THC: Should your samples be seen only as part of the remix, or as part of the original?

Spooky: Both. When you ask people why they sample something, they sampled it because they like the original. And so they want to capture the vibe or the energy of that original. I call it the remixology of the psychology. Once people get to the point where anybody can reconfigure or change things around, that's when we'll finally get to the point where most DJs are already. But music and art are usually ahead of the rest of the culture. We're like signposts for a different route to be taken.

THC: Are you supporting the cultural velocity?

Spooky: Yeah. I think these are very intriguing times. The ultramedia scandal of the Lewinsky trial vs. the OJ trial vs. the global economic system on the verge of collapse, We're on the verge, I think of a global depression, but most of the U.S. people are too busy watching Baywatch or waiting for a new album to come out.

THC: Isn't that part of the culture of velocity, though? Everyone's too busy to pay attention to what's going on.

Spooky: I don't think that has anything to do with speed. I think America has always had this weird passivity. Think about the '50s with the McCarthy trials. Conformity was the rule of the day, and America is pretty conformist. That has nothing to do with whether the technology was there or not. These things were going on before there were TVs or anything. That's part of the Fabric of What's happening. The problem is instead of being able to use the fabric, to change and weave it to their own specifications, they'd rather just sit back and press play. They've become aesthetically numb. A lot of people are like that.

THC: You try to incorporate sounds of real life into your work. But it seems like in your music, the noises are implanted in a very unreal framework. There's this alienation of sorts.

Spooky: The sounds, telephones, car sirens going off, sci-fi channels, busy signals. You can listen and record your environment. There's a surrealism in basic everyday life. I'm here, I'm living, I'm walking down the street. I need to get a bite of food. I walk into a 7-11. There are all the candy bar wrappers and the lights. That's surreal. All the candy wrappers have smiley faces. That's real.

THC: What do you think is the purpose of art? Is it to represent the world or to help us construct our own world and construct ourselves through it?

Spooky: I think when people get to the point where art should say this, this, this, and this, it gets to the point where they lose the notions of nuance and finesse. A lot of art, whether it's folk art of American Indians, or if it's Picasso, these are signposts, saying that art and culture definitely have different routes to take. A painting is in a way, or a sculpture, or a carving, these are all markers of a hypothetical reality that show you "this is a possibility," it could be this, this and this. Even if they paint the exact scene of what they see, these are all still only metaphors about reality and art should be a place where you can think about permutation and where you can look at different takes on the same thing like the same reality we all inhabit, and each person will come up with a radically different way of looking at it. Or, it should be a place to say that there's freedom to think about different routes of how culture migrates through our minds.

THC: Before we finish, I hear you run a party in New York.

Spooky: Yes. It's called Soundlab, featuring a number of conceptual artists. It moves around, and you can call the hotline at (212) 726-1724 to find out where it is.