Here’s Inigo Kennedy on music made from disobedient machines. He’s playing the Token Label Showcase this Saturday, brought to us by Void.

CW: What was so seductive to you about electronic music?

From a very young age I had an interest in electronics, mainly due to my dad who was an electronic engineer, so almost inevitably I became fascinated about the electronics of sound, computers, software and the workings of music itself. There's a real sense of exploration. It can be very unstructured, informal and unrestricted but at the same time there's this element of precision, control and order.

CW: What's your day job?

I'm a software developer working for a very small company and responsible for a fairly large project used by global investment banks. The day job sounds fascinating, I know, but there are a lot of parallels with my music making too - creative thinking, expecting the unexpected, understanding machines and their behavior and imagining ways to use their potential.

CW: What fascinates you about machines?

They can do things we can't but that we can imagine. I'm also fascinated when they don't do what you expect - or more to the point when you expect them to behave unpredictably. When you make music with analogue equipment you can encourage chaotic or non-linear behavior like feedback or distortion. I like leaving a lot to chance when I make music - reacting to things that are not planned clearly. Capturing the accidents is really important. Machines make pretty good coffee too.

CW: Have you invented any musical devices?

I built my own mixers and filters years ago and have made my own modules for analogue synthesizers; something like Zen and the Art of Circuit Bending. I've developed quite a lot of my own software tools for music making - to generate patterns, to manipulate notes, to entertain accidents as I called one of my Asymmetric releases. To some extent those become the signatures that can stick out from the crowd so I think they're really important to invest in. I'd be uncomfortable to say much of these are truly inventions though. I do seem to invent endless ways of being distracted.

CW: Any favorite gadgets?

Something I'm enjoying at the moment is a touch-screen controller called a Lemur. You can create your own interfaces to control other software or hardware; it's quite amazing and I've found it surprisingly creative and it feels very inventive despite obvious limitations in not having any physical controls to feel.

CW: When you started to perform, did you have a sense of this private world of experimentation changing, taking on new dimensions?

When I perform it very much remains an internal experience for me. The difference is only that you sense you might be sharing a similar experience; in fact you are probably having a completely different one

CW: You seem to concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe. Why is that?

That’s simply been where I've had the most success in the past. That specific sound of techno that was evolving at the time - powerful minimal machine music, a slightly punk ethic - seemed to resonate really well there. For many years techno was far more mainstream there than I've experienced anywhere else - for example I've played to a massive crowd after The Prodigy in Czech Republic; that's unlikely to happen elsewhere. I guess the feeling of being involved in something underground and having a slightly subversive edge has a lot to do with it. It's fitted with where people's heads are at culturally, politically, socially.

CW: Tell us how you met Kr!z, Token label head.

Kris heard me play a few times before we were in touch with one another; he's followed my music for quite some time too. He just dropped me a line out of the blue in 2006 when he was planning to start up Token. I got one of those gut feelings that it was a really good thing and sent over some tracks. He's a really nice guy and a pleasure to work with; definitely a good sign that you should always trust your instincts.

CW: What do you release on your own label Asymmetric, compared with what kind of material is suitable for Token?

The Asymmetric MP3 project allows me to release more personal music and make it available to people for free. Token has shifted the focus right back on to vinyl and its dance floor orientation. Thanks to Kris' vision Token supplies an outlet for that techno aimed at the floor and is growing into a label of real quality. It was a real honor to release the first record for Token. Likewise to represent the label around the world together with Kris.

CW: What would you like to know most about China?

I would like to get a feeling for what is under the surface - iceberg tips are all around us and it's the reason I chose that as a title for one of my Asymmetric releases. I suspect I won't get a very true picture of China or Shanghai in the very limited trip I'm about to take but it will be fantastic to have that first brief glimpse of what might be underneath.