Labrinth Quotes

I've got to the point where I just get on with it and the content of what I put on the records is determined from what I learn from the audience, from what works live, from what I want to hear when I go to a club or what I'd like to play when I get home.

Yes, sampling has changed not just my way of playing and composing.

And then the last album, 'Get It', was done over a shorter period of time and I started using other musicians, as opposed to playing all the instruments myself like I did on the other two.

I'm in the studio for hours in that tiny little box, and really, the performing part is what I'm most excited about.

I added and deleted according to the audiences' response to different gestures, and chose songs to build an act that would constantly stimulate my audience.

I started recording the album four years ago. It was very different then - totally rock and roll.

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.

That person who's going to a concert for a nostalgic reason, we're not really going to placate. We still play three or four hits every night. Now, we don't play them like the record. We try to find new ways to do it.

Remixes come very quickly, because you already have the melody and the vocals. I have a great passion for music, so it doesn't matter to me if it's a remix or an original production. I don't think about it as, 'Well, I have to spend three hours on a remix or I have to do something all original.'

I go in and sing the song and arrange it and mix it and that's it. It's no different than playing in clubs.

When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form. They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I'm listening to the audience, and they're listening to me.

There's a joy in having the molecule of an idea, then testing it in front of audiences at secret shows that people only know about the night before.

I'm always on tour, so I'm always trying new tracks out live before they're released. That's more necessity than anything, because I don't get a proper chance to sit in a studio and work on tracks like other producers do.

Once I got a record contract, and I took my songs which weren't quite finished, or maybe they were a good idea, maybe they weren't. I took them into the studio and developed them. They came to life and they evolved... and they're great.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

The first album was more born from busking - they were the 'me-and-my-guitar' songs. Going out on the road and opening for big acts changes you. You look out at those audiences and start to think, 'OK, I need to write some music that's a little bit bigger.'

I'm influenced by a lot of different genres of music. So I'm constantly trying to rework production and make things interesting in the live show and on records.

I played 'Rewind' so many times in the club to see which parts were working, see how the crowd reacted to it.

A sold-out crowd is better than a number one. But being in the studio is better than all of that.

The first turning point, when I stopped doing things by myself and the Bastille project began, was the inclusion of more electronic music into the sound.

Theatre is a living organism. You only know if your show is working when you see it with an audience. You can also tell when it isn't working - it's horrible, and you desperately try to figure out how to make it connect.

When we first signed to Loud, we had a 20-song demo. So all of those songs we wanted to put on the album. But we started making new ones, and through process of elimination, we wanted all the new ones. We didn't like the old ones no more.

I'm always looking to develop my sound and I'm in the studio whenever I have the time to do this. Always looking ahead!