Leeds based musician Teresa Winter began releasing music in 2014. Prior to Covid-19 she regularly performed live and during the first lockdown produced Love Crime, an album whose lo-fi electronics conjured a mixture of longing and unease. Her latest album Motto Of The Wheel is draped in a dreamy, post-rave haze and features artwork produced by her father and childhood photographs of her family. It evokes aspects of the artist’s upbringing in the Yorkshire coastal town of Bridlington, filtered through her interest in philosophy and furnished by striking samples. The interview was conducted via Zoom and email in May 2021.

Spenser Tomson: What is the meaning of the album’s title?

Teresa Winter: The [title] Motto Of The Wheel is something I came up with quite late in the process. That’s often the case and I didn’t start out with a concept or anything like that. Usually, I’ll work on some material for a while, see what happens and then a theme might emerge. The wheel thing is something I was quite interested in. I had what I felt was a big birthday and there were a few numerical things sort of adding up with it. I felt as though I should do something quite big with this project, that there had to be some autobiographical element to it. Obviously there’s always autobiography, but some sense of exploring my self in a deeper way, maybe? And the wheel is one of my tarot birth cards [laughs] so it was something that I was thinking about. It appears in so many different religions and mythologies, something that’s significant across different cultures. So there’s all these things that are attached to these symbols.

How did you progress from there?

So, I’d made a few tracks and I’m interested in cultural theory and philosophy, such as Deleuze, where everything is about movement and the gaps between things rather than the things themselves. I wanted to explore rhythm more in this than in previous albums as the basis for the music itself, the wheel being this symbol of movement and how everything is perpetually moving along and in life. It’s the life story that you tell yourself, you have these ups and downs and it’s so easy when you’re on the down side to feel like you’re going to be there forever. Or the other way around, when you’re on the top it’s so hard to imagine being at the bottom.

So does this concept tie in with the references to tombstoning [the act of jumping into the sea from a high platform] that run through the record?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I finished the album before the pandemic and that’s quite a big thing. I think I was an adventurous, exploratory spirit when I was working on Motto Of The Wheel, so it’s very much that sense of, yeah, jump in and you might die, but something great might happen too.

Would you say that the record deals with nostalgia?

You can't escape nostalgia when you grow up at the seaside. That's just the reality of being surrounded by these architectural reminders of its past grandeur and present decline. The wheel is all about the fact that forward motion relies on repetition, so you can't have these binary oppositions between past and future. I suppose the term nostalgia has come up but for some reason it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable… but nostalgia is uncomfortable, referring to a homesickness for the past.

You’ve also used the word autobiographical. It does feel like a very personal record. Is your work also affected by place? Or more specifically, Yorkshire?

Yeah, that’s a funny one. While putting together this mix, I was thinking, is there some kind of identity to the area? I guess the big one would be Throbbing Gristle and Cosey from Hull.

What do you think of the comparisons that have been made between yourself and Cosey Fanni Tutti?

I think I can identify with her in a way. I watched the Delia Derbyshire documentary – she did the soundtrack. I came away thinking that the connection made between Delia and Cosey is a canny one, because it’s that working class thing. You can compare it with a lot of other women in electronic music, like Daphne Oram, who got money to start her own studio and had the resources to do all of that. And that’s not me slagging her off, I think she’s brilliant, but compare that with Cosey and Delia, who very much had to ride whatever they could do to get their work done. If anything, there is that thing of being from a shit part of the country and being poor, I suppose.

Your work feels Northern to me. Is that something that you think about?

I think I must have thought about it when making Motto Of The Wheel, because in some sense it is psychogeographical. It’s hard to talk about, I don’t know if it’s a conscious thing? There’s difference even within Yorkshire, the North of England is such a big place, there are these microclimates everywhere. I mean, there’s such a different vibe between East and West Yorkshire, completely different histories and industries. West has this heavy industrial history and everything comes from that. There’s been so much money here as well, although there was a lot of money in East Yorkshire, because I think until at least the 1970s, Hull was one of the biggest ports in Europe. Bridlington is the lobster capital of Europe, but I’m not sure how much of the money stays in the town. Who’s going to eat lobster in Bridlington? But yeah, I’d definitely say I was a Northern English artist.

The record sleeve was created by your dad. How much do family relationships feed into the project?

That picture wasn’t something that my dad made for the record’s sleeve and the photo on the vinyl’s centre label is from when I was little. The picture in that photograph is a design that my dad did for the ghost train on the sea front in Bridlington with one of those old airbrush things.

Did your parent’s creativity affect you? Were you influenced by their taste in music?

They’re not into music at all! My mum hates it and she won’t ever listen to it! The story of how I got into music was. I was about four years old and my mum was doing an Open University course at the time, just generally in the arts. She painted but had had children and didn’t go to university until she was a bit older. I remember her listening to bits of classical music on tapes for the course, but one day she watched Amadeus and she plonked me in front of that instead of Sesame Street, or whatever, and I just got really obsessed with it and the idea of playing the violin. When I was about seven, someone recommended a private tutor because I was too young to get lessons from school and basically bullied my parents into getting piano lessons.

So your interest in electronic music came a little later?

Yeah, that was a lot later on! I did music at Leeds Uni and all the composition on the course was post-1950 Western classical music. That’s when I first encountered the more experimental side of electronic music, I was interested in it but I didn’t get the chance to get my hands on the studio or anything. I think there was a point where they said, 'Who wants to do electroacoustic?' and it was all boys. I just thought, I can’t do it, I hadn’t used a studio before, I didn’t know what I was doing. I think it was more when I was doing my PHD at York Uni, really. Friends were like, 'Give it a go' and I think that was the first time that I got a chance to do anything.

So that was the catalyst?

There was a definite moment where I was like, fuck it, if I want to do it I’ve just got to do it. It was one summer and I didn’t really know what I was doing, because when you are a PHD student, nobody tells you what to do [laughs]. It was when Maria Minerva started putting stuff out and I thought it was amazing and could definitely do something along these lines. It was just this sense of it being so good, but in a way that makes you think you could do it, too. And I think that’s why it’s so important for people just to make music that’s not really, really perfect and perfectly realised. Then others can hear it and get a sense that things can be really good without being absolutely perfect and that that they can do it, too.

So you like the idea of freedom through not necessarily having to work in a traditional studio?

The studio, as a concept, is like: you have to go to this special place. I feel there are people like that, who want it to be this protected space. It is a very macho thing, as well, you just get guys who like the language around it that makes things seem harder than they actually are, but most things can be made simple.

Could you tell me a little bit about your own studio process? Do you work mainly at home?

Yeah, in my bedroom. So, with the Love Crime tape, it was very unusual in that I made a conscious decision to use pretty much the same process for each track, because that’s the thing that I normally never do. I always want to try and think of a different process, or at least a different starting point for a track. Going back to Deleuze again, I really like his ideas on schizophrenia and the rhizome, so just starting with a kernel of something – some words or a sound or a rhythm or a vibe – and then find the next thing that connects to it, and the next and there’s always this forward motion, coming back to the wheel again, it’s always just going and going. And it can repeat, you need repetition in order to move forwards but, yeah, Deleuze’s ideas on line of flight and rhizomes. The schizophrenia thing is interesting to me because one of its characteristics is making connections between things that are not connected. But that’s literally what creative thought is, finding connections between things that are not obviously connected.

Is that how you began the process for the new one?

I’m trying to think, how did I start Motto Of The Wheel? The first few tracks were the bigger ones from which everything else hinged. Music is the organisation of time, so structure is so important. Although, I think that’s quite a classical thing to say, that things should be structured in an interesting way rather than letting things do anything they want.

Is that something that you fight against in your work?

Yeah, it’s not a struggle, but something internal about what do you keep and what do you chuck. Was it in The Wire when Mark Fell said the stuff about notated music? I totally agree with him, but it’s also so useful at the same time! I was looking into Carnatic violin, the Indian classical style and the instrument is held in such a different way. You sit on the floor with your legs crossed and your right leg out a bit. You don’t have a shoulder rest, but rest the scroll of the violin on your foot. I guess it’s quite a holistic, whole body thing? With classical violin, maybe one of the reasons why I decided it wasn’t for me in the end is the way that the Western classical tradition treats the body. Playing this way is such a counterintuitive way to have your body. It’s so stiff and prescribed and it’s not natural. All of these techniques are totally unnatural ways to hold your body in order to express yourself musically. I’m not having a go at it – the fact that human beings have developed this incredibly complex musical system and language is so beautiful – it’s just not for me.

What’s your relationship with the technology that you create with?

I was chatting with someone earlier who asked what gear I use and I don’t even know. I mean, I do know, obviously, I collect bits but I don’t really feel a connection with the machines. I just think I’ll try and do something with whatever I’ve got. The worst thing is when I do a gig, and I’ve got a table of junk [laughs]. My laptop is a 2012 Mac, pretty beaten up, but my favourite synth is my Yamaha Portasound. It’s so good! I do have an emotional connection to that as I almost always use it in gigs, but anyone that loves collecting synths would think it’s just a toy. I mean, it literally is just a toy!

Obviously the ongoing situation with Covid-19 has affected your ability to perform live.

So, I did some livestreams but just made videos for those. I do have a gig coming up in June at The White Hotel in Salford, but I don’t want to say too much. I don’t want to jinx it because I don’t know if I’ll be able to do what I’m planning. But I’m going to do something different to normal.

Is this side of your work something that you’ve missed?

I hate playing live! [laughs] If I didn’t have such an intense job [Winter also works in education] I think I’d probably love it, because I’d be able to put more energy and time into it. What usually ends up happening is, it’s just too much. Sometimes it’s really good and I like getting to meet the people you get to meet. I’ve travelled because of it, I’ve got some interesting stories and experiences, met friends that I would never have if it wasn’t for playing live. So I’m probably exaggerating a bit, to be honest, but creatively I don’t find it that inspiring.

Would you agree that your music has a strong visual element?

Yeah, definitely. One of my aims, often, is to make something that’s quite synesthetic. Something that if you listen to it feels like more than music.

How conscious is this? Do you chase it?

I chase it, yeah. It’s nice to make things sound like multimedia, almost. I think using lots of different techniques can make it feel like you are experiencing lots of different types of media. So if you have a combination of different things from spoken word to abstract sounds to melodies to repetitive rhythms, if you can get that variety and richness in there, maybe it’s dinging the different bits in your brain.

That seems to relate back to what you were saying earlier about Deleuze and schizophrenia?

Yeah and it’s to do with what you take inspiration from, because I often feel stupid among some music people, as I feel like I don’t actually know that much about music and my inspiration is not necessarily musical, something like watching a Peter Greenaway film, for instance. Quite early on when I was first doing music, I remember thinking I want to make music that makes people feel the way I feel when I watch his cinema.

Do you have a particular favourite?

My favourite film is probably Drowning By Numbers. Prospero’s Books is such a puzzle and it’s so difficult to watch, it’s definitely not my favourite but there are scenes that visually I’m just, wow! The Pillow Book is a bit more sci-fi with some harder edges, I think he once said that he wanted it to be like a CD-ROM [laughs]. His other ones have really elaborate stage setting and the camera isn’t really doing anything and in terms of editing there’s not that much going on, it’s all in the mise en scene. It feels as though every single colour and object and detail has been thought through perfectly. I think there’s a lot of music where you don’t feel that everything needs to be there. So that’s what I like.

Your mention of mise en scene and Greenaway’s attention to detail reminds me of your use of samples on Motto Of The Wheel.

There’s the radio broadcaster discussing tombstoning and the people talking about the ice cream and then jumping off the wall. On that one, the music in the sample is not my mine, it’s in the recording because there is a fairground on the harbour and you can just hear all the sounds and they are jumping off the wall into the sea. There’s a particular spot where people do go tombstoning. Maybe there is a cinematic thing and a sense of not wanting to be too obvious with stuff but to point the listener in the direction that I want them to be going.

soggysleazysublimeseasidemix tracklist

Richard Whitely “Holbeck Hall Hotel In Scarborough Collapsing Into The Sea (Calendar News, 1993)”
The Caretaker “Drifting Time Misplaced”
Teresa Winter “A Wedge-Shaped Core Of Darkness”
Tony Barron “Tonight Is Erotic Night”
Jean Michel Jarre “Oxygene 4”
Teresa Winter “Untitled”
Dusty Springfield “Windmills Of Your Mind”
Ben Winter “Foam”
Basil Kirchin “Integration”
Ingrid Chavez “Whispering Dandelions”
Harold Budd/Elizabeth Fraser/Robin Guthrie “The Ghost Has No Home”
Goodiepal from The Goodipal Equation
Eliane Radigue “The Resonant Island”
Teresa Winter “The Middle Is Where Things Pick Up Speed”

Motto Of The Wheel is released by The Death Of Rave and is reviewed in The Wire 448, available to read now in print or online.