative to a hardware studio rather than a curious supplement.

There are some amazing and inspirational bits of software about if you look under the carpet of big players - single-developer projects like EnergyXT, a sampler called Shortcircuit, Glitch from dBlue and plenty of other stuff. There's a really nice community spirit around the less well known things too. The internet has really opened things up from this point of view.

I do still knock out raw techno much more easily in the studio - there's just an immediacy that I still can't get when fighting to interact with software. Software seems to lend itself far more to experimentation and thus endless distraction. When I'm using hardware it's still a far more instinctive and immediate process. But, either way, it's figuring out how to entertain those accidents that is the important thing.

- Before Asymmetric.Mp3 people may have seen you as simply an experimental techno artist, but now more of an electronic musician. How do you respond to this?

Perhaps just another way of saying I'm not following the herd? People like to pigeonhole. I've always considered my music as electronic as that's how I make it and it happens that most of what I've released so far has fitted into a techno box. There's plenty more to come and as I mentioned earlier I intend to broaden out things with Asymmetric and some other projects in the near future.

- Whats going on in your life other than techno?

Most of my life is other than techno but that's not to say that techno isn't a big part of my life.

- Many producers have one significant style to their sound. A signifier to their music. From your early zet release to your reducer stuff to your new Asymmetric.Mp3 releases, each release has a distinct inigo sound yet they all seem to be very different. How do you go about making each record so very different?

Well, it is nice to be known as having a distinctive sound although it's pretty hard for me to be objective about that. Could be something as simple as the way I mix the hats might define the Asymmetric sound so far although making records that are difficult to mix might be another defining characteristic for some people :-)

I guess this question links up with something I mentioned above too. Each of the projects is essentially a different face for different types of music that I produce. I don't tend to sit down and think right, now I'll make an Asymmetric|MP3 track, I usually just sit down and make some music and see what happens. Sometimes in the past I have sat down intending for example to make a Reducer EP because I do have a specific way I'd do that, specific effects, but often I might end up with something else anyway. If you're not making music as a machine you can't force yourself to genuinely express yourself if the mood isn't right after all.

I just archive everything to CDs (no more cassettes these days) and I'll sort through the finished tracks later and decide what best to do with them. This selection process is what makes the records different and, in fact, many of my releases will have tracks made many months apart if not years apart. At times I've ended up with between ten and twenty tracks in a month to sort through although to be honest less than that recently.

I've recently been converting all my old cassettes to MP3s. It's truly a labour of love, there are dozens of cassettes full of tracks, hundreds and hundreds of tracks going back to the early 90's. It's been fascinating. I might well put some of that stuff out at some point - watch out for the Asymmetric|Genesis project :-)

- You're stranded on a desert island for 12 months, with only 2 of your possessions for company, what would they be?

That's a tricky one as I've discovered I don't need that much stuff around me what with all the travelling about. Assuming there's no electricity I'd have to plump for a big heap of paper and a giant pot of ink (with a lid that's shaped like a pen and has a knife-sharp edge naturally).

- What's in your stereo at the moment?

Just now Serial Hodgepodge by Lusine, before that was Insen by Alvo Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto and before that Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction no less.

- Top 5 albums of all time?

The Cure - Disintegration
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol.1
Depeche Mode - Black Celebration
The Sundays - Reading, Writing & Arithmetic
Jeff Mills - Waveform Transmissions Vol.1

- Top 5 singles/ep’s of all time?

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
New Order - Perfect Kiss
Mantronix - Bassline
Goldie - Inner City Life
The Stone Roses - Fools Gold

That's a hard choice to make; it's like defining your life in three words.