As far as a concept or message goes, I'd hate to define it too much because I think it's better for people to draw their own conclusions, and decide what it means for themselves individually. The ability to convey emotion in such an abstract way is one of the most beautiful things about music. The title is something that we found in Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies. The statement resonated with all three of us, and the idea of forgetting about what you think you need, and taking a look at what you have is something that was on our minds while writing these songs.

At the time, we had been discussing music and images with Tim for quite a while, but we were never sure how we would end up collaborating. Tim is an amazingly intuitive guy, and he had an interesting take on what we were trying to do musically. The opportunity for Tim to photograph us came from Flaunt Magazine, and they were cool enough to give Tim the freedom to go crazy with the images. To this day they are the most surreal photographs we've ever taken, and Tim's creativity and attention to detail made it possible. One of the images we ended up using as the cover for a 12" EP released last year.

We'd also been discussing a music video, but unfortunately that never materialized. There were some visual ideas that Tim had floating around, and it was his idea to create a visual show to accompany us live. We took it out on tour with us for about 6 months, and it was stunning.

I think the inspiration for the images was just Tim's reaction to our music.

It was a complete inspiration to play music along with these images every night. He put a lot of heart into it all, and it shows.

We met Tim two or three years ago when we were discussing working with him for a video for Prefuse 73's remix of our song "Iamundernodisguise", that first appeared with the title "The Class of 73 Bells". The connection was made then, and it is always inspiring to hear somebody speak thoughtfully about the collision of music and images.

Most music videos are made simply as promotional items. Thankfully there are still a few people like Tim Saccenti around making beautiful art in this format. I get the feeling that Tim's work stands outside of an album's "promotional cycle", and that is a rare thing these days.

I would introduce Tim as a one of the most interesting visual artists working in the music industry today. Of course, he does work outside of music, but I can't think of very many photographers or directors so closely associated with great music, and that's pretty special, i guess.

Hey Tim, I just spent 20 minutes doing an interview about you, so I think you owe me a beer!

Hi Japan! We hope to see you soon!
Love from Brooklyn
xSVIIB