2. Arve HenriksenPlaces of Worship

Arve Henriksen is a contemporary artist and I just think he’s a really great composer with really, really good taste and a beautiful player. All his records are really interesting, really beautiful; this one in particular is a daily listen. I live in Los Angeles so you have to drive a lot: if it isn’t silence or a podcast or books on tape, what I’m listening to has to augment things – it has to make the traffic tolerable. His records really do that.

It’s heavily influenced by the orient, and so is my new record. I love Japanese music, but there were particular bands and a particular aesthetic that we tried to approximate by using the koto – an indigenous Japanese instrument – and I was just in Japan so I went nuts and bought a lot of stuff I couldn’t find here.