What does the space where you make music look and feel like? Where does your music come to you?
Rob and Mary: We work in our bedrooms, but funnily enough, we work separately in our respective houses. With the type of music we make it’s actually better to work on our own and then compare notes. Most of the time we email each other things. And then we create a sort of virtual back-and-forth collage and send each other surprises. Mary lives less than a mile from me, anyway.
Rob: When we moved to LA, we realised we can’t work in sterile spaces. I need a place where I can look out, in New York I felt like I was in a submarine. Here in LA, the urban surroundings suddenly turn into hot desert or snow-peaked mountains. I have an undeveloped lot that looks like a romanticised Repo Man wasteland. My yard is like the gate to hell with all its lizards, snakes and desert spiders and my house is covered in cobwebs. The sun is so hot and bright it feels like it’s pushing down on you. When we were filming the video for ‘Altos Lugares’ at 6am in the cold desert, I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake that couldn’t move because it was still too cold, but it gave me a look that said ‘if it were hotter, I would fuck you up.’

In the pre-music blog era, how did you dig up new music?
Rob: Through skateboarding, both of us. I grew up in the ’80s in Philadelphia and NYC, my background was in punk, hardcore and hip hop. I saw it all firsthand, someone’s older brother would take us to a gig, there was no age restriction then. Or I would go to the CBGB matinees and see six band bills. I once saw My Bloody Valentine by accident when I was 15 or 16, they were supporting Dinosaur Jr. I remember being blinded by a bright light and hearing what sounded like a jet taking off, thinking ‘oh my god, what is happening?’ I was probably high at the time.
Mary: Mixtapes made by my friends. My sister knew every song on the radio when we were kids. She would teach herself chords on the guitar and ask me to sing. In high school it was band T-shirts. MTV was huge, my friends and I would tape music videos and re-watch them at home because most of us didn’t have cable.

Do you follow music blogs?
Rob and Mary: We are always pretty interested to see what people are doing. But it’s more of an unintentional search, finding things in random online places. And with RSS feeds you just end up in a house of mirrors of web stuff.
Rob: I meet many young kids with huge amounts of knowledge about music now that even the most obscure albums can be found online. Out of curiosity, I searched for footage from a concert I went to in 1980 and I suddenly found myself watching the 15-year-old version of myself watching a band on YouTube. It was crazy, weird and cool at the same time.

What do you think of the short life span imposed on music nowadays?
Rob: There’s an obsession to be first in the music industry, especially in music journalism. This leads to allocating a shelf-life to potentially good things, and because so much is available, attention spans are short and stuff gets overlooked. I wish people had the ability to listen more closely, I’m guilty of this too, but they often don’t. But this short attention span is a double-edged sword, it means things get overlooked, but it also keeps musicians on their creative toes. The more people make music, the better. It’s good for society and culture in general, even if getting attention is hard.

Everyone likes free stuff, but should music be free?
Rob: Mary and I have different opinions on this. I’d rather have an audience and be heard through illegal downloads than to not have people listen to my music at all. I’m happy with giving music away if the listener pays to come to a concert. Besides, a lot of people are in a bad place right now. I can’t expect people to not listen to music if they can’t afford it. Some of our fans would have never come to see us if they hadn’t illegally downloaded our work. It’s a gift to have an audience. Selling a hundred thousand records as an indie band will never happen again - my expectations are different.
Mary: I’m not on the same page as Rob. People often have a sense of entitlement when it comes to online music. They will always find a way to download it for free. And while they would never steal from their friends, they treat musicians very differently.
Rob: Art and music have turned into Mad Max, barbarians with cars with spikes and stuff. It’s a shitty time, there’s nothing you can do about it, but enjoy what you can. I wouldn’t want to make music in any other time period. The freedom to do what you want is much greater now. People’s motivation is to make music, no one goes into it to make money.

If you could create any online experience, what would it be? Like pulling food out of a screen?
Mary: I’d be scared to eat something off the Internet, it would taste of plastic. I would develop a way of trying clothes online by projecting a hologram onto your body. You could even feel the texture!
Rob: I want to send holographic messages like Princess Leia did through R2D2.

If you could email the whole world, what would you send them?
Rob: Something about Viagra or Rolex watches. But ours would be real and everyone would think it was spam and then the one naive old lady from Kansas would believe it and she would win.

High Places play on 14 December in OT301 in Amsterdam. The show is free for Subbacultcha! members. Other live dates: 13/12 - State-X New Forms Festival, Den Haag