I think every artist that you like, or even artists that have defined their own times, they're definitely looking to the past as a starting place. It's just about how you infuse your own personality, your own message, and your own ideas into it. The record is supposed to be really sensual and sexy.

If you have a lot of textural stuff happening in music you get called shoegaze, or whatever, and then it becomes about the sound and not about the songs.

I think that from the beginning of me making music, I always had it in my mind to combine things that I like to listen to in a way that I had never heard before.

I didn't want to make a record that's just drones or completely experimental. A lot of the time bands that make this psychedelic style of music are just a bunch of dudes hanging out together and jamming.

I saw a lot of drugs and strange things when I was younger, but I also think it was a positive experience because I was surrounded by these really interesting, beautiful people that were trying to get their lives back on track.

I lived with my godmother and mother in New Zealand until I was seven. They were both Jungian psychologists and had a homeless shelter for street gang members in New Zealand.

In the beginning I had a lot of self-imposed limitations as far as production and instrumentation. It was really inspiring for us at the time, because those limitations allowed us to push ourselves as songwriters and gave us a strong sound that people could recognize as ours, like wearing a leather jacket every day. A uniform. They know it's you - and that's great - but my original intention wasn't to be a shoegaze band or to be derivative of one sound.