As a founder member of Daevid Allen's Gong, Steve Hillage was one of the first guitarists to embrace computers and technology in pursuit of mind blowing effects. His current project System 7 sees him collaborating with luminaries of the dance scene. Tim Barr spoke to Steve and his wife Miquette Giraudy, about guitars, keyboards and the abuse of technology.

System 7's Point 3 has something of an identity crisis. Unusually for an album, it comes in two guises, Fire and Water. Fire features ten tracks of sophisticated, beat-driven techno, and was mixed with the help of Killing Joke's Youth, at his own Butterfly Studios. Water, on the other hand, is Steve and Miquette's baby.

Mixed at their home studio in West London, Water strips away the beats, and concentrates on the lush guitar and keyboard textures of the tracks, building up ambient mixes which perfectly counterpoint those recorded at Butterfly. Set against the tough, club-oriented dynamics of Fire, Water presents a panoramic chill-out vista, full of floating, ethereal melodies and swooping guitars. It's heavily reminiscent of Hillage's 'Electric Gypsy' period, which culminated in the seminal 1979 LP Rainbow Dome Musick, and prefigured the rise of psychedelic trance.

Built around a nucleus of Alesis ADAT and two separate Mackie mixing consoles, System 7's home studio is a well-equipped, hi-tech working environment. I wondered why the decision was made to record the Fire album at Butterfly, instead of completing the whole project at home?

"I like having the big firepower to work with," explains Steve. "I also like to put quite a lot of material down on multitrack. So for those reasons, and the fact that having an engineer around tends to help us get ideas down faster, we preferred to go into the studio. For the Water mixes, I was bringing home stuff I had prepared in the studio, using the wider variety of processing available there, putting that material onto ADAT, re-synching it and working from there. It was an ideal situation, because we had the best of both worlds. We're equally comfortable working at home or in the studio, but on this occasion, it made sense to work between both."

One of the more unusual things about System 7's studio setup is that Steve and Miquette have two Atari 1040s, both running Notator. In one part of the room, Miquette has her system, based around the Roland JD-800, while Steve's setup occupies another part of the room, and is built around a Korg Wavestation.

"Most groups tend to have one central computer, with just one operator," says Steve. "We've got two computers, sync'd-up so that Miquette can write her parts on one and I can write my parts on the other. Eventually, we put the two together and take the best bits. It's a good way to work. It means that any time either of us get an idea, we can record it without waiting for the other to finish whatever they're doing. It speeds up the working process, and keeps the flow of ideas spontaneous, which is the way it should be."

Another feature of System 7's recording style is their ability to exploit 'happy accidents'. With this in mind, Miquette keeps a microphone permanently wired into her sampler.

"While we were working on this album," she recalls, "one of the monitor speakers blew. We were doing a bassline at the time, and all of a sudden, the bass sound took on this huge, distorted quality which sounded wonderful. We'd never have been able to reproduce it exactly, but I was able to sample it almost immediately. Often, during recording there'll be a particular setup of effects or something which will happen in the MIDI-chain, which throws out some really exciting things. With the microphone ready, I can make sure we don't lose it." "The same principle extends to our writing," adds Steve. "The track 'Radiate', which we did with Lewis Keogh, is a good example. In our studio at home there's a radiator which makes a lot of strange clicking noises. It does all these crazy rhythms which sound like some sort of incredible percussion. So we sampled that as the basis of the track, and worked from there."

Central to the way System 7 work is their continuing collaboration with many of the most respected figures on the dance scene. I asked Steve to talk me through the process as it worked on this album.

"Well, 'Jupiter', for example, was a track which we did with The Drum Club. Lol Hammond of The Drum Club originally came round to our house, and we jammed a bit and got the basic track going, which was basically the rhythm and tempo which you hear on the finished record. Then I put down a guitar idea, and we did a couple of rough mixes at home. After that, we went to Butterfly, got the basic track going on the sequencer, put the keyboard pulses down on tape and I did the guitar part straight away, playing all the way through. I did two passes, so what you actually hear is two tracks, split into stereo. Then Charlie Hall, the other member of The Drum Club, came in and added a whole lot of other stuff. Miquette added her keyboards and then we mixed it. That's the version of the track which appears on the Fire album. I also did an accapella guitar mix. I just ran the two guitar tracks, with nothing else, down onto DAT. Then, I took the tape home and put it down on two tracks of the ADAT. I put a timecode down and re-synched it to the computer, and then we built up the mix which you can hear on the Water album.

"The collaboration principle is pretty central to a lot of our music, and dance music in general, is made. The whole remix thing reflects that, because, in a way, a remix is just an extended form of collaboration."

"I remember the first time we worked with Lewis," recalls Miquette. "It was on 'Depth Disco' and he arrived in the studio with a 12" single he'd picked up somewhere. He had brought it along as an indicator of the kind of direction he thought we might take. He put it on the turntable and started to play it, and Steve kind of listened and all of a sudden said "but that's me!" The record turned out to be some Italian remix which had sampled an ambient guitar track from a Gong album. Lewis hadn't realised, of course, but it turned out to be one of those happy coincidences which keep happening."

System 7 owe their distinctive sound to the interplay between Steve's guitar and Miquette's keyboards. It's an unusual and unique combination within techno. On 'Alpha Waves' (Hemi-Sync Mix), for instance, the guitar is used to shape sweeping backdrops against pulsing, rhythmic lead-lines. Elsewhere, as on the Tranquility Mix of 'Sirenes', lush synth washes provide a counterpoint to a range of guitar techniques which ebb and flow around the electronics. I asked Steve if the use of the six-string as the dominant instrument in these sonic tapestries affected their choice of keyboards?

"Not really. We tend to look at synths which sound good as synths. I don't consciously choose synth sounds to fit the guitar, but maybe on the other hand, I know my guitar sound so well that I automatically, or subconsciously, choose things which are going to complement it. Currently, our main favourite is the JD800. We also like the JD990, 'though that has its drawbacks, and, of course, the Wavestation. Recently I've seen a new, polyphonic Oberheim rack that I've got my eye on. But people might be surprised to learn that we're not particularly addicted to old analogue synths. I think that's probably because we grew up with them. I tend to find them a bit boring now. One of the things I like about the JD800 is that it's got some of the manipulability of analogue synths, but on a thoroughly modem machine. Having said that, we did a lot of stuff with the Oscar on this album. It was always going wrong, but it does sound good!"

"I still have my first synthesiser though," adds Miquette. "It was Tim Blake who introduced me to it. An EMS suitcase synth. I just couldn't stop myself, I had to have one. I remember thinking that here was something which allowed you to invent your own rules. It wasn't about how technical you were, it was about ideas and inventing sounds. I've always loved that aspect of the synthesiser. The EMS is wonderful for making crazy sounds. It's a really brilliant, infernal machine. You can never create exactly the same sound twice. I use it a lot for filtering things. It has a real emotional quality to it — there's a pureness in the sound that nothing else has. I can always recognise an EMS when I hear one, the sound is so attractive. We go to it now for weirdness. Weirdness and unpredictability!"

"I think that the Internet will turn out to be one of the most influential developments in communications media since the invention of television."

Throughout the Water album, there is a stunning variety of guitar sounds, ranging from the heavily delayed and distorted textures of 'Liquid Sky', to the pure, clear tones of 'Jupiter'. Although, in some cases, the additional processing at Butterfly was employed, the core of the guitar sounds on the album are delivered courtesy of Steve's live set-up.

"I don't use an amp anymore," he explains. "Instead, I've got four guitar processors, which I base my sound around. My live setup is a combination of a Boss GL100 pre-amp, the Roland GS6 digital amp simulator and the Zoom 9050. Pride of place now is the Ensoniq DP4 multi-effects unit. It's the guv'nor! You can have four, completely separate effects, and four separate inputs and outputs if you want, or alternatively, you can have one effect which gangs all four units together. Each unit can be programmed with any sound you want, so you can make up guitar sounds very easily. The guitar sound on 'Overview' was done entirely with the DP4. On the album, most of the sounds are DP4 and Zoom, with a little bit of GS6. I've also got my secret weapon, which is a small Ibanez compressor pedal. I've never found anything else which sounds quite so good. So, basically, it's just a question of taking a lead from that set-up into the desk."

Similarly, Miquette uses a small Mackie 8:2 mixer to output a complete keyboard mix to the desk. Hooked into the Mackie are her JD800, EMS suitcase synth, Akai S1000 sampler and an Alesis Quadraverb to provide additional processing. Archiving for the sampler is provided by a DAC optical disk.

"We find that it's a much more efficient way of keeping track of, and storing samples," says Steve. "Rather than having hundreds of sample disks, it's simpler for us to have everything we might use for a session on the optical disk. It's a more expensive option, but in the end, it saves a lot of time."

Point 3 is a unique concept in dance music, in that it provides alternate mixes, tailored to the needs of the home listener. Steve explained the thinking behind the decision to create two separate versions of the album:

"Right from the very beginning of System 7, we've had a running debate about whether or not upfront, banging club tracks can work across an album which is destined to be listened to at home. Obviously, the ultimate 'philosopher's stone' solution would be to construct mixes which, ideally, would work in all environments. We've tried to solve this problem in a slightly different way, by releasing two versions of the same album. In effect, 'though, there are powerful and intense moments on the Water album too. It conforms more to something like Eno's original idea of ambient music as an atmospheric background to a range of different activities. We're very pleased with the results."

But this style of pre-emptive strike hasn't put a stop to the remixing. Alongside brand new reworkings from the band themselves, Richie Hawtin has weighed in with a tough, minimalist interpretation of 'Alpha Waves'. And over the next few months it also looks as if Steve and Miquette will be doing some recording with Derrick May and Carl Craig in Detroit. One thing's for sure. If the results are as interesting and innovative as the Point 3 album then they'll be something very special indeed!