Biography

Was commissioned by Microsoft to compose and record the 3 1/2 second "start- up sound" for the Windows 95 operating system. Ironically, he composed it on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Coined the term "ambient music", and recorded the album "Ambient 1: Music for Airports", considered to be the first ambient recording ever.

Created a set of oracle cards called "Oblique Strategies", which have phrases on them instead of artwork. Unlike Tarot cards, which are illustrated and meant to answer life questions, the phrases on "Oblique Strategies" cards are meant to suggest unconventional solutions to creative dilemmas such as writer's block.

Wrote the song "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch" about a love affair with a man from Paw Paw Michigan who could allegedly light anything on fire on which he breathed

His only vocal appearance in a Top-10 song was as a backing vocalist in the Talking Heads' recording "Once In A Lifetime".

I'm an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call the last illusion. The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what's going on but that the planets know what's going on. Astrology is part of the last illusion. The obsession with health is part of the last illusion, the idea that there's that if only we could spend time on it and sit down and stop being unreasonable with each other we'd all find that there was a structure and a solution underlying plan to it all, for most people the short answer to that is god.

[on Rolf Harris] I see Rolf not so much as the missing link in the history of electronic music, more as the weak link. I think, if Rolf is going to be remembered, it won't be for his Stylophone but for 'Sun Arise'. That's one of the great records.

I'm often accused of being ahead of my time but it's simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

I'm a painter in sound.

I like being in working situations with people where they're going somewhere I haven't been, I want to go somewhere they haven't been and together we might end up somewhere nobody's been.