I wish I could go out farther from my musical history. I didn't realize how hard it was until I tried to do it. All the basic tracks on Romanian Names were done in my basement, alone, without any of the self-consciousness that comes with being in the studio. It was a completely different process. And those two things definitely made the record sound different. But you want this quantum leap from record to record, and maybe if I did make a quantum leap I'd make an unlistenable album. So maybe I'm lucky that I can't pull it off.

Ultimately, the question, "does it really matter?" is a question of humanity. If you're into the pursuit of fidelity, it's a really interesting question. Personally, I don't think digital sounds good, but that's just my own feeling.

If you'd asked me what I'd wanted to do five years ago, I'd have told you I wanted to be Viktor Vaughn or The Game - I would want to be a rapper with an eight ball of coke in my pocket and a wad of hundreds. Because that kind of freedom - well, perceived freedom - is where I want to be.

I wish I could go out farther from my musical history. I didn't realize how hard it was until I tried to do it. All the basic tracks on Romanian Names were done in my basement, alone, without any of the self-consciousness that comes with being in the studio. It was a completely different process. And those two things definitely made the record sound different. But you want this quantum leap from record to record, and maybe if I did make a quantum leap I'd make an unlistenable album. So maybe I'm lucky that I can't pull it off.

Usually I'm trying to get away from my discography. I don't think I could tear down everything I've done, the structures I've created - you know, like what Miles Davis did eight times in a row, which was destroy every kind of crutch or system he had for making music. That's very, very difficult. When I reflect on my catalog, I'm very proud of it, and I love it, but what I want to do now is completely different. When I don't do something different, I feel like I'm cheating - consciously or unconsciously stealing from myself.

The funny thing is that even engineers and techs don't know what a tiny telephone connector is - people call them TT connectors. Engineers used to come by all the time and say, "Why are you called Tiny Telephone?"

When I tour with a band, things get more unconscious and more automatic as the tour goes on. Music has to be like natural speech. It's probably like learning a foreign language. Thinking about the use of pronouns is not the passionate part of communicating with people.