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VM: Hello Waveforms is a very mellow, ambient, gentle album - how do you feel it's relevant in today's world of Pop Idols and Crazy Frogs and grime?
William Orbit: Well, I won't be doing a grime record I don't think! Is it relevant? Well it's not. But your question presupposes that people only want to listen to one thing. I like pop culture but I also like what people call "The Arts". There's no conflict there.
VM: So if a reality TV contestant like Shayne Ward approached you to produce their album, would you accept?
William Orbit: Who's he? I don't know who that is but I can imagine what he's like - no, I wouldn't do it.
VM: Looking at the track titles on Hello Waveforms, half seem to be about the sea (Sea Green, Surfin', Who Owns The Octopus?) and half about space (You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers, Bubble Universe, They Live In The Sky) - is this just coincidence?
William Orbit: I've lived on or near water a lot - in the Seventies I lived on a houseboat in Holland, as a teenager. In Los Angeles I lived in three different addresses that were very close to the water. I'm no boater, but this summer I spent on a boat, a friend of mine took me round the Med on a yacht. Sitting on the deck, listening to the sounds, I was uplifted by the experience. It really had an affect on me, I think it did affect the music. And the outer space thing, well, it's very hard to stay connected to the real world. I like to imagine the spirit flying out there, it makes me feel good.
VM: It seems very cinematic - have there been any films you've seen recently that you'd have enjoyed composing material for?
William Orbit: I watched a trilogy of films made by Satyajit Ray recently, The World Of Apu, which had a really profound effect on me. They were made in the Sixties, in Bombay. It's a terrible cliché, but it really is poetry in cinema. I would love to do the score for that, but it's already been scored beautifully by a young Ravi Shankar.
VM: On your website guestbook, one of your fans has described your music as "acoustic acupuncture". Does your music have mystical healing powers?
William Orbit: I saw that one! I like that, because on a very practical down-to-earth level I have friends who have young children who get very irritable sometimes and they put on Pieces In A Modern Style and it calms them down, it does have that effect. Life is very complex and music is a way of getting some sort of order out of the chaos. Drugs do that, but obviously drugs are bad - not the effects, but the fact that they lead to addiction, disease and ruin. But music is kind of like a drug in that it does much the same thing - it makes everything stack up for a while, and that's why I do it. If anyone else is getting a little bit of that, I'm pleased.
VM: After Pieces In A Modern Style, do you have plans for another album of classical reworkings?
William Orbit: I'm working on it right now.
VM: When do you expect that to be released?
William Orbit: 2007, this time next year. I'll be finishing it around November 2006.
VM: Can you tell us about the companion album to Hello Waveforms which is coming out later this year?
William Orbit: Well that's the other side of the coin. Hello Waveforms has a fairy on the cover, there's a sense of lightness about it, but the next one is completely the opposite, it's the antithesis of this one.