Michael Cashmore is a British composer and musician who has created music under the name of Nature And Organisation and more recently (2006) under his own name.

Cashmore has also been a member of the group Current 93 since the late 1980s. He has collaborated with many artists including David Tibet, Antony and the Johnsons, Marc Almond, Nick Cave, Rose McDowall, Steven Stapleton, and many others. Cashmore wrote most of the music for Current 93, and is responsible for most of the guitar work, after the departure of Douglas Pearce in the early 1990s.

After several years of silence Cashmore released his first solo CD entitled “Sleep England” in May 2006.

Early 2007 saw the release of “The Snow Abides”, a mini album containing a collection of songs that feature vocals by Antony of Antony and the Johnsons.

In April 2008, Cashmore release a two-track EP with Marc Almond entitled “Gabriel and the Lunatic Lover” which sets two poems “Gabriel” and “The Lunatic Lover” by Count Stenbock to music. MArc Almond appeared as guest of Current 93 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 21 June 2008, and performed this song with Cashmore on guitar. – wikipedia

Hi Michael. You have a new CD out with Marc Almond. Could you please tell us about it and when did you meet Marc?

I first met Marc at a Coil concert in London in around 2001, we both had guest places and I was sitting next to him, so I introduced myself and we started chatting about Baby Dee who we are both great fans of. We later worked together on the track “Idumea” for the C93 album “Black Ships Ate The Sky”. A couple of years after that I got an email from Marc asking me if I’d be interested in collaborating on a project with him – his idea was to make a series of four 2 track EP’s, each one would feature texts from one of his favourite poets, and each EP with a different musician. So he asked me if I’d like to do the first one which was to be 2 poems from Count Stenbock so I said yes – Marc was so pleased with the way it came out that he asked me to collaborate on all of them. The form has changed a little since then but we are now basically making an album called “Feasting With Panthers” which are some of Marc’s favourite poetry made into songs – this should be available late 2010. I’ve also co-written 2 songs with Marc for his next album.

What was it like collaborating with Nick Cave? Could you tell us about your collaboration with him?

I think that David Tibet first came into contact with Nick through their mutual interest in Louis Wain. In 1995 David and I were working on the C93 album “All The Pretty Little Horses” and asked Nick if he’d like to come down to the studio and record a version of the title track. There’s not so much to tell really, it was all pretty straight forward, I put down the basic guitar track first and sent it to him and then he came into the studio one morning and did the vocal.
When did you join Current 93? What is your favorite Current 93 album?

I first got to know David Tibet in the mid-80′s, we recorded a song together called “Hooves” for my group Nature And Organisation. I actually joined C93 in 1990 – they had a concert arranged in Amiens in France and Douglas P. from Death In June couldn’t make it so David asked me if I could play instead. I’d been a fan for a long time so it was quite strange to suddenly be playing with them – the concert was actually longer than our rehearsal. I don’t really have a favourite C93 album, I’m only ever really interested in the things I’m working on now rather than things I’ve done in the past, but “Soft Black Stars” has it’s moments I think, and I’m also still fond of some of the earlier experimental albums.

Who are some of the artists who have influenced you? Were you performing music at an early age?

I first became interested in music as a teenager in 1977 when Punk started in England, I cut my hair, sewed my trousers into drainpipes and bought a crappy old acoustic guitar from a mate of my brother. The first albums I bought were by The Stranglers, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Jam and so I sat and tried to play the guitar like some of the records I was listening to. A few years later I got into PTV, Throbbing Gristle, C93, Coil and a few other groups from that sort of circle, and that was about the time I first started making music under the name Nature And Organisation, that was about 1983. I was making short super 8mm films as well, reading Burroughs, making tape cut-ups and experimenting with mixtures of manipulated sounds and acoustic intstruments. I guess my earliest influences came from TV programmes from the early 70′s like Top Of The Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test, sort of English pop music, and then later from Punk bands, PTV and TG, and a bit of heavy rock…

Have you studied The Works of Aleister Crowley, as well as Tibetan Mysticism and how have they influenced your work?

These things have nothing to do with my work, totally nothing and never have, what I make is emotive – there is nothing philosophical, intellectual, spiritual or religious about it, I’m an atheist.
Are there any folk artists that are of interest to you?

To be totally honest, I detest folk music, none of it interests me in the slightest. Because in the past I’ve made music with acoustic instruments people often seem to view it as something connected to folk simply because of the sound. A while ago there was this “weird-folk” thing, a wave of American middle-class 20 somethings trying to make music that sounded 20 years older than they were, and this in turn was followed by a British wave trying to sound like the Americans, just awful. The worst nightmare I could imagine would be being tied to a chair and having to listen to one of these young girls strumming an acoustic guitar and singing in a false wavering voice about how she feels like a cross between Noah and a walnut.

What lies in the future for artists such as yourself, both in music and in painting and art?

Who knows? For people in my position the future definitely promises to be a struggle to produce things – not in a creative sense, but just from the fact that in my case because I’ve never earnt a penny from music I have to have a regular job and this makes it very difficult to find the opportunity to work on things, to focus on them and in particular to represent yourself to the fullest. The internet has had such a totally direct impact on music like no other artform, but no matter how much things have changed I think the most important things always stay the same, that you have to live and follow your own inner vision, to do what you really want or need to do, to stay truthful about your work, to do it from the heart and that’s all that matters.¬†

These days it seems to be all about packaging with very little or no content at all, too much about style – too much facade. I simply can’t stand all the contrivances, the retro crap or the things that want to be trashy and cool – it just bears this gigantic emptiness that can only make you sick to death of everything. There is really very little future in music when everyone is so obsessed with looking backwards. Music is not science, I don’t believe that people have to try and push boundaries for the sake of doing it, but I do believe that people need to break free from stereotypes, from deliberately associating themselves with genres and particular decades and to free themselves, to be timeless.