Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My general taste is towards the melancholy.
I just have the normal ringtone, unfortunately.
When we're back home, I feel pretty domesticated.
I was gonna work in a university, but no one was hiring.
I try to stay on a pretty normal schedule of nine-to-five.
I've always, in some way, incorporated sampling into my work.
I think '80s pop music subconsciously informs what I'm doing.
I'm very much a fan of having something tactile you can hold.
I come from a background of hiding everything behind a computer.
Ultimately, what interests me is using exotic sounds in my songs.
One of the great things about music is how it can take you places.
I'm entirely self-taught, which I think is both a blessing and a curse.
My first big influences were more hip-hop based - people like DJ Shadow and Four Tet.
It's very hard to find perfection in your life. But in the art world you can do that.
A lot of the things I was doing on the first couple Washed Out releases was very naive.
In your imagination, you can perfect things in a way you can't do in your everyday life.
The way that I sing is very mumbled-together, and so I guess I'm kind of stuck with it now.
I'm not the most technical producer, so the weird mixes and blown-out sound happen naturally.
In some ways, I feel like I've always dabbled in nostalgia. It's just what I do; it comes naturally.
Honestly, I've just made music so long by myself, in some ways I don't feel I'm a very good collaborator.
The way I work is by infinitely playing a very simple loop over and over, and then I start layering things.
The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.
I do have the personnel that we use in the back of my head when I'm working, but I also don't want to limit myself.
I get very bored easily. I'm a child of the Internet or whatever; I want more and more of new and interesting things.
Travelling is really great for giving you tons of ideas, but it's really hard to actually record anything on the road.
For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.
It is easy to get an interesting loop to happen, but it becomes a collage when the song and loop are constantly changing.
Obviously, I never want to make the same record twice. I want to keep moving forward. That's the real challenge, I think.
I've struggled with depression before. For me, music was always a very positive way to will myself out of that situation.
Escapism or nostalgia, for me, is not about having a terrible life and trying to get away via imaginary ideas or something.
Over a year's time, I felt like I squeezed in five years of touring experience, which was a really huge help moving forward.
I don't think I would change anything. I think we've done a fairly good job of remaining sane and making the right decisions.
I'm very happy in my life, but I do feel that music has a power to transport you to places or to beautiful moments in your past.
It's a weird dynamic - I guess there is a fine line between hope and sadness. Sometimes you can be feeling both at the same time.
I naturally like that dreamy, shoegazey sound on my vocals. A lot of reverb helps, and so do a lot of delay effects on everything.
For the longest time, I was trying to be DJ Shadow, I think. But I slowly developed my own style. It was trial and error, for sure.
I didn't realise how much I ate Mexican food, like tacos and burritos three times a week, until I came to Europe and couldn't find any.
I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.
I never want to make a complete, 180 reactional record. I wanted a connection to what I've done in the past but still move forward and evolve.
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, and I feel like I can pull ideas from practically anything. You name it - I'll probably like it.
I never wanted to just press play on some DJ set and let the lights do all the work. I value old-fashioned performance a little more than that.
We lived in Atlanta for a couple of years, and had a lot of fun, but my best work happens when I isolate myself. It's all about turning inward.
My music is a personal thing, and I feel like if I talk too much about the songs, or if there's too much of my personal life out there, it ruins it.
The types of melodies I tend to write kind of have this bittersweet quality; they're meant to be uplifting but kind of have this melancholy vibe to it.
When I'm not touring, I hardly ever leave my house. Part of it is I get to do what I'm most passionate about, which is work on music and make new songs.
Obviously, you want to honour the sound of your music, but I'm definitely open to trying new things and making myself use a different palette of sounds.
I do try to structure everything in a way that's very much like a pop song. I try to keep the arrangements really simple, just to make everything essential.
The one sound I think of when I think about dreaming is the harp glissando, which is this really atmospheric run up and down the scale that's really dreamy.
There are certain sounds that have a loaded past. Like the sound of a harp, if you go back to old movies, represents a dream sequence; it transports you there.
Something on mainstream radio is very in your face with the vocals. I tried that, and it just doesn't feel like Washed Out. It's got to have that haziness to it.