In Goethe’s drama »Faust« the young girl Gretchen forces Faust to answer a rather uncomfortable question: is he religious or not? Really she wanted to know if he is involved in pre-maritial sex to ultimately discover if his heart is good and his soul is true. Our »crucial question« might not be so absolute but it will uncover one aspect with one photograph. No frills. Just one question.
How important is sampling in your writing and production process?
Anand Wilder: Chris has 50gb of samples
Chris Keating: 50 thousand!
Anand Wilder: There is a shed in North Dakota with a server solely there to store our samples.
Chris Keating: Terabytes! They are all sorted and make sense. I can search frog making love. Purple. Purple frogs making love. It sounds surprisingly like a cello. Samples are amazing. Especially with the technology today. Think of what Brian Eno had to go through.
Anand Wilder: Drop it into the computer and make a new instrument. Got a field recorder right here – it’s called an iPhone. (presses play) That’s the hum of the bus. The bus was making some weird noises the other night. I woke up and started recording it. Our song’s just write themselves.
Chris Keating: Noises on the bus. It’s deep. The bleakest thing I can think of is »Recordings from the bus«. The bus to no where. It makes you want to blow your brains out. It’ll only be available in surround sound and the live version will have naked boys on a bus.
