For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.

Let's take fashion seriously, but not ourselves so seriously. Or reverse that, maybe don't take fashion so seriously, but take yourself seriously. Actually, don't take yourself seriously, that's for sure. So, yeah, take fashion seriously, just not yourself.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

I was just a huge fan of Blur, Suede, Elastica and Pulp, of course, even Menswear and Ocean Colour Scene.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

Venezuela is incredible, but Caracas? Oh God, I hate it. The sidewalks get smaller every time I go back.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

I believe we are all dual beings. Some cultures actually believe we have two souls.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

Coming to Canada, I'd really like to see Sasquatch.

I guess I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every second.

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

People love to take sides, but it's not effective. It's not really an effective way of communicating something, because you're either already part of the side or you're going to feel attacked and get defensive.

I was born with a beard. We're quite hairy down in Latin America. We don't have to use sponges when we wash dishes. We just use our baby beards.

I love 'Star Wars.'

I don't ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.

I'm very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

I do have very small handwriting.

I've always lived in small places.

With music there's so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

I can't imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent... and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

I've been doing visual stuff for as long as I've been making records; in fact, for longer.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, 'Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.' So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don't think about it too much, even though I'm interested in it.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn't in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

It's embarrassing to quote Gandhi or something, but being the change you want to see in the world is pretty powerful.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don't know, twenty five bucks?

I practice Rasayana Buddhism.

I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what's she reading.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.

I like it when it rains; I like it when it snows. I like seasons. I like trees. I like mountains. I like rivers. And with that around me, I write.

I've been a workaholic for many years, but at the same time, I do it because I love it.

When I was going to high school, in the high school band we would play these kind of hour-long concerts for our parents. All the parents would come to the gymnasium, and the band would play an hour-long kind of orchestra piece. 'Synchestra' is supposed to be similar, like a high school band orchestra piece.

As a vocalist, I can scream, and I've got a really good singing voice, but I can't do the really heavy vocals.

Enya was a huge deal for me. That kind of woman vocals and how wide those productions were.

The reason Strapping Young Lad was such a good band was we were honest about what we were doing.

Producing is getting the performances, tracking it, making sure all the parts are there. Mixing is when you take the finished work, and you make sure all the levels are right. It's putting all the parts together.

I think that when I got to a certain age, it was important to me to sort of analyze my relationship with myself and my past.

One thing that's really important for me to be creatively motivated is to find an angle. Some people refer to that as a concept, which it is, in a sense, but not overtly. It's just something I need to focus and hone in on, and the trajectory of what might be seen as a 'concept' gives me creative momentum.

Not only was it Def Leppard I was into when I was 15, but 'Watermark' by Enya. I loved it.

My dad's side of the family were calm folk from England, but the other side just loved to party. Somewhere between those two factions is me.

As a drummer, I'm rhythmically so disabled that it's hilarious.