If I was completely satisfied with an album, I'd probably give it up, because that'd mean I had attained some kind of state that was greater than I'd ever hope, so I think I'd just give it up. But I don't think that's going to happen.

We should do an Adorno reading on Skrillex and vodka sales in Vegas. It's definitely interesting. What's interesting in that music for me is the harmonic density in some crazy melodic line that sounds like some Michael Bay film eating itself. Which I enjoy in the same way I'll watch a cracked up Hollywood movie. Yet rhythmically, I guess that music just funnels more into predictable cash outcomes.

People still talk about sampling as this new, progressive problem in music. There are technologies now where you can glean the polyphonic information out of a sample and then put that back in and then score it for five instruments. You don't need digital audio to sample; you can rewrite things.

I definitely enjoy liturgical work and choral work from the 15th century and 16th century, but I play in churches with a bit of trepidation, and it's not something I enjoy because there are all these problems. It's an implication that you're part of the theological apparatus, like for atheists or something, and I don't like that. I like playing with the form, inhabiting the tropes of religious music without that promise of angels at the end. It can be awkward, you know?

You start to think, when you're finishing a record, in twelve- to fourteen-minute chunks. At a certain point, you do write to the format. It's not a coincidence that most albums are between thirty-five and fifty minutes. It's kind of like the 98-minute film. It becomes some paradigm for human attention in the media.

You have to make rough decisions with sequencing and work within the limitations of having good audio for 15 minutes on a vinyl side.

Once you have MIDI information - I mean, it's a bit technical - that's your paint. You can slow down, pitch up, change notes within a different key. That's the foundation in which you can write things.