SYNESTHESIA: Your music is often regarded as “cinematic” and visually evocative, very much appealing to serve as companion for film scenes and such, and you have as a matter of fact, composed music for various films and visual projects, but I wonder if while you’re writing new music, do you tend to experience synesthesia and actually see the music, or some sort of visualizations?

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ZOE: I find it incredibly hard to describe but when I’m in the flow, I’m creating some kind of abstract, fluid landscape that I can see in my minds eye. It’s made of little patterns. The patterns vary, some are shapes like tetris blocks, some are sparkling droplets, or swirls or fractals. Together they all make up a kind of spaciousness. It’s a place but it’s also a shifting, shimmering thing filled with energy and emotion and direction. It also takes an incredibly long time to make. I make buckets and buckets of music but very little ends up as a finished piece. I need time to be immersed inside of each world in order to see how the patterns are going to fit together into something bigger. When that happens, things really click and I see immediately what the thing wants to be. I get swept up in it. I become the music.

I love performing because that feeling of immersion into my landscape is instantaneous, I almost cease to exist, and I don’t have to work to get there like I do in the studio. Something about being onstage in front of an audience is a catalyst.