You ended up releasing The Attraction of All Things Uncertain on Six Degrees which, I have to admit, I found very surprising. The record isn't something that I would readily classify as coming from them.

Chris: I would probably, yeah, I am one of the weirder ones they have at the moment.

And they've released American McGee's Alice soundtrack. Which seems to be an even stranger decision: putting out a video game soundtrack as a music release.

Chris: Yeah, but I knew that. They started off as almost a world label exclusively. But they've started to stretch out a little bit too. They've got things like Sylk 130, which is King Brit's project--a very weird project too. DJ Cam from France now. But there is still something about all the stuff there that I can see the small thread throughout. It doesn't feel so strange to me. My stuff is primarily instrumental, very downtempo--it isn't a rock record necessarily. They definitely aren't ever going to be signing a hard rap or country and western act.

Or heritage rock.

Chris: Or heritage rock. Yeah. In a weird way, it is a good fit. And they understand what I do and they like what I do. That is the most important thing to me. They get what I was going for and they support what I was going for.

Speaking of remixes, I was listening to the Linoleum EP and there are some very interesting takes on that song. Was that release built in a similar fashion to what we've talked about earlier? The label saying, "We want a two-step version, we want a lounge version."

Chris: Ah, yes. They definitely wanted that 12-inch to target Europe with. Josh Wink and Wandoo both are in that market. We wanted to go club; we pressed vinyl of the release.

Did they talk to you beforehand?

Chris: Oh yeah. We came up with a list together. We're very much in this; they don't do anything without talking to me, and I don't do anything without talking to them about it.

What was it like to hear those, being both a remixer in your own right and the guy who wrote the original music?

Chris: It was probably the most exciting thing for me so far. [Laughs] I've been doing it for so many people for so long that I couldn't wait to have somebody do it to me. I couldn't wait to get all those mixes back. I was so stoked.

I notice that you've got Jennifer Folker singing on one of the new tracks that appear on the Linoleum EP. Did that come about after you signed with Six Degrees?

Chris: Yes, that was one of their suggestions. They have done other things with her. I had one version of this record done three years ago when I was signed to Almo Records. I literally finished it and mastered it and then the label folded two weeks later.

You had different vocalists on that record.

Chris: There were different singers. Yeah, it was much, much different. Almo was a major label kind of. they were in imprint on a major label, I guess. I'm not even sure how you would describe Almo--they were a cool, super cool, label. They were hoping to get a certain thing from tweaker, and I'm not going to say it was good or bad, it was just different.

It wasn't necessarily the first vision I had for the record. And when the record got done it was a little...I don't know. I was feeling it out with them.

When I got re-signed with Six Degrees, I played them the original idea of the album--the original demos and things of that nature--and that's why we hooked up. On the Almo version of the record, I had Xibit, I had Burton Bell (from Fear Factory). There was some heavier stuff. That's not what Six Degrees does. I played them my original demo and they were like: "Wow, That is us!" I got a second crack at making the record I really wanted to make, and it just happened to fit the kind of stuff that Six Degrees does.

After I signed, people like Will Oldham and Jennifer came along. There's a long winded explanation for you.

Okay, I was kind of curious...

Chris: I've been talking about this record for years. People knew I was signed to Almo and then the record never came out and then I vanished for another year. People were like: "What the hell happened to you?"

While doing research, I realized that Nine Inch Nails' "Perfect Drug" had been done in 1996.

Chris: Which is when I left the band.

I was a big Nine Inch Nails fan back in those days and there were rumblings then that you were working on a project and even had a name for it. We kept waiting for something and, suddenly, I realize that was five years ago.

Chris: Yeah. I left Nails Thanksgiving of 1996. Thanksgiving Day, actually. Holy cow, five years. I have lived two lifetimes already. My Nails lifetime and now this last five years lifetime.

What more could a young boy ask for?

Chris: It's been pretty cool. [Laughs] I'm not bitching.

The creative process has always been something that has fascinated me. How something moves from conceptualization to realization and how different that is along the way.

Chris: It really is. In this business, as well, things are different. It is just a different world now--the label situation is all different. Yeah, it is just a weird path that we all take. I never know what is going to happen until I wake up and it starts happening to me.

Let's talk a little bit about the record, The Attraction of All Things Uncertain. The album is based on a painting that you own. Did the title come along naturally?

Chris: Yes. After seeing that painting--falling in love with that painting, getting that painting, making all of that work for me--the character needed a name. The title of the painting is, technically, "Elliot's Attraction to All Things Uncertain." That is the actual formal title of the work. I always referred to the painting by name, I always just called him "Elliot."

The painting is three feet by three feet. It's big. He hung in my studio and I would say "hello." I'd be in there all alone and I would just start talking to him as if he was a person. Elliot became the character's name throughout the album and he actually gets referred to on the last song, "Come Play." The very last line is says his name.

I called the painting's artist up; we had become friends. We had worked out the licensing deal for the picture so that I could use it. I asked him, "Would you be offended, would it be okay if I titled my record after the painting?" And he was like, "I'd be honored." So, it just kind of worked out. Joe Sorren is his name.

I went to his website and checked out his work. He does really great work.

Chris: There is such emotion in all of his characters, in all of his paintings. I don't know what it is exactly; these sad, endearing little people. You just want to hug all of them.

Are you familiar with Mark Dery's The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium?

Chris: Yeah, actually.

There are parts of that book that came to mind when I saw Joe's stuff. There are parts of the book that are just a catalog of weird shit, but there's the whole concept of frightening, scared, out-of-the-circle people, and how a lot of us are falling into that state these days.

Chris: Right--especially now. I find myself drawn to this sort of stuff. I'm not a depressed person or a mad person, but there is just something. I don't get mad, I just get melancholy sometimes.

Pictures of happy kids--kids on a merry-go-round, kids with balloons--just seem to lie there. But it is the picture of the kid who doesn't have a balloon that you come back to. There is something going on with him, there is something in his eyes, some incompleteness that talks to us.

Chris: Right.

I was reading over the press material that is sent out with the record and there is a reference there to "disillusionment and post-disillusionment." What exactly is post-disillusionment? Not that the publicity company called you and asked for two words to describe the album. But, figuring that you've thought about all these things and have spent a lot of time looking at Elliot, I thought I would ask: what is post-disillusionment?

Chris: [Laughs] That's funny. Uh, post-disillusionment to me, anyway--and I think it is open to a lot of interpretation--is, well, you know, that at some point we have all been disillusioned in our lives, be it through career or girlfriend, but something has gone horribly wrong and at some point when you've come to terms with the shock of that event, when you've been that let down by something, at some point you just kind of get over it and move on. You're not as naïve as you once were--you can't just go on about it forever, you can't bitch about it forever.

After something like that happens--when your whole world gets flipped when you thought it could never get flipped--you have to move on, but you move on with that newfound thing. You're not jaded, but you move on, realizing that this sort of thing can happen to you. And it could--probably will--happen again.

This may be a horrible metaphor--and I'm apologizing in advance to the public for this--but it's almost like September 11th. We are now in a post-disillusioned state. Everybody thought nothing like that could ever happen to us, you know? We're totally protected; everything is safe here except for crime on the streets and, after something like that happens, it is shocking for awhile and you go through this period where you go: "I can't even believe." But now, okay, now is "post-disillusionment." We have to move on, but we move on with a whole new set of understandings that we didn't really have before.

You're a little more fragile.

Chris: A little more fragile sometimes. [Laughs] But we don't want to use that word.

[Laughs] Oh, right. Sorry.

Chris: I'm kidding. But, yeah, is no one ever going to fly again? Is no one ever going to travel again? You can't live your life like that. But now you do it with the understanding that you don't have to be shitty to people when you have to wait in line for a few hours. Be careful. Look out for each other a little more than we used to. Try to get back to a better place with that newfound knowledge. Be kind to yourself.