I feel like when we talk about post-apocalyptic themes that's what we're really talking about. We're always returning to this sense of being alone in a strange new place where all is bleak and all is lost. And it is this sense of isolation that permeates the whole album. I wanted to go into the balance between fear and transcendence.
I want to make albums that are like a Murakami novel or a Terrence Malick film - something that explicitly states its own world.
I practice yoga and breathing daily along with all the exercises on the instrument. I'm getting more and more monastic about it, especially when I'm on tour, because I'm making songs that are harder to perform all the time. So I no longer smoke and I drink a lot less on tour.
It's important to me in the creation of it because I figured as soon as I crossed that threshold into effects and loops it would completely undermine the premise of how I go about creating things physically, with the instrument.
I would like for people to appreciate the album musically whether they knew how it was made or not.
There are mics inside the instrument, a contact mic on my throat, and countless mics clustered around the air of the horn and throughout the room. I wanted to make something that was specific to the medium of recording.
I feel like if I do my homework practice-wise, by the time I get to the studio I can put everything exactly where I want it to be right away.
I was also thinking about isolation on an evolutionary scale as well, like when you think of an island like Madagascar where things are free to evolve unfettered by outside powers. That starts to reach into the underlying narrative, which is more of a literal story that I used as a construct to build songs around.
Never had a ska phase, but I was in a very grunge-like rock band that awkwardly had an alto sax in it.
