As a musician, you are all the music that you absorb into your mind; that just subconsciously connects.
I don't like the idea that in music, clothes, taste or anything, we are limited to a certain style, because we need to maintain an identity, maybe between some subculture group. Hopefully, all those walls break down, and music is just music.
I was always a laid-back, subdued person, and I just try to let that speak through my music.
For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.
I know music is subjective.
I'm saying that people who are enmeshed in situations of subjugation and have to live, have to find ways to project their dignity as human beings - in spite of all the efforts of those around them to degrade them - I'm saying that this music is the manifestation of the dignity in the life that has always been present.
Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.
When I started making music, I was so heavy into the hyphy movement. That's something you only know so much about if you were right there living in it, submerged in the culture.
Sadly, piped music in so many public spaces is often just more noise. Rarely is it carefully designed to enhance our experience; much more likely it is there because retailers have subscribed to an incorrect view that music makes people spend more.
I write a lot of my music, but not all of it. I have always subscribed to the 'best song wins' theory when making an album.
The new Zune may not be an iPod killer, but it does offer a clean interface, great industrial design, HD radio, and a subscription model for music, making it significantly less expensive for big users.
There's a certain kind of idealism attached to 'Tusk' as a subtext to the music, and I think people now can respond not only to how colorful and experimental it is, but also why it was made.
I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again.
When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.
I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.
A lot of my music is slow and subtle. The subtly is what I enjoy about making music.
The realisation that, depending on where we changed from one note to the next in a melodic line, the music could subtly influence the entire meaning of a scene in so many ways was like a door opening to this amazing new world for me.
When I was a kid, pre-1994 was still apartheid, so we didn't get a lot the subversive music from the States or from the U.K. A lot of the music we would get was the poppiest pop music, so I've never really had a bad association it.
Music is such a big part of my life.
I am obsessed with rap music - it's such a big part of my life.
