Who have been some of your idols or people you look up to in this industry lately?
For me my idols are people who are really outside of the mainstream, people who have longevity and many different facets of their career. For me it’s not so much about achieving success as it surviving success.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Hopefully still doing what I love. If I can still be creative and collaborating with other artists that’s what it’s about. When we started Thievery 20 years ago, we never really thought we’d be doing music 5 years later.
If you had a message for aspiring producers, what would that advice be?
To not listen to other peoples advice. You have to be “sick with it” so to speak. You have to want to do it even if nobody else gets it, kind of like a mad scientist. Even if nobody likes it, the creative process itself is the reward.
What are some of your favorite production tools to use to create your music?
I love using old vintage analog synths, old pedals, but I also enjoy Ableton Live, The Universal Audio plugins are pretty rad too.
If you were to incorporate another music genre, such as rap, rock, country, etc into your tracks what would you try out?
In some ways I try to incorporate all sorts of genres, that’s where the magic is at for me. I ’m not into purity. Jazz, Blues, Rock even Electronic come from cultures colliding.
What is your go to music when you need to unwind or chill out after a hard day?
I like things like Arvo Part or Phillip Glass, Antonio Carlos Jobim, things that are not so beat-centric.
What would be your favorite event to DJ at and why?
For me I really don’t like to think like that, because sometimes the gigs that you have the highest expectations for seem to be the lamest and sometimes the gigs that you are underwhelmed going into turn out to be some of the most fun.
When you were a kid, did you know that you wanted to make music for a living, and if not what were your dream jobs back then?
I knew pretty young at around 14, I started to make and experiment with Electronic Music at 14, so I feel very fortunate.
You’ve just released your trippy video for Blue Agave, what was the inspiration behind that, and what was the filming process like?
The inspiration was basically this song that I had written driving through the agave fields of Mexico, thinking about loss I eventually worked on a studio version of the track with Federico Aubele. I thought it would be cool to do a video for the song. I met this great director Ivan Landau and we would just hang in this Mezcaleria in San Francisco. I wanted to create a video just for arts sake. The video was shot over a weekend in SF and Oakland. The bar scene was done in this old brothel that the writer Jack London use to hang out at. The process was quick, dirty and well thought out. We really had a cast of such interesting characters! It was great watching Ivan work!
