There is definitely a nostalgia, and I am very sentimental, so I don't begrudge people for having sentimental feelings towards vinyl.

I was living in Gainesville, Florida, and our babysitter brought over the soundtrack to The Who's "Tommy" - not the actual record "Tommy", but the soundtrack to the movie with Elton John and Aretha Franklin. I remember hearing it for the first time and it was so confusing. It was like waves and waves of unknowable and indescribable sound coming out of the stereo.

In fact, it's in my interest to love digital recording, and I just spent a ton on a new digital recording system, so I speak from a place of heavy investment in both sides.

I'm a collector, a tinkerer, and a tweaker, like a lot of people, and recording equipment is really easy to fetishize.

I like vinyl because it's not quite random access. You have to pick up the needle, flip the record. I do think that an 18-20 minute block of music is sacred, and I can see why it's catching on. I really don't know if it will stay, but it's such a bizarre world, I think it's possible.

To make a live record - something that has a lot of life in it - is difficult. After slaving away for years in the studio, when I hear a No Age record or when I hear Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first EP or when I hear DRI or really early punk stuff, it's just so powerful, so raw - and I know how hard that is to create. It's very deceptive. It's like a Dardenne brothers film - it seems like just a handheld camera following some people around in a trailer park, but it's incredibly difficult to do that.

As a studio, you have to have a niche. You have to provide a service and there has to be a reason for your being around.