OTHER TECH

Josef, that is a cool publication you work for.

Well, thank you very much. I like Sound & Vision. I'm not quite the home theater guy, but I'm aspiring to be [laughs].

Do you have a home theater setup? I don't. I'm still getting everything sorted out at my house, so I've only got a DVR, a DVD player, and a TV. I don't have a speaker system yet. Because it's a small living room in a small house, I'm not going to build anything elaborate. I'm probably going to get a basic setup for surround sound.

I believe you're a music fan, too. I'm a huge music fan. I haven't counted in a while, but I know I've got over 3,000 CDs. My record collection is a lot less than my CD collection, but I do love vinyl as well. I actually got a Victrola last December - I'm starting a collection of 78s.

Have you gotten into multichannel music at all? Since I don't have a setup for it yet, I've only really discovered it through other people's systems. But it's fascinating to me - the 5.1 mix of Pet Sounds and Dark Side of the Moon and Downward Spiral. The first time I heard a multichannel mix played on a good system was at Abbey Road Studios. They were recording the score for The Lord of the Rings there. I went upstairs, where they had a large mixing board and a pretty amazing sound system - all high-end B&W speakers - that they'd used to make 5.1 mixes for the Beatles' Anthology DVDs. The guy who did the mixes [Peter Cobbin] played me "A Day in the Life" in surround, at full volume - and, my God, it was like hearing the song for the first time. The separation of instruments and vocals and everything was so clear. As a result of that experience, I want to get my system set up so I can listen to discs like that.

What audio gear do you have? I have a Technics 1200 turntable, a Marantz CD changer, and a Denon home theater receiver, but they're all put away at the moment. I just have my iPod connected to a tiny receiver, and I've connected my old Bose speakers to that.

I heard you're starting your own record label. I'm in the process of it, yeah. It's called Simian Records. Being a huge fan, I just thought it would be an interesting way to contribute to music without being in a band or putting out my own music. I don't write or really play music, so the idea of finding and cultivating bands to release music I believe in and I think people should hear seemed like a really pure and interesting project.

Have you signed anyone yet? Sort of - not officially. I'm working with about four bands, but because the infrastructure of the label itself isn't yet set up, I can't really say that I've signed anyone. It's nice to work on something different, though, to build something from the ground up that's my own and is different from what I do day to day.

I hear you're also into videogames. I've been a gamer all my life, but it's not something I devote a lot of time to. I've pretty much got every game system, though. I'll buy a game and play it five days straight, and then not play it for months. But if it's a story-based game, I tend to get into it and play it straight through until the end.

What was the last game you did that with? I believe it was the last Silent Hill game: The Room.

Do you have a big library of DVDs. Relatively large - somewhere between 200 and 300 DVDs. Not crazy.

What have you watched recently? I just watched a documentary of the last tour of a band, called Beulah: A Good Band Is Easy to Kill. I watched an Iggy Pop documentary . . .

You're going to star as him in The Passenger, right? Right. I came across the script about a year ago and fell in love with it. The writer and director, Nick Gomez, really wanted me to be a part of the film. I'm very excited but, obviously, it's daunting as well. I'm a huge fan of the Stooges and Iggy Pop. The weight of playing someone I and millions of others admire is definitely not lost on me. But I think it will be an incredible tribute to him, particularly because it focuses mainly on the Stooges, a band that just now seems to be getting its due.

Do you watch a lot of music-related DVDs? No, not necessarily - those are just the ones I've watched recently. The last DVD I watched was the Criterion Collection edition of Videodrome.