Let's talk about physics. Regarding the gravity waves detected by the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) instrument: do you believe the detection is conclusive? Is there a guaranteed Nobel prize there?

I definitely think we need to wait for more data. There's a lot of really controversial subjects that involve wave form in general, that could change the entire way we think about physics.

Do you believe a paradigm shift is on its way?

I would say so. I was at CERN a few months ago. I think what's happening there is pretty groundbreaking. It's a subject that's so exciting to everyone, regardless what country you're from. There are PhDs from around the world that are coming together, and I think these are exciting times for physicists in general. We're starting to tap into the surface of the smallest of the smallest of the smallest particles, and learning to detect these particles is pretty exciting. Small, in that they appear and disappear so rapidly. It's cool that we're developing technology so that we can start to understand what dark matter is, start to understand these nuances that we know are really groundbreaking in the physical world, but we can't really describe it yet. Dark matter is the major part of the universe. It's what's holding us together. It's pretty amazing.

The Higgs particle has been found, the standard model is complete.  Are we done?

Oh, no. That's just the surface of it. Now we can all agree, hey, it exists. So, now what are we going to do with it? People can concretely say yeah, we think it exists, but for all scientific peers to commonly agree on something like that, that is pretty outstanding.

Can we at least come to the conclusion that the universe is completely digital, that it's made of particles, not waves? It's a digital universe, not analog, right?

That seems to be a question in the music universe, too! Analog versus digital.

Have you read any of the works by Guy Murchie? He believed in the interconnectedness of many branches of physics and the natural world which have long been split in many discrete slices. He was also really into the music of the spheres concept, the Musica Universalis, credited to the ancient polymath Pythagoras and defended by the first modern astronomer Johannes Kepler.

No, I haven't read Guy Murchie. I do love Carl Sagan (who showed us that science, when done properly, is poetry in its own right). The best quote from Cosmos (the popular astronomy TV-series from the early eighties shown by most national broadcasting services) is Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

You know, the narrative technique Sagan used in Cosmos - the Ship of the Imagination - was totally inspired by a Guy Murchie book called, congenially, Music of the Spheres. What's your take on the connection between music and science? Do you sympathize with the Musica Universalis?

I definitely do. Last week I was in Brazil, recording. There is a documentary film, Zoolook, being made there. It's recreating the idea Jean-Michel Jarre (featured in this Elektron Talk) had, the whole concept of his album Zoolook. They chose four artists, including me, that went to Sao Paolo and recorded an indigenous tribe who speaks an ancient language. They have this really interesting way of experiencing music. They live in the jungle, they don't have iPhones, they don't have running water. There's no electricity. It was really intense. The people we met believe music is a way of reaching spiritual and emotional enlightenment. It's a way to connect to another plane of existence, in which there are other beings who can channel music through us, if we allow them to.

Zoolook is one of my favorite albums. Are you collaborating with Jarre?

No, but I'd like to!

You've got the Octatrack, right?

I'm pretty in love. First, we were just flirting, then we got serious. Now, we're in a committed relationship. We love and respect each other, and I have a lot of creative freedom. I spend a lot of time with these other electronic devices, and often you're forced to do things that you don't really want to do. With the Elektron I have full creative freedom. It's a nice relationship to exist in! It's really going to change the way I play my set completely. In a good way.

A final physics question. Is gravity a force, as real as the electromagnetic force?

It's an interesting question. For the sake of argument, I would say that yes, it is a real force. It's a tangible force that behaves in a way that we can predict. We know the gravitational force of our planet, and we have equations that are really useful. But I don't think that we really understand what gravity is. We know that when you decrease the distance from a large mass, you decrease the gravitational force, but I think there's a lot more to explore there.

*The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality. We are connected. Not in the trivial ways that the pseudo-science of astrology promises but in the deepest ways. Our little planet is under the influence of a star. The sun warms us. It drives the weather. It sustains all living things. Four billion years ago, it brought forth life on Earth. But our sun is only one of a billion trillion stars within the observable universe. And those countless suns all obey natural laws, some of which are already known to us. How did we discover that there are such laws? If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there wouldn't be much to do. There'd be nothing to figure out. There'd be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we wouldn't be able to figure things out. And again, there'd be no such thing as science. But we live in an in-between universe. Where things change, all right. But according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so, it's possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives. Human beings are good at understanding the world. We always have been.*

*Carl Sagan, Cosmos - A Personal Voyage. Episode III: Harmony of the Worlds, (1980).*

Simonne Jones interview by Daniel Sterner

Photo by Julien Menand