Zitat des Tages von Washed Out:
I was gonna work in a university, but no one was hiring.
I definitely enjoy my time by myself - and that's kind of the weird thing about touring; you're kind of constantly surrounded by people - but I actually do enjoy going out and doing things and being around people.
When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it - these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.
My parents live out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of this peach orchard. It's actually Peach County, one of the largest peach-growing counties in Georgia. It's very rural, and there is nothing much going on, so I guess that's had a big influence on everything as far as just not having much to do.
The way I work is by infinitely playing a very simple loop over and over, and then I start layering things.
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.
For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.
Any musician - I would say 99% of musicians - needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they're self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they'll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it's like somebody else's personality being put into your art.
It's like a painter with various layers of paint. I start with a drum loop and add keyboards, and then melodies start to take shape. The vocals happen later. I've never really done therapy before, but it's a form of therapy. Everything else falls away.
Escapism or nostalgia, for me, is not about having a terrible life and trying to get away via imaginary ideas or something.
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.
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.
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.
I'm entirely self-taught, which I think is both a blessing and a curse.
Texture is very important. Just the feel of everything. It's not always about recording everything in pristine quality and having everything mixed where it's absolutely perfect. It's more about a vibe.
I come from a background of hiding everything behind a computer.
Travelling is really great for giving you tons of ideas, but it's really hard to actually record anything on the road.
Making music is pretty much the only thing I can do.
I remember at one point, with a previous release of mine, I stumbled upon a shareware site, and the total number of downloads was in the thousands, maybe the hundreds of thousands. But there's no doubt that the Internet and that kind of sharing has been a huge benefit for the band.
For me personally, I'm always writing from what's happening in my emotional life. Even without thinking about it a lot of the time, it comes out in the songs that I'm writing.
Where I grew up in the middle of Georgia, hip-hop is king, and on Friday and Saturday nights, local DJs do mixes. It's a great mix of local stuff and then some of the bigger hits and remixes of the hits, and it just has this nice flow with a dirty-South sound to everything.
Honestly, I've just made music so long by myself, in some ways I don't feel I'm a very good collaborator.
You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.
I get very bored easily. I'm a child of the Internet or whatever; I want more and more of new and interesting things.
I don't think it's an exciting thing to move back in with your parents.
When you work this intensely on something, the recording process becomes a bit like cabin fever. I shut everything out and, for a while, I totally lost perspective. To an outsider, I imagine the whole recording process sounds like torture.
I lived in a neighborhood where there weren't many kids. I had a couple sisters, but I was very much a loner. Whatever film I had seen that day or that week, I would completely find myself in that world.
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.
I'm without a doubt a producer first. The lyrics happen towards the tail-end of the process, mainly because they're more stream-of-consciousness. It's very rare that I'm going to tell a really concrete story.
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'm very much a fan of having something tactile you can hold.
When I first started writing songs, I never intended on singing. I didn't really consider myself a singer at all. I was just kind of recording the demo vocals as a holding place until someone else came and sang.
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.
The thing that's good about music-making software like the DAW-kinda systems is that they're all generally the same; the kind of interface is normally laid out in a similar way. Depending on the program, the sounds might be quite different, but they tend to all have a drum machine or synthesizer or a sampler.
A lot of the things I was doing on the first couple Washed Out releases was very naive.
I try to be as optimistic as I can. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about art and music. It can take you places, and they can be a positive influence. A very soothing influence. Honestly, I feel like there's enough pain and terrible things that happen in life. That's beautiful thing in art, you can really idealize things.
