RS: Speaking about the technology, you're all Mac, so I'm assuming that you're using Logic or ProTools?
Barton: We work primarily with Logic and we use all the Native Instruments plug-ins. I have a Roland MKS 80 which is my favorite
all-time machine to make interesting bass sounds, but we tend not to use it so much because in this day and age you can do all of your
synthesis inside the computer because the computer's programmable, you can create any kind of synthesizer you want without buying the
physical box.
Part of my training in computer science is in signal flow and synthesis, so we spend a lot of time really creating sounds. I always feel like you're kind of reaching in to this other universe and kind of tuning in to sounds that are somehow already there and bringing them in to the world. That's one of my favorite parts - creating something that's alive to me, when we make a song.
RS: Talking about live creations, the video for "To Call My Own," I notice it's all black and white, does that symbolize something
specific for you?
Barton: There's an austere quality living here in San Francisco. Even though it's technically a big city, everything closes at 10 p.m.
and it's kind of a quiet, small place and it's got a lot of references to the past in its architecture. So we wanted to do something with the
video that reflected that and there's always fog. I don't know if you can see it but we kind of have fog rolling through the video and…
RS: I was going to ask about that smoke, but I assumed it was San Francisco in the fog.
Barton: We try not to like push our interpretation of our own songs down peoples' throats. So what we try to do instead is try to pick
some abstract elements that we think are asthetic and nice and then present those to people. So we did it in black and white and had some
old furniture and these certain props, the heart and the globe and the old-fashioned chemical bottles that were kind of Victorian-looking.
RS: What about those sparkles I kept seeing?
Barton: I don't know why. That came from me, I asked Charlie if he could put sparkles in. My sense is that the way the video is
presented, the first half of it there's a kind of sad quality. Charlie's waiting for the phone to ring, we're looking at the clock,
time is passing, I don't really seem that happy in the video, so what's going on, and to me what's going on is that's how a lot of
people live their lives. What the song "To Call My Own" is about, for me, is about the possibility of transformation so that you've got the
sense of yourself that's internal and very solid, and it's not dependent on the relationships that you have in life with or the
things that you have in the world. So the sparkle is the realization that you're magical, everybody's magical, and everybody's felt that on
the dance floor. I feel like what DJs do when they spin, it's like they create the object for people to kind of express themselves in a
magical way. I don't know if you ever felt that on the dance floor, I have.
RS: I'm a DJ, I totally feel where you're coming from with that.
Barton: I wanted to give people a sense of that without being really methodical about it, just kind of have the image of it.
