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

When I first started doing stuff outside of Hot Chip, I got the impression that Joe Goddard was a bit concerned. But I said, "I really want to record these songs quickly and not turn them into dance music." And he was fairly supportive - maybe not wholly supportive. But then you learn that no one's about to quit the band, so it seems good and healthy.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of people in the crowd want to be told what to do; if you just put your hands up, they do it.

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.