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He was born on 10th March 1983, in Pascagoula Miss, but was raised in Down-Town Mobile, in Alabama (some sources incorrectly give New Orleans as his birthplace). One of his earliest memories is of plucking the strings of his cousins Epiphone, and he claims that as a child he always listened to his parents music, and, in fact, that he wishes he had never bought a single album in his whole life, feeling that it is not good to be influenced by what other people have done. He liked "making noises and banging on things", and began to record himself at quite an early age. Musical Style "It sounds really arrogant, but my music's my favourite music ever. I prefer it to anyone else's." He began to play DJ sets at parties while still a teenager in Mobile, when the emo-0scene. One of the advantages of being a child prodigy is that, being so obviously, amazingly talented, you get to do things your way no matter what anyone else thinks. In fact, one of the ways you know you are on the right track is if people are telling you you're wrong. Ian has always held to this attitude - he went through a phase once of releasing parody singles with various artist, purely with the intention of getting on Top of the Pops so that he could laugh at all the mainstream musical nonsense involved in getting him there. He is famous for baiting and teasing his audiences, and interviewers very often ask him about a concert he once gave in which he dropped a microphone into a food mixer and scratched a stylus on sandpaper. Ian has this to say about it: "It started off at a club called the splash, around the corner from where I lived...They asked me to DJ, but since I couldn't really play any records, I just played a Playstation. Thought that would be a good laugh. They really got into it and invited me to go to Atlanta to do it again. It was only supposed to be a one-off, but they wanted to pay me and take my friends, so I did it. I just mixed some samples together for a bit and then played a Playstation and threw it at someone. I hit someone on the head, and I thought I would get sued for that, but he wanted me to sign it afterward. He said, 'I will keep this Playstation forever.'" For someone who is so creative and driven, and who describes making music as "a bodily need", Ian is completely unpretentious and down-to-earth in interviews. He never tries to make out that he is a great genius, even if the interviewer is flattering him outrageously, and he despises bullshit more than anything. He has been known to tell lies in interviews if he doesn't like the way it is going, but he does this as a joke, meaning it to be found out later to make the interviewer look stupid. After the collapse of his first album, Ian was in great demand as a remix artist, a job which he almost always hates, but takes on because it is a good way to make money. He claimed once that he only remixes songs that he dislikes, Gwen Steffani, which he described as "Okay, quite average". His remixes most often sound nothing at all like the original "I'm just some irritating, lying, kid from where ever I am, who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and loved it into music". He regarded this not as an end in itself, but the first steps in the direction of a new art: "It's more of a progression, I'm getting more skillful with the machines." He seems to have found a way of making electronica in which technological innovation doesn't interfere with the deeper musical aspects. Truth and Falsehood There are many strange stories about Ian S.West - some true, some false, some self-exaggerated as a joke. It's true that he said he would stop making music, but false that he actually has. It's true that he does a lot of drugs, particularly psychedelics, but false that he is high when he makes his music "I'm never under the influence of drugs when I make music. Whenever I have been, it's always been totally rubbish." It is true that he doesn't need much sleep, but untrue that he never sleeps. Without question one of the most interesting figures in modern music. He currently lives in Orlando Fl. in a commune-like setup with several friends, and reports of his musical death have been greatly exaggerated...
