Julian Casablancas is tired of other people meddling with his musical creations.
"I think to work on music, on art, on the delivery - and then at the last second to just give it to someone who totally doesn't understand what you're doing - in the past that's been a bummer," he told Huck, before extolling the virtues of his label Cult, on which he recently released The Voidz album. "With Cult, for one thing, the record price can be cheap. That's been a problem before. Also, people would show me awesome bands, or songs. Now if someone asks me for advice, I say, 'Sure, if you want to put it out we can do this thing'. It was just a chance to figure out how to put out records our own way.'"
He wants to move The Strokes to Cult, too.
"It's the hope to have an outlet," he explained. "It's about trying to make every album , every song, the level of quality people can trust in. And to be a source for tastemakers. Like, every era has their TV, or iTunes. iTunes is such a negative force on music. So we're just trying to counter that."
Casablancas further explained his distaste for iTunes.
"People just go to iTunes to see what the new records are," he said. "And the best records are not there - they're buried. So people think, 'Oh it doesn't exist.' But they just don't know about it."
In an interview a couple months ago, Casablancas explained how a 360 live tour following the release of The Strokes album Is This It nearly destroyed the band.
"A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band," he said.
Though The Strokes keep their tour and release schedules slim, they still apparently have plans to drop a new album and play at least one show in 2015.
Casablancas believes that animosity is a poor excuse for splitting up.
"I think when bands break up, that's another form of lameness," he said. "It's like: 'Really? You need different private-jet sizes to get along?' I can understand that as much as it's my life and it might be a living hell for me.
"I'm not saying it is. But when you think of bands that you really like and then they broke up, it's never a positive thing. It's never cool. I haven't felt that dramatic about it, I guess."
