“I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.”
Freedom“Law is always better than war.”
War“I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.”
Freedom“Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.”
Music“I'm actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.”
Religion“Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.”
Experience“Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish.”
Music“I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.”
Music“You can't really imagine music without technology.”
Music“I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.”
Music“The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.”
History“I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.”
Dreams“For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.”
Music“There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.”
Music“Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically.”
Music“Most game music is based on loops effectively.”
Music“I take sounds and change them into words.”
Change“One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better.”
Knowledge“At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.”
Art“Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.”
Music“I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.”
Learning“I don't live in the past at all I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.”
Movingon