Influences

What are my influences?  I often forget to site these.

I am just as influenced by books or movies or tV or people as I am by other bands.

Favorite Bands (in no particular order)

Howard Jones, Human League, Portion Control, Bjork, Ulrich Schnauss, Trentemoller, Fad Gadget, The Cure, Bombay Bicycle Club, Legendary Pink Dots, Grandaddy, Severed Heads, Tear Garden, And Also the Trees, Clan of Xymox, Boards of Canada, Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, These New Puritans, Grizzly Bear, Radical Face, the Innocence Mission, Nick Drake, The Beatles, The Zombies, Drab Majesty, David Bowie, Anything Box, any early electronic music records - especially the ones from universities       to name a few...

Favorite Books:

anything by Kurt Vonnegut, all Conan Doyle books related to Sherlock Holmes, anything by Daniel Pinkwater (loved him as a kid - especially 'Alan Mendelson, the Boy from Mars' - and still love him as an adult), The Bible, any synthesizer book or book on electronic or computer music (believe it or not, I have a huge collection of these types of books)

Favorite Movies:

Brazil may be my favorite movie of all time, Tekkonkinkreet, Time Bandits, City of the Lost Children, The Fisher King, Kafka, Casablanca, Planet of the Apes (original 5 movies), John Paizs Crime Wave, Logan's Run (great books too), The Man who would be King, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars

Favorite TV Shows:
Though I love film when it is dark, artistic, and sending a message(most of the above), I love a good comedy when it comes to TV.  My favorite is The Bob Newhart Show, but I like Newhart as well.  Also Mary Tyler Moore, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Extras, Taxi, Pete and Pete, The Good Life.

and of course I also listen to my own music.  I have been asked a few times if I listen to my own music.  My CD's are some of the few constants that I have in my car glove box.  I make music that I am happy with and enjoy listening to.  I think that this is an important detail.  I don't consider a song 'completed' until I find that I enjoy listening to it myself and want to hear it again.  This means that sometimes mixes can take a long time to get right.  In my interview with Darwin Grosse, I talk about some autochord chimes that took a long time to get the sound to match what I wanted to hear in my head.  I will say this: once it was achieved and recorded and mixed, it was exactly my vision.