All of those 10cc 'Not in Love'-type synthetic choir sounds on 'Replica' are all from the Omnisphere. We used a lot of that.
— Oneohtrix Point Never
I've always been obsessed with the grain of the human voice. It's the ultimate instrument, there's this whole level of virtuosity and poetry, a sort of athleticism, of controlling your voice.
I can't tell you how much more important watching 'Hellraiser' is to my music than listening to a Milton Babbitt piece or something.
That idea of being so sure of what has happened, and what will happen, is the most idiotic human thing that anyone can do.
I would love to perform in an Amangiri hotel somewhere. Just off to the side like a piano man, while people drink and eat.
I'm so into this idea that the Internet was this reservoir of mythologies and histories, and the architecture of it being linked pages that create hard connections and bridges between ideas that shouldn't be linked.
If I'm not using something, I tend to sell it and move on, so I'm not too sentimental about hardware synths.
Yeah, I guess generally I don't want things ever to be easy. While there's some danger of doing something that loses your personal stamp on things, I'd rather take the chance of doing that and do something slightly uncomfortable or hard for myself.
I think nostalgia used purely for the sake of emotional reminiscing is extremely boring.
The easiest way for me to tell someone what I do is to say that I'm a non-musician who practises and produces music. I don't have a theoretical language for music. I have this abstract dream language.
Oneohtrix Point Never is total freedom to do what I think is right.
I loved Alva Noto's 'Xerrox, Vol. 3' a lot. It might be my favorite of his records. I must admit, I was bummed to see him say he was surprised by how emotional the record came out, as if he was ashamed. But there's something perfect about that.
The way I think about things or hear things in my head is actually much closer to acoustic instruments. I don't have weird synthesized fantasy of music in my head.
I knew my whole life that I had to make ends meet or I would be ashamed of myself. I had a lot of pressure from my parents. So that's where my vision comes from. It's not to be a great artist, it's always to be like, 'Dad, look, I didn't let you down.'
Before puberty, it seems like I was more or less smiling a lot. I was really outgoing and wanted to have a happy life.
I am not an egghead in the least.
I'm predisposed to believe we live in a complicated, enmeshed reality. There's no authentic or organic.
I was doing the Klaus Schulze noise-kid thing before it became interesting to people.
My friends and I have often discussed the plausibility of a connection between qualitatively bad music and quantifiably successful music, often citing the example of Candlebox and their paradoxical influence on culture.
Anything that's too self-assured just makes me nervous.
Thrillers rely on certain archetypes and our familiarity with them is quietly driving all of the tension. So it becomes an interesting challenge from the score perspective, to enhance that tension without being noticed, just like those archetypes.
I love the idea that you develop a relationship over time that yields new projects and more creative freedom and trust.
There are so many things that interest me more than standing on the stage of my own obsessions.
I don't like straightforward drum sounds and hate snares; can't stand them.
Growing up, I wanted to write films and make films. Even as I took this detour and stayed in the music world, I still think in terms of 'What is in this room? What is the shot? Who are the characters? What is the conversation here?' My sense of pacing is very filmlike, it's not musical.
The problem with depicting what's weird and what isn't is that it's got to this point of near total oversaturation. There's definitely a threshold at which that language and experience becomes tedious. How can something be weird if everything is apparently weird?
As a movie fan, I remember Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender and the sort of energy around 'Reservoir Dogs,' and the jump from 'Reservoir Dogs' to 'Pulp Fiction,' and how everybody was stoked on Quentin's career.
Nothing's ever easy about composing for other people's projects, but I like it. I've been lucky to have worked with adventurous directors who trust me.
O.P.N. has always been about reaching for some kind of liminal state in which opposing aesthetic forces become entangled and confused and equal.
Music that is considered minimalism - or post-minimalism music in general - things of that nature or that come from that tradition, or even drone, or non-western music, have a more subtle and more open-ended verticality to them that allows for your own mind and body to be involved.
I was perpetually this B-minus kid vacillating between eagerness and depression. I wasn't a bad kid, and I definitely wasn't aggressive, but I was a sad kid.
You look at somebody like Thurston Moore. Is he a noise dude? A punky dude? Is he a free jazz dude? He's a stimulation chaser, and I relate to that.
When I make music I try to be as honest as I can to how I experience the world. Like how you arrange a piece of music formally. I tend to observe a lot of chaos or whatever, the fragmentation and melancholy. That's the filter I synthesize my world view with. If I didn't formally have that chaos and it was really linear, it would make my skin crawl.
I think I'm a person that's very pessimistic about, like I'm not a luddite but I don't think we need to crack the code of technology and bring forth a future techno utopia.
I really love Glasgow. It reminds me of Boston in parts.
Far Behind' is a single from Candlebox's self-titled record from 1993. The record came out on Madonna's Maverick imprint and went quadruple platinum, regardless of how much it sucked.
There's an arrogance of assuming that we can interpret the past - that we've left the right footnotes, that we're doing the right reclamation projects, that we're not overcorrecting. Actually, we have no idea where we're going. It's this Tower of Babel type scenario.
Yeah, I tend to tinker with things that I love. It's habitual.
The films of Gregg Araki may not be classified as horror, but they have been known to horrify viewers.
I love Ableton's vocoder and Operator for basic side subs and general low-end.
While I absolutely love a great drummer and get tunnel vision listening to drums at a show, a lot of the time I feel like drum machine-driven music tethers you to a genre.
To me everything is a material, and everything is subject to change. When I work with found sounds, I'm trying to figure out how do I make this come from me?
I love seeing Tim Hecker perform because the experience truly shakes me.
When people talk about how parameters can generate really good work, there's no better example than working within a genre in film. That's like the ultimate parameter.
I've lost so many gigs composing commercial or television music because I can't repress my inclination to work against conventions.
Especially in repetitive music, to make a long piece of music you have to be extremely skilled in your sleight of hand. Just to make long form music it's very difficult and you really have to consider what you're putting someone through.
Film work can be anything from just really hard and stressful and you're subjected to really weird deadlines to really draconian and weird and disconnected. You're working in service of the thing, and that can be really amazing for everyone involved, or be kind of just a waste of time.
I was a failed grunge kid who was too nerdy to totally get down with rock.
I basically am always chasing this super enhanced stimulation from music.
I'm not much of a crier, actually. You know, I tend to cry and get sappy on planes.
