As a DJ, you can test out records on a crowd and see what happens. TNGHT had been popping up in your set for a while. Totally. That was a weird situation as well. We did “Chimes" and then decided we would do an EP before the full length. I had this back catalog of music that I didn't want on the new record, but I do want to release it. So I might as well put this out. And purely by chance, after the record was already being mastered and going into manufacture, Apple came along and decided that they wanted to use it for their campaign. It was weird because we hadn't announced the record at all. No one had said anything about it.

The commercial is interesting too. It's unexpected from Apple. A lot of it is quite obscure stuff. For a worldwide advertising campaign to have Kompakt stickers or a Fools Gold or Stones Throw stickers, to me that seemed like a really good look. Their advertising people come to shows and all that. There's publishers sending around folders. They said they went through hundreds of songs and picked ours. I was like, “Really?!" That's really bizarre. But I'm not going to complain.

Kanye West has been in Mexico working on the next record. Have you been out there? We've worked in a few places. I did a lot of work on it the first half of this year. Second half, not as much. Last year, I was doing Yeezus in LA, and then I was flying back to Europe over the weekend to do festivals, then back to LA on Monday. It really took a lot out of me. This time around, I needed to focus on my own record. I'm going to head back out once I make sure that I can keep my stuff a priority. I haven't done an album campaign in five years, and I want to focus on that. The last time I spoke to Kanye a couple weeks ago, I still had a couple of tracks on it. But I'm trying not to take my eye off the ball in terms of my solo material.

You and Lunice teaming up was huge for you both. Is there anyone else you'd want to do a project with? There are a few, I'm producing a couple people's records. Just diving in and out of various projects, but I'm still trying to keep my focus on my own stuff. It's something I've learned from Rick Rubin, just watching him work. I've been whittling away at the stuff that I don't necessarily need to have. There's a finished record there, but it's too long for what I want it to be really. So I'm sort of chipping away to get it refined. But there's a bunch of vocalists, I think five or six.

It had to be crazy as a producer, especially with your style—metallic, booming drums—to sit next to Rick and see how he works. Yeah. I think... You become so accustomed to letting the screen tell you what's going on when making electronic music, rather than your ears. Rick doesn't touch any equipment or anything, he's just in his ears. I think that's key. Not being constrained by little blocks on a screen.

It's almost impossible to imagine a producer in 2014 not looking at a screen. And it shouldn't be. Exactly. I'm trying to do that more often. Once I get to a certain stage of something I'm working on, I'll turn my screen off and just sit and listen. I won't necessarily know what's coming up next, and see if that works purely on a listening level. Nothing like “Alright, this needs to come here because it's 16 bars after this." That in itself is kind of crampy. Even subconsciously, without even realizing it, you can get stuck in that framework.