Quotes by David Longstreth - Page 2

A lot of the music I was inspired by growing up - college rock, DIY, what they used to call indie rock - has a value system where truth-telling and authenticity are oppositional with mass media, showbiz, and commerce.
David Longstreth /
Authenticity
College
Commerce
Growing Up
Mass
Mass Media
Media
Showbiz
Indie
Rock
Value
Value System
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I do think that one of the best effects the Internet has had on music is that it's allowed these false walls between different music communities to vaporize. We can see that this is a big, complex, interconnected web.
David Longstreth /
Effects
Interconnected
False
Walls
Web
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There's a certain power in vague language, but I started to get more into the idea of really trying to have a discrete thought in the lyrics and to have songs that were about stuff - to try to make things more coherent.
David Longstreth /
Ideas
Song
Trying
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When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
David Longstreth /
Melody
Sound
Thinking
Writing
Obey
Sounds
Vowel
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A song is about heartbreak - but what are the constituent feelings? What are the aspects? There is anger, there is guilt, there are all these different things. I guess putting those voices into dialogue together just felt real.
David Longstreth /
Anger
Heartbreak
Dialogue
Different
Different Things
Real
Song
Together
Aspects
Those
Constituent
Guess
Putting
Voices
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You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done."
David Longstreth /
Done
Sitting
Thinking
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Just like any songwriter, the songs come out of where I am in my life and what I'm doing and who I'm hanging out with and the kind of sounds I'm imagining. I always loved the idea of it evolving in the same way that life changes.
David Longstreth /
Life Always I Am
Life I Am My Life
Evolving
Imagining
Life Changes
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I'd always tended to regard song lyrics as sort of a bastard medium because they're subjugated under the music. If you were to regard them as poetry, it would be bad, embarrassing, confessional poetry - a lot of the lyrics I love.
David Longstreth /
Embarrassing
Regard
Love Poetry Music
Medium
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One of the things I really like about West African guitar playing is the way it makes harmony linear. They're really spelling things out and turning chords into melodies instead of just letting them be these hanging blocks of color.
David Longstreth /
Chords
Guitar Playing
Harmony
Linear
Spelling
African
Blocks
Letting
Melodies
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To be in the woods is a special thing. And also just the concept of wilderness as a necessary opposite in a kind of global dialectic. I want there to be wilderness where there are no humans in a world like this. So nature is super important.
David Longstreth /
Humans
Special
Wilderness
Woods
Opposite
Concept
Dialectic
Global
Necessary
Super
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For somebody like Kanye, fame is the fullest realisation of his art in a way. It's like an Andy Warhol dream or something. He's able to marshal all of these different artforms and media into his story, in this very layered, idiosyncratic way.
David Longstreth /
Realisation
Warhol
Andy
Fullest
Layered
Marshal
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Ninety percent of touring is a logistical maneuver, moving your body and everyone else's from one city to the next. You're like a piece of gear. Then you jump out of the box, get onstage, and play. That sounds cynical, but it sucks to move around so much.
David Longstreth /
Cynical
Ninety
Percent
Touring
Your Body
Box
Gear
Jump
Logistical
Maneuver
Ninety Percent
Onstage
Piece
Sounds
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A few things I've noticed about myself as a listener, and the music that I relate to and the music that's continued to mean something to me since I was a little kid or a teenager, is that they're songs that tell stories and songs that come from a place of experience.
David Longstreth /
Little Kid
Experience Music Myself
Few Things
Listener
Noticed
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I just have these terrible memories of our first European tour back in 2007. We had hired this van and tour service from the former Czech Republic called Fluff Wheels, and they sent us out with this 19-year-old vegan driver kid who had no money and refused to eat anything.
David Longstreth /
Czech
Czech Republic
Former
Memories
Republic
Terrible
Wheels
Driver
Hired
Refused
Sent
Service
Tour
Van
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The first musical stuff I worked on was after the tour for 'Swing Lo Magellan' had ended and I didn't really know what else to do. I didn't know what music I would write. I just did work for other people - arranging, producing, writing - and all of that seemed to be in L.A.
David Longstreth /
Arranging
Work Music People
Producing
Swing
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Most of the creative industries have been deskilled by these really powerful ideologies of punk in music and Warhol in the visual arts. I think it would be great for us collectively to ask whether it's had a negative or positive effect in contributing imaginative stuff to our culture.
David Longstreth /
Contributing
Imaginative
Punk
Warhol
Visual
Arts
Collectively
Effect
Ideologies
Industries
Visual Arts
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I love that, for Kanye [West], there's no difference between the epic and the personal. That makes him sound like a really grandiose douche - which, I don't think anyone, himself included, could contest - but at the same time, it's really amazing. I love the scope of his perfectionism.
David Longstreth /
Differences
Epic
Thinking
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I never really thought of music as a particularly social thing. I experienced music through recordings as opposed to concerts. It just makes you think about the way things are put together, the way things are written as opposed to the showbusiness of something onstage, so no regrets there.
David Longstreth /
Concerts
No Regrets
Music Together Way
Experienced
Regrets
Onstage
Recordings
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When the Swing Lo Magellan touring wound up, it felt like the end of something for me, and I needed a break from touring. But really, the co-writing and producing I did after this gave me a different perspective on this whole thing. To me, that was like being a different spoke on the wheel.
David Longstreth /
Different Perspective
Producing
Swing
Wound
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I'm from the East Coast; I think about things dialectically sometimes - in other words, antagonistically. The rhythms that I think of are polyrhythmic, bouncy, loping. The way that I want to approach that is to get, like, a flat-footed Connecticut hard-core drummer to play these bouncy, loping polyrhythms.
David Longstreth /
Coast
Connecticut
Drummer
East Coast
In Other Words
Rhythms
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I've always loved cuneiform; I've always loved the way it looks. I love that it's the world's oldest script. And the creative potential of bad translation or misunderstanding or something has always been at the core of the idea of 'Dirty Projectors.' So the cuneiform is pretty playful - basically, just a joke.
David Longstreth /
Dirty
Misunderstanding
Love Always World
Oldest
Playful
Translation
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When I first heard Bjork's music, I felt like I was a similar-minded thinker, both harmonically and melodically. She takes those things that you naturally assume to be opposite because they're presented that way most of the time, and the way she twines them together is so beautiful. To be able to do that is so powerful.
David Longstreth /
Time Music Beautiful
Assume
Presented
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As far as working with Kanye and Solange, that was amazing. After 'Swing Lo Magellan', I needed a change. Getting to work in that capacity, writing for other people and working for other people as a writer and as a person who's not representing it as the front person or whatever - it's such a different perspective you can get.
David Longstreth /
Capacity
Different Perspective
Representing
Swing
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It's helpful to just hear things through friends' ears, people who know you well. I guess when I started Dirty Projectors, when I was, like, 20, I always imagined it would be kind of like an amphibious vehicle: something that could go with me wherever I need to go. That kind of constant change has been in the DNA from the beginning.
David Longstreth /
Be Kind
Constant
Dna
Ears
Vehicle
Change Always Me
Beginning
Guess
Hear
Wherever
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Songs, a while ago, became the medium through which I process most of the information that I receive and feel. But I go back and forth about whether this is all of life or whether you're missing something important in living and whether or not, as a humanist, you're abnegating a certain responsibility if this - this art - is just where you are.
David Longstreth /
Humanist
Missing
Forth
Medium
Receive
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David Longstreth Quotes - Page 2

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