If a band or artist isn't tweeting or writing posts on Facebook every day, there can be this kind of mystique built about them, and I find myself retreating from the spotlight more and more.
I took piano lessons when I was really young, like five years old, and I didn't really enjoy that very much. It was kind of too strict. So when I was probably 11 or 12, I started playing guitar and just kind of taught myself.
I love listening to pop radio.
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.
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 naturally like that dreamy, shoegazey sound on my vocals. A lot of reverb helps, and so do a lot of delay effects on everything.
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.
A lot of the things I was doing on the first couple Washed Out releases was very naive.
In some ways, I feel like I've always dabbled in nostalgia. It's just what I do; it comes naturally.
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.
Ultimately, what interests me is using exotic sounds in my songs.
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.
Honestly, I've just made music so long by myself, in some ways I don't feel I'm a very good collaborator.
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'm very much a fan of having something tactile you can hold.
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.
The music is at this weird intersection of dance music and indie music. It's not quite dancey enough to do a full-blown DJ set, and it wasn't quite rock enough for a rock band. But I guess it's what makes us unique - drawing from a lot of different influences.
The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.
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.
The Washed Out thing happened really quickly, and I wasn't really actively promoting the songs. I didn't think of them as any more than demos, really, and it sort of became a thing on its own.
Travelling is really great for giving you tons of ideas, but it's really hard to actually record anything on the road.
I definitely enjoy the kind of magic that happens being on stage with a group when everything's working. The vibe when that's happening gets even better if the audience is involved and you can feel that interaction. That's something you don't get with your headphones on in a studio; it's much different.
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 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 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.
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.
I try to stay on a pretty normal schedule of nine-to-five.
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've struggled with depression before. For me, music was always a very positive way to will myself out of that situation.
A lot of the early Washed Out material was done on a couple of synthesizers that did most of the work, but that's the great thing about synths - you can recreate sounds or make an entire record with just one piece of gear.
When I think about making 'Within,' it was not a very fun experience at all.
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.
I've always, in some way, incorporated sampling into my work.
One of the great things about music is how it can take you places.
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 entirely self-taught, which I think is both a blessing and a curse.
For some, being involved in a scene is a great thing because the social element can drive creativity. For me, though, it's never really been like that. It's the opposite. I've always had this instinct to escape.
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.
It is easy to get an interesting loop to happen, but it becomes a collage when the song and loop are constantly changing.
My general taste is towards the melancholy.
I'm not the most technical producer, so the weird mixes and blown-out sound happen naturally.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Escapism or nostalgia, for me, is not about having a terrible life and trying to get away via imaginary ideas or something.
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.
