St. Lucia Quotes

I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process.

When I was growing up, it was still during Apartheid, so the country was very shielded from the outside artistic world. Anything that was too subversive was basically banned. All the music that we got from outside of South Africa was the poppiest, least subversive music that you could get.

The racial conversation in the States is so multifaceted and multilayered. Obviously it's not always a positive conversation, but it's just so much more detailed than it was when I was growing up in South Africa.

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up.

I had this perfect situation where my studio was a three-minute walk away, and every day I would go to the studio. If I had an idea, I could work on it at the highest level possible.

I think I was just too young to even understand what was going on. When I was still living in South Africa, there was still so much racial tension.

World music evokes a feeling. You don't have to think about the scene that it comes from.

Trying to be really dark and alienating just felt exhausting to me, so I started going back to the music that I grew up with, whether it was African music or pop music. It took me away from being overly self-conscious about what I was doing.

I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.

There were times when I would suddenly realize making music is a crazy pipe dream. I would see bands that did super well in South Africa still struggling to survive, or even people on the international level who are doing well but financially can't really support themselves.

When I was developing St. Lucia - around 2008, 2009, at the peak of Pitchfork culture - what was considered cool was being as alienating to your audience as possible.

I decided to create a really good laptop recording situation and to learn how to write that way, rather than have the perfect stuff around.

When I'm writing, those ideas are seldom inspired by music itself. I won't often listen to an artist and come up with an idea.

I was very conceptual about what I was doing; I had the first five albums planned out, and all the songs on every album, and the artwork. I always had these ambitious musical projects in mind.

A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.

When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school.

I think that layers in music, whether it's layers juxtaposing emotions and feelings or layers of texture, make for a more interesting product.

I was also always interested in the aesthetic realm - architecture and that kind of stuff - but music was my first love.