"Avant-garde, in the best sense of the word."

"The avant-garde comes to the mainstream. At the time, Terry Riley was an avant-garde composer. He still is, but he's probably more so known for his work in the late '60s. Indian music at the time was coming into focus because of The Beatles and psychedelic music. So his compositions - especially this one - were really hypnotic, very mantra-esque. I think Terry Riley influenced more in a pop sense than in a rock sense, and I think A Rainbow In Curved Air has probably equal influence to Sgt. Pepper's. And you can quote me on that! It's obviously where The Who got the name 'Baba O'Riley', where the band used synthesisers - that's from Terry Riley. We cut our teeth in Buffalo, NY, in the early '80s and in that time the place was at the height of avant-garde. They opened a music school where they featured all the greats - Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Tony Conrad - just a ton of avant-garde composers, who later became more famous. It was such a central point for the electronic avant-garde movement, one that hadn't been around since San Francisco in the late '60s. It influences everything that Grasshopper and I do. We have strange polarities of the melancholy, romantic side of us. Then we also have the avant-garde side of us. The rock & roll side of us is probably the least prominent in our music. One of our albums, Snowflake Midnight, is also our homage to that bygone era of electronic music. Once you put it on, you think, ""Oh that's where all that William Orbit and Moby stuff comes from."" If you look all the way back, that's Terry Riley. It was the beginning of synthesisers, arpeggio synths also, which eventually became modern dance music. It was his motif of making it more hypnotic."

"The human soul examined by avant-garde gynecology in the saddest movie ever made. Cronenberg leaves the realm of master and steps into the pantheon, bringing Jeremy Irons—flawlessly doubled in one of the all-time great performances—right along with him. Timeless and devastating."

"Alright, my next one on my list is Stardust Memories, Woody Allen. It’s really amazing, and it didn’t do very well at the time. It wasn’t a huge film for him, but it’s loosely autobiographical and arguably super self-indulgent. I f—ing love it and there’s just something about the cage of celebrity that he put together in this film which is pretty on the money. To a degree, I identify with the character in the film. I feel like it’s a really great blend of story-telling and film-making and avant-garde, self-indulgent artsy-ness — without being too far in that direction. And it’s conscious of its own attempts at being incredibly avant-garde and almost pokes fun of itself for that. To me, it’s one of my favorite films of his, and he’s one of my favorite filmmakers, period. That one … It’s f—ing good."

"Having come to music production via electronic music first, I had to go back at some point and try and figure out how to write songs. Learning how to do so involved picking apart my favourite songs, including this piece of perfect concision. It’s a great reminder that those artists like Wire who pushed forward the boundaries of the avant-garde are by no means exempted from writing a perfect pop song every once in a while, when it strikes their fancy."

"Monsieur Hulot is clumsily precise; the silence and precision of the gags are avant-garde. When the vacation ends in this film, you’re left feeling like you’ve met a good friend. Fishing with John can be watched on so many levels at the same time. It avoids becoming too meta and relishes all of the facets of friendship, comedy, and good old-fashioned fishing. The soundtrack alone transports us back to the calming, hilarious alternate universe of John Lurie’s brain: “They woke up with sores and boners.”"

"Monsieur Hulot is clumsily precise; the silence and precision of the gags are avant-garde. When the vacation ends in this film, you’re left feeling like you’ve met a good friend. Fishing with John can be watched on so many levels at the same time. It avoids becoming too meta and relishes all of the facets of friendship, comedy, and good old-fashioned fishing. The soundtrack alone transports us back to the calming, hilarious alternate universe of John Lurie’s brain: “They woke up with sores and boners.”"