James Blake

“I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.”

“I've been asked a lot about the state of dubstep in America, and everyone wants me to say something controversial, but I have no negative feelings toward anything, really.”

“We live with incessant music, all the time. It's like some weird musical purgatory, there is absolutely no rest for the ears, no space to absorb and reflect.”

“I wanted to make sounds that I'd never heard before.”

“I think the music that you make, often it's even better if you identify with other people.”

“I think when you're learning an instrument, you are restricted because much of it is the noise of individual theory and your ability to play the instrument.”

“I was trying to sound like some of the people I was listening to, like Mala and Coki.”

“At some stage in the process, most mainstream pop records are being manipulated and possibly completely rebuilt on a computer, with a visual program.”

“My mum especially listens to music in a way that is incredibly feelings-based. There's virtually no snobbery about what sounds are in it, she just wants to hear a song and that is quite refreshing.”

“The level on which Japan seems to have picked up on my music seems to be on a more abstract level.”

“In terms of writing more club tracks, writing more electronically influenced - I feel like it was all electronically influenced, but now that influence has come to me in a different way.”

“Dubstep has everything for me. Rhythm, sound design, heartfelt emotion - all in one place.”

“I never really approach collaborations as kind of normal things where they're arranged and they happen because you've arranged them. I've always been like this, I just have friends I hang out with, and while we're hanging out, if music happens then it happens.”

“The commercialization of dubstep isn't something I'm part of.”

“I think Japanese audiences are much more attentive than a London audience.”

“If all the elements are in place, you should get 80 percent of what a song has to offer no matter how you hear it, whether on headphones or on the radio.”

“It really surprises me that people in this day and age still write such busy music and fill up every space with layer upon layer of sound... it's like musical landfill.”

“A lot of the vocal music I've been doing recently has been quite clubby. But that's mainly because I've had more time to go to clubs, and that normally breeds that kind of influence.”