For me, the audience is the most important thing in the whole chain, so finding out how they respond to things is a learning curve at all times.

I was listening to a lot more folk music. I love the sound of acoustic guitars but I didn't want to be that person standing up there strumming away.

I've always found it interesting when I'm the person in the audience feeling mismatched by what I've seen or heard. The shows I've taken the most from I may have not liked while I was there listening to it but, maybe an hour later, there's suddenly a lightening bolt out of the blue: "Oh, I'd see them again."

I know that I can't ever write a song that just sounds completely saccharin. Even if I'm singing about someone being my complete love life, I'm singing about my own inabilities to be as bright as that person.

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?

I'm quite interested in what words can be, if it's very few words, and it's a kind of club track but it has a sort of uplifting or spiritual kind of feeling to it. Somehow, something bigger than just the words on the page happens when you hear it all together. Sometimes I notice when I'm DJing, I put on a lot of tracks that feature vocals. I guess for me, it's just from growing up loving songs, so maybe I'm geared slightly more towards dance music that features a song element.

Some people are better at seeing things through to a logical conclusion as far as copying things they like from other people's records; they understand what Brian Eno did and they just do it.