"Octavia Butler is one of my top favorite authors, and my favorite sci-fi writer of all time. Her writing is always at the intersection of race, class — and in this instance, vampires. I love fantastical things, and because this focuses on vampires and not humans it adds another element of imagination. In the book, she’s having a conversation about racism, but through vampires, and you just never know where that’s going to go. You’re reading it, reading it, reading it, and then it takes a hard left, and you’re like Oh shit, I didn’t realize we were going to go into these deep political topics. Even though she always does that in her books. I’ve read pretty much all of them, but this was my favorite. She died pretty soon after she wrote it, so it has a lot of sentimental value for me."

"I can't pronounce it either! It's a fantastic record. It's got such a gorgeous mellow vibe to it. It's kind of accessible to people who aren't familiar with jazz, but it also has kind of this free, loose thing. It's not free jazz, it's definitely modal. It's got Pharoah Sanders on it. It's lush and gorgeous and kind of takes you to a different place. Sometimes Alice Coltrane plays the harp, which sounds dreamy. It's one of my go-to's in the morning at work (in Sub Pop) I just kind of put it on to get me going. I probably drive some of my co-workers crazy playing it. You know, there's not a really obvious influence in our music that comes from jazz. I know I'm influenced by it, but I'm not sure how. I don't like all jazz, but certain things I love to death. That's the problem with this list: I can't stick Charles Mingus on it, or Andrew Hill, or Ornette Coleman, or Albert Ayler. One of the things I feel lucky about, my high school friends and I who formed Mr. Epp, we would go to our little record store in our suburban town and the guys there turned us onto The New York Dolls and Ornette Coleman and Ayler and The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno. I feel really lucky to have stumbled into that, at that time."