I describe things in terms of body movements. I dance a bit to describe what sort of movement it ought to make, and that's a good way of talking to musicians. Particularly bass players.

What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest - the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

If you had a sign above every studio door saying ‘This Studio is a Musical Instrument’ it would make such a different approach to recording.

The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

Any constraint is part of the skeleton that you build the composition on - including your own incompetence.

The seven white notes on the piano - each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes. If you calculate it, there are 21 groups of five notes in any group of seven notes. And although there are 12 sections, this piece actually uses nine of those groups because some of the sections repeat earlier ones. So that's the formula. It's very simple as a way of generating something. It's my inner minimalist.