Somehow I missed this interview with Mike Banks of Underground Resistance in the November issue of The Wire magazine. Fortunately, there's a full transcript on the website.

Obviously, you should read it all, but the parts where he talks about context and 'metadata' had particular resonance:

So, if someone was to say 'Hey man, Why did you make Hi-Tech Jazz?' and I described why I did it, because I did have something I was thinking of, if I was to do that I would have fucked up his vision of why he listened to it. So I learned not to describe anything and just leave it like water, clear, with no shape and no form. I think that's what people really enjoy about UR, they get to paint their own picture. We might just make the canvas for them, with the record, and in their mind they paint the picture and that's one of the reasons we sold for so long. We just went faceless, there was no reason for you to know what we look like, you just concentrate more on what the sound was. Unfortunately, people need a face all the time, and for many years I didn't give em any face. But now - internet, cell phone - people take pictures of me, the shit's all over the internet. I figure well, hopefully the people will still have some honour and honour my wish not to be seen in front of my music.

I don't go in front of the music. I believe that if you put your ego in front of the music, and place it in front of the speaker, then the people trying to listen to the music can't hear your music, they just listen to your ego. So I really ask the people who do have pictures of me to be honourable and just leave me out of it, man.

(My emphasis.) As with photography, music can be transformed by what is left out, as much as by what is put in.

Update: I can't help but feel some guilt in putting a picture of the guy at the top of this article, but I figure if he's happy to appear on the front of a magazine then this is small in the scheme of things. And you've got to love the range of branded techno-warrior gear he's modelling in the full cover portrait. It's worse than 50 Cent...