Maynard James Keenan Discusses Donkey Punch the Night

Jamie Peachey

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Yeah. I think it's that survivalist, end of the world mentality, of pulling together what your skill set it so you don't end up becoming food.

I don't have my finger on that pulse whatsoever. I'm in the bunker or composing, or something. I couldn't even speak to that, [but] the electronic component is very compelling to me. [I hand off programming to other bandmates] -- I don't work on the computer at all. So I can hear it in a fluid and emotional form, and then kind of guide them, like, "Hey, guys, you're off track." In a way, I'm kind of a producer, an executive producer.

EDM is sort of another indicator of how the music business is shifting -- it's the big thing this year. But "electronic music" is nothing new.

It's like Members Only jackets. They never will truly go away.

You joked in your column about being wrong about the end of the world in 2012. You know, it's funny. We all made so many jokes about that, but there definitely is a feeling of something being in the air at the end of last year.

I think that part of the way you have to look at a lot of these things is that we're living in the middle of it. [Imagine if] you were to transport your body and mind back even 200 years, and [be able to] place yourself in the middle of everything going on then. Whatever is happening now is absolutely different than what was happening then.

On some metaphoric level, the Internet in general, is a representation of the collective unconscious. That is your physical manifestation of the collective unconscious. All it takes is a form of meditation to locate the information you're looking for, just a little bit of focus mentally in your collective unconscious to retrieve the information from a person across time and space. That's your Google -- that's what you're doing. It's a physical representation of the collective unconscious. In a way, things have changed. This is the end of the way people used to look at it. If you look at it that way, the world that you knew did end. We're just living in the middle of it, so it doesn't seem any different to us, because we're living in it.

You're prepping for shows right now, correct? Both APC and Puscifer are going on the road.

Finally we're getting out of the country, we're going down to Australia and South America as well, for Lollapalooza Chile and Brazil, and the Soundwave Festival in Australia as well as some individual shows.[Both bands are] rehearsing at the same time. I'm doing double duty. When I hang up with you, I've got to do Puscifer rehearsal this morning, then take a break, and do APC rehearsal in the afternoon.

That's the beauty of this project. We can still maintain our irresponsible side -- our rock-star side -- but when it comes time to be responsible, we can react; we can respond. We can do what needs to be done. We can start rehearsal at 10 a.m. What band that you know of can actually get going at 10, 10:30 in the morning and get done by 1?

That's not even the secret to our success: That's our success. We can go, "What day do we want this record to come out? Okay. So how many weeks before that does someone need to have it in their hand? We have to finish doing this by this day, and this other thing has to be finished by this day, so we can do that next step." We can be logistical and responsible enough to go, "Here's the task at hand. This is what has to be done. Are we up for it?"