I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing.
It's inevitable your environment will influence what you do.
Lately I've been a workaholic. I'm in the studio all the time and I've helped to produce a couple of artists.
Things come to me pretty regularly. There is never a shortage or a backlog.
But I can't really say there is too much modern music that I'm blown away by at this moment.
For my second record I had gotten ProTools (program) and started to familiar myself with hard disc recording.
I started playing music at a pretty young age.
Because of my Buddhist practice, I'm never lacking for inspiration.
I try to make sure that the Buddhism is more or less implicit in the music rather than explicit.
I think in a way I was probably completely naive about what it takes to make something become a hit.
The difficult thing about a pop record is that you're given guidelines: it has to have 3 choruses, and then it must be between 3 minutes fifteen seconds and three minutes forty-five seconds.
The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away.
Simon Hale, the British arranger, does all string and wood arrangements on my records.
I'm a pretty big P.J. Harvey record fan and you can really hear New York in his record.
I'd have these weird experiences where I'd just be walking down the street with this chord progression in my head, this happened more than a few times, and I'd walk home and find a fax in my machine and it would match the music in my head.
So I started chanting when I was nineteen, which was about twelve years ago, and it really had a huge impact on my outlook, happiness, and general creativity.
Happy music doesn't tend to move me much.
I make the kind of music I like.
I mean, at the end of the day when I'm making a record, what I want to do is what I do.
My first two records were more energetic; Phantom Moon is subtle, quiet; so these various reactions are just something I expected.
