Subtract The Untapped Science of Less

who released his sixth album, Subtract, earlier this year.

Yeah so I had this idea well I say I had this idea my dad has my dad's full of great ideas sometimes not so great but his idea he said to me like there's this composer called Elgar and Elgar did this thing called Enigma Variations which is 14 compositions about 14 of his friends and he never told anyone who it was about and it was an enigma and he said there's never been a modern version of it wouldn't it be cool if you did a variations record so I was like oh that's fascinating actually and I was talking to Aaron who I made the record with and I was like we should do this record base it around a season and it will be variations of the season with my friends and then whilst we were making the record I had my best friend die my wife got diagnosed with a tumor and then I went into a court case and I wrote loads of songs about that in the space of that month and then because all of those songs were finished quite quickly that album was done which became Subtract but actually we were in making Variations so after all of that we went back and finished it and it was done but like songs like on if you know my album Subtract like the opening two songs were meant to be on Autumn Variations they were meant to be the first two of Autumn Variations and it just came the two sonics are very different one's quite a sad album and one's quite a sort of hopeful joyous fall album

and one's quite a sad album and one's quite a sort of hopeful joyous fall album

Subtract is pretty much all just doom and gloom and depression and you know being sad we were going through a lot of very intense stuff there wasn't much happy moments

And so what this book challenges you to think about is to realize the evolutionary things driving you to believe that addition is always the answer, and to instead consider the ways in which subtraction can actually sometimes solve your problem.

Leidy Klotz is a professor of engineering at the University of Virginia. He's the author of Subtract, The Untapped Power of Less.