Flying Lotus Quotes

I go through a thousand songs to find ten for a new record.

When creating an album, one of the first things you have to think about is what you want your production style to be.

One always has to remember these days where the garbage pail is, because it's so easy to make sounds, and to put sounds together into something that appears to be music, but it's just as hard as it always was to make good music.

A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

When I think about putting together an album, the process of listening to hundreds of songs each time and picking out the best 10 or so that will go on the record, it really sinks in as to just how many songs I've listened to all these years.

'Trouble Maker' was a project that worked whenever a song that fit the concept came in.

When you make timeless music - and I like to think that's what I'm doing - the fun part is picking the songs. You can clip and flop and mix and match, and when the record is timeless and it feels good, you know it's going to have the same appeal whether you put it out now or 10 years from now. That's what I'm about.

When you are busy with all the live shows and bands, world music and jazz music, it takes time to come back and do a pop album. It needs its own length of time.

You get the beats. You write to them. You go in the studio and lay it down. Hopefully, a song comes out sounding good. If it comes out sounding good, you put it to the side with the rest of the other good ones, and you try to decide which ones you're gonna use on the album.

I write a lot of my music, but not all of it. I have always subscribed to the 'best song wins' theory when making an album.

It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn't write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers - all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.

Yeah, with 'NASARATI,' that was my first project. I really worked literally three days on it, writing on the beats and putting it together. I'm not saying that I don't love the mixtape, but it was really my first, first move in rap. I tried to make sure everything sound different, so you hear no two songs and think they sound alike.

When I started making songs, some of them read as mixtape-y, and some of them read as album-y.

I'm always working on a new album because I'm always writing, and I'm always in and out of my home studio.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

I love putting the music together. It's like art.

I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.

It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.

Well, I've been recording myself on a computer since I was about 13 or 14. So it's completely entwined with my creative process. Essentially, it allows you to make music that's better and smarter than you are, by using your ears to lead the way.

Everything I make as a producer, I visualize it as a DJ first. And all those beats, I test them as a DJ.

I spend a lot of time working in the studio as a producer, not just a singer.

I usually enter the studio with a mix of songs that I've been listening to that are relevant to the sound I want to achieve.

I'm really a singer, so I love songs and I love singing. I like rap music, but I didn't grow up freestyling.

You never know how they're going to play out, but 'Pork and Beans' definitely had the same vibe as the 'Buddy Holly' video in that you just knew it was going to work.