30 Quotes by Dev Hynes

I've been kind of listening to the composer Britten and his rendition of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The opening track is a choral section where all the weird fairies, who are played by kids in the production, sing. It's a crazy opening melody and chord sequence - really amazing.

A lot of my friends were gay, so I was spat on on the bus daily, and I ended up in hospital a couple of times from being beaten up so badly.

I'm pretty much fully digital. I've basically spent a few painstaking days putting sounds into my laptop, just banking them, because I love playing, and I love visually seeing it on my screen and being able to change the sounds more, with different plug-ins. I've created my own synth sounds.

When I was recording music, I'd record all the parts myself, and I wouldn't let other people in; that's essentially what Blood Orange is the result of; me trying to find the most comfortable I can be with everything.

I don't really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they'd see I don't care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever.

Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I'd never play them live!

I'm always weary of connotations. I don't want people to listen to the music I make presently because they liked my previous work, or to dismiss it because they didn't. I'm guilty of this as well - having preconceptions about other artists - but it's stupid because all music exists on its own and should be listened to with a clear head.

Everything I do, I build a kind of confidence net - 'I'm able to execute this; it's fine.'

If I like something, I then have to study every single aspect of it to find out if there's more things that I would like, and it's just this weird hunger to want more. I always feel like there's so much that exists.