EARMILK (Jake): Hey Mike, before we start, I though I should let you know that we’re going to do this entire interview in CAPS LOCK, in light of your recent tweet. Hope that’s okay?
Mike Shinoda: (laughs) Fantastic. That actually goes back to a funny idea that we had about the aesthetic of the album. We decided to submit all of the titles to iTunes in all caps, so if you go on iTunes and look at Living Things, all of the song titles are in all-caps, which makes it stand out in any sort of list.
EM: Plus, when people are reading it in their car they’ll have to yell all of the song titles, which is pretty cool.
MS: (laughs) Yeah, we’d prefer you didn’t speak any of the song titles. If someone just speaks one of the song titles I just go “I’m sorry, i don’t know what you’re talking about.”
EM: I’ve always closely associated your projects- whether it’s Linkin Park, or Fort Minor, or anything else- with technology. There’s some debate as to wether technology’s impact on music production is an over-all net-positive or negative, because of things like the loss of region specific-sounds. Do you feel like technology is, generally, an enabler or disabler when it comes to cultivating new sounds?
MS:Oh, I think it’s definitely an enabler. In fact, as many of our fans know, we chose the name Linkin Park spelled the way that we do because we couldn’t get the URL of the presidential spelling. We wanted the .com, and that’s how we got it. So we’ve had a sort-of intertwined relationship with technology since day 1. Plus, at this point, we’ve only recorded one demo to analog tape. Everything has always been digital.
EM: Do you feel like technology has helped you move forward musically, though? Because each record sounds pretty different from the last, and it feels like there’s a pretty audible progression. Do you think that progression was inevitable? How much have technological changes- software, hardware, greater use of “the world wide web”-helped facilitate your artistic progression?
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