A Quote by Finneas

So, I'll walk around with - just an iPhone will work - but sometimes I'll bring, like, a little mobile recorder and I'll just, like, if hear an interesting sound, I'll just record it. And then later, I'll listen through them and I'll go like, 'I wonder how can I use that?'
It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening.
When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, 'Oh, that sound's bothering me.' If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there's nothing more to it. We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
I tried to bring in the live orchestra like Bjork does. I love the feeling that that music gives me when I just listen to it. I mean it would be awesome to do an entire record like that. But unfortunately that's not my style. So rather than do a record like that I just got inspired by it.
When you go to a restaurant, sometimes you want to go to Heston Blumenthal's where you hear the sound of the sea while you're eating one tiny thing for a hundred quid. And then sometimes you just want toast. You just. Want. To eat. Toast. Sometimes you have to be okay with the fact that in terms of comedy, I'm just like, maybe, 'chips and a side.'
I've had this look for about a year. I usually grow this beard out around Christmas. I like to go to malls dressed as Jesus, and I like to then walk around the mall and go, 'No! No! This wasn't what it was supposed to be about, people!' Then if there's a Santa at the mall, I walk up to him and say, 'Listen, fat man, you're just a clown at my birthday party.'
Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public's going to like, anyway.
I can do a whole project with Madlib and turn around and do a record with Gucci Mane. Gucci Mane, E-40, and Black Thought on the same record. I like all those rappers, so why can't I work with them in some type of capacity? It just speaks to my versatility. I don't just listen to one type of rap. I listen to all of it so I can make all of it.
I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.
I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.
It is just like your tape-recorder. It records, it reproduces - all by itself. You only listen. Similarly, I watch all that happens, including my talking to you. It is not me who talks, the words appear in my mind and then I hear them said.
Well we usually just try to do a mix from all the albums so if somebody just has one they don't get bummed out that they don't hear anything from that record, then a couple songs you'll only hear live. Just kind of wing it you know? And sometimes on a tour you'll get with a set-list you like and you kind of just stick with that.
When I don't feel like working out, lifting weights or doing serious cardio, the best thing for me to do is just go on the treadmill and walk. I walk and listen to music and 10 minutes will go by, then 15, and then I'll speed up a bit. Once my blood really starts flowing, I'll get a second wind and then I want to work out.
Sometimes things aren't a dream because you don't really think it's a possibility. So my goal on a daily basis is just to go to work and be someone that people like to be around. I just want to work hard and be nice to people, and I feel like when you touch people in that way, on a more personal level, then they go to work the next day pushing for you. And that's when an opportunity comes that you wouldn't have even expected otherwise.
To make a live record - something that has a lot of life in it - is difficult. After slaving away for years in the studio, when I hear a No Age record or when I hear Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first EP or when I hear DRI or really early punk stuff, it's just so powerful, so raw - and I know how hard that is to create. It's very deceptive. It's like a Dardenne brothers film - it seems like just a handheld camera following some people around in a trailer park, but it's incredibly difficult to do that.
Usually it's lyric first, but sometimes it's melody. And I carry a hand-held recorder everywhere I go so I can just hum or whistle a melody if one hits me. Sometimes it's both simultaneously - lyric and melody at the same time - those are a little confusing to me, but sometimes it comes in that form. I just feel like I have my own little radio station and sometimes the static clears and something beams in from out there.
I went to UMass-Amherst and was like, 'I want to work in news, I want to be a journalist.' Then I got there and was like, 'what kind of crap is this?' They inflate everything. It will be like snowing outside, like just a little bit, and they are like 'Giant storm coming, batten down the hatches!' and I just didn't like that aspect of it.
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