Quotes from Washed Out

The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.

There are certain sounds that have a loaded past. Like the sound of a harp, if you go back to old movies, represents a dream sequence; it transports you there.

I'm very happy in my life, but I do feel that music has a power to transport you to places or to beautiful moments in your past.

I lived in a neighborhood where there weren't many kids. I had a couple sisters, but I was very much a loner. Whatever film I had seen that day or that week, I would completely find myself in that world.

Travelling is really great for giving you tons of ideas, but it's really hard to actually record anything on the road.

I personally love the record-making more than the actually performing and travelling. It's funny, the drastic shift in lifestyle that comes with it. It certainly satisfies my more adventurous side, but it leaves little time for contemplation and all of that.

The entire making of 'Within and Without' was a series of experiments and trial by error. When I started writing, I didn't have a strong idea of what the record was going to end up like.

For the longest time, I was trying to be DJ Shadow, I think. But I slowly developed my own style. It was trial and error, for sure.

My general taste is towards the melancholy.

We lived in Atlanta for a couple of years, and had a lot of fun, but my best work happens when I isolate myself. It's all about turning inward.

If a band or artist isn't tweeting or writing posts on Facebook every day, there can be this kind of mystique built about them, and I find myself retreating from the spotlight more and more.

Obviously, I never want to make the same record twice. I want to keep moving forward. That's the real challenge, I think.

It is easy to get an interesting loop to happen, but it becomes a collage when the song and loop are constantly changing.

For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.

I try to be as optimistic as I can. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about art and music. It can take you places, and they can be a positive influence. A very soothing influence. Honestly, I feel like there's enough pain and terrible things that happen in life. That's beautiful thing in art, you can really idealize things.

Obviously, you want to honour the sound of your music, but I'm definitely open to trying new things and making myself use a different palette of sounds.

I get very bored easily. I'm a child of the Internet or whatever; I want more and more of new and interesting things.

I never want to make a complete, 180 reactional record. I wanted a connection to what I've done in the past but still move forward and evolve.

Any musician - I would say 99% of musicians - needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they're self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they'll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it's like somebody else's personality being put into your art.

Where I grew up in the middle of Georgia, hip-hop is king, and on Friday and Saturday nights, local DJs do mixes. It's a great mix of local stuff and then some of the bigger hits and remixes of the hits, and it just has this nice flow with a dirty-South sound to everything.

I try to stay on a pretty normal schedule of nine-to-five.

I normally start at the computer with something really simple like a four-bar loop of a drum sample or a bass line. And then I just start adding layers of synthesizers.

In some ways, I feel like I've always dabbled in nostalgia. It's just what I do; it comes naturally.

The one sound I think of when I think about dreaming is the harp glissando, which is this really atmospheric run up and down the scale that's really dreamy.