In the 90s, whole genres were mixing and blurring. So he just rang them up and said: “Do you want to be on my record?” He was a huge fan of Sakamoto’s Beauty album and Bill Laswell’s experiments with Indian music. He makes you want to drop what you’re working on to be part of what he’s doing. Then, after one gig, she got a call from Bono and we all went off to support U2 at Wembley. The next thing I knew, the three of us were all sat there trying to figure out how to play her songs. One day, Talvin called me to say Björk needed to put a live band together. Talvin Singh performing at the Mercury prize ceremony in 1999. So I used the £20,000 prize money to buy him a Mercedes. My father was a hardworking TV repairman, but had never owned a car. When it won the 1999 Mercury prize, I was ecstatic. The album was played on Asian stations, urban stations and Radio 1. I’d heard that when second world war pilots came back from missions alive, they were listed as “OK”. Island didn’t even freak out when I told them the first single, Traveller, would be more than 11 minutes long. I wanted it to sound like a journey, like classical music has movements. Island Records let me get on with it and didn’t hear OK until it was finished.
Staring at the computer waiting for the music to appear felt very futuristic. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto sent his parts from New York over the internet – which was a new thing back then. Making the album took nine months of travelling around and recording everyone from London MCs to folk singers on Okinawa Island, as well as the Madras Philharmonic Orchestra in India. I’d heard that when second world war pilots came back from missions alive, they were listed as 'OK'
At my club night, I played Indian classical, tabla, jazz, hip-hop, electro and drum’n’bass.
I dyed my hair blue and went on tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees, then arranged the strings on Björk’s album Debut.
My parents had wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer, but I was coming home at 3am with armfuls of drums.
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