The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.

Sometimes I just think we're not meant to fly halfway around the world in a day. That some kind of mutation is going to happen.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound. It's not trying to replace a band, per se. It's become a completely different thing. And it's not just simply an effect. It's just a very surprisingly intuitive thing.

This might be a controversial thing to suggest, but in a quest to understand and relate to terrorism or school shootings, sometimes it feels like it's real, the appeal. As we've seen with ISIS, it's not always the devout who are getting into it; it's just people looking for a sense of belonging. The more they feel they're up against, the more intensity the cause has. It's an epic clash of cultures, and both sides are playing that up, but it's human beings disaffected, detached, and lonely.

You can build up expectations for a song before you record it, and then it's like nothing's good enough in the studio.

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.