A Quote by Kemp Muhl

The idea of old world instruments mixed with sci-fi, futuristic lyrics, playing baroque guitar on a song about a robot boy and a banjo solo on a song about white noise - that's our sense of humor.
Cyberpunk was really a reaction against old boy sci-fi which was about white guys in space who would come up with some kind of technological thing.
Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
The first song on my first album is not a song - it's a guitar solo! It's called 'Frenzy,' and it's pretty much nonstop maniacal guitar playing. I had just turned 19, and I had some serious muscle then.
It's always amazing seeing the song-writing process. A song just starts off as just an idea or a story you want to tell. It keeps building and building when you add the lyrics, the instruments, the vocals until you finally reach the finished song other people can enjoy.
I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was 'Good to Be a Man.' That what's got me signed.
I'm not from a particularly sci-fi background. I'm not anti sci-fi at all, but I've never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.
Yeah, I'm a geek. I read sci-fi and I watch sci-fi films. I love my computer and I love to fix it. I'm a total nerd. I literally am a 12-year-old geeky boy trapped in a 32-year-old woman's body.
I had this idea of writing a sci-fi musical about a woman who falls in love with a robot and realizes it's a love that can't be, and enlists in the Mars One project.
When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head.
I've actually found that most of my jobs have been in sci-fi. I realized it because sci-fi has the biggest fan following. Every time I do a play in London all these sci-fi fans come out. They ask me to sign things from all these little projects that I did. I hadn't even made the connection. It doesn't always have a spaceship and guns; sci-fi has been projected on in someway. I did Never Let Me Go, which is sort of Star Trek-y. It's about the future and training humans. It's sci-fi too. It's such a broad umbrella.
But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.
It's always been based around the song, and guitar-playing in the service of the song... The sensibility is about songs. I like to think of it as kind of 'refined primitive.'
I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case.
'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it.
There are so many sci-fi fans and it's such a big business now. So many people love sci-fi, and they're so loyal. I would be lying if I said that the fact that I had been on a very popular sci-fi show and had some recognition in that world didn't help me get the job on another sci-fi show.
You kind of worry for the characters in a way that you don't normally in sci-fi, because sci-fi tends to be about the ideas, and this is about people.
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