Top 45 Washed Out Quotes

I don’t think I would change anything. I think we’ve done a fairly good job of remaining sane and making the right decisions.

I know of some guitar-based rock bands that refuse to record anything that they can’t play live. But some of the best stuff I come up with are studio-based performances – bringing out whatever accident I had in the studio and building a song around that.

For the longest time, I was trying to be DJ Shadow, I think. But I slowly developed my own style. It was trial and error, for sure.

I normally start at the computer with something really simple like a four-bar loop of a drum sample or a bass line. And then I just start adding layers of synthesizers.

A lot of the things I was doing on the first couple Washed Out releases was very naive.

I put some songs on the Internet back in 2009 – that’s kind of how everything started with Washed Out. I had never really planned on being in a band or anything like that. It was kind of a hobby I did on my own, just recording music.

For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.

I get very bored easily. I’m a child of the Internet or whatever; I want more and more of new and interesting things.

One of the great things about music is how it can take you places.

It is easy to get an interesting loop to happen, but it becomes a collage when the song and loop are constantly changing.

I took piano lessons when I was really young, like five years old, and I didn’t really enjoy that very much. It was kind of too strict. So when I was probably 11 or 12, I started playing guitar and just kind of taught myself.

I’m very happy in my life, but I do feel that music has a power to transport you to places or to beautiful moments in your past.

My first big influences were more hip-hop based – people like DJ Shadow and Four Tet.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, and I feel like I can pull ideas from practically anything. You name it – I’ll probably like it.

You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it’s OutKast. There’s a strangeness about it because it’s catchy, but it’s not just pop for the sake of pop. They’re pushing the envelope.

I think ’80s pop music subconsciously informs what I’m doing.

I don’t think it’s an exciting thing to move back in with your parents.

I was at a slight disadvantage in that I had never played in bands or done any performances before, and that’s just as important as writing, recording, and putting records out. It’s been a lot of hard work, balanced with a lot of pinch-myself moments of touring in crazy parts of the world.

I never wanted to just press play on some DJ set and let the lights do all the work. I value old-fashioned performance a little more than that.

I definitely enjoy my time by myself – and that’s kind of the weird thing about touring; you’re kind of constantly surrounded by people – but I actually do enjoy going out and doing things and being around people.

If a band or artist isn’t tweeting or writing posts on Facebook every day, there can be this kind of mystique built about them, and I find myself retreating from the spotlight more and more.

I’ve struggled with depression before. For me, music was always a very positive way to will myself out of that situation.

I was gonna work in a university, but no one was hiring.

I have a small studio set up in my house in Athens. I’ll wake up, have a nice breakfast, and I won’t surface until dinnertime. I’m very domesticated in that way.

I love listening to pop radio.

I’m very much a fan of having something tactile you can hold.

The way I work is by infinitely playing a very simple loop over and over, and then I start layering things.

I’m without a doubt a producer first. The lyrics happen towards the tail-end of the process, mainly because they’re more stream-of-consciousness. It’s very rare that I’m going to tell a really concrete story.

My music is a personal thing, and I feel like if I talk too much about the songs, or if there’s too much of my personal life out there, it ruins it.

The way that I sing is very mumbled-together, and so I guess I’m kind of stuck with it now.

There are certain sounds that have a loaded past. Like the sound of a harp, if you go back to old movies, represents a dream sequence; it transports you there.

There are things I can accomplish in the studio via manipulation on the computer or some kind of effect that are nearly impossible to do live. On the flip side, there are some things that happen live that can’t be pulled off in the studio.

I naturally like that dreamy, shoegazey sound on my vocals. A lot of reverb helps, and so do a lot of delay effects on everything.

I’m entirely self-taught, which I think is both a blessing and a curse.

When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it – these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.

I’m not the most technical producer, so the weird mixes and blown-out sound happen naturally.

My general taste is towards the melancholy.

The types of melodies I tend to write kind of have this bittersweet quality; they’re meant to be uplifting but kind of have this melancholy vibe to it.

I never want to make a complete, 180 reactional record. I wanted a connection to what I’ve done in the past but still move forward and evolve.

I come from a background of hiding everything behind a computer.

Where I grew up in the middle of Georgia, hip-hop is king, and on Friday and Saturday nights, local DJs do mixes. It’s a great mix of local stuff and then some of the bigger hits and remixes of the hits, and it just has this nice flow with a dirty-South sound to everything.

Making music is pretty much the only thing I can do.

I’ve always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it’s verse-chorus-verse.

I have a little basement studio set up here at my house, and I do probably 80 percent of the recording here on my own. With multi-tracking technology, I can play various parts on top of one another.

It’s like a painter with various layers of paint. I start with a drum loop and add keyboards, and then melodies start to take shape. The vocals happen later. I’ve never really done therapy before, but it’s a form of therapy. Everything else falls away.