It's funny, I played a social gig once - we were playing music that was rhythm based, but it was going in some strange places. Some people came up to me afterward and said, "Can you play a tune that we'll all recognize?" I've carried that with me forever - why would you want a tune you could recognize? What's the point of that?

Starting out, I remember being on the same bill with other bands, and I always thought they were so much better because they were rehearsed and had all their moves down and they sounded really tight.

That happens quite a lot in Hot Chip - you can let go of something that was originally essential to the creation of a song.

I like listening to music on a Discman, where the CD spins, and the fact that it's weird to listen to something on a Discman when most people have an iPod, even though those have an internal hard drive that's spinning, too.

There's another thing that you don't want to take for granted, and that's the reality of there being an audience there each night. It's pretty amazing that that can happen around the world.

I really enjoy playing for hours and hours. DJ sets where you turn up over an hour and you're on a festival stage, people basically expect much more pounding than I ever would play. I just feel like a fish out of water when I do those. They want something really kind of aggressive; that's not really the kind of music that I'm into.

It's not like that because the improvisation makes it automatically democratic. No one's leading anything. I didn't have to worry about anyone feeling involved. It was just the most natural, easy process of making music.