For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards.

I'd rather hold one note for an hour and modulate it so that it means something than play 3,000 notes in 15 seconds.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature... The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don't know that I'm doing it, usually.