A Quote by David Byrne
Music is relegated to an underground, relatively obscure group of listeners. It's partly because of the nature of the medium. With a piece of visual art, you can look at something ugly, brutal and in your face, but it's kind of - there it is. It doesn't take you over in the same way that putting on the music at a certain volume does.
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I wanted to create this dialogue between music and visual art and vice versa. No matter what part of the spectrum they fill, whether it's visual, music, or whatever, artists are interested in other art forms. Your brain is already kind of firing in that way.
Underground electronic music is art - fundamentally it's based on contemporary art, culture, dance, and real music. If you look at EDM, how many of those cultural standpoints are the same?
Because of the irresistible nature of our own Imagos, I think the replication of it in music is a siren song - we love those tormented songs, and we listen to them over and over and over the way that we smash ourselves into our lovers, or the same kind of lover, over and over. That drive is tireless, until it is resolved. And we can "enjoy" it safely through music, which is a simulacrum we have power over.
I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
I wouldn't say that I'm a consummate live artist. Album work is kind of just like quilt weaving or something. But live music is just like a method of emptying out the mind through volume. Volume as a form that allows you to do different things. And that doesn't really translate to recorded music, like how do you listen to that, on Spotify or in your car? It's not the same kind of effect. I would say that the loudness is a huge part of what I do live.
You're creating music to pull people into a world, whether it be a visual medium where music is just one element, or a purely musical medium. Either way, you're trying to transport people and to create a connection. I've always felt that the best films and the best albums can be the best company. If people feel a little bit less alone because of something I had a hand in creating than I feel like I'm contributing to the world in a positive way.
I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.
Obviously, something like ballet, you have music, you dance with the music and it's a very direct connection. With visual art, when there's no music that accompanies the art, such as great masterworks in a museum, you wind up interpreting what the artist is doing, how the artist made that work and what they're conveying.
Music, for me, is the most sacred of the arts. I say that because music communicates in a way that no other art form can. All great art has a spirit that we recognize and appreciate, but music goes directly to your heart.
For me, as a music fan, visuals kind of steal away the purity of the song. My instinct is not to provide a visual to go with a piece of music. But here's MTV. It's really powerful.
After 10 years, I have been touring for 20, playing basically the same type of music, a four-piece or three-piece type of music with loud, crashing drums and screaming vocals. It gets to the point where you're looking for something new, and you don't want to do something that's way too left-field, for fear that it might seem contrived.
As a woman you have to tick all these boxes to be able to be on TV. I know I look a certain way and that's partly why I'm on TV. If I were really ugly and fat, I don't think I'd have had the same chance.
A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.
I used to hate, with a capitol H, making videos. It was nothing but a chore. It was something you had to do to have your music accepted in the visual medium.
The way I look at music, what I'm interested in is not necessarily creativity - in many ways I think creativity is overrated, actually. What I think is important is authenticity. I want to hear music that has the resonance of the people. I want to hear music that is an amplification of them. Because then, I can experience the people. But because the music has become so institutionalized, everyone is learning and regurgitating the same material in the same way.
If I was a young director starting off, there's so many tools at your disposal now to do things relatively inexpensively that it's a great time to learn your chops and do some cool music videos. If I started all over again, I'd still be doing music videos, I'd just be doing them very differently. It's very difficult for me to do them now, but for young kids out there that love music and want to tackle a different art form - and I do think music video is an art form - that's a very cool thing to do.
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