Combining sounds that are from another universe with the classic songwriting structures never gets old for me.
Clipping is a very specific, concept-y thing. We have all these rules: we don't sample drums. We create all our own sounds. I don't speak in the first person. We come from a background of experimental music like John Cage... Philip Glass.
I do so play an instrument! I play air! I play the air with my fingers, and I'm in touch with the deepest emotions within. It took me a while to learn that whatever I feel like doing is the right thing. If I want to play an invisible instrument, I will.
I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.
With guitar, I'd always mixed more sounds that occur in hip-hop, or occur on Crystal Method records, or occur at the zoo - so I've never been sort of tethered or have limited myself to the traditional rock n' roll vocabulary.
'Badlands' is a very tangible record; a lot of the sounds were actual things: they were pots and pans, and they were rocks, and they were voices, and instruments used in a way to create a landscape of sound.
I started using contact microphones that you can place on common, ordinary objects, like a rake. I put a microphone on it and it picked up the tines vibrating and turned it into a horrible din. What attracted me to it was the horrible din - that's what I really liked.
Banjos, dobros, and acoustic guitars are not our first instruments.
