Timothy Lewis, known as Thighpaulsandra, is one of the most charismatic and multifaceted figures in contemporary music – a multi-instrumentalist, producer and sound engineer whose path leads from early experiments at Loco Studios through collaborations with Julian Cope, Coil, Spiritualised and others, to solo albums. His work combines classical training, theatrical sensibility and a fascination with electronics, and Thighpaulsandra himself is constantly pushing the boundaries of arrangement and sound.
In our conversation, we revisit early memories – a home filled with classical music, weekly chamber concerts in Cardiff, and various fascinations. These experiences laid the foundation for his role as an engineer and sound producer and his willingness to experiment: the ability to ‘imagine’ the sound from the beginning of a project and meticulously work on every detail of a recording.
Thighpaulsandra is also a catalyst – someone who introduces new ideas to other artists’ projects and is able to convince his collaborators to bring their recordings to life in concert (he was the one who helped convince Coil to perform live for the first time in years). His collaborations with Julian Cope resulted in the Queen Elizabeth project, and his years with Spiritualised gave him arranging discipline and taught him to restrain his own tendency towards ‘synthesiser excesses’. At the same time, his studio work shaped his approach – for him, the way something sounds is just as important as the compositions themselves.
In recent years, his solo releases – from Practical Electronics to the more recent Acid & Ecstasy – confirm that Thighpaulsandra is capable of combining sophisticated electronics, theatricality and catchy melodies.
In Thighpaulsandra’s world, sound is not just a carrier of melody, but a space of experience – something that can be sculpted, condensed, stretched and illuminated like matter. His music seems to balance between the sacred and the absurd, precision and ecstasy. It is a constant attempt to capture the ephemeral: emotions, tension, light and shadow that appear at the intersection of technology, human sensitivity and the unpredictability of sound.
Artur Mieczkowski
Artur Mieczkowski: Your musical journey is very unusual—how did your early years, when you worked as a piano technician and nurse, as well as your childhood surrounded by classical music (opera, conducting), influence who you are as an artist and how your experimental style developed?
Thighpaulsandra: My childhood had a huge influence on my music career. My earliest memories are of there always being music in the house. Both my parents were great lovers of Beethoven and Mozart and played records incessantly. Every week I would be taken to chamber music concerts in Cardiff at the university. At the time I found most of this quite boring as the standard classical repertoire seemed very overly familiar and very safe to me. Occasionally as part of a recital someone would play some Bartok, Stravinsky or Messiaen and I found this much more interesting. My parents hated anything more modern or harmonically adventurous than Debussy, and being a fairly rebellious child, I would enthuse about the more modern pieces just to annoy them. Strangely I did form genuine love of these composers and was increasingly drawn towards more contemporary classical music. I was also inspired by our next door neighbour, the orchestral conductor John Carewe whom I often heard playing Birtwistle, Boulez and Stockhausen and also inspired my great affection for Alfa Romeo cars.
A.M.: You collaborated with Julian Cope very early in your career—how do you remember your first sessions and the creation of albums such as Interpreter and Rite²?
TPS: My first session with Julian Cope I think was in the late 1980s when I mixed a live recording of his group at Westminster Hall in London. He came to the studio I worked at, Loco Studios in Caerleon, Wales. I think in that session we also worked on the Eve’s Volcano EP which contained a very Krautrock-inspired track called Transporting. I think Julian and I got on well at the time because I too loved Krautrock and we bonded over that. About a year later he returned to Loco to record the album Autogeddon which I engineered. It was great fun working with him and he asked me to contribute some synthesisers to the album. I’d never played on such a high profile release before so I was greatly honoured to appear on his album. After that we stayed in touch and he returned to Loco again to make his next two albums, 20 Mothers and Interpreter and we also collaborated on our more ambient project, Queen Elizabeth. Julian is a very talented songwriter and a very clever lyricist. Unfortunately, I think he got bored with writing pop songs and decided to follow a less commercial and obscure path. I like his more ambient and Krautrock inspired material but I still think he is a pop song-writing genius. Songs like Try, Try, Try and Charlotte Anne were absolute classics. Julian had a great sense of humour but could also be frustrating and contrary at times. Even though we are no longer in touch I still have huge respect and affection for him.
A.M.: You and Julian Cope created the Queen Elizabeth project—what inspired you to take this experimental approach and choose this name for the band?
TPS: The formation of Queen Elizabeth came out of our shared interest in Krautrock particularly Popol Vuh, early Tangerine Dream, Cluster and Faust. We thought it would be great to make a record like that and to our amazement Julian’s record label, Echo agreed to release it. It sold very badly and wasn’t a hit with the majority of his fans but some people appreciated it and we had a lot of fun making it. We would always have ‘experimental’ moments in the studio and from those the second Queen Elizabeth album was born. The concept became as important as the music. The name, chosen by Julian to piss off royalists, and our faux-glam personas to piss of anyone who took us too seriously. Double-neck guitars and fake fur being the order of the day. It was all about having fun and making music we enjoyed free from commercial constraints.
A.M.: Your collaboration with Coil was groundbreaking. What attracted you to this project, how did it come about, and what were the most important moments of this collaboration?
TPS: After playing at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire with Julian Cope I received a message via Julian’s manager, Seb Shelton, from John Balance asking if I would meet him for tea. I’d bought Horse Rotorvator when it was released and was intrigued by the titles and enjoyed the record but that was as far as it went. I hadn’t really followed Coil. Nevertheless, I agreed to meet John Balance when I was working at Island Studios in Chiswick and was invited to tea at his house. We got on very well immediately and John (Geff) told me how much he enjoyed my synthesiser and keyboard contributions to Julian’s work and also my over-the-top stage presence. I enjoyed Geff’s company. He was extremely charming, intelligent and amusing, and rather like Julian, we shared a similar sense of humour. We became friends and I would visit him whenever I was in London. I think for the first five times I’d been to Geff’s house he was always alone but one day I called and was introduced to Sleazy. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of him, being considerably more reserved than Geff, but when I eventually got to know him I realised he was a deeply interesting character, quite unlike anyone I’d ever met before. So the three of us became good friends and I was surprised one day when they asked if I’d like to make a Coil album with them. I thought this would be an interesting collaboration so we went to Gary Ramon’s studio in Southwark with Drew McDowall and recorded what would become Astral Disaster for Prescription Records. We were all pleased with the results and not long after that Geff and Sleazy asked me if I’d like to become a permanent member of Coil. Of course, I said yes. However, I did have one condition. Geff had given me all the Coil albums to listen to and asked me to give an honest opinion of what I thought of them. I told him I liked most of what they’d done up to Black Light District but wasn’t a fan of their more dance music inspired efforts so I definitely didn’t want to make anything with them in the dance music genre. They both agreed that this wasn’t they’re finest work so we agreed to work on something new and that something became Musick To Play In The Dark. Working on that album was a revelation in many ways. By the time we started this album they had moved from London to a beautiful old house in Weston Super Mare in the west of England, not too far from my home in Wales. I visited frequently and we got to know each other very well. Even though they had made lots of records Geff and Sleazy were not musicians in the conventional sense. They had no idea about notes or chords. They just knew what sounded good and had a great talent for spotting something musically interesting or unusual. I found their approach to songwriting and recording totally captivating and I think they appreciated my ability to realise their ideas and also contribute some of my musical and programming talents. It was a very happy, productive and fertile period. We drank gallons of tea, cooked elaborate meals and ate lots of cake. We were definitely on a collective high.
A.M.: Could you tell us about your role in Coil’s concert activities – how did you manage to convince Balance and Christopherson to perform live after all these years?
TPS: After making Musick To Play In The Dark I was convinced that more people should hear Coil and that we should perform live. Geff and Sleazy were very reluctant. They disliked the rock’n’roll posturing of most groups and felt that they were not part of that world and also didn’t think they had the musical or technical expertise to perform Coil live. I promised I would take care of all the technical aspects if they would just agree to do it. Even if it was just for one show. Julian Cope was curating a mini-meltdown festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London and asked if we would like to perform as Coil. After much deliberation and persuasion I got Geff and Sleazy to agree. We invited Ossian Brown to join us on stage (because he was a friend and looked great) and we performed a version of Time Machines which was a great success. The show had very minimal lighting and we wore fluffy white costumes designed by David Cabaret which looked spectacular under UV light. The reviews were favourable and after that their confidence grew and we continued doing shows until Geff died in 2004.
A.M.: You once mentioned that Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson changed the way you think about sound, to pay attention to very small fragments and process them. How does this affect your current solo work?
TPS: Yes, Sleazy’s approach to sound was very different to anything I’d been used to before I’d met him. Although texture has always been important to me, Sleazy showed me how fragments of sound could be the source for much wider soundscapes and rhythmic structures and inevitably this has inspired me to work in the same way when appropriate. When I’m recording my own material even now sometimes when inspiration escapes me I often think “What would Sleazy do?”.
A.M.: You played with Spiritualized for many years – how did you integrate into the band and how did it influence your own compositions?
TPS: I’m not sure I every truly integrated into Spiritualized. Whilst I enjoyed my time in the group immensely I was very much a hired hand. Spiritualized works within a set of of musical parameters very clearly defined by Jason Pearce’s aesthetic principles. I think that is to be admired. Jason has a sound in his head and he sticks to it. It doesn’t seem to matter who else is in the group, it always sounds like Spiritualized. There was certainly no place for my synthesiser excesses or absurd humour. Having said that, I have a lot to be grateful for having been in the group for eleven years. I learned the benefit of restraint, of not overplaying and the beauty of allowing space within the music. Also Jason has great music taste and exposed me to many things i otherwise would never have listened to. Also some of the other members of the band have had a lasting impression on me for being such wonderful musicians. Particularly Sean Cook, Damon Reece and Tom Edwards who also eventually played with Coil on many shows. I wouldn’t say Spiritualized has affected my music directly but I learnt a lot whilst in the group and that’s important. Also from working with Damon Reece I was able to record with his partner, Elizabeth Fraser, on her project Sun’s Signature which is one of the recordings I’m most proud of.
A.M.: Your solo work is very diverse and experimental. How would you define your style, and what guides your compositional choices?
TPS: Although other people may label it as such, I don’t consider my work ‘experimental’. Although improvisation definitely forms a part of what I do it is always used with purpose and intent. Some of my work is highly arranged and scored and in other parts the musicians are given free reign to what they like. I’m lucky that I work with people who know me very well and therefore know what I want to hear. My compositions that are largely electronic are, for the most part, born from hours of recording where I try and craft each sound precisely whilst always aiming to imbue an organic nature. Once I have the concept for a piece in mind I usually find it quite easy to realise it even though at times it can be extremely time consuming. I’m not sure I really could define my style and have never heard anyone else’s clear definition. Predictably, it is probably just a sum of my influences – standard repertoire classical music, 60s, 70s and 80s pop and rock, 20th Century avant-garde composers, church music, Zeuhl groups, jazz, progressive rock and more serious electronic composers like Tod Dockstader and Morton Subotnik. My compositional choices often involve what I call ‘palette cleansers’. These are dramatic stylistic shifts I use to introduce a new idea or derail one’s perception of what has happened before. Those are things that, for me, make music exciting.
A.M.: The Golden Communion album was created over many years and features collaborations with Martin Schellard, Siôn Orgon, and deceased members of Coil. What emotions did you experience while working on this project?
TPS: The Golden Communion was an interesting album to make.It was my first band album since Rapescene in 2005 and my first to be partly made at my new studio in West Wales. I had some material that I had started when Coil was still working but I also wanted to develop some material that I could play with my band because at the time playing band shows was still just about financially viable. John Balance and I had been working on The More I know Men, The Better I Like Dogs before he died so I definitely wanted to include that. When Sleazy was working away from home, John (Geff) would often lapse into alcoholism just through sheer boredom. So quite often I would drive over to Weston Super Mare and take him back to my house in Wales. We would write songs and it was difficult for him to drink alcohol because I don’t drink and there was no easy way for him getting to the shops to buy alcohol because I lived in a very rural location so it was a good way of keeping him entertained and I think we also produced some great material.
A.M.: In 2025, you released the album Acid & Ecstasy. What did you want to convey with this double release, and was it a return to your roots or a new direction for you?
TPS: Acid & Ecstasy was, in some ways, a very frustrating album to make. The songs themselves required probably more attention to detail and work shaping the arrangements than any of my previous albums. I had started recording it in 2017 before even Practical Electronics was released but the recording process was very slow and a couple of the songs I partially recorded, scrapped and started again because they didn’t feel to me like they had fulfilled their true potential. Then when I eventually completed the recording it took me many months to mix it. In this time Peter Rehberg from Editions Mego sadly died so I was also suddenly without a label on which to release it. I have zero interest in the business side of the music industry. and consequently I’m not very well-informed or connected. Most musicians I work with are very good at self-promotion but I find it extremely stressful and tedious. I’m not really into social media and networking soI feel quite separate from the world other musicians seem to inhabit. I’d prefer to spend my time making more music. So when the album was completed, mixed and mastered I sat on it for over 18 months before eventually deciding to release it on my own label Retractor Records. That brought its own set of problems as to sell it into shops I needed to find a distribution company and eventually found Cargo. In the process I encountered several manufacturing problems which were both costly and time-consuming. So as much as I really like the album’s contents, the process of selling and promoting it has been very painful and it seems to have gained a relatively small amount of traction and attention from both the press and public. I wouldn’t say it was a return to my roots. All my albums are really just a collection of songs that I’ve written since the last record. I imagine it will always be this way.
A.M.: You have worked with many highly avant-garde figures – what does “experimentation” in music mean to you, and how do you define the boundaries of creative freedom?
TPS: Again, I find the term ‘experimentation’ strange. For me, all music is a learning experience and working with different artists is always interesting and exciting but never feels like an experiment. I’m always confident that something good will come from the collaboration. I don’t think creative freedom should have any boundaries. If I start working with someone new I want them to be honest with me. I don’t have many boundaries or taboos in my life generally so I wouldn’t want to impose them on any of my musical projects either. In the words of the great Jim Steinman – “If you don’t go over the top you’ll never see what’s on the other side”.
A.M.: Your solo albums often have a very strong visual and conceptual context (e.g., covers, aesthetics). How do you collaborate on the visual aspect of your projects? Acid & Ecstasy features mixed media by Siôn Orgon.
TPS: Most of my albums covers have been designed by other people. I always loved Sleazy’s cover art so having him design the covers of I, Thighpaulsandra and the two Double Vulgar albums was a great honour. I gave him no direction at all. I just said “Do what you want”. Obviously, I had some idea of what he would produce but his ideas always worked really well even if some other people found them challenging. Similarly, when Sion designed the covers for the Golden Communion and Acid & Ecstasy I gave him free rein to do whatever he wanted. Particularly in the case of Acid & Ecstasy Sion had been producing a lot of digital art with the intention of making a book and I liked these artworks so much I asked Sion if he would make a collage from some of these pieces which then became the album cover.
A.M.: How does your experience working as a sound engineer in a studio influence how you record your solo albums?
TPS: Working as a sound engineer has influenced the way I make my albums enormously. For me, the way the music sounds is as important as the music itself. The reason I initially wanted to be a sound engineer was so that I could make my music sound the way I wanted. Obviously, this was a process that started in the early 1980s and it took me many years of work and experience, working with other people to obtain the required skills, but it’s a process I still enjoy to this day and I get as much of a thrill from recording and mixing the music as I do from writing and performing it. From the moment I conceive a new piece I’ve always got the finished sound in mind and have a very clear vision of how I’m going to achieve it.
A.M.: You collaborate with groups such as URUK and UUUU, and since 2021 with Hawkwind – what do these projects mean to you and what new elements do you bring to them?
TPS: URUK, UUUU, and Hawkwind are all very different creative experiences. Uruk is a very meditative project and a collaboration between two like-minded people. It requires a particular mindset to create that music and our point of focus is very much the same. UUUU was a more risky project in that we had no clear vision of the outcome and was largely born from four people having fun improvising together. Having said that we soon developed a fairly clear path which allowed us to continue the project with some sense of direction. I think we were all very pleased with the album and EP we made. The live shows I think were less successful but interesting nevertheless. Hawkwind is very much a fun project for me in which I get to rock out. Although I love making my own music and playing in some very unusual and less commercial projects playing in Hawkwind is great fun. I’ve been a fan of the group since I was a teenager so to be asked to play for them was a great honour. I’m also still a great fan of the rock band format. Being on stage with loud drums, guitars and bass is exciting and I think we’ve played some great shows.
A.M.: What are your most important musical and non-musical inspirations (philosophical, literary, visual arts)?
TPS: My musical inspirations are quite varied. I love Purcell, Bach, Schubert, Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen, Stockhausen, William Mathias, The Beatles, Motown, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, 10cc, Little Feat, Henry Cow, The Art Bears, Shub Niggurath, Magma, Todd Rundgren, Boston, Scritti Politti, The Fall, The Lemon Twigs, MGMT, Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Wendy Carlos, Morton Subotnik, Tod Dockstader and probably a lot of other artists I can’t remember right now. I read quite a lot… fiction, politics, social sciences. I’m also a great fan of avant-garde and independent cinema and get a lot of inspiration from things I’ve watched over the years. Particular favourites would be the films of Buñuel, Herzog, Fassbinder, Noé and Lynch.
A.M.: Has there been a moment in your career when you felt that you had crossed the line of creative comfort?
TPS: No but I’m sure other people have felt that about my work.
A.M.:
How do you see the future of your solo work—are you planning
further experiments, perhaps a return to old forms, or completely new
projects?
TPS:
I
don’t really think about the future. I’m always creating new work
and I hope I’ll be inspired to do so for many years to come. I have
no idea what direction it will take but I still have many ideas I’d
like to pursue and people I’d like to work with.
Article from issue 8 of ANXIOUS, 2002
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