As a DJ you spend a lot of time on your own, in airports, away from friends, away from your home. That can have a big impact.
Fifty percent of what I've worked on is never going to get heard, but I think the important thing is just working.
The ability to have that mobility of music right now, where you can be in an airport with a sample library, it means that you can channel that mind-space you're in when you're overly tired and in an unfamiliar place.
I really enjoy DJing but l couldn't DJ exclusively. I couldn't produce exclusively either, that would involve spending a lot of time in isolation. But l do enjoy performing the music l create to people. It's a release for me.
The process of making music is very therapeutic; it's late at night and I'm wearing headphones a lot of the time, so it becomes a way of zoning out and engaging with my thoughts. It's a solitary environment and process.
Albums are just a punctuation of music. I don't usually start out with a manifesto. Your tastes change with the process of the album. I just make music and put it out when there's enough to call it an album.
For me, the energy when I'm DJ'ing should be about the dance floor and not about the person performing.
Out on the West Coast, I learned to snowboard in Whistler, and I've been to festivals in British Columbia, and played in Toronto so many times I can't remember each one. Montreal too, is just one of my favourite cities on earth. I've played in Calgary, Winnipeg, Saskatoon.
I was in bands when I was younger, and that's a lot of the reason I started working solo - it was always a compromise.
If there was just music without any genres, then people would look at a lot of things afresh, and approach a record without any preconceptions.
I didn't really think my music was good enough to be heard by anyone. I had some friends who were releasing records who were older than me, and within that group, I was always the younger, patronized friend who was making tunes as well, which everyone thought was cute.