I had Halloween parties every year, as it was my birthday five days before. My parents would actually put prosthetic noses on, and my dad would wear a top-hat and tails, put on a fake curly moustache, and hold a pipe.

I've hidden behind my hair more than clothes. Sometimes having long hair with a fringe is very useful when you don't want to look at people. I used to have very short hair, but long hair is my thing - a black nocturnal shield.

When I use electronic beats and program things, there's something quite brain about that - you're feeling it in your body but it's like a puzzle you wanna solve, and it gets very detailed. I really enjoy that side of music.

Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic.

Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate - and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.

I wrote about Freud and the process of sublimation, which is when you learn to stop breast-feeding, or stop going to the toilet whenever you want to. It's about learning to repress a desire for instant gratification. And in a repressed society, artists fulfil a sense of harking back to instant gratification, or immediate expression, by doing things that function on the edge of society, or outside of what is conventionally accepted.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.