Sonic Texture Quotes

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?

I'm a very textural composer. I care a lot about textures and gestures. Electronics add so much to that. It's like a flavor - it creates so much texture.

When you put the guitars over the 808, it just makes it grittier and grimier. It's just different.

I love the weird overdub style, like 'The Madcap Laughs' by Syd Barrett, where you can tell it's being overdubbed and it's kind of warbly. It creates a different experience. Or the 'White Album,' where you can tell it's overdubbing. But there's something about a band in a room - it's a feeling you can't replicate. There's a feel to the music.

For some producers who are technical-minded, making the song sound good is easy, and getting the emotion into the song is harder.

I wanted there to be something to fill the space and to catch the listener's ear, but I didn't want there to be any 'Virtual Self' songs that had a clearly defined vocal with lyrics and top line. If you do hear any lyrics, it's just your brain filling in the gap, because those moments are just various syllables combined.

It's really the sound of the voices, the sound of the words, the sound of the sound that we're interested in.

Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within our perception.

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence.

I often begin movies with music in my head; it's a very important dimension to me. Not just the music itself, but how to use music in film: when and how and subtlety. I don't like to be too sweet in my stories, and I like the abrasive clang, the contrasting of sounds and cultures.

Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

It's amazing how well real strings blend with metal, like that whole sound.

Part of me likes a more ragged, jagged guitar sound or performance, but our work might not have been as innovative had we followed in the footsteps of what came before. We were very proud of what we had hit on.

To me, dance music is a lot of space - to listen to other things than melodies. I think club music and dance music really require a different way of listening.

I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.

Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

The Knife can't stop cloaking brilliant pop songs in voodoo jam blankets.

There's something in glitchy music that I like to get lost in.