When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.

I'm not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days.

Spirit moves through all things.

My two interests are spirituality and politics. I would mesh them in some way; maybe try to figure out the politics of spirituality, or the spirituality of politics. Or maybe come up with this really crazy naive solution for the end of civilization.

Political statements are usually more direct, and it works with the upbeat music as well, for some reason, the directness of your statements.

It's probably a combination of personal and non-personal matters that have led us to where we are musically.

I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.