"I love altered tunings, and guitarists who use them like Michael Chapman, whose Train Songs album was great. To me, this is like a lost film soundtrack, full of soft beauty, powered by this overdriven electric guitar against found sounds and synths. It makes me think of this trip I did to the Joshua Tree National Park: I hadn't known what was there, and I'd thought the Joshua Tree was just one tree! But walking in the high sierra, the quietest place I'd ever been, the idea of cars, planes, city noise, feeling so far away…there was this silence. This reminds me of that.
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"My final choice. This is really tough. Part of me wanted to say Dogville. Part of me wanted to say The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. And then part of me wanted to say Rosemary’s Baby. But I realized that I had to put an early Scorsese in there. I had a hard time choosing between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, but I think it’s got to be Taxi Driver. I mean, from Bernard Hermann’s score to what Scorsese does with the camera with Michael Chapman. Yeah, it’s just like this sickly fever dream that captures a New York that I never got to see, but it just feels like New York to me. You know, the way that he kind of wrangled all of these very important influences that have nothing to do with one another. Like, there’s a lot of Bresson in there, but then there’s also Max Ophüls and there’s Fellini and there’s Cassavetes. You know, you see so many sources, but together they’ve become singularly Scorsese. I could put any number of Scorsese films in here. I could put Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, The King of Comedy, but right now this strikes me as like his toughest and most perfect film. Also, Bernard Hermann’s score is so persistent and so pervasive, it feels like a total montage, because that score is so driving. I’m not sure if there is another Scorsese film whose score is so integral. I mean, Cape Fear‘s score is all over it, but Taxi Driver is like top to bottom just Bernard Hermann music."