Do you find the album to be melancholic or uplifting?

Chris: Ah, both. If I have somewhat succeeded, it starts off completely depressed and sad and confused. I think the most confused part of the record is the track "Turned"--this little two minute noisy thing I did with DJ Swamp. It starts off confused and sad and then the character slowly tries to get re-centered again, tries to find new sources of inner strength and self-awareness. "Take Me Alive" is the beginning of this and "After All" is a point of internal power again. It's one thing to get there, but when you look back there is always going to be a bit of melancholy. Yeah, even when it is the happiest at the end, it is not a completely stereotyped Los Angeles type of plot. Things never work out, things never tie up at the end in real life like they do in a 90-minute movie or a half-hour sitcom. Even though it is better and things are good, it's not over by any means. It doesn't really end, it just kind of keeps going. [Laughs] That'll be the topic of the second tweaker record.

The tempo changes in "Come Play" struck me as a visual accompaniment of a little kid coming outside to play.

Chris: I love instrumental, electronic music. I like experimental music. I like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Crystal Method, all that kind of stuff. My ideal for my own music was to maybe, somehow, tell a story, to somehow make that kind of music mean something more than just "what kind of crap is this?"

Not that there is anything wrong with those bands, I love them to death, but that music is really hard to get into. It is so disassociated with any sort of human element. There's no singer, it's very weird sounding, it's a style that people aren't used to hearing. People could listen to an instrumental piano record and get more emotion out of it because all people have in their brain somewhere an archetype of a piano. One of my main goals was to make a bridge--could I get "out there" sonically but still tie it to some sort of human thread that could convey an emotion--into a bigger context, into the story of my character, so that when people were listening to it, they could put themselves in that place and kind of live a little play or a little movie via the music. It was very difficult.

"Come Play" was where this person found his strength and it was to time to get out there, to "get back on the horse," or whatever that silly phrase is, and do it. He's trying to, he's trying to keep it fast, but it keeps lurching on him.

It is nice when you can accomplish that without lyrics.

Chris: It is difficult because the lyric is the thing you hear first, it's the thing that is talking to us, telling us how to feel, what we're supposed to be thinking about. When you don't have that, the music is one of the things that can hopefully fill that place.

One of the lessons we are told as writers is to "show and not tell." It's understandably much more difficult because you are trying to convey headspace through just music. Which leads me to the track "Full Cup of Coffee." That's the only song on the album where you go to this space very much like the German minimal techno scene. A Mike Ink kind of space.

Chris: There are those two songs that run back to back: "Full Cup of Coffee" and "Empty Sheet of Paper." Those are just experimental things that I was working on. I really dug them. They were kind of cool the way they were. Sometimes you need a little breath between the points on the arc of the story.

You've mentioned that you are big art fan, big fine art fan.

Chris: Kind of an amateur, but yeah.

Yeah, aren't we all? [Laughs] The album came together because of a piece of art. I wanted to play a mental game with you to see how your brain tackled things. I'm going to throw out a painter's name and I want to hear your impressions--your ideas--about what kind of sonic environment would go along with that artist. Let's start with Picasso--his cubist era.

Chris: I actually own two of the Carmen series. They're single line etchings. I think there were 30 of them or something. Wow, cubist era. I would picture the music being very minimal, very much like the track you just mentioned. I would see it being minimal and sparse, very squared and very quantized. German-sounding with no swing on the groove underneath it. On top it would be very pretty, probably major scale, key. I'd write something in the majors. The sounds on top would be very soft. I always found the subject to be square, but very sensual and very pretty.

How about Claude Monet?

Chris: [Wretching sound] God, I don't like Monet at all. Monet would be a fucking Musak track. [Laughs]

Salvador Dalí?

Chris: Love Dalí. Dalí would be much more like "Come Play." Something weird. Something uncensored. Something very difficult to get your head around, but very mutli-layed with lots of shit going on within the track. It would be a very dense track. But very weird. I could easily see the weird tempo thing, maybe writing in an odd meter.

Dalí is probably one of my favorites of all time. If you ever get to Florida, you've got to go to the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg. Everyone time we'd hit the East in a tour, we'd take a side trip down there and go to the museum. I actually own three of his too.

That's a lot of wall space there.

Chris: [Laughs] They're small.

How about Turner?

Chris: No. Modern?

Joseph Mallord William Turner. He painted during the late-18th/early 19th centuries. He did landscapes and was revolutionary in his treatment of light and motion. Beyond abstract in a lot of ways. He is one of my favorites; I find him amazing. He has this wonderful sense of motion frozen and, at any moment, the subject could move on you again.

Chris: I started off very, very modern. You know, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Mark Ryden. Do you know Mark Ryden?

I'm woefully behind on my modern artists.

Chris: He is so cool. Well, besides Joe Sorren, of course. He's another one of the modern painters that I just love. When you look at this stuff, you realize there is a history there. These guys do what they do because they're ripping off Dalí. You start with the new stuff and then you realize what their influences were. It's just like anything. You find something and then start backtracking through time to find out what they were inspired by.

Any kid today who has probably never heard the the Beatles hears Limp Bizkit say, "Yeah, my favorite album of all time is the White Album." And I'm sure there will be a lot of kids who will think, "Yeah, I should pick up that record. Fred says it is cool!" And maybe they'll discover the Beatles.

I saw an interview recently--one of those street test things--and nobody knew who Paul McCartney was. Very few people. The percentage of people who know Paul McCartney's name has dropped like 50 percent or something in the last few years. I'll be 35 shortly. These kids buying records could be my kids, you know? We have kids out there who think Orgy wrote "Blue Monday." They don't know that New Order did that song in...what...1982? They just don't know. It's not their fault.

How about Marc Chagall?

Chris: Ah, Chagall. He's actually my new favorite painter. There's a gallery showing his stuff right near where I do my work. They're showing a bunch of new Chagalls next week.

I've just started getting into Chagall. He does a lot of weird water colored type of things with these blotches of color. I don't know much more about him than what I've seen, and I can't wait to see this new show and learn more. I guess they're showing original oils at this show. But he's got this Goth side, at least, I think he does. There's something about the imagery that I've seen, it is very religious looking, very bizarre. What kind of music would fit him? I've been thinking about him a lot lately because we're going to the show soon.

There is such a difference between seeing his work on a little postcard and then actually seeing it.

Chris: Yeah, when it all large and framed, it is a different experience all-together. I guess I would do something more like my Alice soundtrack--kind of gothic, kind of ambient. Maybe lots of choir. I don't know why, but I feel very religious when I look at his stuff. Little girl choir. Strings. Something a little more classical, but still very, very dark.

Definitely a minor key, more ominous. I do find his work weirdly ominous for some reason, even though it is not. I don't know why it strikes me that way. That's why art is so great, because it is just like music: so subjective.

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