What’s the ratio of live to computer-generated instrumentation on IdleWild?
Fifty-fifty. We don’t do a lot of sampling, though. I like to hear variation – even if musicians are just repeating a riff over and over, it feels different than actually looping a sound. What does it take to blend the live with the CG so that it’s seamless? That I don’t know. Actually, sometimes you want the computer to be the computer and the live to be the live, because they’re serving two different purposes. We’ve grown up on beat machines; live drums may not be strong enough for our appetites. Sometimes you want the drums to sound really syncopated and boxy and computerized. And then you put some soul on top, funk it out that way. It’s like a good marriage.
