"I'm not really a mainstream musician so if I had to be put into either mainstream or avant garde, then I guess that that's right. But I'm hardly John Cage." John Parish is a lot of things. Pioneering left field musician, producer, PJ Harvey collaborator and now film score composer are the ones that we're certain of. John's not so sure about his description in press releases as avant garde though. A pigeon hole perhaps only too easily accessed by the (to use a crumbling old adage) avant garde a clue. "Most writers try to write stuff that they'd be interested in hearing themselves and I try to do the same. I'm bored by a lot of the stuff I hear and I imagine that there's an awful lot of people who are equally bored by what they hear."

From his musical beginnings as frontperson of cult tribal popsters Automatic Dlamini, John has stayed pretty much true to his brief of only working on projects he finds interesting and challenging. "I didn't want it to sound like other groups, I really wanted to do something different. But not just for the sake of it. In the early days we would do absolutely anything to avoid sounding like other groups. I think that that philosophy helped us to develop an original sound... possibly at the expense of gaining many followers."

While in AD, John met a then 18-year-old Polly Harvey, a fan of the band who used to give him tapes of her early songs. "I just remember thinking she had a great voice. So we asked her to join the band. We've been great friends ever since. There's a great level of mutual trust between us; Polly tends to be the first person to hear something I'm writing and vice versa. We value each other's opinions."

Automatic Dlamini were responsible for a string of acclaimed releases, including the superb The D is for Drum (the, er, artwork for which is still vaguely visible on the doors of the old Spike Island prison), but gradually John began to have doubts about his ability as a frontman. "When I started off I was really happy to be at the front of the stage kind of singing and thinking "yeah, look at me everybody, I'm doing something really interesting and you should be looking at me". After a while I just started to feel embarassed by that. I guess I just lost that mindset that you need in order to be a convincing frontperson. As soon as you lose that self-belief it's very hard to continue doing it."

Quite by chance John was asked to produce the Chesterfields' first EP. Having never produced before, it soon became apparent that he was a natural and it wasn't long before his knob-twiddling talents were picked up on by the likes of the Brilliant Corners, 16 Horsepower, Giant Sand and the now-solo Polly Harvey. At the same time, he was balancing his new appointment as an associate lecturer in rock/contemporary music at Yeovil College and scoring two musical movements for theatre productions. "My career is a series of unconscious moves that have been largely brought on by circumstance and being asked to do things that are either successful or not successful and the resulting spin-offs from that. I don't really think of myself as a composer or as a producer, guitar player, whatever. I just like being involved in a lot of things, it keeps it interesting for me. I don't really mind what it is."

John co-produced and toured the world with Polly on her To Bring You My Love LP, followed by the classic Dance Hall At Louse Point (which he co-wrote) and more recently Is This Desire?, with which he has spent the best part of a year touring the world with Harvey. He's also been on Top of the Pops. Twice. Not really avant garde territory, that. "The first time I hated it but the last time I enjoyed it because firstly we played live, and secondly the Eels were also playing live. I liked what they were doing, they sounded good and they were also nice people. The Lighthouse Family were on and they had to keep retaking their miming. I didn't recognise any of the names of the other bands. I didn't even know what Lighthouse Family looked like! It didn't really feel subversive but I was slightly amused to see that both our single and the Eels' single dropped down out of the charts immediately after we were both on TOTP."

The Is This Desire tour culminated its British leg at the Colston Hall with an awesome show. From an audience perspective at least. "Funnily enough, I thought it was the worst show of the whole tour. We almost cancelled it because Polly was ill. We were nervous about that and the atmosphere in that place is so weird compared to everywhere else. It's a little like playing at a school hall in assembly. Everybody's sat down and then they have ice creams between the bands."

The gig still fulfilled an ambition that John has long held, though, "because that was the first place I went to see a show. When I was 14 I went to see David Bowie on the Aladdin Sane tour. For the first time I thought 'mmm yeah, I'd like to be in a band and play here'. I didn't really like our gig there though I really enjoyed the rest of the tour. The band was excellent, they were all really interesting musicians and Polly as a performer is superb, so when it clicked there were some really brilliant shows."

Now back home in time for the birth of his first child, John is about to release the soundtrack for the Flemish film Rosie, the story of a 13-year-old girl's relationship with her mother, and is soon off to Europe to perform live versions of it. Director Patrice Toye was a fan of Louse Point and tracked Parish down for the job. "It's a different working practice but it's not that radical a leap musically for me. Much of the music I've been writing in the last five years or so, when it hasn't been described as avant garde, it's been described as filmic. It seemed kind of a logical movement to use it for actual film."

Recorded in the front room of his home onto eight-track, this atmospheric album stands just as well without the visual backdrop. Perhaps this is down to the fact that the film is in Flemish. "I don't speak Flemish and I didn't see a subtitled version of the film until I watched the premiere. The director talked me through the film so I knew what was going on. I watched it so many times that I found myself understanding it without quite knowing why - a bit like going to live in a country I suppose. It's Belgium's official foreign film Oscar entry so that's going to up it's chances of getting seen outside Flemish speaking countries - of which there are..." - cue joint five-minute geography brainstorm - "er... two?".

David Bowie, The Colston Hall, Bristol, 1973
Character-building first ever gig attended by John, inspiring him to start a band.

The Gang Of Four, The Studio, Bristol
"They weren't my favourite band but live, they had an amazing energy. A lot of bands took from them."

Sparklehorse, Fleece and Firkin, Bristol and US support to PJ Harvey
Mark Linkous, purveyor of damaged, beautifully fucked-up melodies. The band supported PJ Harvey for the US leg of their tour. "Just an extraordinary live band..."

Howe Gelb, Opener for PJ Harvey in USA
Giant Sand singer, "because he's so totally unprepared he has no idea what's going to happen from one minute to the next when he plays live. I find that quite inspiring."

Magazine, The Locarno, Bristol
Ex-Buzzcock Devoto's arthouse pop-not-pop paranoia project, who in 1978 fair filled the young Parish's head with inspiration.