Snowden has demonstrated true love for his country. He has done something to improve the lives of people.
As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.
Governments can help support European music by promoting public awareness that when people take music that doesn't belong to them, they undermine the future of those very artists whose work they enjoy.
'Oxygene' was one of the first, if not the first, popular electronic music album.
I collect robots. They're mainly Japanese, American, and especially Russian - small robots, big robots, and old toy robots made between 1910 and the Fifties.
I had no precise plan when I started 'Electronica,' but I think it has been a very positive journey for me.
I thought we had opposite visions of electronic music. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk had a very robotic, mechanical approach. I had a more impressionist vision - a Ravel/Debussy approach.
I was recently realizing that I've probably spent 80 percent of my life in studios! It's very difficult to do that and still have a private life; it's very difficult to do anything else.
This project, 'Electronica,' is about working with people who are a strong source of inspiration to me.
Back in the Seventies, we had a romantic, poetic vision of the future, like it was in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' It felt as if everything was still ahead of us.
I would say to anyone starting out that if their priority in life is happiness, then don't be a musician.
Electronic musicians are quite like writers or painters. They are quite isolated in their home studios. We often don't have that the opportunity to collaborate with that many people, like in rock or jazz.
In my opinion, British women are more romantic than French ones.
Sometimes, you try something, and it works in terms of success. That doesn't mean you like what is a hit. Sometimes you like the most obscure song on your album.
When I first heard Kraftwerk, I thought they were an American band singing in German.
One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera's ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.
I have always been of the opinion that when those in power are promoting actions and ideals that risk harming or impeding us, people should stand up to this.
My father and I never really achieved a real relationship. We probably saw each other 20 or 25 times in our lifetime.
In a lifetime, you can say, yes, you have instances of pleasure, of happiness, you like some of your work, but your work is the entire story, and if you are not satisfied with a few moments of a few parts of that story, you would like to be able to adjust that.
Some collaborators might join forces in certain cities or special concerts. I'm excited to share the stage with some prestigious people that I love and respect.
I used to play in rock bands. Then I went to the first school of electronic music in the world. It was in Paris headed by one of the most important people involved in electronic music.
The difference between noise and music is in what the musician does with the sounds.
If you get rid of music, images, videos, words and literature from the smartphone, you just have a simple phone that would be worth $50.
From the outside, being an artist seems like a dream life, but there are much darker aspects to it.
What may not have value to you today may have value to an entire population, entire people, an entire way of life tomorrow. And if you don't stand up for it, then who will?
All those ethereal string sounds on 'Oxygene IV' come from the VCS3. It was the first European synthesizer, made in England by a guy called Peter Zinoviev. I got one of the first ones.
With the violin, for example, one understands culturally that the sound comes from the instrument that can be seen. With electronic music, it is not the same at all. That's why it seemed so important to me, from the beginning of my career, to invent a grammar, a visual vocabulary adapted to electronic music.
People don't realize enough how important and influentical John Carpenter has been in electronic music. He did his soundtracks by himself, using mostly electronic and analog synthesizers. He's a cult figure with DJs these days for good reasons.
The whole 'Electronica' project is about the ambiguous relationship we have with technology: on the one side, we have the world in our pocket; on the other, we are spied on constantly.
With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
The value of streaming platforms is estimated at a few billion dollars, and creators can only afford a pizza without pepperoni at the end of the year with the revenues. Without musicians, all those platforms wouldn't exist, so we urgently need an appropriate and sustainable business model for musicians for the 21st century.
Technology is neutral, but it all depends on the way we use it.
What is very interesting when talking about electronic music is that - I would say that rock and roll is called the ethnic music born in America that invaded the world. Electronic music is certainly kind of ethnic music born in countries like Germany and France that has invaded the world.
I was always interested in mixing experimentation with pop music, and Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream - we were all doing it at the same time, just very isolated from each other, all in our different cellars, in different worlds, without the Internet - underground in every sense.
I have played a few times in Barcelona, including the fantastic Olympic Stadium. It's undoubtedly one of my favourite cities in terms of the people, arts, food, architecture and design.
I just had one occasion in my life when suddenly my private life was everywhere, and that was an accident and beyond my control.
When you think after 25 years of Mao, Chinese people had no idea about western music or even western culture. They had no idea about James Dean or the Beatles or Charlie Chaplin, modern music or modern cinema.
For me, electronic music is like cooking: it's a sensual organic activity where you can mix ingredients.
I feel very privileged to have played China, and the pyramids, all these fantastic places, but it created a kind of smoke curtain between the audience and me as a musician.
My mother, who was in the Resistance in the Second World War, passed away at 96, and it was like she was 60. I almost have to apologise for my genes.
In electronic music, staying behind your laptop for two hours is not too exciting to watch.
I leave everyone to have their own opinions of my music and my influence - or not - on others.
Our senses have changed, even though our emotions have not.
Suddenly, we are putting ourselves as the next dinosaurs. It's rather dark; we have narrowed our dreams. It is time to restore our visions. And so it's not a nostalgic idea; it is based with this unconscious need to restore a kind of dynamic for tomorrow.
At the time, 'Oxygene' was considered a totally 'far out' concept... What was 'in' at the time was disco, hard-rock, and the early days of punk... and moreover, 'Oxygene' was instrumental. And I was French!
If music is to continue to support the livelihoods of artists, it cannot be taken without the permission of artists.
Pursuing music eats into your life to the point where there is no space left for anything else. You are lucky if you find a partner who is able to understand that, but even then, they will only understand it for a while, and then things get - you know, difficult.
Early music in all kinds of movements is always a mixture of innocence and ambition.
The major rock instruments and classical instruments were designed for performance, for sharing the music with an audience, and then later people put microphones on them and recorded them. But for electronic music, the opposite was true - they're designed in laboratories, and later, we tried to put them on stage.
