I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Byrne is describing an aesthetic he returns to across his work: fusing the expressive, “cinematic” affect of orchestral strings with the physical, dance-oriented propulsion of rhythm sections. The “dramatic emotional warmth” suggests strings’ capacity to signal tenderness, grandeur, or melancholy, while “grooves and body business” frames drums and bass as music’s embodied engine—what makes listeners move. The quote also hints at Byrne’s broader artistic method: combining elements associated with different traditions (art music vs. funk/rock/Latin grooves) to create hybrid forms that feel both emotionally expansive and viscerally immediate.