Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I always consider every album to be a snapshot.
When I think about the stuff I turned down it's kind of insane.
I've always feel like it's been my place to offer an alternative.
I still consider myself a consumer of music more than anything else.
I don't hate what I love. I love what I love and I hate what I hate.
I'm not going to get on any anti-corporation soapbox to an extreme level.
To be honest, I didn't really get into making music to be an album artist.
Anything that sparks some eight-year-old's interest in music or DJing is great.
I tend to gravitate away from the more trendy Ibiza style of dance music. It's not me.
My problem with iTunes is that I don't have any say in how I'm represented on the site.
I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovation. That's true of any genre.
I always managed to fly a bit below the radar, but high enough to avoid colliding into anything.
Frequently, when I'm compared to someone, I'm like, "Is that really what people think I sound like?"
My core values are still the same about music, and my work ethic, and what I want to represent to people.
My main thing is constantly looking forward and trying to make music that I couldn't have made at any other time.
I've always been compared to people. It's a revolving cast that comes and goes - obviously, sometimes people stay.
I couldn't make a real drum'n'bass or dubstep record to save my life. But I can be influenced by them in small ways.
Everything right now tends to be the same and very aggressive, and I think people are getting a little burned out on it.
I don't care if I get kicked out of every rich kid club on the planet. I will never sacrifice my integrity as a DJ...ever.
I personally feel the need to experience life and new music and ideas before I can sit down and start writing music again.
If I wanted to contribute to the hyphy movement, what good is it making a hyphy record that isn't embraced by that community?
When I'm looking for DJ sets and stuff to drop, I look for music that I feel is gonna get the reaction I want from the crowd.
Any good album title has multiple meanings, and I like choosing titles where I find myself repeating it, almost like a mantra.
It's satisfying to put out new music. And I think that's the context in which I'm comfortable revisiting things from the past.
Things go wrong when the people who control that world stop listening to their own instincts and start catering to their fan base.
If I have a chance to positively impact how the populace views DJs, then I'm going to try to do my part to nudge things in the right direction.
I would much rather people kick and scream and tear their hair out and accuse me of all kinds of blasphemy, than just have no opinion whatsoever.
I got asked to remix a lot of movie themes, like Mission Impossible, which other people ended up doing quite well. But it was just never my thing.
I realized that people don't quite understand what I do when I was the new kid on the block and a lot of Hollywood was offering me fairly cheesy projects.
People love drama, and if you aren't really interested in perpetuating that, it keeps you from exploding on a mainstream stage. I'm totally fine with that.
You can be a great DJ and still be not very good at DJ Hero. And vice-versa: You can have never spun in your life on real turntables and be fine on DJ Hero.
Yeah, I do. HipHop was, though I would not say all, cause I try to keep myself open to other things, but nearly all I listend to for the last 14 years of my life.
I would rather have 10 people working on a record that are really committed and believe in it and love it, than 50 people who have no idea who I am or what I'm for.
I was asked to do TV ads for Macintosh. Nowadays, I think anybody would jump at that but, at the time, it didn't feel appropriate for what I was trying to stand for.
Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it.
The conventional wisdom of fandom is that you must give your fans anything they want. But I've never felt that that's a healthy attitude - and that comes from being a Star Wars fan.
I think one of the things about ageing is the jagged peaks become a little bit mellower...? Heheh. And I feel like I'm able to understand a little bit better where that sort of tack comes from.
There's any number of DJs who have inspired me over the years. I don't actively go out in clubs, so I can't tell you if there's some hot new talent out there who everybody's aware of but I'm not.
If you think of any long-term artist that makes music throughout several decades, you would hope that it's autobiographical and a form of self-expression, and that's certainly how I approach my music.
I remember when the big shift happened in 1996-97, when suddenly it dawned on the music community: 'We should license our music to commercials and sell out for all intents and purposes. It doesn't really matter.'
Through it all, the words of John Peel echo strongly within me: you have support the music that's being made now. You have to continue to look forward and learn from what's happening. That's my philosophy, anyway.
The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.
There are a lot of music startups that don't have anything to do with anyone's love for music. It has to do with them having a glorious IPO and then retiring to the Bahamas somewhere. It's important to keep that in mind.
I have a natural fear of anything that feels like celebrating my own past to an extent that doesn't allow me to continue to look forward. I don't know psychologically why it is, but I get a little uncomfortable with nostalgia.
Like a lot of other DJs, I've been wondering when the first DJ game was going to happen. Somebody even pitched me on their own idea and I thought, "I'm not a video game startup; I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."
I'm trying to satirize what it's like to be a recording artist in 2011. I realize that standing on a soap box and ranting and raving about my opinions on the digital age and its effect on music is only going to get you so far.
I just felt, at the time, a little bit relieved, because I was kinda counting the days: 'Come on! Let's get these records into people's homes - nobody will ever be able to get them all back, and it'll be an artefact out in the world.'
Just like on Guitar Hero, there are things that are similar and things that are not similar at all. When I first played DJ Hero, I wasn't very good. The control surface is similar in some ways to a turntable, but in other ways not at all the same.
I always like to remain a fan, put it that way: and I like to hold the idealised version of what these artists are like. Greed is one of those components of human nature that's inherent in everyone, and sometimes it is an unpleasant thing to engage in.
When I first pursued this with Universal, they had no idea what to do. But now that we've gone through the whole process and I've signed this 60-page document that says what we can and can't do, I suppose it will be a little bit easier for the next person.