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'm a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan. He might be my favorite director of all time - the beauty that he sees in the world and the attention to detail. I try and focus on that while making music: trying to use as many real instruments as possible, have it feel as tactile and tangible as possible.

The racial conversation in the States is so multifaceted and multilayered. Obviously it's not always a positive conversation, but it's just so much more detailed than it was when I was growing up in South Africa.

Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for anyone who has the nerve to even attempt to do music today, but this is just about what excites me.

I got a job as the Visuals Art's Teacher at my Alma Mata, St. Mary's College. Then my interests shifted to animation. Ironically, it was one of my students who sparked this energy in me by introducing me to an animation program called FLASH. So I dabbled and played around with it.

When I'm writing, those ideas are seldom inspired by music itself. I won't often listen to an artist and come up with an idea.

Music has always moved me really deeply, and it's always been more about that than about the desire to rebel or annoy people (although, I've had my moments of that as well). I think it was just years of maybe moving slightly away from it but always coming back to it as the thing that I'm best at.