Awkwardly avoiding actually talking about anything, Richard Jackson takes random bites from his morning fry-up. Two waffles, two hash browns, beans, fried egg, two veggie sausages, his daily attack on his own digestive system fuels his daily ritual of avoiding serious work by focusing on smaller jobs, usually for other people. "I just find it hard to write for me" he says. "I can only write words when I want to say something to someone, I can only write music when I want someone to make those sounds. I can work for 37 hours a day on a piece if someone asks for it, but I just can't get myself to just write music that'll only be for me. There just doesn’t seem to be a point."

Richard hasn't left education yet. Having graduated from Cardiff Uni in 2008, (undergrad in Music and Maths, "Not that weird a combination really" he insists) he went straight into a part-time masters in Composition, reasoning that that way he would still be writing for people, even just for the sake of the course, until people would actually start asking him to write for them. Now he has almost got there; "People have had to start reminding me that I owe them pieces. It's amazing when you feel that people appreciate your work like that".

As a musician, Rich feels like a late starter. Though he had 'a few piano lessons for a few years' early on, it was guitar that was to be his first musical passion. "I heard Radiohead's 'Street Spirit' when I was 15 and then life began again. I spent 2 months learning it, with folk screaming at me to learn anything else. Loads of folks seem to go into these 'Radiohead cocoons'." It was then a few years later when a Rachmaninov Prelude found it's place in a Muse show he attended that piano came back to the fore. From then on there was little else.

"I was in my A level year, and I just realised I needed to do Music. I spoke to the school office about just being able to do the AS, but they said I couldn't since it collided with Chemistry. I just ended up skipping most of my Chemistry lessons. I think it worked out better that way. Still passed Chemistry anyway."

Accepted into Cardiff Uni for Maths, he quickly jumped ship onto the joint Maths and Music course ("It was great, I skipped out any auditions, exams, I didn't even have any qualifications. I still don't have a grade 8 in anything"). It was there that he started to understand how much performance meant to other people. "I met this girl right at the beginning of the year, and I would just end up spending hours just playing songs for her. She even called me up once because she couldn't sleep and just wanted to hear me play. It's stuff like that that made music a necessary rather than just a hobby for me."

From then on, the rest is noise. Rich found his feet in writing things ("I just needed to express exactly what I felt, not in someone else's words or tunes, on a level that other people would understand and appreciate") and kept on singing and playing whenever he could. From forming the Cardiff University Kazoo Orchestra for a special performance of Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus' to conducting orchestras and choirs, it seems that Rich has spent the past few years just trying to make up for lost time, and it doesn't look like he's planning to slow down anytime soon.

K.R.O