the style of Debut

Compared with other music that was happening at that time, 808 State, electronic music fermenting, the British soul scene - ’Debut’ is quite different. A long time later you defined the music on ’Debut’ to me once ; " The concept behind ’Debut’ was house music, where the starting point was songwriting". Was this done consciously ?

I don’t think it was conscious. When you look back you can often be incredibly profound and a lot of what you say might be right. But when things are happening you don’t see them like that, You’re chasing you’re instinct more. Ever since I started clubbing with Graham in 1989-90 and was listening to a lot of acid jazz, house, which was quite abstract music then for partying and quite improvised, I experienced incredible moments. Those moments occured if you could be bothered to listen, go to seven clubs, listen to a lot of bad stuff, hang out around until six or seven in the morning, then maybe some deejay brought along a synthesizer and a magical moment occured. Everything was open to me. Being an old-fashioned sonwriter and getting into sound and writings songs. Today you can come up with loads of good songs, for instance R&B. But at that time, I remember having endless conversations at clubs about how there really weren’t any good songs.

Livebox interview, 2002