It's been over a year since Chris Walla parted ways with Death Cab For Cutie. In that time, Walla had time to reflect on the transition while also working on a new instrumental album Tape Loops. The record, inspired by physical tape manipulation, is quite a soothing, tranquil and reflective listen. It's also one Walla says was “more satisfying” and “weirdly therapeutic” to create. MySpace spoke with Walla about the album, his leaving DCFC and even John Boehner.

What was the attraction with manipulating tape physically?

It's always been a fascination of mine. I've always been a very fidgety person. And there's something about tape, magnetic tape and splicing tape and razor blades, it's fidgety by nature. It gives me an outlet for my fidgety-ness in a way that a mouth doesn't really scratch the same itch. But the process of composing an entire record out of them is very new.

Do you see the whole process as a lost or dying art with everything so digitally-focused?

That's a really interesting question. At this point, so much of what we hear on the radio chances are very high at this point that some portion of it was looped or most of it. It's all built out of digital manipulated loops. And the idea of looping something, it's more found than ever. It couldn't be further from lost. The thing about tape is that it's a really challenging way to do it. You never quite know what you're in for. It's sort of like trying to keep a kitten off the curtain.

The song “Goodbye”—can fans infer from the title it was a farewell to Death Cab For Cutie?

'Goodbye' came about the time I told the band I was leaving and everybody was sad but everybody understood. It was clear we needed to figure this out and everybody needed to carve a path forward. The thing about it is, despite anyone's best intentions or expectations it's just sloppy and weird and you don't always get what you want or what you think you should get in terms of emotional satisfaction or closure. I left the band and I don't have any regrets about it, but that doesn't mean that it's not difficult or not without challenges.

What's it been like being off the album/tour/album/tour wheel?

It's been awesome. Touring the way Death Cab For Cutie or any band whose doing that kind of touring, if you're playing four or five or six nights a week it's a grind. The novelty of the shitty bus bed and not knowing where you are every morning and the only thing you're sure about is the show schedule. It's a very weird way to live and for me it really got tough to figure out up from down emotionally.

When you made the announcement regarding leaving Death Cab For Cutie did anyone reach out to you who had been in the same boat?

My friend Corey (Duncan, former Pattern Is Movement member), he and I talked quite a lot about it and identity. Just the whole mind fuck of identity and the identity shift that happens when you leave a thing that you've been singularly associated with your whole adult life, literally your whole adult life.

It's really interesting, I felt this really deep bizarre kind of sad kinship with the Speaker of the House John Boehner the other day when he announced his resignation and stunned everybody. Politically I couldn't be further removed from where he's at. On a purely human level it was so clear this was a personal and spiritual decision for him particularly after having the Pope there the day before. This idea that realizing the institution you're a part of is on a track you cannot reconcile with your own feelings and needs and desires. What it means to leave that. And how that changes your identity and sense of self. I just felt for the guy in this, 'Fuck I know what that's like!' In this very much smaller slightly different kind of way.

Finally, when you're performing and you see a crowd—some of who are viewing you through a small screen—how does that make you feel?

I simply don't get it. On the liner notes for Tape Loops, the physical copy, there's a quote from a 20th century British-Indian polymath named J.B.S. Haldane. “The world shall perish for not a lack of wonders but rather for lack of wonder.” To me, wonder is a group of people performing a thing once in this moment right now. The amount of shit we can do on an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, that's so commonplace.