The New Album

What's the story behind Movement in Still Life?

Basically, the whole thing with making this record.... For five years I was in the Warner Bros. system with managers that did not understand me, with a label that did not understand me. They were like, "You're the dance music guy. We want you to do this one thing specifically and that's all we want going on in your record." So when I got out of my record label and management situations, it was a period of complete elation and liberation for me. It was like, "Wait, I should do whatever the hell I want." I called all of my friends up, 'cause I'm not in a band. If you're in a band, you get the opportunity to vibe and resonate with other creative people.

How did you decide which of these people would contribute to the album?

Everybody that I collaborated with on the record is a friend. Some people I had never collaborated with before, but we had talked about collaborating for ages, like DJ Rap and Michael Doughty from Soul Coughing. And then guys like Sasha and Paul Van Dyk I have collaborated with for ages. It's just a bunch of friends getting together. We had a lot of fun making this record.

It sounds like there's some loose improvisation at the end of "Never Gonna Come Back Down."

Yeah, that's funny, Doughty going, "That's what I do for a living." It's great. He's so funny. He's such a great guy and such an interesting musician. He's not a spoken-word artist, yet he's not a rapper, yet he's not a singer, yet he's all three of those, but he's . . . what is he? And the way that he works is fascinating to watch. It's literally like a rant, and you wonder what the hell is he talking about. Then when you sit back and you listen to it in context, he ends up making more sense than I'm definitely making now [laughs]. He's a really cool guy.

Was that song totally improvised?

Totally off the top of his head. It's two takes. One take, he's singing from the Book of Revelations. And the second take, he's singing about how hot he thinks DJ Rap is. And that's the whole thing. That's his vibe, man. I took those two takes, cut 'em together and made "Never Gonna Come Back Down" out of it [MP3 sample, 472 kb].

That's the first single. How often do you find a single that is a totally spontaneous rant?

Why not? That really kind of summarizes the whole spirit of the record. It was just sort of getting together and . . I did some of the tracks on my own: "Satellite," "Godspeed," "Shame," "Movement in Still Life." But then others I just literally called up my friends, like, "Come on over." Or when my friends were in town DJing. . . . On "Running Down the Way Up" I went out to my friend Mike's house in Wales and called Kirsty Hawkshaw, who was in Opus III, and said, "Let's go out to Mike's for the weekend in Wales and we'll all write a track."

Go got a lot of attention. As a result there were expectations for this record. Was that hard to get that out of your mind?

No and yes at the same time. No in that I feel like it's a part of the job description that you have to get that out of your head or else it totally interferes with the creative process. You're screwed if that's what you're thinking about, you won't be able to do anything altruistic. But yes in that the people I think about more than the people that I don't know are my friends. Whether my friends are going to laugh at me or not is more of an influence on me than anything. My dog too; my dog knows good tunes [laughs]. She'll come and sit in the studio with me and if it sucks she can't be bothered.

What do albums mean to you as an artist?

The coolest thing to me about making records is they're just a time capsule for whatever period in your life. When I think of "Running Down the Way Up" I don't just think of the track; I think about Kirsty boiling roots 'cause she said that they were good for our creativity, making tea out of roots. And then having to walk through the woods to get to the pub from where Mike lives in Wales. It's just this collection of memories from the time period that you made the record. And each one of them, I've got three records, I've got stuff like that. It's like a diary.

On Staying Busy

You have so much going on all the time. Do you ever slow down?

It's weird because this week before I came to New York, like on Monday; I went by my manager's place and I said, "You guys have any envelopes I can seal or phone calls I can answer?" I was bored out of my mind.

I love getting to work on music. I've done it since I was a kid and I'd be doing it if I was still eating macaroni and cheese. I just feel really lucky to be able to do it for a living. So it's like I love working. I love it more than traveling, actually. I kind of do one as much as I do the other and I actually prefer work. It's cool to get to go see all kinds of cool places, and I like having periods where I do a lot of traveling, which is what I'm gearing up for and what I've kind of been doing. In two and a half weeks I've been to Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Tokyo, Miami, Los Angeles, and now here. I'm like, "What time zone are we in?"

I'm going to Malaysia next Friday, and Singapore, Thailand, Taipei, and Hong Kong. I love doing that, but I actually prefer sitting in front of my computer and like working on a movie or working on music.

Is your music heard in all those varied places and cultures?

It's so weird, man, because America is kind of the last to catch on. And it's weird because we feel like we're so forward-thinking here, but you go to a place like Japan and just on the technology front alone, you go, "What the hell are we doing in the States? It's like technology-based music is readily accepted everywhere in the world except for America. Progressive house music, trance music, it's pop music all over Europe and all over Asia. It's Top 40 music that's on radio 24 hours a day. It's just weird.

What future projects do you have coming up?

I'm working on a bunch of stuff, actually. We've been working on tons of mixes for tracks from the album, tracks like "Never Gonna Come Back Down" and "Dreaming." Also I'm working on a track for Gone in 60 Seconds. They really liked "Never Gonna Come Back Down" and they wanted to use that for the soundtrack. I was like, "Why don't you let me take it and do an instrumental version for the film?" Because there's dialog in there. So I started out half-tempo and this mad breakbeat stuff with weird ambience and then segued into Angelina Jolie's popping the ignition on this Ferrari and stealing this Ferrari. Then it kicks into "Never Gonna Come Back Down." So I've been working on that and then I'll probably start working on another movie from the road. I'm desperately trying to put together a little Pro Tools rig with a laptop and then a rack just so I can work on the back of a bus or whatever.