I was extremely frustrated, almost at the point of giving up on coming up with a name for the project (because I'm awful at it), when I decided to play the 'put a pen somewhere on a map with your eyes closed' game with South Africa. About the 5th try was St. Lucia in South Africa, which coincidentally also happens to be an idyllic sub-tropical seaside resort town. The name seemed to fit with the mood of the music, and so after a while it just stuck.

When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school.

Most of the writing that I do is a complete train of thought process. I'll just be walking down the street or sitting on the toilet or whatever and something will pop into my head and I'll record it on my phone and then over the next little while it'll develop a little more in my head.

[I] was always my dream to attend the Art Institute. I have always had this zeal to become the best that I can be and I saw that this institution will act as an avenue to me achieving that goal. I applied to the institution and got accepted based on my impressive portfolio.

When I was developing St. Lucia - around 2008, 2009, at the peak of Pitchfork culture - what was considered cool was being as alienating to your audience as possible.

I was very conceptual about what I was doing; I had the first five albums planned out, and all the songs on every album, and the artwork. I always had these ambitious musical projects in mind.

I didn't see [Luigi St. Omer] as a teacher. I saw him as a comrade I respected and I could go to see anytime something was bothering me. He was indeed my "big brother". He praised me when I did something exceptional and scolded me when I did things which were out of the way.