Touring for this album, have you been playing with a live band?

Yeah, for the last three years when I've toured it's been with a live band. I'm playing keyboards, percussion, guitar, and vocals, and I have a bass player, drummer, and a percussionist.

Has the music changed at all from playing with a live band?

Well, the live versions are quite different from what you hear on record just because there are musicians playing it. There's a computer as well, so essentially it's a five piece if you count the computer as a member.

Do you like that vibe?

Much more so than just playing with a computer. I mean, because most electronic music you go out to see it live, and it's just so boring. It's just like, two guys standing behind keyboards on stage and it's dreadfully dull. I'm just of the opinion that if you're gonna put something on stage, it should be entertaining and compelling. It's more fun for the performer, it's more fun for the audience.

In your bio, you wrote that you named the album Animal Rights so that people would ask you why you named the album Animal Rights. So, do you want me to ask you then?

Yeah, sure, if you want to.

So, why did you name the album Animal Rights?

There are a lot of pretty compelling issues that we're faced with being the end of the 20th century. The fact that human beings are torturing and killing maybe 50 billion animals a year needlessly. As a food source they're very inefficient, and it's bad for us. As far as animal testing goes, it's scientifically not valid by any stretch of the imagination. And I think it's absurd that so much suffering and so much cruelty is being done needlessly.

Aside from being very outspoken about how you feel about all of this, how else are you involved?

I'm involved with different animal rights organizations, I give them money, I do benefit concerts, and I involve them in whatever promotion I put together.

About Jesus: How would you describe your relationship to Him?

In some ways it's quite unconventional, because I'm not denominational, I don't go to church. I love Christ and I try to live according to His teachings, but I don't have a conventional, cultural understanding of what being a Christian is. I think that being a Christian doesn't necessarily mean conforming to cultural ideas of what a Christian is. In fact, I think most cultural Christianity seems to be quite far from the teachings of Christ. Not that I'm any closer, but I think that there's a strange arrogance and hateful quality to contemporary Christianity that seems very far from the teachings of Christ.

Do you believe in things like the resurrection of Christ? Or do you just look at the life and teachings of Christ from the context of the rest of the Bible?

I can't claim to understand it, but as far as I can understand who or what God is, Christ seems to be God to me. But then again, we're talking about an infinite universe, and I'm a teeny little part of it. So my understanding of it is very flawed. I'm very teeny.

Who are some other people that would rank up there with Christ? Who would be like, second and third?

Ghandi is a hero of mine, I like Van Gogh an awful lot. Other people that would be up there? I can't think of too many.

How much do your spiritual beliefs come through in your music?

Well, it's a pretty cohesive package. I don't intentionally try to convey my spiritual beliefs in my music. But it's all part of the same person, it's me. I'm sure that whether it's intentional or unintentional. A great deal of what I believe is revealed through the music that I make, even if it's in an ambiguous sense.

When you're writing songs, do you place more of an emphasis on lyrics or on the music?

Maybe I think more about the music because I'm not a very good lyricist. The majority of work that I've made has been instrumental.

You do most of your recording and song writing on your own. Do you have an interest in collaborating with other musicians?

I have in she past, yeah. On Animal Rights I worked with a violinist on two songs. On Everything Is Wrong I worked with a few different singers. On the "James Bond Theme" I worked with a horn section. So, in the past I've worked with other musicians.

Have they been part of the song writing process?

Two of the songs on Everything Is Wrong, yeah. On other instances, they've just been hired hands.