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.

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.

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.

If you can do something that doesn't rely on a major melody but still sounds immediate rather than being obtuse and devoid of anything to catch onto, that's great.

I like the fact that everyone is nostalgic for vinyl, and I'm being nostalgic for CDs, which are like the new outdated things that no one is going to mourn the loss of - everyone's already written them off.

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