"This is track two on Beck’s Morning Phase, his ninth studio record, which I discovered after touring Radlands around America three times. I’d always appreciated Beck from a distance, but I never had an emotional connection to his music. I loved “Loser” and it was fun to spin him at an indie disco, but I didn’t have that real relationship with his music. But when this came out it blew my mind; it was such an incredible record. “It was written and recorded as a counterpart to Sea Change, his previous record. It used a lot of the same musicians and it was recorded in Nashville. It has that real blissed out, opioid induced country music feel to it - very floaty. To me, it really felt like it was his mid-life crisis record, the musical version of him buying a Bugatti and running off with his secretary. “Just like with King Crimson and Cass McCombs, Beck’s Morning Phase completely influenced Curve of the Earth and it gave us the sonic blueprint for that record. The blueprint was this woozy, washed out, ethereal, very spacious, widescreen feel. There are tinges of country there, but it’s more of a headphone stoner record."

"When you see A Constant Forge, you realize that Cassavetes was living his films at all times. That’s something I definitely tried to do with my past two films—I wasn’t just going somewhere to make a film, I was really living it and making it a lifestyle. There’s sort of an inherent sloppiness that comes with that, but I love it because it feels like the result of just trying to capture what’s happening as opposed to constructing what has happened. I love Cassavetes in general, but Faces in particular has to be one of his most honest and real films, and it definitely feels like it has a maturity to it that you don’t find as much in Shadows, even though Shadowsis incredible. Rossellini always said the shot doesn’t need to be pretty, that for him the first thing is to keep the audience close to the characters and to follow the characters. And in Faces, there are a ton of out-of-focus shots, and it’s anything but pretty. It’s not a film that strikes people because of the magnitude and beauty of its images. It’s more about the relationships and the real life that you feel in it."