"I try to be organised. Honestly, I do. But it just repeatedly turns to shit."
“I dreamt of a record store where I would find my holy grail. I have now found a way to print that record myself - as many copies as I want.”
"This is my kind of “spirituality”: How we are all connected through communication."
"Production techniques and the creative outside of the song can work in tandem in a beautiful way."
“Collaborating potentially comes from our furious need to connect.”
"Often the magic happens at night. So it helps that I live in a country with only 4 hours of sunlight in Winter!"
“In some theatres they know if I’m coming they’ll have to hang extra speakers.“
“Listening to music, I've had broken bones, bruises, and a car in a ditch. Creativity can be treacherous!”
“The best make it look easy. But they deceptively display taste.“
“I try not to think too much about the creative state. I'm afraid of spooking it, and scaring it off.”
“Art is made of illusion. Books were the first examples of Virtual Reality.“
"At some point, machines take control – and drive me to paradise!"
“Dolby Atmos is really overwhelming. You have to be careful not to get addicted.”
“No Tongues is an experiment. Strict control is not really possible.”
"I let go of equipment that I seem to ignore. Well at least I try to."
"When I’m low on ideas I always try to buy new hardware or software to find new inspiration."
"Music is not about creating an illusion. It is about investigating what is."
“When our ego gets small, it loses control over what we are doing. It lets us work in peace without judging every step.”
“As long as people are on the same page and honest, people write how they want to write ...“
“Everything we are capable of imagining we can also realise.”
“If your idea works, great. If it doesn’t, onto the next one.”
"My work is sometimes weird - I need a collaborator who wants to go there with me."
"My ultimate goal is to have a band with as many tuning systems as there are instruments."
“Some of my colleagues think suffering is the best factor for creating. This is very different for me.”
"I’m selfish. I just want to find the best and easiest ways to make original music."
"Our task as musicians is to take composing back from those people who produce music out of purely economic calculation."
“A lot of my best lyrics have come from the seed of something dumb.”
"Lyrics are the toughest part. What do I really have to say that millions of people need to hear?"
"When I was four, the resonance of a bass drum made my chest and belly vibrate. Right there, something awakened inside me."
"If I act belligerently at a dinner party, I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t get invited back! Music-making is similar."
“Unleashed creativity may appear chaotic. But it can be an infinite source of new ideas.”
"Electronic music allows any sonic fantasy to become reality."
"Touring performers are subjected to similar conditions as athletes."
“The more an artist concerns herself with being “original”, the more likely she is to sound like someone else.”
"Engagement is the key to a meaningful life. Otherwise, why are we here?"
“In Fado, souls are communicating – in their own unique language.“
“I’ve listened to all our songs at least 100 times until they come out.“
"Sometimes I walk through the city and inhale the noise. Sound is all around us, it is in everything."
“With some of my music, there is a mixed feeling. It's very familiar. And yet, I don't know exactly how I did it.“
“Songwriting has a magic to it that is unexplainable. It is sort of like god with a small g.”
Dubokaj about a powerful mixing console with a silky sound.
Mads Kinnerup about a module that bridged the gap between analog and digital.
Lake Turner about a bulky organ with an inspiring feel from a bygone era.
“Your soul is taking over your mind when you’re creating something aligned with yourself. Like an orgasm is only a few seconds when you make love.”
“Roots music was an important impulse on modernity.”
“Playing with greats like Miles Davis and Jan Garbarek felt like coming home.“
Patricia Wolf about a synthesizer with effortless flow and almost limitless possibilities.
"It was going to be an album I made for my 19-year-old self. I didn't want to worry about anything other than making it feel right."
“After the completion of each of our last 5 albums, I’ve said: I’m not sure if I’ll ever write another song, the well is empty.“
“No vanity. Everything has to support the goal of celebrating the music.“
“On my new album there's what I call a word vomit song. The chords, words, and melody all came out in ten minutes.“
“I have a hard time to really let people in. Through music I can connect.“
“Some of our tracks take ten years before they are released.”
"The songs that cause the most torture are usually my favourite tracks."
"I disagree that I focus foremost on sound abstractly. This music still has intense melodic, rhythmic, harmonic components."
"Sometimes I have the strange experience of watching my fingers play, and asking myself: Who is doing this?"
“I’m less productive the bigger the studio is.”
“My eternal holy grail? Trying to find the future of disco.“
Can’t Fake the Funk
Creative Flexibility, Flexible Creativity
"When I was in a professional studio for the first time, the possibilities seemed endless. I still feel they are."
Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir about stretching collaboration to its limits on "strengur".
“A Juno-60 does not have many faces. But the few things a Juno can do are close to perfection.”
Moderat about the arguably most recognisable Drum Machine of all time.
"I would have no idea how to write a song if someone asked me to."
“We are already becoming cyborgs. Our intertwinement with machines is getting deeper every day.”
Theresa Wong about an instrument that feels like a soundbox with infinite possibilities.
“The most creative moments with equipment are when you don’t quite understand it.”
"It can be hard to know when a song is done. Especially when I’m posting sixty second fragments of half-written things online all the time."
“I was given 15 minutes at Abbey Road. I ended up getting enough stuff for 2 records.”
"The Doctor Who theme music shattered any preconceptions of traditional timbre."
"Imitation still remains a crucial ingredient for me."
"Bringing something fresh to a song is welcome. But you can‘t create a revolutionary national song if your brief is to write a romantic one."
"When I start composing, I almost never know where I’m going."
"What’s nice about music is the effort to uncover something so intangible. You’ll never be able to touch or see it."
"Every synth guitar, or midi guitar I’ve played, except for mine, completely sucks."
"We all hear voices in our head. They are private moments, some darker than others."
"One moment we are talking about our day, week, life. In the next, we are knee deep in sound."
"The idea of musicians as vessels for superhuman ideas is over rated."
"Music requires less personal interpretation. It doesn't require your intellect."
"I must create all the time. Doing nothing is something I just don’t know how to do."
"I'm a ditch digger in my own personal mythology: You just shovel dirt."
"It's important to remove the pressure that something should be perfect. It never is."
"I hear whole symphonies when the tube screeches and hallows."
"I wrote the majority of my record in a windowless room lit by a grow light."
"If the chemistry is right between director and musician, great moments of cinematic art can arise."
"I love losing control. I'm constantly looking for it."
"My remix is kind of like I’ve eaten a Debussy risotto. The rework is next day’s arancini balls."
"Often, I’ll be awake at night and my head begins to swim with ideas."
"It felt natural to write about extreme excess and greed."
Ancestral Connection
Tobias Fischer about an album that sacrificed itself for a higher goal.
"I knew this was going to be a challenge of the best possible kind - every note was dissected, and discussed."
"In the unknown, just guided by the moment – isn't that exactly where you want to be as a creative?"
"Getting started is like leaving the house: you just need one reason to do it. From there you can go anywhere."
"My pieces create spaces that one can enter, stay in and leave again. There is no true beginning or end."
Tobias Fischer about an album whose beauty turned into an object of hate.
“With live instruments and musicians, the music remains fluid until you record it.”
"Enjoy the failures as much as the successes. They are both pretty special."
"To make the music we want it to make, I have to resist certain temptations."
"Songwriting has been with me for so long. We miss each other if we spend too much time apart."
"Stars emerge, stars die. Just like working with analogue equipment."
Tobias Fischer about an album that was glorious and self-destructive at the same time.
"There are a million principles about improvisation. Some of them contradictory."
"Songwriting is one of the last forms of black magic left in this world."
"Once I've started working on a track, I can’t wait to finish it. It might be a bit like being pregnant."
“Instruments come first. What you might call creativity follows.”
"I am a classically trained flutist. Technology has completely changed my mind."
"30 seconds as a duo with Evan Parker realigned my atomic make up."
"Don’t get me wrong, I do like technology. I just have a very particular focus."
"We want to implement 100% of what we have in mind. Like a vision of a film."
"When my ex-husband listened to one of the songs, he broke down crying."
"I was messing about - which in turn became improvisation, of sorts."
"I think the element of surprise is fundamental. Isn't that why we make music?"
"It is not beauty that is going to save this world. It's music."
"I can cry my eyes out while I’m writing some of my saddest songs."
"Producers with the most broken, fucked up computers tend to make the best beats."
"Llistening to the environment is a different experience from listening to a pop song. It takes patience and practice."
"For us it’s really important to imagine the music before putting our hands on the instruments."
"Yes, I believe in the presence of spirituality in what I do."
"I hope to be able to make music on Mars one day."
"I often find myself looking ages for the right snare. It's a little bit like tinder."
"Music might be the most physical and direct earthly religious experience you can have."
"What if nothing comes? That fear now excites me."
"When a song is released it feels like it’s born again to me."
"We are very far from Prince’s vault."
"Technology can be in service of creativity. But the concept of surprise is human."
"In a film, I want the music to be the unspoken voice."
"Sometimes, the seed of a song will haunt me. I have to get it done to have some peace of mind."
"Sometimes technology stifles creativity. Especially when you're more into technology than music."
"Whether collaborating or working independently – we can expand ‘who we are.’"
"Life on earth never dies. It goes through stages of life and dormancy, remaining in a state of constant transformation."
"Music is as an instrument of union. It is a tool to demolish mind veils."
"What is the creative state like? I don't know. In fact, I'm not sure I would even want to know."
"Once free jazz exploded in my brain, it changed my perception of what music could be. It changed my life."
"I like it when it’s hard to tell if a piece of music is composed or improvised."
“The reason to collaborate is dangerous – to work with someone who is not ‘like’ you.”
"To know when a track is finished, when it feels right - that's a hundred million $ emotion!"
"Film music is like a magic trick - you know you’re being manipulated and the crazier it feels, the more wonderful it is."
"My rituals when writing novels? I have to feel good, and I can’t be hungover. When writing songs, I can be hungover."
"No amount of cycling, running, meditating, coffee or incense will help if you’re not happy inside."
"If a singer sings, “I love you,” and believes it, it can be the best line ever written."
"Sound challenges our beliefs of how the universe is supposed to be."
"I can reach part of myself in music that I can’t in other spheres of life."
"I'm like a sculptor. I look at the song and decide if it needs a different shaped nose or bigger ears."
"Africa is so rich in its native languages - and that’s a powerful thing!"
"You can transform a whole tone scale, a brown shoe, the blue sky or a rollercoaster.“
Into Non-Identifiable Space
"The experiment is greater than the plan. It always wins in the end."
Music helps a party. Music helps a funeral.
"We are god's creatures. Not selfmade egomaniacs."