With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the decision to become an architect, made around1960, at age 4 or 5, was both slightly premature and ill-advised. I made the early career decision in order to have a ready answer to the regular questions about what I wanted to be in life – which had very quickly become tedious, as at that time I just wanted to draw and had already been told that being an artist was out of the question. I chose the profession from the proffered shortlist of architect, doctor or lawyer simply because it sounded marginally less boring than the other two. Had I had a competent careers advisor at that point in my life or a decent, fully-functional time-machine now – things would be different. I've always liked the line on the fly leaves of Woody Allen books where it is claimed that "If Mr Allen had one wish in life it would be to be someone else…"

My biological father first left for Canada when I was two or three years old, and most of my relationship with him was correspondence-based at Christmas and birthdays, but he left behind a red and cream Dansette record player along with which were Elvis and Eddie Cochran singles – becoming the first music that I could listen to by choice. Since one of my uncles was stationed in Singapore in the RAF, these were later joined by a collection of eastern pop singles, some of which were Japanese – which were actually far more influential for me. The Yukihiro Takahashi albums of the 80s still bring memories of that music back. I know that my father is likely to read this soon, so dad - I'd like you to know that the Creedence Clearwater Revival album that you sent me as a child scarred me for life and contravened local strategic arms limitation treaties. ((^_>^) I admit to making a prototype Frisbee from it at the time ((^_>^). In the most recent Die Hard film one of the characters describes listening to CCR as being like having a pine cone shoved up the ass - i laughed until i cried at the memory. ((^_>^)

For the last year of primary school I was given a high number of increasingly tightly-timed IQ tests each night in preparation for the secondary school control exam. Whereas this provided an extreme boost at the time of the exam, it had a terrible side-effect. In first year first term I completely failed to grasp the purpose of the education system and flunked my first term examinations quite spectacularly. I had, due to the tests, come to believe that the purpose of education was to build pattern recognition and problem-solving skills. The tests had made me so focused on recognizing patterns in language, numbers and shapes that it had not even remotely occurred to me to try to memorise anything at all for the examinations… oops. The public humiliation from the headmaster was extreme. I still burn from it 40 years later and may yet leave my tag on his headstone. It took me 4 years to get back on my feet, and claw myself back up after being hurled out of my class. I think that the experience has, though, at least left something from the pattern-recognition tests that feeds into my approach to music.

"Architect" served as a ready-made answer to teachers for many years, but I accidentally inched it closer to my real future by taking a part-time job after school hours in order to buy a guitar, an amplifier, fuzz box and tape echo. The job, through no design of my own, just happened to be in an architect's office. It was excruciatingly boring, but it allowed me to make my own music – because – with a probability of almost zero, it turned out that the secretary in the office had the first 3.5 inch reel to reel tape recorder I'd ever seen – which she gave to me as a gift. Synchronicity.

I studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art and the course was, for the most part, engaging – and for some years extremely interesting - but I always really wanted to be in the other part of the building studying art. I took night classes when I could get them, but they were low-level and unsatisfying. I eventually specialised in urban design and did a second post-grad on the artistic principles of historic European town planning. 8/9 years of study in the end. Look at Edinburgh on Google Earth sometime – this is one serious piece of urban design.

i travelled quite a lot; spent 6 months going around Turkey - which I probably know better than Scotland. Managing to get abducted and robbed in Egypt cured my wanderlust for a while (thank you British Embassy in Cairo – I still owe you one for getting me back). These days I'm more likely to head for the south of France.

I worked on illustration for a couple of years after college and was lucky enough to run into my illustration hero Moebius (Jean Giraud) at the offices of Métal Hurlant In Paris in the very early 80s. He was very supportive and soon my portfolio was spread over the reception floor (thank you Jean). This helped to get the attention of the editor, who until that point had been leaving me waiting - though he then took a kind interest. He held on to my work for a year…… but it was eventually unused - the magazine changed direction and it no longer fitted. They suggested that I should take up with Heavy Metal magazine in America – but my texts were integral with the artwork and in French – so I gave up on the idea. ….taking me back to a life in architecture…

My day job for the last 8 or 9 years has been working on the development and implementation of Scotland's national policy on architecture, around 50% of which is a cultural programme…. I no longer build things…and architecture is mostly where the gestalt fixation came from. … I like the idea that a well-designed city can become almost a diagram of the society and the culture that created it through the sum of its many parts; that the hierarchy of buildings, streets and spaces and the modelling of the building forms and ornamentation can tell the story of a society's values.

In music, my trusty Atari which I bought in 1987 (and still use today for its graphic simplicity, despite a house full of Macs) combined with Pro 24, and later Cubase – allowed me to make the music which was most natural to me; very many layers of tiny parts working together to make a whole – which I try at least – to make greater than the sum of its parts.

I get up for work at 5.30 am or earlier each day – so that I can also return home early to work on my music. I've hardly ever promoted my music – I was always more interested in just making it - but this year I finally decided to get a real grip on that and make a serious effort to get it out there.