"To make the music we want it to make, I have to resist certain temptations."
"Once I was finished with therapy, I could no longer be angry for listeners like I used to be. But I can still channel energy."
"Stars emerge, stars die. Just like working with analogue equipment."
Glenn Gould, Max Richter and the Four Seasons – how much Respect do Composers Deserve?
"I am often very drawn to sounds that remind me of voices - without actually being from a human."
"At some point, I’d like to try to just let the emptiness happen."
Tobias Fischer about an album that introduced a new approach to improvisation.
"At the completion of a piece, I often feel: I can never do that again."
"Some of us have been playing together for more than 20 years. And we still don’t have a clear answer to how we do it."
"Creating instruments and producing music are part of the same project: To make new music that hasn’t been made before."
"Death taught me that you shouldn’t wait.“
"Don’t get me wrong, I do like technology. I just have a very particular focus."
"Sounds are a utopia that can be heard. They're possibly the nearest thing to a God I can imagine.”
"If you don't fucking know what you're talking about, it's okay to say nothing."
"I find singing in the Irish language so freeing."
"Sometimes I am so nerdy and tyrannical about the smallest detail. My producer sometimes thinks it's madness."
"I think the element of surprise is fundamental. Isn't that why we make music?"
"There is a mystery about the inner part of a black hole. I wonder what it would be like to travel there."
"I had tears running down my face. How can it be that music is powerless to express anything?"
"My jaw was wired shut for a month, and all I saw was darkness."
"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."
"At first, when I set out to tackle the new album, it was a bit intimidating."
"We've reached a point in Western experimental music where artists are incredibly self-conscious and verbose about where their work fits in."
"Music might be the most physical and direct earthly religious experience you can have."
"100% loving a track is the worst precondition for a great remix."
"Many people have told me that my beats sound quite melancholic. I guess they're not wrong."
"We are very far from Prince’s vault."
A musician told me: "I can hear the mountains of your village in your music."
"In a film, I want the music to be the unspoken voice."
"Many electronic musicians think that sound can replace melody or harmony. No, it can't."
"Sometimes technology stifles creativity. Especially when you're more into technology than music."
“I rarely think of starting a song at the beginning.”
"Life on earth never dies. It goes through stages of life and dormancy, remaining in a state of constant transformation."
"Ultimately, I wanted to create something that broke away from the old order."
"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."
"In Africa, musical engagements are often not divided between stage and audience - everyone is a contributor to the sound.”
"Already Johann Sebastian Bach was improvising over contrapunctual concepts."
"It's like there's an ancient civilisation hiding behind the DX7 algorithm."
"That’s beautiful - you are the adoptive mother of lost and found sounds!"
"Film music is like a magic trick - you know you’re being manipulated and the crazier it feels, the more wonderful it is."
"Dancing translates another view of our experience in the world. It’s another kind of listening."
"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."
"Every time I start with an idea, it ends up becoming something completely different."
"I can reach part of myself in music that I can’t in other spheres of life."
"Sound travels from one body to another. And on its path it makes connections."
"If I can't achieve sufficient volume and sound pressure, the nature of the Merzbow experience changes."
"You can transform a whole tone scale, a brown shoe, the blue sky or a rollercoaster.“
"It is fun to get lost for a while."
"The experiment is greater than the plan. It always wins in the end."
Music helps a party. Music helps a funeral.