Music has become something different from the past, when it was one hundred per cent live. Throughout the twentieth century, it was recorded, and the medium adjusted.
A young musician needs a powerful laptop and a good analogue synthesiser.
When we went to see the first rough cuts of 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence,' I fell to the floor because my acting was so bad. I wrote music to compensate for my bad acting.
I have a cultural map in my head, where I find similarities between different cultures. For example, domestic Japanese pop music sounds like Arabic music to me - the vocal intonations and vibrato - and, in my mind, Bali is next to New York. Maybe everyone has these geographies in their head. This is the way I've been working.
Water is not free anymore. Our resources were free at one time, but now they are not. Everything is getting controlled by big corporations. I'm most worried about this.
I know Brazilian music. I have worked with Brazilians many times.
I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
I was really into the music of Cream after I finished composing the music for 'BTTB.'
I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.
You're changing every day, right? Your curiosities and ambitions change, your ear changes, the music you like changes - and the music you want to make, too.
I'm concerned by a deficient technology. In other words, errors or noises. It absorbs me, and I wonder if new cultural currents could emerge from this deficiency.
To record the perfect album. That is my dearest wish.
Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.
For me, Debussy is the door to all 20th-century music.
I was aware of that theme of mortality in my music since around 2009. The decaying and the disappearance of the piano sound is very much symbolic of life and mortality. It's not sad. I just meditate about it.
Hopefully, we will become a stronger democratic society and avoid falling into xenophobia. Hopefully, we build good relationships with our neighboring countries and, rather than acting for profit for the current generation, acting in a way that will ensure we leave natural resources for future generations.
I'm fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: a sound that won't dissipate over time. Essentially, the opposite of a piano, because the notes never fade. I suppose, in literary terms, it would be like a metaphor for eternity.
I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, 'Nature tuned it.'
Since the early 1990s, I had been very worried about the state of the environment, and by the end of that decade, I realized I needed to do something about it.
Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.
