On the new EP, Add Violence, you've got this extraordinary album image: the machine, with labels and knobs covering the breadth of human emotion, is laid out from the top down. In the notes on the website, you mention the importance of vinyl and the interaction it demands from the listener, and how it’s about the ritual.



TR: With a physical album, aside from touching it, feeling it, smelling it, there's another factor that I realized; I've got to figure out where it's going to sit on the shelf. When I walk past all my vinyl, I'll often look and think, "Oh, there's that so-and-so record." I'm reminded of it. It's in the world with me, like something on my desk. It doesn't just disappear in the clouds, or on some fucking app somewhere. It's a thing. The next time I move, if I move, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with it, do I want it anymore? It's a thing living with me.



In a recent interview, you mentioned seeing through the eyes of a father, and worrying about what's happening in the world. Artists and musicians have historically made political statements about what's going on in the world. Have musicians stopped being political?

TR: I can't speak to the motivations of pop artists. I just read a couple of artists, popular indie artists, talking about their concern about think-piece culture, and how they fit into a think piece, and maybe that they shouldn't make music now, because of a real concern about what people, journalists, and bloggers think of them.



Imagine if you're a product of that culture, you've been created because you've emerged from a blog culture that is think-piece driven. You're going to be much more concerned about making sure that this “thing” that fed you still cares about you. It’s part of a bigger issue, of being too worried about what people think. In this social media crazed, “How many followers do you have?” world, everybody has an opinion. There’s a toxic world of online feedback. The ability for people to bitch at you, and complain about you, are greater than they've ever been. I think years ago, you might have just gotten letters, and didn't have a fire hose of people shitting on you all day. Now, at any moment, if you want to feel shitty, you are two buttons away from having someone tell you that you’re shitty. It's not good for you as a human being. It's certainly not good for you as an artist who might take chances and follow your own voice. You're not delivering their expectation of what you should be delivering. That's not to say you can't make shitty arguments, and certainly we all do from time to time, if not all the time, but tuning into that is the death of great art, in my opinion.