I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

There is always the working out of things, and you have to have sort of a gut response to it. And an intellectual response. And an aesthetic response. All that comes from having done this for a long time. Instead of saying, "That's a really good rock track, and that will do," I'm looking for something that is more original and fresh. There are a lot of elements to get into it: a level or sophistication, passion and excitement.

It's exciting to see if you can create something that sounds, at least to your own ears, exciting.

Sometimes, literally within a few minutes, you'd be off this amazing roaring scene and back at your hotel room, staring at the patten of the wallpaper. It's very surreal. You're back in your room, and it's dead quiet and really weird.

'Triboluminescence' is actually a scientific world meaning striking something and creating light from dark. I thought it was a great word and that is was a very apt metaphor for making music - or any creative act, really. We all start in the dark and have to create light.