Deep Listenings magazine, Spring 1995
by Gianluigi Gasparetti
1 You are the most celebrated and charismatic musician of recent years, and with every new recording you release you are broadening the frontiers of music. Where are you going? What secret energies feed your internal fire?
This is a very complex question, since I feel many of these "secret energies" are still secret even from me. I like it this way. There are so many things that I feel in my life which are undefineable, untouchable, elusive moments which if strung together start to make sense on a very deep level, if only to myself.
Music is my way of bridging this world of unconscious and conscious realizations. For me, it’s a world that has a taste and texture as well as color and smell. At this point in my life, I feel as if I live in a landscape of constant internal sound, regardless of where I am—traveling in the desert, doing simple things around the house or in the studio. There is always this "sound" to hear and tune into and draw from, something really powerful. It’s a kind of feeling I remember since I had my first memories as a child. Only now the volume is turned up louder. When I try to put words to this, it seems to slip away. But when I jump into the soundcurrent, that’s when I feel nourished, where I feel a sense of direct connection.
So in that sense, music is my food for the soul, and the sound of the soul is the food for music. As for where am I going? The inspiration for this unknown answer comes from listening deep and not necessarily to music. These secret energies are there for all of us.
2 What do you consider yourself: a cosmic musician, an electronic musician, or something else?
Above all I see myself an artist, someone who loves life and has a burning need to express it. Rather than a musician, my feeling is really more that of a sculptor or painter of sound. I have always had the sense that my hands are shaping and holding a tactile source when I create my sounds and music. Also the situation of working endless hours alone in the studio is similar to that of a painter. I think the mental process has parallels since I often spend a lot of time "looking" at a piece in progress from difference angles throughout the day and night.
3 In recent years you have been moving toward a more reflective mood and it seems that you are in contact with the supernatural. What’s happened? What influences are shaping your music, which is getting closer to the primordial silences and seems to be moving closer and closer to a prayer?
I feel that question relates to growing older and being able to spend more and more time in the creative process. It’s the same as developing physical strength through the discipline of exersize. So in this sense, the strength of the inner life is what is developed through time. Also I feel there is a quality that is connected throughout all of my music. I think the titles alone from my early 80’s releases "Now" and "Traveler" indicate where I was heading and would still work today as new titles (for example, "Growth Sequence," "The Ritual Continues," "Light Sound," "Mysteries Continue"). Also a tremendous influence (besides meeting my wife Linda Kohanov) was moving out of the insanity of Los Angeles into the desert and having this type of extreme natural environment become my home. I think this combination of the dedicating my life to music and finding my spiritual home has helped to bring me to new places creatively and as a person.
4 "Dreamtime Return" has been singled out by everyone as the album of your artistic and personal turnaround, the beginning of your spiritual growth. How was this recording born? Do you still love it as much as we do? Do you still listen to it? What is your favorite recording?
I will always hold "Dreamtime Return" as a major rite of passage for myself. I do not see it as the beginning of my spiritual growth but another signpost of my evolution as an artist and person. By that time, I had developed an increased level of proficiency with my instruments and my compositional style, which allowed me to bring some of my deepest, most elusive experiences and aspirations to the surface through the music. I had always been trying to do this, it’s just that with Dreamtime Return I felt (and apparently a lot of listeners did too) that I had really gotten to the next level in terms of communicating a truly personal vision.
Around this time, I also found myself going deeper into the remote desert areas that I had visited since I was a child. My solo dreaming hikes would lead me to incredible places, both in terms of the austere and beatiful sites I would find wandering around out there, as well as the mental and spiritual discoveries I would make simultaneously. I was more compelled than ever to find more and more expressive ways to convey theseexperiences through sound. I had felt connected to Australia in a mysterious, unexplainable way for many years, but it wasn’t until I saw the film "The Last Wave" that I felt these things stir in a creative way. I was also starting to receive letters from listeners in Australia about how the music on "Structures from Silence" seemed to reflect the land there. And then I heard the Australian aboriginal instrument known as the didgeridoo, and it was as if I was hearing some kind of ancient, organically-created electronic sound creating a bridge to the present. The power of that sound and the way it calls up deep primordial feelings has much in common with what I strive for in my music.
Strangely enough, I was well into investigating the aboriginal mythology of the dreamtime, and composing music for an album I was already calling Dreamtime Return, when I got this telephone call out of the blue from photographer David Stahl. Here’s this guy I had never met telling me that he was working on a documentary about the ancient aboriginal art of the dreamtime, that he had been out driving and heard Structures from Silence on the radio and felt that it keyed him into the feeling of being in Austrlia. He was basically calling me up to find out who I was and if I might be interested in submitting some music for this documentary. You can imagine the strange feeling coming from the other end of the line when I told him that right at that moment I was working on an album called Dreamtime Return. Within 15 minutes, we determined that I would go with him on his upcoming trip to Australia, all expenses paid, to the very remote places I had been dreaming of but had never visited. It wasn’t at all like signing up for the usual tourist trip. I was part of a film crew with the resources and permission to visit areas that are normally closed off to the public and impossible to get to except by helicopter, ancient sites of aboriginal rock art that have rarely been seen by people outisde the tribes who lived there.
My experience going to Australia brought me to a much deeper understanding of how to draw inspiration from empowered geographical sites. Feeling into these places in a dreamtime sort of way was incredible – feeling the memories contained there, hearing the sounds, seeing the activity of thousands of years shifted into the moment through my imagination. These are some of the things that were vital to my work on Dreamtime Return and continue to be a major influence in my current work.
5 You are invoved in many projects as producer and talent scout (Thom Brennan, Loren Nerell, Todd Fletcher, David Hudson, Elmar Schulte, among others) and you appear to be infallible in this field as well. Which of these projects have given you the most satisfaction? What projects are you currently preparing?
The wonderful thing about music is that when it goes out into the world quite often it brings like-minded people together who already have a strong point of reference to stand on. I met Thom and Loren at my early concerts in Los Angeles around 1979-1980. Elmar called me one day out of the blue and said "Hey man, you want to make concerts in Germany?" I was ready to go. I met David Hudson in Australia after a performance of his. Within 15 minutes after our meeting we were planning his recording for Dreamtime Return. In fact during one of his visits to my house in Tucson, he and his girlfriend decided to marry, so within a few days we had the ceremony in our desert garden. That’s the wayit often works. I have met some great friends in just this way.
I met Vidna Obmana, another kindred spirit, a few years ago. This friendship has recently created a double CD, Well of Souls, to be released on the Projekt label in August [1995]. This is a full collaboration which we started last year when Vidna was in Tucson to have me produce The Spiritual Bonding at my studio. After long days working on his album, we would find the enrgy to work on some of our own pieces together late into the night, which laid the groundwork for Well of Souls. We continued the work long distance, and he returned this past February to complete the tracks.
I also just returned from copmleting a new collaboration with Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger for Fathom Records. The title is Kiva, and it will be released in September. Michael and I have a long history together starting when we lived in Los Angeles; both of us having made it out of there alive brings a lot of stories.
6 With which musicians do you feel the most at ease with in the recording studio and on stage?
With these guys it’s total trust and tremendous fun. It’s a pity we don’t live closer, but this type of relationship makes every moment count. We met and continued to develop our relationship in live, improvised, "on the edge" concert settings. Our approach in the studio has been very much the same. The language barrier has really been our ticket to freedom in this group. Suso doesn’t speak much English. I speak even less Spanish, and I think Jorge would really get tired of translating for us if we had to do a lot of talking and planning to make our music. Our shared language has always been music, first and foremost, so we go straight to places that travel far beyond where worlds can go, and that kind of instant edge is something that’s very rare to achieve when you’re working with other people.
7 Which artists do you appreciate the most? What kind of music do you like to listen to?
At home I listen to a variety of world music and the music of my colleagues. If I am driving around in the city, I sometimes check out some nicely-produced pop music and new ambient-type sounds if nothing else just for fun since it’s miles away from where I live musically. One of my favorite things on a long roadtrip across the desert is to program a soundtrack of some favorite CD’s. This creates a great trance experience with the music selected to support the landscape you’re moving through. One such program would be Jon Hassell’s Power Spot, Steve Tibbitts’ Northern Song and Safe Journey, Baked Beans (on the Recycle or Die Label), Michael Brook’s Hybrid, along with a few of my discs like Artifacts, Origins, or Suspended Memories, and the album by Trance Mission called Meanwhile. This is one prescription for a 7-hour ecstatic trance experience. Also, sometimes I will go for weeks without listening to any music except that which occurs in the Timeroom. It’s necessary from time to time to cleanse the ears.
8 Do you still have anything to do with Kevin Braheny and Robert Rich?
My work with Kevin ran its course when we were in Los Angeles. Although our music has gone into different directions, we are still in touch on occasion. I am in touch with Robert regularly. We are good friends and the work we did together is some of my favorite. I am sure we will get together again at some point and seewhere we go.
9 Is Klaus Schulze’s Timewind still in your recording studio? And in your life? I ask this because I don’t think your present music has any more ties with electronic music in the style of the 1970’s Berlincosmic style of Schulze and Tangerine Dream, etc.
No, not for years, although Timewind still holds a place in my heart for the doors it helped unlock. I left Los Angeles nearly six years ago. Moving away from there was like the shedding of a skin. It was a time to leave many things behind symbolically. I had just returned from my second trip in Australia. In my California studio, I had a few shelves that held objects from over the years, reminders, memos, photos, album covers, rocks, artifacts. Most all of that was put into the "airlock" and shot out into space as I headed to Arizona for a new life. I lost my interest in the Berlin School etc. in the mid-80’s as I continued to find my way deeper into my own worlds.
10 Do you believe you were an aboriginal in a previous life?
That’s an interesting thought since I have this deep connection to Australia, but I have never really considered any sort of past life connection since I am still hoping to understand a few things about this life. However, I do feel that the collective primal memory gives me some good jolts now and then!
11 What does "The Dream Circle" mean to you? What did you want to communicate to your listeners? And why did you release a recording in a private limited edition? Is that something you will do again?
The Dream Circle at its most basic level was released as a personal thank you to the people who appreciate this quality of deeper listening. The piece in its basic form started out as an atsmosphere which I would play before my concerts. People were starting to request copies, and I continued to work on it over time. Eventually I decided to find a way to release it. OIt was actually ready for over a year, but my time was full with other projects as well as talking with a few labels about releasing it. I had a very clear idea of how I wanted the CD released—the digipak with the dot painting and the title all are bound together. Digipaks were not big with my main two labels. So to keep the project pure, I decided to release it on my own with the help of Projekt. The limited edition concept was based on a few points. One was a practical decision since I am cautious about running a label and taking time away from creating. I also like the idea of the music becoming more like a limited-run lithograph of a painting. Finally, it brought me in touch with my core listeners and friends of the music. The personal feedback was fantastic. Somehow I felt like after working with the larger companies, I liked the ritual of holding every copy, signing it and handing it to the listener, even if it was through a distributor. This completes the "Circle" and brings the process of sharing the music back to what’s important. The title came from some daydreams while listening to this music on its usual infinite playback mode during the summer’s 105 degree afternoons. Sleeping circles are found in the southwest. They are circles of rocks that the native american people would sleep within for protection during travels across the desert. The protection was more from the spirit world than the physical one. I combined this idea with the "Dreamings" of Australia. The Dreaming, in very short form, is the founding story, the great drama of the creative era, in which the landscape took its present form, and the people, animals, plants, and elements of the known world were created. So, in any case that’s the Dream Circle story. I feel this type of release will certainly appear again but it’s not something I can or want to predict.
12 There are many analogies between the Australian desert and the American Southwest, between the Aborigines and the Native Americans; have you ever though of taking your inspiration from the cosmology of the American Indians?
On the upcoming "Kiva" release some of these things are explored. It is really fascinating how you find similar aspects in many of the myths and cultures of indigenous peoples. I have talked about this with David Hudson, and Linda and I discuss these things as well. Perhaps someday I will explore this area deeper. For now my interest seems to be moving beyond any one culture or continent. Another sad and sobering comparison is the way Aboriginal Australians and the Native Americans both suffered under the ignorance of the Western idea of progress. I am always aware of the fine line that we all walk when visiting other cultures. I have no real answer for this except I always enter into these situations with an open heart and respect.
13 Have you ever had any strange experiences, something you cannot explain (in a spiritual sense) ?
This is something I really don’t mention in interviews but since this is Deep Listenings, I will meet the challenge. When I was 19, I had a really serious accident riding a motorcycle way out in the desert (of course). For about two hours, I can really say that I was tasting and seeing death of some sort. Total expansion, all color was gone from my vision, every thing was sort of washed out and white. Above all, there was this sound that was rushing, sort of like what I was referring to in the first question. And then... I woke up in the hospital. So you have to know I was not creating music up to this point. I was a serious listener and was hearing something in my imagination. Soon after I "woke up" from the accident things in my life started to change REALLY fast. Many years later, here we are....
14 What does Linda Kohanov mean to you, a person who I think is very special and represents your link to heaven?
I would dedicate every piece of music I create to Linda if she would let me, but she’s too modest. She supports me in so many ways. Linda is always at the edge with me - sometimes at the edge before I am. We met in one of those moments that seemed fated, and many things fell into place for us in ways that were nothing less than magical. Our life together seems to become even more magical as the years unfold because we support each other in areas that are anything but mundance or predictable.
The whole journey began when my record company sent me on a media tour to support the release of Dreamtime Return. They said that they had to fly me to Florida to be interviewed by this woman who was becoming one of the most respected critics in the country for writing about the type of music I do. That woman was Linda Kohanov, and it turned out that we had much more in common than an understanding and love for a particular form of music. For me, finding a person I connected with on a deep, unspoken level was a similar shift in my consciousness as to the experience I just spoke of in the previous question. It was another wake up call where there was no going back.
As a person, Linda has a stunning ability to absorb a large amount of information, digest it and bring it to life in a new way. She reads more than anyone I’ve known. Her knowledge of music is vast, as are her esoteric understandings. There is very little small talk between us. The kinds of discussions we have at dinner or watching the sunset or whatever else we may be doing take us to some pretty incredible places. And then there’s the silence and the music we share on so many levels. I can absolutely trust her opinion about the music, and she lets me get away with nothing. So yes, she is my link to heaven and many other places as well.
15 What is a typical day for you? How do you inspire yourself to compose?
There is never really a typical day. I might follow a routine for a few days or weeks, but all the various projects I have cooked up keep things from being too typical. Sometimes I wake up and go directly into the studio. As summer approaches, the heat dictates my creative habits. Recently I have been getting in the studio just as the sun is coming up. This is also a special time because of the light on the mountains and the sounds of the desert life starting to awaken from the silence. There is also a sweet smell in the early morning air that is beyond any incense. These are things I appreciate everyday and keep me in touch with what is really important. I will work for several hours, and in the afternoon, take a break and tend to the faxes and the mountains of details that surround the life of an independent artist. Again the heat is like a really powerful drug, one I am addicted to. Even though there is air conditioning in the studio, the afternoons can be so intense that I can feel the strain of the heat on everything in the studio, so this is a good time to shut it down, move slower, listen to mixes and so on. The late afternoons into the twilight time have almost ritual like quality for Linda and me. As the sun stars to receed, we are almost always outside taking it in some way. Then there is the night, perhaps my favorite time to be traveling in the Timeroom. The hours from 9pm on are when the magic starts to happen for me. Then again, if I am swallowed up by a project or a collaboration then I start feeding off the momentum of the creativity, losing track of time, and often don’t really know or care what time of day it is, hence the name Timeroom.
16 And how important is silence and the desert for you?
Silence (if there is such a thing) is where I find a great deal of my inspiration. Sometimes I feel like a container that cannot hold anymore, and this feeling spills out into the music. The desert is rich and full of life on many levels. The landscape and sounds here bring me to an inner silence like no place I have found. This is the place I have sought since I can remember. The inspiration is there for me, somehow going on a trek into the desert or simply sitting right outside the Timeroom will burn away all the distortion, noise and clutter from the brain. Living in Los Angeles for 12 years made me develop ways to access my inner life out of survival for my soul. It taught me a great deal about staying fucused and connected to "the soundcurrent," as I like to call it. Structures from Silence is a good example of creating a sanctuary in the middle of a storm. During this time I would make regular trips to the desert to charge up. I always knew at some point I would go out into the desert and never return to the city. A lot of dues were paid in those 12 years.
17 What kinds of instruments and machines are you working with and how do they shape your music?
Here goes all the cryptic names and numbers: For synths, Korg Wavestation EX, M1REX, Emax 2, Oberheim Xpander and Matric 12, Yamaha SY77, Proteus World, ARP 2600 and 2 ARP sequencers, Akai MPC 60 Midi workstation.
The main Processors: Lexicon PCM 70, PCM 80, Alex and JamMan. Eventide Harmonizer, and a few other multiEFX devices. For recording: 16 tracks of ADAT and mix to DAT. My console is a Soundcraft Delta 8. For the acoustic side of things, I have a growing collection of all kinds of percussion, clay pots, skin drums, ocarins, etc., and the didgeridoos, of which I have several to cover different keys and sound qualities.
18 The Timeroom studio seems to be becoming more and more of a sacred place, a place of pilgrimage and a source of inspiration for many musicians who go there; tell us about this magic place.
It’s been my dream for years to have my sound temple in the desert. Nearly two years ago, I built this basic addition to the house. I designed and built it myself and with one other guy. So it was like making a piece of music in its own way. Every detail was considered; a lot of love went into every nail that holds it together. One thing that was important was to have a large window to view the desert, and from my mixing console I can gaze out into this "dawn of time" desert mountain range. The studio itself is nothing special as a room goes. It is essentially one large room with some nice angles to the walls and ceiling. The builk of the recording gear, synths and console are arranged almost in a circle. All the percussion and acoustic instruments are arranged on a carpet on the floor in front of the window. There is a basic warm feeling in the room that comes from the light as it shifts throughout the day mixed with the sort of gray-purple color of the walls and carpet. There is a clean zen-like feeling that I don’t find in many studios.
19 You have just finished recordings Well of Souls with Vidna Obmana; can you give our readers some idea of what to look forward to?
Well of Souls will be a double CD divided in two distinct moods almost like day and night. Disk One builds with rhythms from Vidna and I, all of which are set within a shifting mass of sounds. Sonically, you will feel some aspects of Artifacts or The Spiritual Bonding, but it’s something different which is hard for me to describe since I am so close to it all and just completing the mixes between answering these questions. There are some really nice driving trance pieces that lead you to Disk Two. This is another story—four pieces in total, two of which are long and dark, real late-night journey music not for the weak at heart. It will be out by August on Projekt.
20 You are recording an album with Michael Stearns and Ron Sunsinger: what is it?
The recording is called Kiva. A Kiva is an underground dwelling used in Native American traditions for centuries. Traditionally it is a gathering place for the elders of the tribe to perform any number of ceremonies. In the context of the recording, we used the kiva as a metaphore to build the music within. Ron Sunsinger recorded some incredible ceremonies which he also participated in—a peyote ceremony, an ayahuasca ceremony, a sundance ceremony. We each choose a ceremony to initiate and build our piece around, and we would then jump in on each others’ pieces and work together.
We created four Kivas for the four directions. With the fourth Kiva, we actually went into a series of caves in northern New Mexico and recorded for two days within the labyrinth of chambers and tunnels. It was an absolutely intriguing session in terms of adapting and drawing the music out of this subterranean space. In some cases, we would be hundreds of feet away from each other in different chambers playing didgeridoo, drums and flutes to each other by only hearing the sound rushing down the passageways. It was very surreal. Kiva will be out in September on Fathom.
21 Tell us about Suspended Memories; Suso Saiz and Jorge Reyes are certainly very particular individuals.
Well they are like brothers to me. We are all around the same age but from different cultural deserts if you will. They are absolutely rooted in their work, very serious and driven but still know how to have fun, which sort of sums up the philosophy of Suspended Memories. Suso is truly a passionate Spaniard, quite brilliant in all aspects of music. Jorge has this dark mysterious quality to him, almost like the spirit of a wild animal but in a deep, calm way.
22 What sort of thigns have you been listening to lately?
David Darling’s Dark Wood, TUU’s All our Ancestors, O Yuki Conjugate’s Equator, but mainly Well of Souls.
23 What is the perception of your music in the U.S. ?
I think it’s like other music and art forms. There is the core group of listeners who really understand and appreciate. Then there are those who don’t have a clue. I do know the interest is growing steadily. I am meeting more and more people who have been collecting my music and watching it develop over the years. This is really satisfying, to maintain my focus with the music over the last 20 years and know it’s appreciated at a deep level. I am also very aware my music exists outside of what a lot of people think music is. I had a bit of a shock a week ago when "Earth Island" won Album of the Year in its category according to a national association of independent record dealers in this country. And guess what was competing against it as one of the other top 5 finalists—Artifacts. I don’t know what this means really, now or in the long run. But it is interesting that some of the darkest, most challenging music I’ve ever done was embraced by certain members of the music industry, people who are usually so driven by commercial concerns that you’d never expect them to take "serious" contemporary instrumental music seriously.
24 What do you think of specialized magazines like Deep Listenings?
The specialized magazines are the life blood to this music because it rarely receives attention in the mainstream press. I know it’s a lot of hard work to keep it all going. It’s a real labor of love, which makes these publications much more than just another music magazine. A friend of mine created "i/e" magazine in the states, and he is as driven as anybody I’ve ever seen.
25 A strange question for someone who lives in the desert; what recordings would you take with you to a desert island?
Let’s call it a tropical island, then. If I left tomorrow it would be: John Hassell’s Power Spot, Harold Budd’s The Pearl, Suso Saiz’s Simbolos, Brian Eno’s On Land, Baked Beans’ Baked Beans, Night Spirit Masters’ Gnawa Music of Marrakesh, Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa, Roach’s Dreamtime Return, Steve Tibbits’ Northern Song, and David Darling’s Cello.
26 Do you have anything further to add, something important that we didn’t ask you about?
As you might imagine, I’m often asked why I have drawn so much inspiration from indigenous cultures, and I have to emphasize that it’s really an offshoot of my longstanding connection to nature as the supreme source of inspiration for my music. Since the beginning, I have tried to capture the timless movements of nature and their effects on me through sound. In the process, I’ve also developed an interest in how other human beings throughout the world have attempted to do this. The people who still live closest to nature tend to be the best at it, that’s why I’m most strongly drawn toward what we call "tribal" or "indigenous" cultures. However, I’m not trying to romanticize these people at all. I think many Westerners have felt an emptiness in their lives and have, in recent years, looked toward Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals as people who hold some sort of essential secret that can cure all the ills of modern society. But the real secret is not to blindly exchange your own culture for another culture’s approach. The real secret is to see behind the curtain of them all. In the process, you become a highly original human being who appreciates the diversity and wisdom of all cultures without falling prey to the destructive habits of any of them—and they all have their darker sides.
In thinking about it, there is an underlying theme to all my music, whether it surfaces as the floating textures of Quiet Music and The Dream Circle, the intensely ritualistic trance rhythms of Artifacts and Origins, or the aggressive sequencer pieces I created on Empetus. That theme involves the manipulation of time, which is the primary reason I call my studio the Timeroom. I’m fascinated with the way music can change the listener’s (and the computer’s) perception of time - slowing it down, speeding it up, making it seem to disappear all together.
It turns out that the most basic building block of any culture is its perception of time. Ideas and habits that clock-oriented, european-based societies like our own take for granted as immutable truths don’t even exist in traditional aboriginal cultures. But to understand your own concept of time, not to mention any other society’s, you have to be willing to delve into those areas of human experience that are usually left unconscious, which can bring up all kinds of strange issues as you deconstruct the most basic aspects of your cultural mindset. The feeling is like having the rug pulled out from under you, and you’re left staring into that giant void where the intricacies of time and space are man-made constructions and not ultimate truths. I thrive on this feeling. For me it represents freedom. I have found ways to express this place through my music, and that’s why there are some people out there who love my music and others who are very threatened by it. Some people don’t like floating through the unconscious, outside of time, staring at the magnificent void from which all thought-constructs come and to which all things return.
I didn’t start out making music with such a big agenda in mind. In fact, it took me years to consciously figure out what I had been trying to do all along. But my attraction to manipulating time led to my interest in the trance rhythms of indigenous cultures and the time-suspending drones of the didgeridoo. And before that, the timeless experiences I had in nature led to my first inkling that the way our society organizes daily existence it was not the only way to experience time. Through my investigatons of ancient cultures like the australian aborigines, I also came in contact with the concept of the shaman. I feel a strong connection to this type of person. The shaman serves an important purpose in his tribe precisely because he lives outside his culture and sees through it. Shamans travel through psychological states that most other people are afraid to even acknowledge. Yet the shaman can sometimes be of assistance in healing others because he can, at the moment when it is most needed, make people aware of possibilities that their own society knows very little about.
When people assume that I’m inspired by indigenous cultures because of some yearning I have for a simpler, more innocent era, they couldn’t be farther from the truth. There’s nothing innocent about the perspective I’m talking about because you don’t give yourself over to anyone. But it is a perspective filled with an almost child-like wonder because you are traveling through states of awareness that haven’t been mapped out and trampled into a rut by centuries of mindless tradition. When you feel comfortable playing with different perceptions of time, you are drawing inspiration from the place where all cultures arise and in a very real sense that is a mystical undertaking. But I don’t think it will ever be an experience that draws a mainstream audience. The sensations I strive to recreate in my music can only be experienced in the most private, most fearless part of yourself.