John Walters, as an influential member of Landscape, was in the forefront of electronic music technology. Chris Maillard catches him a decade on working with real musicians

'Ten years ago,' says John Walters ruefully, 'my band Landscape were I carting around bits of gear nobody had ever seen before: sequencers, drum machines, early electronic kits, computers.

'We'd go into studios and they'd be terrified, hearing a clean machine-made bass drum with no squeak or ring. Then we'd go back a while later and the studio would be using all the same gear themselves.

'We could be blamed for an awful lot of what goes on in studios nowadays. All the sampling and sequencing and so on could actually be our fault. Frightening, really.'

Very true. While most people were safety-pinning their nostrils to the back of their Clash T-shirts, Landscape were pushing the primitive electronics of the day to the limits to produce bizarre sequenced pop such as Einstein-A-Go-Go.

If Landscape had been in the air transport business they would probably have been trying to run a scheduled Transatlantic service in 1919 with a Sopwith Camel. They were so far ahead of their time that they actually had to invent most of the machinery as they went along, which presented some huge technical hassles. Spare a thought for them next time you plug in your tiny, black Japanese do-everything box.

So what is the pioneering Walters doing now? Is he a record producer? Working on a wind-powered sampling sequencer, or a thought-to-MIDI interface? Well, no. Actually he has returned to his roots with straightforward, non-electronic musicians. You must remember them: they were the big things with two legs that you had to deal with before the Nakatishi Z3000.

Musicianship was where Walters started: playing alto flute and soprano saxophone and composing and scoring music for a ten-piece group, which was superseded by Landscape.

After that band's idiosyncratic career ended, John worked as an arranger, composer and programmer on all sorts of weird and wonderful things, often alongside Landscape's drummer — and producer of early Spandau Ballet, among many others — Richard Burgess.

Later still he became a producer in his own right and since 1983 has sat in the big chair for a ridiculously wide selection of artists such as progressive rockers Twelfth Night, regressive jivers Rent Party and obsessive style victims Swans Way, with whom he had a top 20 single, Soul Train.

But though he is well acquainted with the technological tricks of the trade and is extremely sussed about sampling, John Walters has never got over his liking for the real thing — musicians.

'There is an immense pleasure in working with great musicians,' he explains. 'People who have learned their craft over a long period and who, when put into a good recording environment with a good arrangement to play — and paid at least the MU minimum — will give all they've got.

It probably won't come as a great comfort to some of those people, but I think one of the good effects of the programming revolution we've had is it has forced us to appreciate those skills more. But it also puts those musicians on the line a lot, because they're not called in regularly as they used to be to do all the boring parts, the semibreve stuff that would pad out an arrangement.

'You can do that much more easily by sticking on a Kurzweil or an Emulator or whatever, and you can change that later, it's not such a big deal.

'What I think has happened is that strings are used to greater effect. The arrangements have to be interesting and well-played, and they have to be dynamic and exciting.

'Of course, as soon as you get something like that, some programmer is going to want to try and get that sound, so arrangers and players have to keep on their toes.

'A great musician has a particular sound, a particular way of playing and a particular set of distinctive sounds. Although they can vary quite a lot within that there's a certain area beyond which they won't go because they don't think it sounds very good, or they physically can't, or because their instrument doesn't work in that way.

'So despite the fact that they may be an exceptionally versatile session player, you still get that player's personality stamped on the part.

'There is a problem with programming and sequencing that you have such an infinite variety of sounds; there is no limit to what you can do. That's great when you're working as a kind of pure composer or sound manipulator and you want to be able to pluck any imaginable sound out of the air.

'But sometimes it's nice to have the restrictions of working with particular musicians' personalities and if you choose those people well you still have a lot of control over that sound.

'When that person comes into the studio you have a definite goal. You often hear stories of people chasing a particular synth sound. If you're dealing with a particular part that's programmed — I've done this myself — you're looking for a sound that will go with that part.

'So you find a sound, then the part's not quite right, so you re-programme the part; then the synth sound could still be a bit different, so you say "oh, it's alright, we'll just MIDI it up and put another keyboard on it..."

'Now that's great, it was beyond my wildest dreams ten years ago — it would be amazing to be able to go back and change the sounds a little bit, just to improve things. The technology knocks me out even though I was one of the people involved in developing that technology.

'But there is something great about the restrictions of having a bunch of musicians. Because they are expensive and because time is of the essence, things have to happen right there and then. I think a kind of vibe goes on to the tape, because the engineer's got to get it all down in the session time, the arranger's got to stay up all night getting the arrangement right, and he's got to make sure the copyist copies it out and gets it right.

'There's a big team of people working together and that creates a sort of buzz. If they all know what they're doing I think you end up with something on tape that is different from what you would get working with machines and only one or two people.

'Maybe if you totted up the number of man hours involved in both sorts of project they'd be exactly the same — one or two people slogging away like crazy instead of 16 string players, the arranger, the copyist, the assistant engineer, the engineer, the guy moving the mic stands, the guy putting the music stands up... I quite like that very labour-intensive way of working. I find it exciting, and I think it's a shame that there aren't that many opportunities to do that.

'A lot of the older generation of engineers, the ones who now own their own studios or are working in senior positions in the industry or whatever, were trained in an era when records had to be turned out so quickly that they had to be able to capture large groups of musicians playing together. Musicians had to get it right on the first take, and there was a kind of intensity there.

'Of course, records didn't sound as good then, and a lot of them don't stand up now, but of their time they are very exciting and as pieces of music they are great works of art.

'Music tends to cycle round, and a lot of these things that we've lost we will have to re-discover.

'Also, I think the standard of musicianship is possibly higher than it has ever been before; among the pros, among the semi-pros and among the amateurs, guys who are sitting around on the dole and have maybe just got the time or inclination to develop instrumental technique.

'A lot of these guys are listening to records played by machines which are note-perfect, but they don't necessarily know they're played by machines. I've heard people listen to Fairlight-sequenced slap bass parts, like the one on Thomas Dolby's Hyperactive, thinking that it's played by hand — and they've figured out a way to play like that. A few years ago I'd get bass players who'd walk into sessions and if they were asked to do that sort of thing they'd say, "oh God, this is dreadful. No-one can play like that!"

'Drummers are learning how to play like drum machines — but with one essential difference. If they are any good as creative musicians they will go beyond that, they will use that as a starting point.

'I think that raising the general standard of playing ability is a good thing because the musical climate in this country hasn't been one that's encouraged that in the past. Compared to American musicians, English musicians can often come across as a bit stilted, a bit naive.

'On the other hand it's that same naivety and originality that's produced such a lot of great music in England. I don't suspect, though, like some people do, that just by getting better over here we're going to lose our originality. I think it should be possible to do both.

'This country doesn't take music as seriously as some other countries, and it's a well-worn theory that it's because English musicians consistently come out with very original, striking ideas. But it's also a rather sad fact that a lot of these ideas are eventually taken up by other people outside Britain who proceed to make a lot more money out of them.

'A lot of people regard Britain as a kind of test bed for whacky ideas and if some of them turn out to be really commercial, they'll go and sell them all round the world.

'At the moment, musicians are one of the great wasted resources of this country.'