Youth, aka Martin Glover, is a musical maverick and sonic adventurer best known as the bassist of post-punk band Killing Joke. He has been a pioneer of the techno and house music scene, collaborating with the Orb, as well as a record-label owner, while his prolific production and remixing career has encompassed many big name acts, from the the Verve to U2, Primal Scream to Kate Bush, Pink Floyd to Guns N Roses In Edinburgh, he is collaborating with Moroccan-born dancer and singer Karen Ruimy on a show that combines flamenco performance with Mediterranean and eastern music.
ZIK’R is at Assembly George Square Gardens (0131 623 3000), to Aug 30, 5:40pm
Describe your show in 140 characters
An intense, emotional journey from the Far East to the West. A dazzling feast for the eyes and the ears.
What will people love from your show?
How to love hard. Love fierce.
What do you hope the effect will be on the audience?
The flamenco inspiration is like agony of the soul, but a celebration of that; and the Sufi element is more ecstatic trance – it’s about addressing sometimes the pain and the loss in your life and then celebrating that. Then through celebration of that, the chance that you achieve ecstasy. People perhaps don’t know there’s a connection between flamenco and sufi music, which is there because of the journey of the gypsy through Northern India, the Middle East and Southern Europe to Spain and Andalusia. I’ll be playing bass, harmonium and drones. It’s very spontaneous; each of the shows are slightly different.
Is all your music, from Killing Joke onwards, about creating an altered state of mind?
Altered states are part of the big attraction of music, going back to when I was at school and I had an art teacher who used to play music in our double-art class, and I used to just get lost in the music, and get into a trance, and coming out with these paintings and not even sure where they’re from. And, musically, it’s been an exploration from there really.
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Have you been to the Festival before?
Never, but my mother’s side are from Edinburgh way.
Best-kept Edinburgh secret?
Perhaps the thing I most love about Edinburgh, which people don’t necessarily take note of, is the spatial awareness in the architecture. Just beautiful - I love that feeling you get from just walking around the town, and the architecture just enhances the vibe.
Strangest of experience of Edinburgh
Hmm, tricky one that. I had a funny experience walking up Arthur’s Mount, involving ghosts… well, something weird happened. Maybe the whisky had something to do with it.
What Edinburgh needs is…
Good jokes.
What Edinburgh doesn’t need is…
Bad jokes.
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Edinburgh in three words
Fierce. Innovative. Challenging.
If you ran away to the circus what would you be?
I’d be with the horses, probably. Throwing daggers at a girl. I dunno. From on top of the horse.
Favourite gag?
What do you call a dwarf clairvoyant who’s just broken out of prison? Small medium at large.
The moment you almost gave up
1981 on King’s Road. An LSD meltdown. I was burning money on the street after no one would take it – I was trying to give it away, in a kimono and swimming trunks in January. I thought the sky was turning green and the world was about to end. I got carted off to a mental hospital. I guess I thought that was probably the end of my career. Little did I know that was actually the beginning of my career. It became a big kind of initiation for me, that wounding. It took me a few years to get through it, but I came out the other side – before I was an arrogant punk rocker, and I came out of it a serious artist. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
You recently worked with David Gilmour on his latest album, I believe
I’ve been doing some remixes on Rattle That Lock for him. I think it’s his best solo album by a long shot. Very eclectic – it covers a lot of different territory. Reading a lot of the comments on the different fan forums about the first single, I see they’re overwhelmingly positive, but about 20 per cent were very anti. Simply because it’s not strictly Floyd – and even if it was they’d be moaning that Roger Waters isn’t there. The usual. But I think it’s going to do it well. He covers jazz, blues. He’s been working on it a long time. When we were doing Endless River it was kind of interrupting his solo project.
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Who is the greatest Scot?
Rabbie Burns. I just published a fourth volume of poetry called Middle-Class Riot and am especially interested in the Celtic poets. I like the sense of community they inspire. And it’s romantic. In fact, I recently did a poetry launch outside a book shop on the street at the Idler Academy in London. Jeff Dexter, a legendary DJ from the UFO club [a famous late 1960s hangout], said it was the first proper street happening he’d seen since the 1960s, which was a great honour. Very Edinburgh Fringe actually. Who knows, I might do it here – take my harmonium out to the street and do some spontaneous poetry.