Why does Homeland have more electronic grooves and more improvisation than your earlier works?
If it’s too highly programmed, it’s no fun to play. You’re doing the same thing every night. I built this music on the road through collaborations with all kinds of musicians: rockers, the downtown avant-garde, electro-pop people. I also became mesmerized by Tuvan throat singers. It’s like listening to someone whose head is a radio tuned to nine stations at once. Homeland has a lot of odd beats, and my big challenge is showing the musicians where the downbeat is. If they don’t feel it in the same place, we’re dead.
You and Lou are a quintessential New York couple. How connected do you feel to the city?
I love this city. I’ve lived in so many different New Yorks. Now I’m living in a Minneapolis-style New York in Tribeca, with all kinds of people and a Whole Foods. They’re planting trees outside my window as we speak, where a burned-out warehouse used to be. I don’t feel nostalgic for the old New York, although I enjoyed it. There’s always something interesting going on, and lots of great musicians and artists and people who are ambitious but also help each other. The sentiment is, “We hope you succeed, because that will make the place more interesting.”
Related:
The 100 unsexiest men 2007: 70-61, We've got a bigger problem now, Show and tell, More 
- The 100 unsexiest men 2007: 70-61
These guys couldn't turn on a radio
- We've got a bigger problem now
I got my first Dead Kennedys T-shirt in 1985 and have been a Michael Savage listener for years.
- Show and tell
After a brief late-December break from the usual boatload of good shows, the flood picks up right where it left off in early January.
- The Big Hurt: Earnest goes to camp
Hey: when the Verve play shows in America, they should start out their set with a cover of “The Freshman,” just so everyone’s like, “Wait a minute, I thought I had this shit figured out.”
- Another Nail in the coffin
Big Coffin Hunters are no big fans of McCain/Palin, the Bushies, or neo-cons, either, and their new album, Drive Another Nail , manages toss in a little political commentary amongst fun macabre metal tunes.
- Youth in the booth
Sometime since 1976 — just four years after 18 year olds were granted the right to vote but decided they’d rather not — the youth movement has become a joke.
- Wish list
[1] An MBTA Red Line station without a broken escalator. [2] Someone in the White House who at least pretends we’re still looking for Osama.
- CMJ in one day
The Gray Lady of indie music fests ain’t what she used to be
- Breaking it down
There are so many things wrong with this review, both factually and in his dismissal and apparent ignorance of the whole culture of hip-hop.
- Musical melee
An old, grizzled white guy, once considered a maverick but now an entrenched member of the establishment, is challenged by a younger, popular African-American upstart.
- Blade runners
You’ve perhaps heard the hipsterrific Swedish electro duo the Knife. But if they have their way, they’ll never hear you. Pointed pop: The bemused machinations of the Knife
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Barack Obama, Laurie Anderson, Entertainment, More
, Barack Obama, Laurie Anderson, Entertainment, Music, Armed Forces, John McCain, Performing Arts, Lou Reed, Rush Limbaugh, Performance Art, Less
