You're trying to make music, and then at the end of it you give reasons for everything.

When you're making the record, you're not thinking about an audience, but you still need them and you want them.

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.

It's an example of when three people think something's brilliant and one thinks it's terrible. I suppose that's what improvising can be like because you just don't really know how anyone's feeling about it. You come off stage like, "Was that good?"

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.

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

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?