-How is Fuji-Rock and this area treating you so far? It got quite cool, are you okay with the jet-lag and all?
Jet-lag, I’m used to it. The weather’s nice. The weather’s like English weather, so it kind of feels familiar. Yeah, it’s beautiful. I’m just trying to absorb all of the beautiful surroundings because I’m only here for one night.
-Last night you played at Tokyo in a club, and tonight you’ll be playing outdoors kind of. I mean there will be a roof, but it’s still outdoors, so will your performance be different?
Yeah, hopefully. I’ve started making some new music just in my hotel room, so I want to try and finish it. It’s like a race against the clock. I’m just playing some new material, and it’s always exciting to try and make something just before the show that sounds fresh to you.
-Your album is called “Death peak” and this area is similar to that, so will you be playing a lot form the new album tonight?
Yeah, quite a lot. We’ve got like dancers and my wife made the choreography for the show, so that’s always exciting. She owed me a favor because I’ve made a lot of music for her.
-So you owe her a lot of favor or do you owe her a lot of favor?
We’re kind of even now.
-Are you guys are even now because she did all of the choreography?
No, I think I now actually owe her.
-Speaking of this new album, I think your albums sound different all of the time, and this one in particular is very physical, grand door, and had a very complete kind of world feel.
I don’t know where to start. I’m trying to think of the best way to put it. For me, it became really clear on this album that my approach to music is split into two periods of writing and then editing. It was really good to realize that on this album, since it took about 6 months, for about the first 3 months I would write anything and just write ideas even if I didn’t the track was great I would just finish it and just make music all the time. Then I just had hours and hours, literally like 10 or 12 hours of music. The second half is when you just do the opposite. You just narrow it down and delete, delete, delete… In this part you have to be very critical, and very hard on yourself. Still enjoyable, but you have to go through the process of thinking “I don’t want people to hear that” or “I don’t want to hear that.” So you just select the best things, and it takes its’ form like that. It’s this process of like making and delete. What you’re left is the essence of that period of work. It’s just really satisfying when you never quite know what it will be until the last fast days. For me, even after it’s mastered it’s still a prototype, and then you sort of freeze it. You just stop it, and it’s this thing that can’t be changed. That’s always sort of scary. When you listen to it on iTunes or whatever, I hate Spotify, it’s never going to change after that, so you have to make sure you’ve got it right. It’s a really exciting feeling, but it’s quite frightening as well because it’s in the world forever then and you’re like “fuck, I have to get it right.” I don’t really ever know, other than I just have an instinct. I don’t even know if it’s good or bad, but it’s just like an instinct that I have that it can’t be any other way than it’s done. Then it just makes you want to make more stuff up, but quite often it takes me a long time to really like what I do after finishing an album because I was really satisfied with the record. I still don’t really know what to do for the next album. It’s always the same actually. It feels like you’ve said it all, and sure enough an year later, you have more material so the process starts again.
-Listening to your music, I can really feel the potential of electronic and techno, and she’s really surprised at what you can do with music and there’s a lot of emotion in your music. Do you think that comes in the editing process or do you think it comes in the first making process?
The first part making music is kind of the stupid part, and the editing is kind of the clever part. I think you have to be kind of stupid to make music. I think when people start when they’re older, it’s quite hard for them because your intelligence is too critical sometimes. Quite often when you start a draft, it doesn’t sound great and you have to get it into a good stage, and I think your adult brain kind of tells you, “That’s wrong. What are you doing? I can’t do this.” so you shut things down. What I do is, I don’t let things get shut down. I keep it as open as possible, so anything can happen. Then after a while, you start editing it. I think it’s pretty important to be kind of stupid when you start writing a track just to keep naive about it. You have to be determined to do that. I don’t consciously do it, but it’s like a intuition that I just keeps things open and allow things to happen. If you do that, you usually get good results.
-I was imagining that if there was a track with really hard and heavy drums, maybe you were really angry or something. Does it work that way?
No, not at all. Usually laughing. Sometimes I just make a sound or something that sounds like a crying or a laughter, and I find it very funny. Music should have humor, and it doesn’t mean you can’t be serious. To me, they’re not exclusive things. That track “Hoova” on the album, I made that beat when I was just laughing. It just sounded really exciting, but funny as well.
-Maybe that’s another way feeling your emotions?
Yeah, for sure.
-In the album, there’s like a title that talks about artificial intelligence, so I was thinking that maybe the song is reflective of what’s going in the world and how you feel about the current situation and everything.
Yeah, I don’t really know. I like the idea that kids in the song are simulations, and they’re not real kids. Hang on I’m trying to think now. They’re singing, “We are your ancestors” and I like the idea that they’re singing to A.I. It’s like a song for their creator. That idea of A.I. is like a replacement for religious idea that were made by intelligence. I mean it’s very hard to express an abstract and idea like that, and to express a philosophical idea in a song, you don’t really need to. I think I song is better without philosophy. Philosophy music is quite hard to pull off really. Some of the songs on the album have lyrics, but I took them out because I find it has more emotion without it.
-When I’m listening to your music, it almost has this mirroring effect like I hear your music and maybe the ideas are reflected in the music and it’s interesting. But you probably have a completely different way of thinking, so it’s interesting.
When people ask me what it means….like when you listen to someone’s music, your imagination is just expanding and it’s different for everyone. Other people have a different idea of it, and I can’t really control it. It’s great.
-I still think it had a very physical sound, which really hit the song but would you agree?
Yeah, I would agree. Definitely. I like it feel like you can almost touch it. I’m not fine at drawing but I can do scrapes and that’s the kind of art I really like. My favorite painters are like Frances Baker, that paint quite cruel and bold, not delicate, but still very worked on.
-Those painters that you just mentioned also have a sense of humor, don’t they?
I think so, yeah.
-I might be the only one, but she found it quite rare for electronica or techno artists to have dancers in their show.
Yeah, I guess so. It’s new to me as well, but it seems so obvious. Now I’ve done it, it seems so obviously good because it’s like dance music.
-So you’ve done this before right?
Yeah.
-Have you seen the crowd being kind of inspired? What were their reactions looking at those dancers?
For sure because they’re like visual representations for music. It takes attention off me, but I think it’s important to think that the dancer’s are not here for the whole show. Now, it’s not just me, and there’s more of a dynamic there. If they were there for the whole time it would be too much. It’d be too intense, and it’d just become boring actually so it’s nice to do it for just a few tracks.
-I think it’s really important that there’s physical music and there’s something that we can really feel, so thank you. I really appreciate it.
No, thank you.
-Enjoy your show.
Yeah, I will.
