With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.
I have a very toxic combination of being completely determined, inflexible, controlling and being totally shy, guilty at hurting anyone's feelings, hypersensitive to other people's needs - and it's just paralysing.
I think I'm designed to regret everything.
I don't drink beer, and I don't drink at home.
I was always just blown away by David Bowie and how mannered the guy was willing to be. It was so far from what I imagined someone with my confidence to be capable of.
I wouldn't say I'm a friend of David Byrne, but I guess I'm an acquaintance. I'm obviously an admirer, and we've met, but we don't call and chat about 'Breaking Bad' or anything.
Making 'Sound of Silver' was very emotional at times, where I just hated making that record.
Those early years in New Jersey were amazing. We lived in a really small town with tons of kids my age. There were fields and woods and a creek - it was a pretty ideal place to be a little kid.
One of the big things that broke the band up for me, which I've become much clearer on over the years, was that I had no desire to be famous.
In my experience, people looking for progress aren't actually looking to move things forward. They're looking to be perceived in a certain way: as a forward thinker. It's about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.
The plan is to keep on putting out records until someone shows up and tells us to stop.
Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.
I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together. He said, 'Does it make you uncomfortable?' I said 'Yeah,', and he said, 'Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.'
I don't prepare very well. I'm always sort of wrapped up in what I'm supposed to be doing in the moment, and then I suddenly appear someplace, and I'm really not prepared.
I'm really focused and obsessed with writing things that are specific. I don't like big rock lyrics - I find them infuriating.
My personality is based on an anonymity and failure. Failure and anonymity, those are my strengths - superiority from below.
When given the opportunity to fail myself or fail someone else, I choose to fail myself.
When I want to DJ what I think to be the best-sounding place in the world, I go to this place in Sapporo, Japan, called Precious Hall, which has kind of a custom sound system with a much lower ceiling and a smaller room.
I was someone who grew up obsessed with bands, how they were and how they treated one another, and how they treated fans.
I moved to New York in 1989 and went to study at NYU.
