The whole background of 'Avian' is rain. I was just playing with textures and realizing you can touch music.
I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.
I want to make music three-dimensional. I want to make a song also a painting, and a painting also a culinary experience.
One of the more distant concerns is with the visual interpretation of the music. I find it fascinating but I don't always particularly get involved with it.
I always think about that when I make a song, 'what is the dance gonna be?'
A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.
Dance has always just been an extension of music for me. It's about putting my music into motion. It's just another dimension that I tap into with my music that not many artists do anymore.
I'm very conscious that a music video is beyond just a promotional tool for a song. It takes a song to the next level and it gives a song a new life.
Whether it be tour posters, album packaging, videos, stage design, etc., the visual aspect of music is very important to us.
When I hear music as a fan, I see fields. I see landscapes. I close my eyes and see an entire universe that that music and the voice, or the narrative, create. A music video-and any other kind of visual reference-is created by someone else.
Maybe it's because I grew up during the MTV generation, but to me a perfect song is one I can imagine a music video to, a song that can take you into a dream.
A music video is so different to doing a movie.
It's a really fun hobby to set imagery to music, and finding the right songs for that. Your favorite song in the world might not work at all... for one reason or another.
I've always wanted to be a director; it's just how my mind has always worked. If I hear music, I see music videos and all the shots and setups to edit it all together. If I interact with a person, I'm seeing a whole scene come to life.
I feel like I can see the music and can see how the character of the music actually flows. For me, that's music to my eyes.
I had never done TV. I think it's a foolish medium for, most rock 'n roll music. Nobody ever comes off well on TV.
I always view my music like a city at night, like Atlanta. I view my music in lights. So Far Gone would be my experiences in Toronto at night.
In electronic music, staying behind your laptop for two hours is not too exciting to watch.
If you listen to a song and get an image in your head, and then you go home and watch mtv and the image they're showing is the same as the one in your head, kill yourself. You're better off coming back as a lobster.
I searched YouTube for 'deaf music videos' and watched them with the sound muted. I noticed that though you could understand the words being signed, the sense of rhythm was lost. That's when I had the idea to create a video where you could see the sounds you couldn't hear.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
Visuals are important, as listeners like to 'see' the song.
I couldn't do a record without knowing I'll translate it into something visual.
