Daniel received a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation on the literary cult of melancholy directed by Janet Adelman. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University. This brought the band to relocate their home base to Baltimore in August 2007. Daniel also has a personal dance music project, The Soft Pink Truth. He is a contributing writer to the online music magazine Pitchfork Media, and wrote an essay about the Throbbing Gristle album "20 Jazz Funk Greats" for the Continuum Books series "33 1/3". Both Schmidt and Daniel appeared in the Sagan music film "Unseen Forces" by Ryan Junell.