If I like something, I then have to study every single aspect of it to find out if there’s more things that I would like, and it’s just this weird hunger to want more. I always feel like there’s so much that exists. – Dev Hynes
The way it works for me is my sight and sound senses are combined. Every sound I associate with a color and every color I associate with a sound… The way I see things is constant streamers across the room, bouncing off from every touch and every sound. Over the years, I’ve learned what color palates I love most. – Dev Hynes
I was 13 years old at music school talking to my teacher. I can’t quite remember what it was I was trying to describe, but I do remember my music teacher saying to me, ‘Do you have synesthesia?’ In hindsight, it seems a little presumptuous of her to think a little boy in Essex would know what synesthesia was. – Dev Hynes
‘Chamalkay’ is an old Guyanese slang word. It means a ‘young mischievous girl.’ It’s not derogatory, but it isn’t over complimentary, either. It was probably a word I just Googled one day, and the song kind of played into the feel of that. – Dev Hynes
It’s funny because I think, as a general rule, that people seem to think that if you do lots of different things over the course of, like, a timeline, it means that you kind of disregard what you did before. But that’s not true of me. I still genuinely like everything I did as much as I liked it when I released it. – Dev Hynes
A lot of my friends were gay, so I was spat on on the bus daily, and I ended up in hospital a couple of times from being beaten up so badly. – Dev Hynes
Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I’d never play them live! – Dev Hynes
I’m pretty much fully digital. I’ve basically spent a few painstaking days putting sounds into my laptop, just banking them, because I love playing, and I love visually seeing it on my screen and being able to change the sounds more, with different plug-ins. I’ve created my own synth sounds. – Dev Hynes
Every day there’s a lot of things I block out, because if I start visualising things, I tend to go completely insane. I’ve always had anxiety issues, and it can totally overwhelm me and suck me under if I’m not keeping focused. I just think and think until I have a panic attack, and then it dies down. – Dev Hynes
I’m such a strong believer in making yourself happy. Almost in a selfish way. There are a lot of trends, and obviously you can get swept up into them. But I feel like if you just write songs you love, it can have trap beats in it or whatever’s going on in the moment, but you don’t stop loving songs. – Dev Hynes
I’ve been kind of listening to the composer Britten and his rendition of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ The opening track is a choral section where all the weird fairies, who are played by kids in the production, sing. It’s a crazy opening melody and chord sequence – really amazing. – Dev Hynes
I know a lot of people feel like they get eaten alive by New York, but I feel it more as a father figure or something – this huge presence watching over me. I definitely feel better and work freer here. – Dev Hynes
I don’t want to say I hate remixes, because I don’t, but I hate what instantly comes to mind now when people say ‘remixes.’ – Dev Hynes
I see no kind of reason to not just try everything. I mean, I feel like we all have such varied tastes, and to not just try our tastes is a crime. – Dev Hynes
When I was asked to compose a score for… ‘Palo Alto,’ I first thought to myself, ‘What is the house that these characters would want to live in?’ I wanted to paint a picture and color scheme that I could work around. I gently apply different daubs to see what fits to match the color I have in mind with these characters. – Dev Hynes
Some people say I do it too much, but I’m always asking the artist questions. Sometimes – especially with new artists – you can see they’re compromising in their mind. You see that look when they’re listening to a vocal take and there’s hesitation. And I’ll be like, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do this again?’ – Dev Hynes
When I was recording music, I’d record all the parts myself, and I wouldn’t let other people in; that’s essentially what Blood Orange is the result of; me trying to find the most comfortable I can be with everything. – Dev Hynes
Everything I do, I build a kind of confidence net – ‘I’m able to execute this; it’s fine.’ – Dev Hynes
I’m always weary of connotations. I don’t want people to listen to the music I make presently because they liked my previous work, or to dismiss it because they didn’t. I’m guilty of this as well – having preconceptions about other artists – but it’s stupid because all music exists on its own and should be listened to with a clear head. – Dev Hynes
I don’t really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they’d see I don’t care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever. – Dev Hynes
The issue I had with the Lightspeed albums was that usually the main purpose with them was to fulfil really dorky musical goals, like, ‘I wonder if I can do that,’ and it was all very personal. It was more that once I’d finished the goal of what the song was, I was kind of done. It was like ticking boxes. – Dev Hynes
