St. Lucia Quotes

#1. I think I was just too young to even understand what was going on. When I was still living in South Africa, there was still so much racial tension.

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#2. Trying to be really dark and alienating just felt exhausting to me, so I started going back to the music that I grew up with, whether it was African music or pop music. It took me away from being overly self-conscious about what I was doing.

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#3. When I was developing St. Lucia - around 2008, 2009, at the peak of Pitchfork culture - what was considered cool was being as alienating to your audience as possible.

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#4. World music evokes a feeling. You don't have to think about the scene that it comes from.

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#5. What I love about African-African music is how unselfconscious it is in so many ways.

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#6. There were times when I would suddenly realize making music is a crazy pipe dream. I would see bands that did super well in South Africa still struggling to survive, or even people on the international level who are doing well but financially can't really support themselves.

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#7. A lot of the people I was writing with think a lot more about lyrics and a lot more about the details from the beginning. That kind of thinking made me a little self-conscious because I was suddenly having to judge what I was doing early on in the process.

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#8. I was very conceptual about what I was doing; I had the first five albums planned out, and all the songs on every album, and the artwork. I always had these ambitious musical projects in mind.

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#9. Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising.

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#10. I was also always interested in the aesthetic realm - architecture and that kind of stuff - but music was my first love.

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#11. I had this perfect situation where my studio was a three-minute walk away, and every day I would go to the studio. If I had an idea, I could work on it at the highest level possible.

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#12. I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.

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#13. The music that I listen to the most is probably world music, whether it's from African or South America or all over.

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#14. I'm a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan. He might be my favorite director of all time - the beauty that he sees in the world and the attention to detail. I try and focus on that while making music: trying to use as many real instruments as possible, have it feel as tactile and tangible as possible.

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#15. I've been making music for as long as I can remember. I would, as a kid, just sing little ideas or be making something.

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#16. A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.

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#17. When I'm writing, those ideas are seldom inspired by music itself. I won't often listen to an artist and come up with an idea.

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#18. I think that layers in music, whether it's layers juxtaposing emotions and feelings or layers of texture, make for a more interesting product.

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#19. When I start working on an idea, I immediately record without judging it.

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#20. The racial conversation in the States is so multifaceted and multilayered. Obviously it's not always a positive conversation, but it's just so much more detailed than it was when I was growing up in South Africa.

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#21. I decided to create a really good laptop recording situation and to learn how to write that way, rather than have the perfect stuff around.

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#22. I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process.

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#23. When I was growing up, it was still during Apartheid, so the country was very shielded from the outside artistic world. Anything that was too subversive was basically banned. All the music that we got from outside of South Africa was the poppiest, least subversive music that you could get.

St. Lucia