We were interested in this notion of compression- a lot of the songs were really short so that you'd absorb them in memory rather than when you're actually hearing them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.
I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic.
There was this discussion to know how long the human ear was really receptive to the music. A 74 minute CD is too long. We thought about making two CDs, 35 minutes each... But the songs need to breathe.
There's a guy at the record company who's 30, and he says, I would not listen to these songs except in this context. Somehow the recording process, the arrangements, make it more accessible.
Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.
I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.
I guess the idea of doing albums in their entirety, in sequence, appeals to people. I guess it's the memory of being able to hear the music in the way it was originally presented.
Interestingly, songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter.