A MERE GRASSHOPPER: JAMES HOLDEN

It's been a while since you released 'The idiots are winning' - an experimental EP demanding for more! What we can expect from Border Community this year?

"It's a funny time for music at the moment. In a lot of ways it reminds us of the way things were when we started BC. On either side there are quite fixed, conservative scenes about to implode - Minimal and Neo-trance, whereas 6 years ago it was Prog and Trance - and we get mentioned in connection with both but want no part of either, and see an obvious gulf between us and them. But just like back then, I think we can see a way forward, and there seem to be like minded people around us. The BC old-guard are all working on new stuff that seems a leap forward, and especially exciting about this year is we have so much new British talent. I'd got so used to the UK being a backwater dominated by all these awful British 'superstars' and now we have all this fresh box-escaping brilliance from people like Luke Abbott and Wesley Matsell - our newest signing."

You have been called a nerd, an outsider and a rebel. Do you feel misunderstood?

"Maybe I am a bit of all of those things. I think being separated from everyone else by a stage and some decks makes anyone into an outsider, but I love that. The objectivity it gives you about the music but also about human behaviour is great. It's also hard to do anything but misunderstand musicians. I'm not sure I really understand my friends and I've met them - so understanding someone you've only read about seems like a bit of a leap."


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