“Things flow better and everyone is in a better mood because they’re like, ‘I got my point across and it sounds like I want it to sound’”

It makes you feel really comfortable when someone is like, I’m not going to touch what you’re doing.

Which would have been a very interesting thing to have done, but we were very aware that we wanted a bizarre kind of production value on the record.

It was like, cool, that sounds like the right move.

It’s 210BPM gabber-style techno and 40BPM reggae in the same list and it’s like, yeah, they work.

We get real picky about frequencies. Put it on a tape, start on tape, and it’s kind of locked to how it sounds.

You can’t just listen to The Smiths anymore. But then there are plenty of people that do only listen to five bands and six albums and that’s it.

People are like, ‘What do you mean you don’t listen to 115 different types of music?’.

The production pushes and pulls you as much as the song does. It’s almost more to do with the production value of how each bit was done as opposed to the actual track itself.

Do what you do and I’ll put it out, but as opposed to sticking it out in Dublin and in one shop in London, it’s going to go all over the world and you’ll have the backing of a PR team and whatever else you need.

Humour is a big part of our lives as well as our music. Making it fun is the most important thing.

My playlists are massively varied. There’s never a theme throughout, it’s never like everything is based in funk or based in reggae or whatever.

But God told me that He/She/It had actually chosen Al Gore by making sure that Gore won the popular vote and, God thought, the Electoral College. ‘That worked for everyone else,’ God said.

The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else. was to be indifferent to that difference.

the freedom to live a life free of fear of violence, to select a fulfilling career and be compensated fairly, to choose when to start a family, to marry whom you love.

In my family, there were Kei and Minoru and then there were the rest. Everyone in my family is very opinionated and everyone tried to join the debate. But by the time my turn came, there was nothing left to say.

During a race where everyone holds their own truth, the finish line is a surprise.

Of course, everyone knows that I’m also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.

Politics is like air and water. And you know if there is bad politics. Everyone is polluted. Everyone is unhealthy. See the people walking on the street: how they act.

Everyone has a watched life. Everyone is both the observer and the observed.