KR: Yeah, it’s unsettling. That brings us into the middle of the album, where I found some of my favorite tracks, which were pleasant surprises: “Patty Hearst” and “Not for Me.”

JE: Yeah, I really like “Patty Hearst.” That’s one of the ones on the record that I still listen to. Usually, being a musician, when you make a record, you put it out in the world, you’re like, “All right. Now I’m on to the next thing,” and you’re not really listening to your own stuff for pleasure. But once in a while, I have a track on a record here and there that I’m like, “Ooh, I actually wanna listen to that.” That one keeps coming up when I’m driving around.

KR: Yeah, same for me, too. But as we get further into the album, you have this arrangement of Beethoven...

JE: Ah, yes, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

KR: Yes, the second movement. Tell me more about that.

JE: Well, thank you for asking because a lot of people don’t. You know, you talk a lot about the transition, the Mindless stuff, but everybody keeps skipping over the fact that I covered freaking Beethoven, which was really fun. I think soundtracks really introduced me, and I’m sure a lot of people, to classical music. In general, if you’re some kid and you’re listening to rock ’n’ roll, you’re like, “Classical? That’s not cool.” But then, if you watch a movie and they put a classical piece in with something really amazing, like a space battle, all of a sudden that particular piece of music is cool. You’re like, “Oh, I like that piece from that movie,” and you learn that it’s Vivaldi or it’s Mozart. If you watch A Clockwork Orange, you know Beethoven’s the coolest thing in the world. I really like throwing back to that era; I love Wendy Carlos, I think she’s genius. I really wanted to capture that same type of style. The seventh symphony is one of my favorite Beethoven pieces, so I did a straight-up synthesizer version of it—and it came out really good! I’m always bummed that people don’t catch it.

KR: Oh, it stood right out for me. I’m a huge classical nerd. I wanted to quickly transition into Guardians of the Galaxy, which you not only wrote this little piece of alien music for, but you also appeared in.

JE: Well, I’m friends with the director, James Gunn. We’ve known each other for about 10 years. He got in touch with me because he was looking for six or seven guys that were kind of interesting people he knew to play these ravagers. I thought it was a walk-on part, but it turned out that each of these ravagers had a little more significance. They have a couple lines and appear throughout the movie. We all flew down to Atlanta and filmed at Pinewood, which was amazing because, even though it’s such a huge movie—the sets were ginormous—I still knew so many people, because Gunn loves to work with people he knows. When you hang out with him, you end up meeting all these people that come to his parties or go out to dinner or lunch, so when you show up on set, it’s so relaxing. The nerves of being in a movie that was going to be a giant blockbuster were just gone. It wasn’t until later, after I wrapped, that I saw Captain America: Civil War in the theater and I was like, “Oh... Oh no. I’m in a huge movie.” And now I gotta be nervous.

Later, when they were in post-production, they had this one scene that needed a song, but not their usual classic rock song, and it didn’t have Tyler Bates’ score, which is usually super cool and very orchestrated. They had this odd spot, and they were like, “Hey, maybe Jimmy would be into this.” So, they called me up, and were like, “Hey, could you come up with an alien piece of music?” It was supposed to be this really small piece way in the background, so I agreed and I knocked it out really quick. Then the scene kept expanding as the post-production kept going. It started out as a couple of seconds but now it’s like a minute and a half. It’s also very surreal because I’m in the background of that scene, so it’s weird. It’s like a little music video for a hot second. But I did a whole alien language thing and transcribed it. It’s a beautiful little piece of music and they really dug it. Everybody was very supportive and Tyler [Bates] gave me a lot of advice. It was cool to go into all those meetings and see people and how they do it on a huge scale. It was very inspiring to see people building sets and talking about everything—the music, the designers and the editors and all that. Very, very interesting.