Pitchfork: It’s hard to find out exactly where you live—I’ve heard Turin, Italy, Los Angeles, and now you’re hanging out in Berlin?

Yves Tumor: A lot of people are confused about my actual whereabouts, but that’s OK.

Do you have a permanent home?

Yes.

Where is it?

Question mark, question mark, question mark—it’s private.

It seems like there are a lot of things about you that are private. I couldn’t even definitively determine that your name is Sean.

That’s one of my names.

Why don’t you want people to know your name?

I don’t keep anything from people—the people who should know my name and where I live know those things. But as far as journalists and bloggers, I may fabricate things at times. I’m not trying to be like Burial or anything, but I don’t really like people to be involved in my personal life unless they are very close to me and I’ve known them for a long time, just out of respect.

Being online so much, I’ve noticed that people who post a lot of stuff about themselves grow a fanbase out of the constant show that they are putting online, and then their fanbase starts to feel like they know this person personally even though they’ve never met them. It’s happened to my friends who have put themselves out there intensely. Sometimes the fans cross the line and take advantage of this connection, and it becomes super unsettling, and it’s hard to reverse. So I just started to draw back the things I say about myself online, so they don’t have a chance to cross that line.

Yves Tumor: “Role in Creation” (via SoundCloud)

Let’s talk about your music then. Is there a deliberate narrative to Serpent Music?

There absolutely is an arc, but it wasn’t intentional. I want it to be like a journey, like you’ve just walked with me through some dystopian place.

Dystopian?

Well, even saying “dystopian” boxes the production in—I try to steer away from that stuff.

If you had to pick a word, what kind of story is it?

Spiritual.

What is your own spirituality like?

It’s very real, but it’s not something I discuss with too many people. Are you a spiritual person?

Yeah.

What do you feel when you listen to it?

Well, on “Perdition,” the image that came into my mind was not spiritual, but it was quite frightening: It sounded like somebody digging a grave by water to bury a body in the middle of the night.

I can’t argue with that. That’s very close to what I had in mind. It’s actually someone running, panicked, sprinting away from an inevitable source that is going to destroy them.

Yves Tumor: "Perdition" (via SoundCloud)

Let me ask you about something else a little creepy, which is the photos of you that accompany the album. It looks like you are in a coffin—are you?

Yes, I am in a coffin. Well, not necessarily a coffin, but I am definitely not alive.