Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey What's
Speaker 1: up y'all?
Speaker 2: Back in twenty twenty one, Fante Sugar Steve and I
Speaker 2: sat down with the Avalanches, and, as I say in
Speaker 2: the intro, this Australian duolet a fuse for me as
Speaker 2: a producer with their visionary approach to sampling and make music.
Speaker 2: Since this classic QLs interview, Robbie and Tony have put
Speaker 2: out some recent singles, including collaborations with Jamie Xx. This
Speaker 2: conversation was a lot of fun for me, and you'll
Speaker 2: hear why. Quest Love Supreme classic with the Avalanches.
Speaker 3: All right, enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: I'm your host Quest Love with Us. We have fragmented Supremers.
Speaker 3: We got fan ticket in the house. What's up, brother,
Speaker 3: I'm still here?
Speaker 1: Man up?
Speaker 4: What up?
Speaker 5: What up? We're here?
Speaker 1: Sugar Steve?
Speaker 4: Yep, I'm not fragmented that I've never missed a show
Speaker 4: except the ones you told me not to attend.
Speaker 1: Wait when did I ban youse that.
Speaker 4: That purple roundtable joint?
Speaker 1: Oh you're holding that against me? Yes, but let's talk
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: That's fired in the introut ladies and gentlemen. I will
Speaker 3: say that probably our guests have single handedly at least
Speaker 3: changed And I'm making this introduction person, I'm making it
Speaker 3: about me, not about you or the audience.
Speaker 1: I'll say that our guest.
Speaker 3: Today have single handedly probably changed my trajectory or changed
Speaker 3: my perspective on how to deliver music. And that's pretty
Speaker 3: much all I can say. I heard their Taput album
Speaker 3: and it just cracked my skull, cracked all of our
Speaker 3: sculls open, uh in a way that really hasn't uh
Speaker 3: really hasn't done that, probably since the days of Prime
Speaker 3: Bomb Squad productions of like Public Enemy and Ice Cube,
Speaker 3: or even the three feet hind rising in Daylight Soul's
Speaker 3: Dead albums of the early nineties. I'll say that Rick
Speaker 3: Rubin has taught us on the show that editing is
Speaker 3: necessary for smart pop music making, and you know, the
Speaker 3: ability to leave the basic necessities for you know, for
Speaker 3: the most part of that theory, you know, with self
Speaker 3: editing has worked miracles for pop music in the last
Speaker 3: seven years. But our guests have done the opposite of that,
Speaker 3: and they've left no stone unturned as far as a
Speaker 3: sonic landscape Therefore, ever classic debut album, now twenty twenty
Speaker 3: years old, called Since I Left You is probably personally
Speaker 3: one of my top ten favorite albums of all times,
Speaker 3: with over one thousand mind staggering amples and soundbites.
Speaker 1: We all got to investigate how this was made.
Speaker 3: When we found out that they wanted to come on
Speaker 3: the show, it was an instant yes on my part, saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just honored they're here to share their story with us,
Speaker 3: because I don't even know if I can properly explain
Speaker 3: to you how important there art is. But ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 3: please welcome the Quest of Supreme the Avalanches. We have
Speaker 3: Robbie and Tony. Robbie, what's your last name? Robbie Taita. Welcome, Robbia.
Speaker 1: Where are you right now? How is it over there
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's pretty good. We had we had like a
Speaker 5: really hard lockdown last year, but we're coming out of
Speaker 5: it now. It's really good. We just played our first
Speaker 5: live show in three years on Friday. It was incredible.
Speaker 5: It was it was so amazing, you know, just to
Speaker 5: be with the people again, and you know, I don't know,
Speaker 5: it just it just felt like at the start it
Speaker 5: felt really strange, like, you know, it was a little
Speaker 5: bit rusty, but then you kind of get into it
Speaker 5: for twenty minutes and you're like, I remember what it's like.
Speaker 5: Instead of being scared, it's like this joyous experience and yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, we just missed it so much.
Speaker 1: So it was so good.
Speaker 3: So it's hard like working your muscle memory for what
Speaker 3: the show was when you well with this particular show,
Speaker 3: was it was it crafted from scratch or was it
Speaker 3: the show that you were developing around the time when
Speaker 3: covid first hit us.
Speaker 6: No, it was from scratch, So it was a lot.
Speaker 6: It was like our hometown first show back, brand new show.
Speaker 6: All the equipment too, has been like in storage and
Speaker 6: all covered in dust, and you know, it's like it
Speaker 6: was like.
Speaker 5: Family and friends. Yeah. Yeah, we had a few technical
Speaker 5: issues that that we were that seems like every like
Speaker 5: whenever there's a first show, there's always a few things
Speaker 5: that go down or go wrong. But in the end
Speaker 5: it was it was really incredible and we've got so
Speaker 5: much love from the audience.
Speaker 3: And I would imagine that the amount of research that
Speaker 3: you have to put into your product as far as
Speaker 3: your creativity is concerned, that I mean, was this time
Speaker 3: off with Covid. Was it a total time off for
Speaker 3: you guys, or was it just like, okay, let's go
Speaker 3: back to woodshedd and create new product or did you
Speaker 3: just stop period and just you know, kind of see
Speaker 3: what happens until the world opens.
Speaker 6: It was tough. I mean, we went we were finishing
Speaker 6: an album as COVID hit, and we kind of got
Speaker 6: that done and got that, got that ready to go.
Speaker 6: But like Melbourne's Lockdown, we're in it for like two
Speaker 6: hundred days. It was one of the hardest lockdowns in
Speaker 6: the world. And you couldn't You could only leave your
Speaker 6: house for an hour a day. There was a curfew
Speaker 6: in the evenings.
Speaker 5: Eight pm to five am. You couldn't go outside your house.
Speaker 1: Will you guys get it right?
Speaker 3: You actually did it right, and you know the world
Speaker 3: would have actually caught up to you guys. And yeah,
Speaker 3: because after some point, once we saw your numbers go down,
Speaker 3: and then like a whole bunch of movie productions and
Speaker 3: a lot of my friends in the industry, we're going
Speaker 3: to melt, you know, going over over there to Australia,
Speaker 3: to New Zealand. Over Zealand, you guys are just doing
Speaker 3: it right. So but yeah, you had to be strict
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 6: We had to be strict. I mean the payoff was
Speaker 6: like we got to do a show, you know, like
Speaker 6: now you know and things are opening up. But at
Speaker 6: the time it was hard and we thought, well, we've
Speaker 6: got all this free time, will be creative. But it
Speaker 6: was pretty intense and the city was, you know, a
Speaker 6: ghost town. And really it made me learn how much
Speaker 6: that we rely on the collective energy and other people
Speaker 6: to feed our creativity. So even though we had this
Speaker 6: fair time, like we didn't write a lot last year
Speaker 6: because it was just kind of getting through day by day,
Speaker 6: you know, the lockdown was.
Speaker 5: I'm very uninspiring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well both of you were DJs for starters, Like
Speaker 3: what got you interested in DJ culture?
Speaker 1: Like how did it hit you over there?
Speaker 6: We actually, uh, well, we grew up in different suburbs
Speaker 6: of Melbourne and then both ended up in the same
Speaker 6: country town during high school and that's where we met
Speaker 6: and became friends. And we weren't DJs initially. We were
Speaker 6: like bad punk musicians and punk musicians.
Speaker 5: We say punk because we were so bad.
Speaker 6: It was noise noise.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Beastie Boys story like Boys. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they started off.
Speaker 6: Punk and then you know, that's right, and we so
Speaker 6: we were just I mean, I had no money or whatever,
Speaker 6: so we were buying old guitars and broken guitars and
Speaker 6: organs in junk stores and then we started to find
Speaker 6: all these old records and it sort of grew from there.
Speaker 6: I was doing a court a film school course at university,
Speaker 6: and they had a big studio for all the film scores,
Speaker 6: and of course everybody doing that course wanted to be
Speaker 6: like a famous director, so nobody wanted to do the soundtrack.
Speaker 6: So I just had the studio to myself for like
Speaker 6: three years, and there was an old end sonic sampler
Speaker 6: in there that I learned how to use and started
Speaker 6: sampling all these junk store records and it just grew
Speaker 6: from there. Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how were you when you made the transition
Speaker 1: to DJ oriented music, like away from punk and more
Speaker 1: into what we now know is DJ culture.
Speaker 6: I guess it was like a gradual process between the
Speaker 6: ages of like sixteen and twenty.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, was there a particular record that just spoke
Speaker 1: to you that said, like, Okay, this is the direction
Speaker 1: I want to go personally for both of you.
Speaker 3: Was there like one particular album that wash for me?
Speaker 6: I reckon It was like some of Prince Paul's productions,
Speaker 6: the Bomb Squad, the things you mentioned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so prince Ville he just remixed Since I
Speaker 3: left you. That was excellent.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And because you know, like the records were finding
Speaker 6: in junk stores were just strange, weird records. They weren't
Speaker 6: like sort of cool, like a lot of the beautiful
Speaker 6: funk and soul records from the States never made it
Speaker 6: out here, you know, so we were they were junk
Speaker 6: store records of exotic and strange stuff like that. And
Speaker 6: Prince Paul, I think, showed us that, you know, you
Speaker 6: can use anything and you can make music with humor
Speaker 6: from from all these different bits and pieces, and we
Speaker 6: were like, we can do that, you know. And also
Speaker 6: we love like the Beach Boys and seventies rock and stuff,
Speaker 6: so we thought, would imagine if we like take his
Speaker 6: sort of approach but like try and make like pop
Speaker 6: songs with it, And that's how the whole idea began.
Speaker 1: So how did you two meet each other at high school?
Speaker 5: We met in high school. I was from Melbourne and
Speaker 5: at eighteen went and moved to this country town where
Speaker 5: I met Robbie, and it was it was a very
Speaker 5: very for the for the early nineties, very backward kind
Speaker 5: of place like country Victoria and sorry. It was just
Speaker 5: like a lot of football players and they were all
Speaker 5: the cool people and stuff like that, and like so
Speaker 5: the music people who are into music kind of gravitated
Speaker 5: to each other. So so we kind of started hanging out.
Speaker 5: And the first thing I remember, Robbie was like, I
Speaker 5: was into all types of music, but he played me
Speaker 5: My Bloody Valentine and that just kind of broke my
Speaker 5: brain of like what the hell is this? And I
Speaker 5: was like, all right, this is this is really cool.
Speaker 5: I think I like this guy. I think I like
Speaker 5: his taste in music. And so so from then then
Speaker 5: on we kind of, you know, just had a few
Speaker 5: other little small bands that we were in, and then
Speaker 5: we both moved back down to Melbourne and started you know,
Speaker 5: doing the punk thing just in our landro and really badly,
Speaker 5: and it just kind of grew from there.
Speaker 3: Did y'all were y'all any of y'all folks involved in
Speaker 3: music in any way? Or what did your parents do?
Speaker 6: No? I mean my father would my mom was a teacher,
Speaker 6: but I did. I do remember being fascinated with my
Speaker 6: father's record collection when I was a little kid, and
Speaker 6: when he would let me, like, you know, handle the records.
Speaker 6: I was obsessed with the line of notes and you
Speaker 6: know he had he was like into like the band
Speaker 6: and Bob Gil and the Neil Young and and all.
Speaker 3: That stuff, single songwriter stuff.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 3: I know that because you guys developed early. I guess
Speaker 3: what ninety three ninety four is when you guys first
Speaker 3: started so without sort of like culture colonialism, well not
Speaker 3: culture colonialism, but just the the idea of like you know,
Speaker 3: now with the Internet, someone could release something and the
Speaker 3: entire world get it at the same time. Where you know,
Speaker 3: really before in nineteen ninety seven, like just it was regionalism,
Speaker 3: like certain parts of the world had certain types of
Speaker 3: music or whatnot. Now I know for Australia kind of
Speaker 3: the inside joke. And again this is before like the
Speaker 3: really the age of the internet spreading becoming law.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of groups.
Speaker 3: That were wildly popular from America from that were wildly
Speaker 3: popular in.
Speaker 1: Australia really weren't that big in America.
Speaker 3: And I always wanted to know I never got to
Speaker 3: talk to anyone like specifically from Australia or New Zealand
Speaker 3: to find out why. Like I'll say that there was
Speaker 3: a point where like the Jurassic Five pre Fergie, Black
Speaker 3: Eye Peas, Ben Harper, like those acts could damn near
Speaker 3: sell out stadiums and we'd hear about the United States like, yo, man,
Speaker 3: do you know the Black Eyed Peas could sell out
Speaker 3: a stadium in Australia Like this is again back when
Speaker 3: they were just like a club act, like a bar.
Speaker 1: You know that that's ayah, But what what? What is it?
Speaker 3: I noticed with Australia especially for their their embracing of
Speaker 3: like soul music, Like you guys have that big giant
Speaker 3: soul festival down there where you know, you guys have
Speaker 3: this this this festival for soul music that's sort of
Speaker 3: like Coachella, but it's just like all Neil soul artists
Speaker 3: and even now everybody from Kim Like and again I've
Speaker 3: my friends have told me that, you know, New Zealand
Speaker 3: and Australia like we tend to lump just that entire
Speaker 3: area one thing. But you know, I see right, and
Speaker 3: you guys are like we're not the same but but
Speaker 3: there's so many like minded, cool artists from down there
Speaker 3: that were like influenced by a certain type of soul
Speaker 3: music that's very niche to us here, Like what what
Speaker 3: was the what's the radio like there? Like what is
Speaker 3: it that that turned people onto that particular type of
Speaker 3: soul music? Whereas now years later, like a lot of
Speaker 3: these acts are coming out better, like really incredible, like Hiatus.
Speaker 1: Coyote and.
Speaker 3: A Theme a Billion, But yeah, what is it about?
Speaker 3: What was the music atmosphere?
Speaker 6: Like it's a rock culture, I would say, like when
Speaker 6: we were starting out, So it's like there's the pub venues.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a very heavy drinking culture in Australia.
Speaker 6: There's the pub venues and all the bands that we
Speaker 6: grew up with came through this pub scene. It's like
Speaker 6: hard rock and roll, like ACDC and this kind of theme.
Speaker 6: I guess there's the Bad Seeds. You came in the
Speaker 6: Bad Seeds as well, or the Birthday Party came out
Speaker 6: of that sort of dark pub scene as well in Melbourne.
Speaker 6: But then something started to change in the nineties exactly
Speaker 6: like you're talking about. And I think it was just
Speaker 6: it was pre internet, but people just just this passion
Speaker 6: for music that wasn't like that, and something just started
Speaker 6: beautiful to started to grow. I don't know how it happened,
Speaker 6: but it was very very like when we started playing.
Speaker 6: You know, every band we played with was just two guitars,
Speaker 6: bass player, drums, and so we rock up with a
Speaker 6: sampler and the sound people were like, what's this?
Speaker 5: What do we do? And no one knew what it was.
Speaker 5: So I was like in the in that way we
Speaker 5: were kind of breaking ground in this country as far
Speaker 5: as like every little festival we do, it's like every
Speaker 5: band was the same guitar, drums, everything like that, and
Speaker 5: then we just have you know, s nine hundred sampler
Speaker 5: and some shitty organs that work sometimes and didn't and
Speaker 5: so so yeah, to your question, it was a very
Speaker 5: rock and roll culture back then in Australia.
Speaker 3: So the it was that the nine hundred was that
Speaker 3: did your your weapon?
Speaker 5: That was the jam?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3: Then they came with the nine fifty. The nine fifty
Speaker 3: I think that was the one that the nine.
Speaker 6: Fifty Oh we were loading. We were loading off songs
Speaker 6: off floppy disc. When we've played live, every song was
Speaker 6: on a different flopping.
Speaker 5: So we'd stop a song and then have to load
Speaker 5: for forty five seconds and just sit there in silence,
Speaker 5: or just try and make up some stupid banter in between.
Speaker 1: Again again.
Speaker 3: You guys and DiAngelo, Okay, that's good. To this day,
Speaker 3: D'Angelo still uses floppy disk I didn't even know that.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that that can that still and you know
Speaker 3: they still made them. Yeah, you know, drive Really.
Speaker 5: We had to search the internet to find floppy discs.
Speaker 6: You finish, we just did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wait, so to this day you still use it.
Speaker 1: That's your weapon.
Speaker 6: When we were bringing to pull out the old samplers
Speaker 6: for this show that we just did so we wanted
Speaker 6: to bring back and really show how we made the music.
Speaker 6: But we couldn't find floppy discs anyway. Tiny had to
Speaker 6: order them online and they arrived like two days before
Speaker 6: the show, just in time.
Speaker 1: So wow, Really.
Speaker 5: We're not using that. We're kind of using computers and
Speaker 5: now as our main backing tracks, so we're not relying
Speaker 5: on the forty five second loads anymore. But we used
Speaker 5: the sample it's just a trigger samples during the show
Speaker 5: because that's the way we used to do it. I mean,
Speaker 5: and it's such a fun you know, right, what was.
Speaker 3: The period of which you guys discovered like breakbea culture.
Speaker 3: And as far as like, at least I would like
Speaker 3: to think that you guys, you know, had to put
Speaker 3: a lot of time in researching like all the sounds
Speaker 3: and for you know, for your arsenal of sounds, your drums,
Speaker 3: your samples and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So at what point.
Speaker 3: Did you guys discover or at least like do away
Speaker 3: with kind of your rock backdrop and get to what
Speaker 3: we know is like breakbe culture.
Speaker 6: I think it was like a gradual process, and all
Speaker 6: of a sudden we realized, like I think we had,
Speaker 6: you know, all these big sounds and big dreams in
Speaker 6: our heads, but you know, no money, and then you
Speaker 6: start sampling an old orchestral record because a lot of
Speaker 6: the records that we were finding junk stores were like
Speaker 6: schmaltzy kind of like junk like Fifth Andres, Galanti, strings
Speaker 6: and games all that stuff. But but we were we
Speaker 6: could find beautiful little bits and then realized we can
Speaker 6: create these you know, big sounds with you know, for
Speaker 6: for two from a two dollars record, And we gradually realized, look,
Speaker 6: we're not great musicians, that are, and we can't sing,
Speaker 6: but maybe we can invent our own little world if
Speaker 6: we don't, if we just use samples, and it sort
Speaker 6: of grew from there, and then you know, a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of records were coming out, Like the Gust Brothers
Speaker 6: produced the record, and you know, there were early Chemical
Speaker 6: Brothers records, and all these records had breakbeats.
Speaker 1: There was Yeah.
Speaker 6: Day La Soul, and even like the Far Side records
Speaker 6: and all these kind of early hip hop records, and
Speaker 6: we kind of in our you know, it's because we're
Speaker 6: so geographically removed from the rest of the world. You know,
Speaker 6: we would just get strange little influences coming through before
Speaker 6: the Internet. So in some way we'd way like a
Speaker 6: bit of Prince Paul, a bit of the Bomb Squad,
Speaker 6: a bit of the Beach Boys, a bit of My
Speaker 6: Bloody Valentine. All kind of made sense to us, and
Speaker 6: we just kind of started developing our own sound from there.
Speaker 3: When you formed the group, was it instantaneous that you
Speaker 3: called yourself the Avalanches, or were you just like you know,
Speaker 3: DJ Robbie, DJ Tony.
Speaker 5: We had a few we had a few name incarnations
Speaker 5: before we came up with the Avalanches.
Speaker 6: The Avalanche's name was actually on. It was a surf
Speaker 6: rock group from the fifties, one of these bands we
Speaker 6: sampled and then and we used to change our name
Speaker 6: every time we played, and that that one just stuck.
Speaker 1: It just stuck. Yeah, Oh, just randomly.
Speaker 5: Maybe we had a good, a good gig the day
Speaker 5: that we called ourselves the Avalanches, and we went, this
Speaker 5: is an open We'll stick with this name because I
Speaker 5: think we had a few gigs where we were different names.
Speaker 3: So what was the first product that you guys worked
Speaker 3: on when you decided to form the Avalanches.
Speaker 6: It was like, I think it was a mixtape we
Speaker 6: made in the studio. I was talking about it the
Speaker 6: film school studio that was made to send around to
Speaker 6: various promoters to try and get a gig, try and
Speaker 6: get shows. And then I think they pulled a couple
Speaker 6: of tracks off that and our friend pulled it out
Speaker 6: as our first seven inch that was called rock City. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think that was the first release we have, Yeah, seven.
Speaker 3: Inch Yeah, even then, Like was your theory? What was
Speaker 3: the theory based on how to create the music? I
Speaker 3: know a lot of times, especially with where we are
Speaker 3: today with hip hop culture in America, you know, and
Speaker 3: I won't say that flipping samples. Of course, you know,
Speaker 3: flipping is a way of survival to at least avoid
Speaker 3: you know, lawsuits are getting caught out there. But I mean,
Speaker 3: there's there's definitely a slew of producers that flip just
Speaker 3: for the sport of it, you know, especially like these
Speaker 3: post J Dilla times where he could take something make
Speaker 3: it so unrecognizable that you don't know it.
Speaker 1: So but for you guys, like, were you.
Speaker 3: Guys even aware of kind of sample cultured almost being
Speaker 3: endangered species in the mid to late nineties to the
Speaker 3: point where you know, now a lot of the backdrop
Speaker 3: from America is far from that.
Speaker 1: But were you guys aware of it then or was
Speaker 1: it just you know.
Speaker 6: Well, I think we were aware that the records that
Speaker 6: were made in that way, that that we were rare
Speaker 6: and were and you know, to find find them they
Speaker 6: would like sort of these gems that would stick out,
Speaker 6: like if a well made sample based record is just
Speaker 6: like such a beautiful thing and they don't come along
Speaker 6: all the time, you know, But we were we kind
Speaker 6: of thought, no, like we're a million miles from anywhere,
Speaker 6: no one's ever going to hear this, so well, we
Speaker 6: can just sample anything and.
Speaker 3: Were doing famous last words. I was going to say,
Speaker 3: it's funny that he said that all the way in Australia,
Speaker 3: because that's also where I was when I decided to
Speaker 3: play Really Love, because I quite I didn't understand this
Speaker 3: was going everywhere. Yeah, I thought it was on something
Speaker 3: like local underground radio station that the world wouldn't hear of,
Speaker 3: and then that shit happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we've kind of got the same attitude to samples.
Speaker 1: Of just like, we'll just use it and nobody.
Speaker 5: It's you can't tell.
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's let's we're twenty five minutes and let's
Speaker 3: cut to the goddamn chase. How just that's my first question.
Speaker 3: How can you tell us the story of Since I
Speaker 3: Left You? And it's hard to explain. It's really hard,
Speaker 3: even when you know that album is so perfect to
Speaker 3: me that even when I explained to people who are,
Speaker 3: you know, just casual music listeners, like, they're still not
Speaker 3: getting the genius that every last thing you hear had
Speaker 3: to be manipulated and edited in a way so that
Speaker 3: it fits melodical we structurally. So tell us the beginning
Speaker 3: of how you guys even thought to make this this
Speaker 3: this classic album.
Speaker 6: I think we I mean, I'll let Tony jump in.
Speaker 6: But we were kind of doing gigs in these rock venues.
Speaker 6: We're using samplers and our friend Darren would emc over
Speaker 6: the top and we had some live drums. And then
Speaker 6: as we got into the studio more we realized it
Speaker 6: sounds so much cooler if we just remove ourselves from it.
Speaker 6: You'll remove our voices, remove any live drums, and we'll
Speaker 6: do it just with samples. And it was almost like
Speaker 6: there was.
Speaker 5: A bad beast ivoys or something to start off with
Speaker 5: with this kind of wrapping that was a little bit
Speaker 5: Doctor Octagon kind of lyrics and a big kind of beast,
Speaker 5: and it was, you know, some cool stuff. But then
Speaker 5: you know, it was like, let's just make all the
Speaker 5: melody samples and use no voice.
Speaker 3: Man, how long was that a process of working on
Speaker 3: that record? How long did it take you out.
Speaker 1: To make it?
Speaker 6: Probably like eighteen intense months, but there was like maybe
Speaker 6: three or four years of like collecting samples before then
Speaker 6: and finding your way. And then it's almost like there's
Speaker 6: this I mean, there's two sides to it. There's the
Speaker 6: technical side of how you actually make it with the
Speaker 6: samplers or whatever that we can talk about. But the
Speaker 6: other side of like how you think, how you know,
Speaker 6: how you can sive it, or the feeling behind it
Speaker 6: is harder to talk about it because it's like we
Speaker 6: just hit this period of a beautiful flow and it
Speaker 6: was really just a love for music and discovery. And
Speaker 6: when I listen to it now, that's what I can hear.
Speaker 6: I can hear it like a twenty one year old
Speaker 6: me just so in love with music, sampling and discovering
Speaker 6: strange old records that that I think that joy is
Speaker 6: just still what people can It's infectious.
Speaker 5: You definitely true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely came through for me.
Speaker 3: I think you know, at the time when I discovered
Speaker 3: you guys, this was when my band Little Brother, we
Speaker 3: had put out our first record, The Listening and a
Speaker 3: Mirror actually had listed his uh I guess the top
Speaker 3: albums he was listening to at the time in uh
Speaker 3: in Rolling Stone and so he listed like like fifty
Speaker 3: cent Little Brother and then you know, the Avalanche since
Speaker 3: I left you, And I was like, all right, if
Speaker 3: he if they on the same list with us, I know,
Speaker 3: I shit banging. So these motherfuckers got to have something
Speaker 3: so I'm like, so, I'm like, that's how you got
Speaker 3: straight up yeah, I mean I heard of him. That
Speaker 3: was how I actually listened to him like I had
Speaker 3: always seen but like you said, you know, y'all kind
Speaker 3: of the rock culture and enjoyed. So I just thought
Speaker 3: they were like a rock band. I thought they all
Speaker 3: was kind of like The Strokes or like right, because
Speaker 3: that was around that time, you know, I thought it
Speaker 3: was just that kind of you know, that that rock
Speaker 3: revival shit that was popping at the time. So I
Speaker 3: was like, all right, this is just another rock band.
Speaker 3: But then I heard the album and I hadn't heard anything.
Speaker 3: I just went into it blind. I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: well let me check it out, and man, that shit
Speaker 3: blew me the fuck away. And the thing about it,
Speaker 3: like up until that point, you know, Introducing by DJ Shadow,
Speaker 3: I mean, we grew up on Bomb Squad and like
Speaker 3: Prince Paul and all these guys, Dust Brothers, all those
Speaker 3: guys doing that kind of collage and pay stuff. But
Speaker 3: when I heard Introducing, I was like, oh wow, like
Speaker 3: this is amazing, and it was something that kind of
Speaker 3: took it for me, made it it felt like y'all
Speaker 3: really it made it more emotional like that was I
Speaker 3: think remember the first time sample based music instrumental in
Speaker 3: that way. I was like, man, this is really emotional.
Speaker 3: But then that was when I heard introduce it. But
Speaker 3: then when I heard y'all shit and that damn three
Speaker 3: two hearts and three four times, bro, I played that shit, man,
Speaker 3: I played the MP three tags off that motherfucker.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 1: Listen, I ran the record in the ground man.
Speaker 3: And the thing, you know, when Tony you're talking about
Speaker 3: just kind of that spirit of just you know, the
Speaker 3: you know, that discovery. The thing that I always liked
Speaker 3: about all you guys records is that the way you
Speaker 3: use the samples, it doesn't feel like in kind of
Speaker 3: just a bastardized way. It really makes you want to
Speaker 3: search what you guys use. It makes you more For me,
Speaker 3: just as a love of music, it just made me
Speaker 3: more curious to know more about the stuff you guys use.
Speaker 3: And like even like since I left you, you know,
Speaker 3: the way it starts is, you know, since I left you,
Speaker 3: but then at the end when you bring back.
Speaker 1: The just can't get you ever since the day imagine,
Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, that ship is so fucking dope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like how do y'all plot all that ship out?
Speaker 3: And like, I know the sample you say you use
Speaker 3: it was like the S you're using the S nine hundred.
Speaker 3: Were you tracking it on tape? Was it like was
Speaker 3: it pro tools at that time? Like how were y'all
Speaker 3: storing all these ideas?
Speaker 6: It was like S nine hundred, And then we got
Speaker 6: a S two thousand, which had more memory. Two thousand.
Speaker 6: We were like, this is this is insane. We're going
Speaker 6: to be able to do anything with this no stopping.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So and by that I think by the time we're
Speaker 6: making since I left you, we had a ZIP drive
Speaker 6: for the yes, sir, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It
Speaker 6: was literally just that and and at a shitty old
Speaker 6: turntable and two dollars junks store records.
Speaker 1: And how the work.
Speaker 6: You know what that the limitation is what is beautiful because.
Speaker 1: Then drives the ingenuity.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And then we had a there's an op code
Speaker 6: program called studio Vision. There was a sequence that I
Speaker 6: didn't have any audio, but that ran medi into the samplers,
Speaker 6: and so that's how we could sequence the samples. And
Speaker 6: it was all done like that. And if I came
Speaker 6: to work again in the morning, like there was nothing
Speaker 6: on tape, no pro tools. I would have to load
Speaker 6: it all up again and to hear what the song
Speaker 6: sounded like and to remember, you know, or if I
Speaker 6: wanted to burn a demo, make a demo, would have
Speaker 6: to like bounce it, burn it onto CD, put it
Speaker 6: in my CD, walkman, and go for a walk or
Speaker 6: something and have a listen to it where we're at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to ask, do you have all
Speaker 3: the discs saved from that album? Or was it just
Speaker 3: like once you track it and once it's on tape
Speaker 3: or once it's recorded, then you just unplugged your machine
Speaker 3: and that's it.
Speaker 1: You don't save the samples. You don't any of those things,
Speaker 1: Like is there a flap? Like if I were to
Speaker 1: ask you, like, could you get the either diners from whatever? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Pablo Cruise, Like, could you actually get the floppy.
Speaker 6: Disc some of them I've got, I've got some and
Speaker 6: I've got I've kept most of the records when I
Speaker 6: sold my record collection, but I kept all this since
Speaker 6: I left you once And we just found the stems
Speaker 6: recently from because we eventually tracked it to an early
Speaker 6: version of pro tools when we went to like a
Speaker 6: Proper studio. We were like, wow, this is like and
Speaker 6: they had like about four different engineers helping us to
Speaker 6: like get it from this from out the back of
Speaker 6: our samplers onto recording into pro tools and then we
Speaker 6: mixed it from there. So we've got those stems and
Speaker 6: some of the some of the floppy discs.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is the what is the accurate number?
Speaker 3: I know that, you know, sometimes these stories can be exaggerated.
Speaker 1: How many samples do you believe are on that album?
Speaker 6: I've got no idea I reckon there would be. Like
Speaker 6: I think I figured it out once by working out
Speaker 6: how much the five thousand could store and how many
Speaker 6: samples in a program. And because it was every every zip,
Speaker 6: every song was you know, the sampler memory was full.
Speaker 6: So it was probably like around three thousand because all
Speaker 6: the little drum hits and little bird noises all.
Speaker 3: Yo. I won't say, man, when y'all use the part
Speaker 3: they got me because like I mean, I listened to Recon,
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, this is do the part where
Speaker 3: I realized them. I'm like, okay, they know what's up.
Speaker 1: When y'all use the ray Kwan, yeah exactly.
Speaker 6: I was like, yes, I was like, yes, yes, yeah, she.
Speaker 1: Was so dope. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So your guess like I've read nine hundred samples, I've
Speaker 3: read four thousand samples. I mean, of course, for the
Speaker 3: legend of it, four thousand samples is a way better thing.
Speaker 3: And I believe, you know, I believe anything, but baseball
Speaker 3: guests baseball estimate.
Speaker 6: I think two to three thousand, like like when you
Speaker 6: consider every little up here and everything, because it was
Speaker 6: it was a lot.
Speaker 3: So Okay, when you're when you guys are at least
Speaker 3: at the let's say the ninety percent mark. Let's say
Speaker 3: that you have fifteen songs down already as you're creating
Speaker 3: this album in your mind, are you like, there's no
Speaker 3: way in hell we can ever clear this or sell
Speaker 3: this to the outside world, Like, I mean, at this way,
Speaker 3: is it just a passion project to you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we were, But but I think we
Speaker 5: were just thinking not even of the legality of the
Speaker 5: whole thing. We were just like trying to put together
Speaker 5: this amazing thing, and there it was just kind of
Speaker 5: record company, you do your thing and just get it out.
Speaker 5: So it was good for us because we didn't have
Speaker 5: that limitation, where whereas now we're you know, we have
Speaker 5: to be more aware of samples we use and you know,
Speaker 5: clearing and all that kind of stuff. But back then
Speaker 5: it was still a little bit of a you know,
Speaker 5: a little bit of a more of a free for all.
Speaker 5: I guess we'll just say Robbie.
Speaker 6: Yeah. But also nobody knew who we were, Like, yeah,
Speaker 6: we didn't think anyone would ever you know, it would
Speaker 6: get a wide audience. So in that way, we were
Speaker 6: free to do what, to sample whatever we wanted, you know,
Speaker 6: like we kind of just didn't really like I think
Speaker 6: as we were as it was growing, we knew we
Speaker 6: were very passionate, and we knew that it was this
Speaker 6: beautiful thing, but we certainly didn't expect it to be
Speaker 6: become what it was. So we weren't restrained by thinking that,
Speaker 6: you know, we have a high profile and people are
Speaker 6: going to a lot of people are going to hear
Speaker 6: this record.
Speaker 5: We've done an EP before that as well and didn't
Speaker 5: clear one sample from that, so it just kind of
Speaker 5: like didn't care to be nice, all right, so we
Speaker 5: can't do that anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I was my ass so when people came
Speaker 3: to about you know, samples and stuff, what was it like,
Speaker 3: were they like honored?
Speaker 1: Were they like like fuck you pay me?
Speaker 3: Like what was the what was the feeling like back then?
Speaker 6: It was it was pretty nice. I mean some people
Speaker 6: didn't even know what sample was, or you know, we
Speaker 6: would track down someone who they'd inherited, like their grandfather's catalog,
Speaker 6: you know, in a willis they didn't even know they
Speaker 6: had it, and we would find them and say, hey,
Speaker 6: you know you own it music and so and some
Speaker 6: people just were like a flat out no, like Rogers
Speaker 6: and Hammerstein and people like that.
Speaker 1: Oh, so there are songs that did not make.
Speaker 6: It, samples, samples that didn't make it. Yeah, and then
Speaker 6: other people like John Kale, like he was super cool
Speaker 6: because like, ah, that song two Hearts and three four time,
Speaker 6: it was going to work out that like there was
Speaker 6: five main samples and they all wanted twenty percent each,
Speaker 6: so we were going to get nothing. And John Klee
Speaker 6: was like, no, no, we the sample owners should all
Speaker 6: take a little bit less. So the dudes that made
Speaker 6: the song can get a little bit too.
Speaker 1: And so that what's up that never happens that never.
Speaker 5: It's probably never happened again, never happened again.
Speaker 3: Can you represent us please this This never ever happens
Speaker 3: in real life.
Speaker 5: This is being unknown in Australia.
Speaker 3: I mean I got people that like come after me
Speaker 3: for like a snare drum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let alone and want like.
Speaker 3: Seventy percent of it that's a snare drum. Yeah okay,
Speaker 3: So when you're this, this was on actually recordings. So
Speaker 3: when you played the final product to your company, how
Speaker 3: long did it take for them to even start the
Speaker 3: process to clear this? Because again, like I yeah, man, yeah,
Speaker 3: usually okay. So the obstacles that I run into are okay,
Speaker 3: say I create a song and uh okay, I have
Speaker 3: this situation once where I used Hey Bulldog by the
Speaker 3: Beatles and they wanted like one of the publishing, which
Speaker 3: then left no space for like the other things I sampled.
Speaker 3: And I've learned, I've learned, at least in the last
Speaker 3: ten years, that relationships are key to making these things happen.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes lawyers and red tape lawyers and administrative people
Speaker 3: are kind of the the demons of the situation. And
Speaker 3: half the time, if you can get to the actual
Speaker 3: artists themselves, then you can you know, sort of iron
Speaker 3: out and make it smooth. So again, how.
Speaker 5: This we had this amazing lady called Pat Shanahan, who
Speaker 5: I mean, she would have been in her sixties or seventies.
Speaker 5: She just passed away recently. So she would clear all
Speaker 5: samples for us, and she'd done like Beastie Boys records
Speaker 5: and iced Tea and all stuff like that. So she
Speaker 5: used to work at Ireland Records for many years and
Speaker 5: had a lot of contacts just through the whole industry.
Speaker 5: So when we were clear on his sample, she would
Speaker 5: be like, Hey, I know him, I used to work
Speaker 5: with him here or I notice. So she had a
Speaker 5: lot of personal relationships with relationships. Yeah, So so that
Speaker 5: helped us so much, and she would just be able
Speaker 5: to get things over the line for us that you know,
Speaker 5: if it was a lawyer or anything or anyone else
Speaker 5: like that, it just wouldn't have happened. So well, I mean,
Speaker 5: we're so lucky to have her.
Speaker 6: Yeah, record one lady, And Yeah, she became a dear
Speaker 6: friend actually Patch. She was just the most most lovely lady.
Speaker 6: And I think she worked with who did she work
Speaker 6: out before Island? I can't remember, but she sort of
Speaker 6: knew everybody in the industry since like the sixties, had
Speaker 6: seen that there was a niche for someone who just
Speaker 6: specifically cleared samples, and so I think she left the
Speaker 6: record label. And then the first record she cleared was
Speaker 6: like the Tone Low Record or something like that. And
Speaker 6: then and then she did Beck and the Beastie Boys,
Speaker 6: and yeah, so she helped us a lot, and then
Speaker 6: there were other personal relationships that Richard Russell at XL
Speaker 6: helped us clear. The Madonna sample.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was, yeah that that was to be when
Speaker 3: even when I heard it in the car. Now my
Speaker 3: story of hearing it. I heard that album on my birthday.
Speaker 3: I was doing a DJ gig in Indiana and I
Speaker 3: was born in January, so it was like cold, and
Speaker 3: the guy that picked me up from an airport played it,
Speaker 3: and you know, because the album runs, uh sort of
Speaker 3: as a continuous flow, like it doesn't go from song
Speaker 3: to song, I just thought he was you know, normally
Speaker 3: when the guy picks me up from the airport, they're
Speaker 3: always like sneaking their.
Speaker 1: So complain yeah no, no no.
Speaker 3: From like the from the airport to my hotel room,
Speaker 3: I was under the impression he was playing me his
Speaker 3: ship and that's just that had me wide open. And
Speaker 3: then like finally he gave me the bad news twenty
Speaker 3: minutes into it like oh no, no, no, this is some
Speaker 3: cats from Australia called the Avalanches. I was like, oh man,
Speaker 3: I thought it was your ship, all right, never mind,
Speaker 3: all right, right, but what WI wound up happened? I
Speaker 3: asked him, can I borrow the CDs?
Speaker 1: I could hear it?
Speaker 3: And like, actually the same story with little brother when
Speaker 3: I heard Fonte's thing, like, I rarely have dedicated so many,
Speaker 3: like a lot of hours just to listen to product
Speaker 3: over and over and over again, and I just I
Speaker 3: just couldn't believe it. Well, because you guys worked on
Speaker 3: and what you said earlier about how limitation studio limitations
Speaker 3: makes you more creative, that makes sense because a lot
Speaker 3: of my favorite guys like use you know, with with
Speaker 3: Fonte's group, what did you guys do everything on fruity loops?
Speaker 3: Everything was fruity loops and a compact we had We
Speaker 3: had a compact computer, yeah, you know, we let it
Speaker 3: pro That was what we quart of vocals and cool
Speaker 3: litter or.
Speaker 1: A sony acid like something real primitive.
Speaker 3: So what I want to know is how do you
Speaker 3: how do you bend samples to your will melodically, especially
Speaker 3: back then without you know, the aid of a MacBook
Speaker 3: pro to instantly, you know you could do.
Speaker 1: That time stretching, yeah, yeah, thirty seconds.
Speaker 3: But how are you able to bend these samples to
Speaker 3: your will so that they melodically fit the song? And
Speaker 3: with that primitive equipment how.
Speaker 6: I think it comes back to what you're saying about
Speaker 6: just how limitations can be really powerful, because it was
Speaker 6: just like I just remember going, this is this actus sampler.
Speaker 6: I'm just going to get really fucking good at this
Speaker 6: one thing, and that's all I'm going to do, you know,
Speaker 6: And so once it just becomes almost invisible, so you're
Speaker 6: not even thinking about how to use it. You know
Speaker 6: it so well, and so it was just just literally
Speaker 6: tuning samples in the sampler. So you know, you might
Speaker 6: have stuck with a drum bead and kind of a
Speaker 6: beginning sample, and the beginning sample just kind of gets
Speaker 6: you going it might not even be there at the end.
Speaker 6: But then it's just literally getting samples in tune and
Speaker 6: whole bunch of samples just on the MIDI keyboard that
Speaker 6: are living in the sampler's memory and playing around and
Speaker 6: then going, oh, that might be a verse that might
Speaker 6: be a chorus. I've kind of stuck. Save it, put
Speaker 6: it away, maybe give it to Tony Hills see if
Speaker 6: he can find a sample for it. And slowly and
Speaker 6: slowly the layers built up. So it's just using your
Speaker 6: ear tuning samples by ear.
Speaker 3: So that is not easy to do. People, that is
Speaker 3: that is that is not easy to do.
Speaker 1: Which leads to my next question.
Speaker 3: So when I asked the bomb squad how they created
Speaker 3: Nation of Millions, I guess Keith Shockley explained to me
Speaker 3: that basically the process that they were doing, they would
Speaker 3: have jam sessions. So the way that the engineer was
Speaker 3: set up was Eric Sadler had his sampler on his
Speaker 3: side of the room, Keith Shockley was probably on turntable
Speaker 3: doing his stuff, and then Hank would have his bit
Speaker 3: and they would start with a drum beat and when
Speaker 3: they were satisfied. Their theory was that if you took
Speaker 3: everything away, like are the drums banging enough? Like the
Speaker 3: drums have to be perfect. Once the drums are there,
Speaker 3: then each chef would add their particular ingredient into the
Speaker 3: musical stew until it felt complete and felt right. So
Speaker 3: how do you guys source or like what's the back
Speaker 3: and forth or the work process to adding things like
Speaker 3: you know, whose idea was it? Like oh, I got
Speaker 3: this horse noise over here. Even with the first song
Speaker 3: on Wildflower where the kid is talking, I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's a SoundBite, and you guys manipulated his voice
Speaker 3: to go right and key with that intro. But you know,
Speaker 3: even with the Wildflower intro, like how do you guys,
Speaker 3: how do you guys communicate back and forth like what
Speaker 3: gets inside the.
Speaker 1: Meal?
Speaker 3: And also subsequently, how do you tell each other that
Speaker 3: doesn't work? Like Okay, I don't know if that fits
Speaker 3: or whatever, or is it just like whatever works thrown in?
Speaker 5: I think that, I mean definitely. Robbie is the great
Speaker 5: producer of the records. And it's almost like where, you know,
Speaker 5: we used to have all the other members in the
Speaker 5: band and we you know, have a little sample, you know, loops,
Speaker 5: a couple of things that go together or something like that,
Speaker 5: but then kind of give them over to him where
Speaker 5: he's putting it all together and you know, chopping up everything,
Speaker 5: and I mean it's just what he's amazing now. He's
Speaker 5: just doing all the layers and incredible production work and
Speaker 5: you know the horse noises and all that kind.
Speaker 1: I was just like, the hell.
Speaker 6: Because no no I heard. I was like it was
Speaker 6: like DJ Muggs and Cypress Hill and you know that
Speaker 6: squeal noise he had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 6: Gonna try and make a noise like that. And then
Speaker 6: I was watching an old Western movie and there was
Speaker 6: this horse. I was like that that might work.
Speaker 4: So how did you get the horse to clear the sample?
Speaker 5: The horse to this day still doesn't know that he's
Speaker 5: on the record.
Speaker 3: How did you guys even know because movie soundbites are
Speaker 3: also a big part of the.
Speaker 1: Kind of the structure here, How.
Speaker 3: Did how did you guys even source or even figure
Speaker 3: out clearing all of the non musical elements of the
Speaker 3: song that had to be clear, Like I'm certain that
Speaker 3: with movie dialogue?
Speaker 1: Or was it just like the Wild West? Like if
Speaker 1: they come to you, then you admit it? Or never mind,
Speaker 1: please don't incriminate yourself.
Speaker 3: I think never mind. I got my answer. This is
Speaker 3: this is Quest Love Supreme, not DJ Last.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I don't never compare me.
Speaker 5: Would you like al answer or the record label?
Speaker 1: Never mind?
Speaker 3: I just never mind, forget it. One thing I was
Speaker 3: I was curious to know for two things. One just
Speaker 3: the making of a Wildflower, because you know, we've read
Speaker 3: a lot and if you guys have talked a lot
Speaker 3: about they make it.
Speaker 1: Since I left you.
Speaker 3: Wildflower was like other than Dangelo's Black Messiah, that was
Speaker 3: those were neck and those are like my two most
Speaker 3: anticipated records of that decade. Yeah, just as long and
Speaker 3: and I remember it. You know, we've been hearing about
Speaker 3: it for a while and I was like it dropped
Speaker 3: and I was like, holy shit, this is really here.
Speaker 3: And you know, it was really inspiring me because it
Speaker 3: sounded like you guys picked up like right where you
Speaker 3: left off. It didn't even you could listen to since
Speaker 3: I Left You a Wildflower back to back and aside
Speaker 3: from the cameos, you know, you would sound like they
Speaker 3: were done at the same time. So I was curious
Speaker 3: to know just you know, working on that record and
Speaker 3: you know what took so long? A what took so long?
Speaker 3: From uh since I left you the Wildflower? In two Uh,
Speaker 3: the you guys picking your mcs, because you really picked
Speaker 3: you know guys that weren't you know, like you know,
Speaker 3: Danny Brown and camp Low and you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like you guys worked with some kind of unorthodox people,
Speaker 3: So how do y'all go about choosing that?
Speaker 6: That? I mean Camplow. That first Camplow Camp Saturday Night
Speaker 6: was like a favorite record. We would just play that NonStop,
Speaker 6: and some great sampling in that record too, So we
Speaker 6: actually sampled Camplow on Since I Left You, So it
Speaker 6: was really nice to kind of go full circle and
Speaker 6: then work with that.
Speaker 5: Whenever we played live, we'd always have a bit where
Speaker 5: Luccini would coming after a song, So massive Camblow fans.
Speaker 3: Before you answer Fantie's question, how how did you guys?
Speaker 3: How did you guys deliver the album live?
Speaker 1: Like? How does that even happen? Or what's the star?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 3: I only saw you guys when you guys finally came
Speaker 3: to the Tonight show for the Wildflower album. That's the
Speaker 3: first time I got to see you, like actually perform.
Speaker 3: But when you're when you made Since I Left You,
Speaker 3: then how do you decide how to deliver this in concert?
Speaker 6: We still when we were touring Since I Left You,
Speaker 6: we were still like in live band mode because that's
Speaker 6: we still had that element from you know, when we
Speaker 6: were starting out, So we would sort of do like
Speaker 6: kind of like there was like a big party with
Speaker 6: live drums and kind of like I don't know, guitar
Speaker 6: key yeah.
Speaker 5: But most of everything was just like on a on
Speaker 5: a mini keyboard and we'd have the samples. It would
Speaker 5: just be that key chorus break horse. So I was
Speaker 5: just triggering live and then the drama playing along to it.
Speaker 5: So there's no like you know, time code or anything
Speaker 5: into a computer or anything like that when we did
Speaker 5: to it Since I Left You, So it was still
Speaker 5: pretty organic in that way.
Speaker 3: One of the guys in your band man hold, I'm
Speaker 3: a big fan of Johnty. How did y'all? How did
Speaker 3: y'all hook up? And what's his Rolling You guys band?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, he was part of our touring group for
Speaker 6: around the Wildflower era. We came and Dido and and
Speaker 6: we I think we heard his first EP and it
Speaker 6: was really cool and then he did some vocals on
Speaker 6: Wildflower and then we were like, come come on the road. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and so.
Speaker 5: He was So he also did a it was Since
Speaker 5: I Left You. He put a band together of about
Speaker 5: fifteen musicians and played Since I Left You front to
Speaker 5: back really and did it live around Australia and we
Speaker 5: were like, oh, let's let's go check this out. And
Speaker 5: it was kind of like really weird to just be
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, and weren't played so long. We're just like, hey,
Speaker 5: we should get back on running, like do this. So
Speaker 5: it was really it was really cool to see and
Speaker 5: from now, I mean, you know, we developed the relationship.
Speaker 1: No, he's really dope.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of Yeah, but what's but the
Speaker 3: gap between the first album and wild Flower? You know
Speaker 3: that eighteen years sixteen years, welter, what what happened?
Speaker 1: I got admit I thought they threw you guys under
Speaker 1: the jail. I really ad meant. I was they got
Speaker 1: thrown under the jail. You don't got our money? Fuck it?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yeah, I mean, I mean there's many ways to
Speaker 6: answer that question, but the short answer is like was like,
Speaker 6: you know, you make since I left you with no money,
Speaker 6: no equipment, you have a success, You get an advance
Speaker 6: to make your second record, you buy all this equipment,
Speaker 6: and then but it doesn't flow and it doesn't happen
Speaker 6: sitting there around with compressors all day and like outboard gear,
Speaker 6: and we had none of that before, and it took
Speaker 6: a long time to get back to that point of
Speaker 6: realizing it's not about that, it's just about your imagination
Speaker 6: a turntable and a sampler and you can add all
Speaker 6: that shit later in the studio. But it was like,
Speaker 6: you've got to write the songs, the beautiful songs first,
Speaker 6: you know, and all the gear to help you. Well,
Speaker 6: you know, we were young and we had to learn
Speaker 6: that ourselves. And now we're back to like I don't
Speaker 6: have the studio in my house anymore, Like I just
Speaker 6: back to the same sympath start.
Speaker 3: So you purposely wanted to go back to square one.
Speaker 5: It took us sixteen years to realize that. But eventually,
Speaker 5: and the thing is like, like in all honesty, as
Speaker 5: as the time went on, kind of since I left,
Speaker 5: you started to grow in stature, so we were a
Speaker 5: lot of pressure started to build. And then that pressure,
Speaker 5: you know, came a little bit from the record company,
Speaker 5: just from fans in general and everything when's it's going
Speaker 5: to happen, And that got to us a lot as well,
Speaker 5: I think as it went along, and you know, and
Speaker 5: then like Robbie said, we kind of just got back
Speaker 5: to the essence of what it was all about, and
Speaker 5: almost just in our own personal journeys kind of declinded
Speaker 5: our minds and stopped with all the pressure within ourselves
Speaker 5: and just let go of all that that goal of
Speaker 5: all the equipment, and from that point like it didn't
Speaker 5: take that long at all to finish.
Speaker 4: I'm just curious, what, so, what equipment did you use
Speaker 4: for a wildflower and the new one specifically the same?
Speaker 5: No, we use pro Tools for this one. We were
Speaker 5: using Vision for since I left it, which that program
Speaker 5: actually they stopped making it in nineteen ninety seven and
Speaker 5: Robbie was still using that up to two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: It ain't broke.
Speaker 3: How long did it take you to learn how to
Speaker 3: master updated equipment or were you just stubborn, like I'll
Speaker 3: never it's this or nothing.
Speaker 6: I was stubborn for a long time. But now I'm
Speaker 6: just like it's pro Tools, and I just editing pro
Speaker 6: Tools and it's just like second Nation to me again.
Speaker 6: So it's just like it's just like a tape recorder,
Speaker 6: and it reminds me of like when I was like
Speaker 6: fifteen and learn me how to make tape loots and stuff.
Speaker 6: You know, it's like as long as long as I
Speaker 6: keep it simple, you know.
Speaker 4: It's what's the what's what are the pros and constant
Speaker 4: You know, when pro tools you're now able to see
Speaker 4: your music and your samples, and back in the day
Speaker 4: you couldn't. So what are the advantages and disadvantages to that,
Speaker 4: if any?
Speaker 6: That's an amazing question because you're so right. I mean,
Speaker 6: you can't see the waveforms when the sampler, you know,
Speaker 6: you don't see You're just listening and you're kind of
Speaker 6: like looking at the window almost, you know. So it's
Speaker 6: just a feeling thing, and it has been a big
Speaker 6: change because you know, pro tools can grit everything so easily,
Speaker 6: and everything can get tight, and like you can make
Speaker 6: so many different versions of the one song, and it's
Speaker 6: almost like you can again get too out of control
Speaker 6: with limitlessness of things like pro tools. And even just
Speaker 6: going back to Wildflower the way, you know, we used
Speaker 6: the sample to just just pick up a record, put
Speaker 6: it on, find a sample from a you know, pretty.
Speaker 5: Simple like that. But during world Flow, we just for
Speaker 5: some reason we'd go, okay, let's just collect samples. So
Speaker 5: we just collect samples without like thousands and categorize them
Speaker 5: without it and really making songs. We're just like we'll
Speaker 5: do that later. So it almost became like this story
Speaker 5: and administration process of making music. So so that just
Speaker 5: that the limitlessness of that.
Speaker 3: Years later we're like work, Yeah, I was gonna ask
Speaker 3: just in the sixteen years you know between those records
Speaker 3: were your what would you guys make? Source of the income?
Speaker 3: Like how was yall able to stay going for that loan?
Speaker 6: It was a struggle, you know, and it's certainly not
Speaker 6: not what people think. It's like, you know, being in
Speaker 6: bad and like, for example, the song since I like
Speaker 6: talking about sample clearance, Like the song since I Left
Speaker 6: You is like I don't own any of it, you know,
Speaker 6: it's all owned by samples. So we don't get really
Speaker 6: walties to live OX. So it was tough, and we
Speaker 6: would get offers to do some big shows in that time,
Speaker 6: but we kind of thought, you know, if it gets
Speaker 6: to like twenty ten and we haven't put a new
Speaker 6: record out, we can't. We don't really want to go
Speaker 6: and do a show because it just seems like we're
Speaker 6: in all.
Speaker 5: These Yeah, I mean, you know MAXI credit credit cards.
Speaker 3: Well, were you guys did you ever consider it, like
Speaker 3: just going back to your roots and DJing, like just
Speaker 3: doing DJ sets as a duo, but without the pressure
Speaker 3: of here's our new album, that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: We did that a few times and that was able
Speaker 5: to to earness some income. We did like a couple
Speaker 5: of songs for a musical it was King Kong Musical
Speaker 5: that was here in Melbourne, so that kind of helps it.
Speaker 5: And we did have a lot of help from the
Speaker 5: record company who had just signed to so it was
Speaker 5: like an in dependent record company would just like being
Speaker 5: half yeah, half brought out by Universal.
Speaker 6: Which has a lot of money.
Speaker 5: So so you know, our man Steve pav would really
Speaker 5: help us out by constantly asking them if he can
Speaker 5: have a little bit more, and it's just around the corner,
Speaker 5: you know, six months away, six months later, it'd be
Speaker 5: the same thing.
Speaker 1: So faness.
Speaker 6: He was wonderful.
Speaker 5: He was really good.
Speaker 3: I always wanted to know, Okay, so I'm not I'm
Speaker 3: probably closer to to Robbie's theory on kind of staying
Speaker 3: intentionally ignorant too technology so that it doesn't destroy me,
Speaker 3: you know, like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: That's my excuse, Like I don't want to learn all
Speaker 3: this technology because then I'll lose.
Speaker 1: What I had in my magic period. That sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but I have to know.
Speaker 3: So when I first saw the demonstration of I hope
Speaker 3: I'm saying this right. And I prefaced all that to say, like,
Speaker 3: I really don't know the technical terms, but with the
Speaker 3: program melodim, that enables you to sort of like erase
Speaker 3: the DNA of a song, like if I could take
Speaker 3: a Stevie Wonder song and erase his vocals out of
Speaker 3: it and make it just an instrumental that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: When I first saw that, I saw that Jazzy Jeff's
Speaker 3: house and the first thing I said to him was, yo, Like,
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see what happens when the avalanches
Speaker 3: get a hold of this machine.
Speaker 1: Where they can now.
Speaker 3: Really manipulate and bend sounds to the you know, or
Speaker 3: like y'all, or like Ableton, like the avalanches were Ableton.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's fucking scary exactly. So, like, have you
Speaker 3: guys even created songs to that level?
Speaker 1: Like it's weird.
Speaker 3: I don't know if someone has fully taken advantage of
Speaker 3: like it's to me, it seems so grandiose and so
Speaker 3: attimidating that I haven't even I think maybe once last
Speaker 3: year I decided, like, all right, let me take the
Speaker 3: Fender Rhodes from this particular song that I don't have
Speaker 3: the stems to and see if I could build a
Speaker 3: song from that.
Speaker 1: But besides that.
Speaker 3: One moment, like I kind of thought it was going
Speaker 3: to be just a flood of kind of a return
Speaker 3: or at least a part two of the sample. Wow
Speaker 3: Wow West, that was you know, eighty six to ninety two,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. But what this sort of sampling
Speaker 3: have you guys ever been Have you guys even decided
Speaker 3: or considered that level of sampling where you start erasing
Speaker 3: the DNA of samples that exist to create new material.
Speaker 1: I hope I asked that question right.
Speaker 5: Yep, totally, Okay, totally did. It feels like it's a
Speaker 5: strange crime.
Speaker 3: I also feel like it's a concept a crime, so
Speaker 3: a little bit I.
Speaker 1: Feel every time I use it.
Speaker 3: I asked someone last week to like, you know, astract
Speaker 3: some vocals from a song, and even then I felt guilty.
Speaker 1: So my heart was to make it because you.
Speaker 3: Know, no, it's it's it's it'll because it'll start off
Speaker 3: innocent now with just music, but then who knows, like
Speaker 3: what they'll use it for thirty years.
Speaker 1: From now with identity thefts.
Speaker 3: So I think I'm kind of scared of jumping in
Speaker 3: that pool because I feel like this is the beginning
Speaker 3: of the danger period. But what is your relationship with
Speaker 3: that level of technology and sampling.
Speaker 5: I don't think we thought about it too much. I know,
Speaker 5: we bought Maldine maybe three years ago and I personally
Speaker 5: haven't used it once. We were like, yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 5: be great. Kind of looked at it now, not now,
Speaker 5: But I know, I feel like that's kind of in
Speaker 5: a way dishonoring the sample and the people who played
Speaker 5: on it, and and I don't know, maybe that's if
Speaker 5: that's just kind of an old fashioned attitude, and then
Speaker 5: the future is just going to be like taking out
Speaker 5: you know, Steavy.
Speaker 1: It was never that one song. If I could just
Speaker 1: give her of the vocals on.
Speaker 5: That, Yeah, we try and do that with filters, But
Speaker 5: who knows what the future holds are. I don't know
Speaker 5: how Robbie thinks about that, but I.
Speaker 6: Don't know, Like I think there's some cool stuff like
Speaker 6: you mentioned able to and stuff like being able to
Speaker 6: stretch a sample, like a really really really far way
Speaker 6: further than we have could. Like we've done some of
Speaker 6: that kind of stuff. But I also love, you know,
Speaker 6: the art form of like like say, the vocal sample
Speaker 6: for Since I Left You has got music underneath. We
Speaker 6: just had to filter it and then I had to
Speaker 6: chop it very finely, but you can still hear all
Speaker 6: these little bells and stuff, and it all adds to
Speaker 6: the sort of magic, even though yeah, auto tune and stuff.
Speaker 6: It's like, it's kind of it's kind of beautiful that
Speaker 6: way too. You know. I think things would get quite
Speaker 6: clean and really like Christine sounding if you can like
Speaker 6: forensically remove elements, but I don't know if it would
Speaker 6: still have the magic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it take away like the layers that you
Speaker 5: don't necessarily hear but you feel. And then if you
Speaker 5: do take them away, you're like, hey, something's missing here,
Speaker 5: but I can't tell what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing with like sample based music.
Speaker 3: It's just so like even when like trying to replace
Speaker 3: stuff or you know, and it's just like, dude, when
Speaker 3: you sample something, you're not just sampling that song. You're
Speaker 3: sampling that day. You're sampling the engineer, you're sampling the
Speaker 3: outboard gear. You know, there's so many things that made it.
Speaker 3: What it was, and when you start manipulating that a
Speaker 3: lot of times you can't kind.
Speaker 1: Of get too far away from home to where you
Speaker 1: lose the magic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's like a spirit, a spirit in the music.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, engineers should get paid for sham bull.
Speaker 1: Shut up, Steve. Yeah, that's real wrap.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna start at a petition.
Speaker 1: On the Sugar Network.
Speaker 3: Hey, oh, another question I have. I have a theory,
Speaker 3: but I want to see if I'm correct. What was
Speaker 3: the What was the inspiration for the Wildflower album cover?
Speaker 6: It was that sliced down cover.
Speaker 1: I knew it.
Speaker 7: Yeah when I first nd when when literally when I
Speaker 7: first saw it, I was like, wow, Like in an
Speaker 7: alternative world where Sly was was happy with his life.
Speaker 3: And everything was going swimmingly, this would have been the
Speaker 3: album covered too. There's a ride going on and always.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: Okay, we actually got it founder World Quilting Champion who
Speaker 6: she lives in Nebraska and she quilted that cover for us,
Speaker 6: and we just took a photo of it so we
Speaker 6: wanted it to look real like the Sly cover.
Speaker 3: Wow. So that's an actual.
Speaker 5: Que made Yeah, that's a quilt.
Speaker 1: Whoa ship?
Speaker 3: No, I thought it was animated ship. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: you're right. I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 1: Who yeah, who got it?
Speaker 5: He still sleeps on his bed you do.
Speaker 1: Congratulations, Robbie, there for it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Man, I wanted to ask y'all on the on the
Speaker 3: new record, Man, bruh, where did y'all find Trin Darby?
Speaker 1: Yo? For real?
Speaker 3: I mean Sonanda, Sonanda Montreal, that's you know what he
Speaker 3: goes by. It's been going back for the past few years.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I was so happy.
Speaker 6: I can't remember how we got in touch, but we
Speaker 6: had this song and Tony and myself and I collaborate
Speaker 6: on this record and he it was like this beautiful
Speaker 6: piece music. We had this fashy Bunian vocal and it
Speaker 6: was honestly not going to make the record because it
Speaker 6: was like, there's just no voice that can that can fit.
Speaker 6: And I can't remember. One day it was Tony and
Speaker 6: myself we just had this idea and we were like,
Speaker 6: we wonder if we could ever get in touch with him,
Speaker 6: or if he would know who we are. And somebody
Speaker 6: got in touch with Sernanda and it's been honestly the
Speaker 6: most incredible, one of the most beautiful experiences in my life.
Speaker 1: He's warm answer. I didn't know.
Speaker 6: He is incredible, so open hearted and just so generous
Speaker 6: with his time. That's probably the most beautiful thing that,
Speaker 6: like people just don't dial in a vocal and he
Speaker 6: goes it's like so generous with their time to go
Speaker 6: back and forth and really get something that feels like
Speaker 6: it was meant to be there.
Speaker 3: You know, YA tracked that together or was he tracked
Speaker 3: it on his side?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he tracked it on his side. But there were
Speaker 5: a lot of back and forth with emails and stuff,
Speaker 5: and he's his emails are an absolute joy to read.
Speaker 5: It's it is he's so eccentric but smart and expressive
Speaker 5: in his emails and he's just like Robbie, go, we
Speaker 5: couldn't you email from Sernandra and go send it? I
Speaker 5: want to read it. It's like a it was so
Speaker 5: amazing to read.
Speaker 6: And then poetry, really real.
Speaker 5: Poetry, and just listening to his voice, it's like it
Speaker 5: is one of the great voices in my opinion of
Speaker 5: all time. He's still incredible, Like I listened to that
Speaker 5: song and I still just go, what a vocal performance.
Speaker 5: It's incredible, incredible.
Speaker 3: So on the other side, I guess maybe the polar opposite.
Speaker 1: Tricky. What was that?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 3: I love him, man, I love him.
Speaker 6: Actually, actually we should have mentioned when we're talking about
Speaker 6: nineties sample music too, like his first.
Speaker 3: Record Massive Oh yeah, Max and Ka Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly, and so that that was stuff that was
Speaker 6: filtering through to us from England at the time too,
Speaker 6: So it was like he was one of our heroes,
Speaker 6: you know, and the Massive Attack records, and he was
Speaker 6: in Berlin making a record. He just put that record
Speaker 6: out last year. It's a really great record, and he
Speaker 6: was just like, I happen to be in the studio
Speaker 6: right now, what have you got? And we would just
Speaker 6: send him a song. The first song the next morning
Speaker 6: came back with full lyrics and then he was like
Speaker 6: that was great, send me another one. And we ended
Speaker 6: up that went on for like two weeks. We did
Speaker 6: like eight songs together, and then we got like a
Speaker 6: message from his management to our management, who didn't know
Speaker 6: anything about this, and they were like, are you guys
Speaker 6: recording together? What you've made half a record? What's going on?
Speaker 6: Like we need the paperwork something, But yeah, that was
Speaker 6: he was like just he was on a hot streak
Speaker 6: making that record, so he was like anything you can
Speaker 6: send me. I'm on fire at the moment.
Speaker 5: And it is so good when it when it's just
Speaker 5: the artist to artists as well, and it's not going
Speaker 5: through so you know that the management obviously they didn't
Speaker 5: know what was happening or whatever, and we were just
Speaker 5: doing our own thing without all that and and that's that's,
Speaker 5: you know, such a rewarding relationship for us to kind
Speaker 5: of you know, they have that situation with people we
Speaker 5: grew up listening to and our heroes and everything, and
Speaker 5: I think he gets to so much of a more
Speaker 5: pure product when it's not you know, through their people,
Speaker 5: through their people and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you guys, the people y'all picked. Man, you know,
Speaker 3: I can'tfront like it is pretty much. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: it's like a dream, you know, just just me being
Speaker 3: just the music nerd. I am like the people you
Speaker 3: get on every record. I'm like, yo, like that was
Speaker 3: a perfect fit. And when I saw that it was
Speaker 3: you know, Terrence tranp Darbys on this one and then Tricky.
Speaker 3: But when I saw the y'all got fucking Cornelius, I
Speaker 3: was like, yo, dude, like, yeah, they've been in my
Speaker 3: iTunes or some ship like you'll almost know, like, what was.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, they pick it all my guys. What
Speaker 1: what was he like? Man? What was it? What was
Speaker 1: it like working with him?
Speaker 6: But I don't I don't know what to say about Keego. Really,
Speaker 6: he's like he's a dear friend. And we met him
Speaker 6: like in two thousand and one or something because he
Speaker 6: put out that album Pasthma, Yeah, and we were making
Speaker 6: since I left you listening to that album. Just got
Speaker 6: this is my check.
Speaker 1: That was my ship.
Speaker 6: My check exactly. But it's kind of.
Speaker 3: Like Disney one two.
Speaker 6: Four exactly, yes, because Tokyo is only like the same
Speaker 6: time zoners here in ten hours. We go a lot
Speaker 6: to DJ and so we've become friends over the years
Speaker 6: and he'll always show us like record stores and everything.
Speaker 6: He's this sweetest guy. And then he just happened to
Speaker 6: be in Los Angeles doing a show when we were
Speaker 6: there recording, so that song just came about, like it
Speaker 6: was probably birthday.
Speaker 5: At the time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, recording recording with him a happy birthday.
Speaker 5: The recording with him was so incredible the process because
Speaker 5: we kind of had the beach just going and he
Speaker 5: just had a guitar there and he'd be like, all right,
Speaker 5: let's do some takes and just you know, just all around.
Speaker 5: And so we sit there and go the comp, the comp,
Speaker 5: then the next take. Then I just all started layering
Speaker 5: up that you got there. We were all like okay, okay,
Speaker 5: and then towards the end, everyone's like, oh, we understand now.
Speaker 5: So he had this whole thing and he said it
Speaker 5: was like twelve layers of different guitar tracks that he
Speaker 5: was just like making and it just I mean, that's
Speaker 5: how came about it.
Speaker 3: That's him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that that's so incredible to watch.
Speaker 3: It was fantasma like fantasma like fantasma like that fucked
Speaker 3: me up when I heard it. And then the one
Speaker 3: that like when I think it was after I graduated
Speaker 3: college when he came with point like I played, I
Speaker 3: still play that record, like, you know, I love that album. Man,
Speaker 3: he's he's a nut.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I ask what was it like working with Johnny Moyer?
Speaker 6: That that was another one that was done remotely, But
Speaker 6: I still remember the morning actually that you didn't get.
Speaker 1: The nerd out on any Smith's questions or oh.
Speaker 6: My goodness, I think we would have overwhelmed him.
Speaker 3: I think yeah, yeah, when he when he came to
Speaker 3: sitting with us, like I think we I that's probably
Speaker 3: the only time that we really nerded out on like
Speaker 3: tell us more stories, you know, that's what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but we actually met we we saw him even
Speaker 5: before we approached him to play on the track. We
Speaker 5: were like he was at the next table and asked
Speaker 5: at Fuji Rock Festival, like just backstage, and we'll both
Speaker 5: just go up to him and ask him, no, you
Speaker 5: go on, come on say something him. For about fifteen minutes,
Speaker 5: we're trying to pick each other up to go after him,
Speaker 5: and in the end room just like we can't do it.
Speaker 5: But you know, we got to come back eventually, and
Speaker 5: he was. He was really great, and he actually sent
Speaker 5: us a message off to the Divine Call, which is
Speaker 5: the song he's on it. It kind of got play
Speaker 5: in England and he's like, thanks Gods, my kids think
Speaker 5: I'm cool again.
Speaker 3: Now, Hey, if you guys even considered a thought thought
Speaker 3: about releasing like all instrumental versions of the last two
Speaker 3: records just for the Avalanche Purists or whatever, like just
Speaker 3: to hear it, because sometimes I you know, I know
Speaker 3: that you guys are going through a progression and you're
Speaker 3: the the you know, the metamorphosis of the group sort
Speaker 3: of blooming. But so there's no just there's not an
Speaker 3: instrumental mixed version of of of any of any of
Speaker 3: this stuff out there.
Speaker 6: No, but we have them.
Speaker 5: We have them. Yeah, I think we can. We can.
Speaker 1: That's really what working on.
Speaker 5: To ask exactly is this interviews are now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to see the now will you
Speaker 3: do you do you guys ever think that you'll try
Speaker 3: to do another all instrumental project as far as I know,
Speaker 3: you're probably working on something now and just yeah.
Speaker 6: We're starting another now, I think yeah, because it's just like,
Speaker 6: I mean, working with vocalists like that for us is
Speaker 6: almost like it's still you know, an active curation and
Speaker 6: almost sampling in a way. But I feel like we're
Speaker 6: we're we're making a slight turn back towards just the
Speaker 6: sample based record.
Speaker 3: Well whatever, whatever the next record is, I'm putting my
Speaker 3: beard in. I won't end on that motherfucker. So saying hey, listen, man,
Speaker 3: even if you just just talking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, whatever, let's do it.
Speaker 3: This is probably the least that I've inserted questions and
Speaker 3: an interview only because I feel like every question that
Speaker 3: I want to know the answer to is almost like inconsequential,
Speaker 3: like just okay that particular snare that you use on
Speaker 3: this song versus.
Speaker 1: The wait I do.
Speaker 3: I do want to know who who decides the concept
Speaker 3: for your videos, man, especially with Frankie Sinatra, like or
Speaker 3: just all your videos.
Speaker 1: All your videos are just.
Speaker 3: Some next level shit, Like who comes with those concepts?
Speaker 5: That's mainly the video people. So we get we get
Speaker 5: pitched some things and then we kind of, I guess,
Speaker 5: just pick the craziest one. Really yeah, but yeah it
Speaker 5: was Frankie Sinatra. I met. I just don't sound bad,
Speaker 5: but we actually had a zoom or a skyt with
Speaker 5: the producers who were gonna be shooting the video and
Speaker 5: our French and like we struggled to understand just like
Speaker 5: you guys, okay kind of sounds I say.
Speaker 6: My lovely papers.
Speaker 5: So sweet, and and the lady had this beautiful voice.
Speaker 5: It was almost like a movie like it was just.
Speaker 1: Like look, okay, whatever, Oh my god, wow wow.
Speaker 4: Can I ask one more question? So in messing with
Speaker 4: loops and samples and beats and and things like movie
Speaker 4: dialogue and and horses and everything that you that you
Speaker 4: end up creating your music with how often do you
Speaker 4: go in with with an idea I'm going for something specific,
Speaker 4: but then as quest eleven, I am constantly talking about, yeah,
Speaker 4: some kind of happy accident happens and ends up something
Speaker 4: better than your idea or different. And how often does
Speaker 4: that play into what we hear in the final product?
Speaker 6: It happens all the time. But really that's almost the
Speaker 6: whole thing, Like you know, like we will talk about like
Speaker 6: where we want to try and go next, but but
Speaker 6: you can't predict the mood you're going to be in
Speaker 6: and the record you're going to be sampling at that time,
Speaker 6: and maybe just one little like a bit of atmosphere
Speaker 6: at the end of someone's song or something. It's like
Speaker 6: and you're just in the right mood to hear how
Speaker 6: you could flip that.
Speaker 4: Moment or if you put something, if you put something
Speaker 4: in the wrong spot, and then if you put it
Speaker 4: a bit behind or something, and suddenly you're a rhythmic genius.
Speaker 6: That's also like our friendship too. It's like having to
Speaker 6: be able to tell each other that you know, that
Speaker 6: thing you made yesterday morning in five minutes is like
Speaker 6: it is better than the thing you spent a month
Speaker 6: on when you had this big concept and you know, yeah,
Speaker 6: you just captured some magic there and that's we should
Speaker 6: roll with that, you know. And I think that was
Speaker 6: that was also part of Wildflow two, is like that
Speaker 6: magic of the five minutes finding the great loop and everything,
Speaker 6: and then we were just layer and layer and layer,
Speaker 6: and in the end the initial thing is like this
Speaker 6: much of something that's like that, and then we like
Speaker 6: we went through a process towards the end of you know,
Speaker 6: making it, we just took a lot of that away
Speaker 6: and this started to shine again.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, it's so dope. Kurt vow Man,
Speaker 3: how did y'all go with him his record? He's all right,
Speaker 3: that's like I love that song and I always dug him.
Speaker 3: How did y'all hook up?
Speaker 6: It was? That was like a last song we finished
Speaker 6: for the record, and once again it was a beautiful
Speaker 6: piece of music. But we just and I just play
Speaker 6: his records like all the time, so huge fan, and
Speaker 6: we just reached which reached out on Instagram and he
Speaker 6: was like down for it. I think he might have
Speaker 6: meant messaged us about something else in the past, and
Speaker 6: then we're like, we've got this song, and yeah, he
Speaker 6: just did this beautiful kind of like poetic rambling spoken
Speaker 6: word thing that was beautiful. I still remember the day
Speaker 6: that that arrived.
Speaker 8: Actually, it was like, I'm like, I remember the day
Speaker 8: that Robbie played it to me after he put the
Speaker 8: vocals into the track, and we'd had that track for
Speaker 8: a long time, and it was just kind of like what.
Speaker 5: Do we do with it? Like is it a melodic
Speaker 5: kind of thing? And then he played with the thing
Speaker 5: that Kurt did and I was just like, played again.
Speaker 5: He went, that's done. That's perfect. That's exactly what I
Speaker 5: you know, just one of those things where you're like
Speaker 5: you don't have to arm and a about it. It's like, oh,
Speaker 5: we have to change it around a little bit, or
Speaker 5: maybe if we cut this bit of perfect. It just
Speaker 5: felt so good and it was just like, that's it,
Speaker 5: that that's done.
Speaker 3: What made y'all come back? Because I'm be real, I
Speaker 3: was surprise to see that we got Avalanche's album in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty because after Wildflower, I was speaking night, we'll
Speaker 3: be another teen years.
Speaker 1: I was ready to wait it out, but y'all came back.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, what led to the I
Speaker 3: guess the quicker turnaround in records, like where you're at
Speaker 3: now in your lives, you're being kind of turned around
Speaker 3: a little quicker.
Speaker 6: I think we were just freed up from the long
Speaker 6: sixteen years. You know, we felt the pressure to follow
Speaker 6: offs I left you, and then once we made another
Speaker 6: really great sample based record in Wildflower, that we felt like,
Speaker 6: you know that that was a really worthy follow up
Speaker 6: since I left you, we just felt free and you know,
Speaker 6: we just got back to the very simple flow of
Speaker 6: creating and not overthinking, and it's just flowing really quickly.
Speaker 6: We've already got a bunch more songs as well, and.
Speaker 5: It's so fun to be an actual touring band and
Speaker 5: not you know, broke musicians in our houses working on around,
Speaker 5: you know, to play Coachella and we're doing listed dream
Speaker 5: like what we should have been doing this ten years ago.
Speaker 5: Like that's inspiration for us.
Speaker 1: And bring I love it.
Speaker 3: Wait, my last question about a guest on your record,
Speaker 3: What was the process of like working with Rivers Korma? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And did you did you resist any Pinkerton fan out
Speaker 3: moments or just.
Speaker 6: You know, that was so cool and I think we
Speaker 6: grew up loving like you know, we have love for
Speaker 6: like the Beach Boys, and he's someone who I can
Speaker 6: hear that in his music. And he's like, I can
Speaker 6: write such an amazing pop hook. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 6: I mean Tony can tell the story. But I think
Speaker 6: we'd already tracked the song. And then he was in Melbourne.
Speaker 6: Did we meet him beforehand, Tony or no?
Speaker 5: So he sent us like the well, so he had
Speaker 5: like center spreadsheet with three different lyric lyric paragraphs.
Speaker 6: Of all his hooks. Yeah, just in the spreadsheet, and
Speaker 6: he was like, choose one, choose one, but we need
Speaker 6: to hear.
Speaker 5: The melodies, like we want to hear how it goes.
Speaker 5: So he's like okay, and he set the melodies for
Speaker 5: each you know, little lyric thing he.
Speaker 1: Had, and like a whole bunch of hooks and you
Speaker 1: could choose.
Speaker 5: One, he said, he said three.
Speaker 1: At all.
Speaker 5: So in the end we were just like, they're all
Speaker 5: really good? Can we have them all? I mean we
Speaker 5: worked them all into the into the track eventually, and
Speaker 5: and you know, like the outro and the verse of
Speaker 5: the chorus and so that made up the three different things.
Speaker 5: But so we ended up meeting him in Melbourne and
Speaker 5: like they were out they were supporting the food Fighters
Speaker 5: a big stadium and we're like, okay, well go. So
Speaker 5: Robbie and I spent a day like looking at all
Speaker 5: the coolest bars to take him in Melbourne, and you know,
Speaker 5: you want to impress him and do all these really
Speaker 5: cool things. And in the end it was raining, and
Speaker 5: all he wanted to do is like we got some
Speaker 5: umbrellas from the hotel. He just wanted to walk around
Speaker 5: the city in the rain. And then we stopped at
Speaker 5: a Starbucks and had a coffee and spoke for about
Speaker 5: an hour and then went back to the hotel. Wow,
Speaker 5: it sounds like, okay, I guess we won't be going
Speaker 5: to this cool bar where there's like, you know, hold
Speaker 5: the girls and all these crazy shit. Come on, We'll
Speaker 5: just sit in Starbucks. But in that way, it was
Speaker 5: like perfect.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, wait, speaking of your Beach Boys fandom, assuming
Speaker 3: assuming that the woman who worked with you for sample
Speaker 3: clearances is the same lady that cleared the samples for
Speaker 3: Paul's boutique. I don't know which albums he did it for,
Speaker 3: but I would assume it's Paul's boutique because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of samples. Were you guys even aware of Brian
Speaker 3: Wilson's hip hop album that was produced by the Dust Brothers.
Speaker 3: The world question does not know about this? Yeah, so uh,
Speaker 3: I guess the story is that, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: at the time when the Beastie Boys first signed the Capitol,
Speaker 3: I guess, uh. Brian Wilson had gotten a copy of
Speaker 3: Paul's boutique and was kind of impressed because they explained
Speaker 3: him like how the album was made and how all
Speaker 3: these samples and that sort of thing. He was really
Speaker 3: impressed by it. So he hit up the Dust Brothers
Speaker 3: and said, I too want to do an album, and
Speaker 3: he wound up making a I think they made like
Speaker 3: five or six songs together.
Speaker 1: And one of them I think was called smart Girls
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: But it's it's nice Brian he rapping, or it's just
Speaker 3: oh boy.
Speaker 1: If you.
Speaker 5: If you YouTube, no, I'm gonna check.
Speaker 1: These yeah wait wait wait, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: Because the thing is is that every time I tell
Speaker 3: the story, I'm like, wait a minute, I know, I
Speaker 3: know for starters that I actually talked to Brian Wilson
Speaker 3: about this in person, and I talked to the Dust Brothers,
Speaker 3: But even in my mind, I'm like wait did I
Speaker 3: imagine that?
Speaker 1: But it's no, it.
Speaker 5: Doesn't seem real.
Speaker 1: Wait is it still on on YouTube? Yeah?
Speaker 3: He did it. He did a song. Okay, so smart Girls, Yeah,
Speaker 3: smart Girls.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Capitol rejected the album, but it's still out there. It
Speaker 3: came out in nineteen ninety one and yeah, Matt Matt
Speaker 3: Dike like the Yeah, yeah, yeah, those those guys produced it,
Speaker 3: and yeah it was. It was the Brian Wilson rap album.
Speaker 3: It was called Sweet Insanity. Yeah, I'd never heard.
Speaker 5: That's it. That seems like a fitting title for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: I just want to say just you know, like I
Speaker 3: try to keep my cool with guests, you know, half
Speaker 3: the time on this platform, but yeah, man, I want
Speaker 3: to thank you guys personally because I will say that
Speaker 3: in hearing your record, that's what really planted the seed
Speaker 3: in my head on how my DJ gigs should go,
Speaker 3: because I just never thought, I mean, yeah, like again,
Speaker 3: I was raised on that certain bomb squad type of
Speaker 3: hip hop that anything could go. But when when when
Speaker 3: I heard this album, that's when I realized, like, oh,
Speaker 3: anything can really happen in a DJ set and a
Speaker 3: sort of a creative context. So I will say that
Speaker 3: after hearing your album, and I guess I heard it
Speaker 3: in two thousand and two thousand and one, Like that's
Speaker 3: when I just totally wipe the slate clean of what
Speaker 3: was current what was then my DJ sets, And my
Speaker 3: whole goal was like, well, I'm just doing the avalanches
Speaker 3: do and just throw any and everything in my DJ set,
Speaker 3: be it something normal, something off kilter, something unorthodox, something
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Just I thank y'all for that. Like, you guys were
Speaker 1: definitely the impetus to like my my.
Speaker 3: My DJ rebirth that I've been running away with like
Speaker 3: for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: Man, but you guys are are are are are true geniuses? Man,
Speaker 1: I thank you for doing the show with us.
Speaker 6: Oh thank you. That's really cold.
Speaker 5: This has made yeah, this has beene so fun.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you? Thanks really all right, Well are you done? Oh?
Speaker 3: I was just gonna ask because I guess my last thing.
Speaker 3: The other artists like kind of soul artists in uh
Speaker 3: in you guys region, So yeah, Australia. So like I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: of course, how it's Coyote Fat Freddy's Drop. I know
Speaker 3: they're kind more of a ska kind of band. Lisa
Speaker 3: could call it, like what relationship do you have with
Speaker 3: that community that the soul you know, I guess R
Speaker 3: and B community.
Speaker 1: What's that like?
Speaker 6: Well, we're just like kind of a couple of old
Speaker 6: men who liked each other on the park bench every
Speaker 6: day and talk about the weather or whatever. Like we
Speaker 6: don't like I guess we're up and traveling, but we're
Speaker 6: kind of not really like.
Speaker 3: On the scene.
Speaker 6: Yeah, except that, except to say that there is just
Speaker 6: like it's just a very warm music community here in Melbourne.
Speaker 6: Everybody is very supportive. I think it's maybe because it's
Speaker 6: so geographically isolated. It's like there's there's just like it's
Speaker 6: very supportive. Anyway, we always feel for support.
Speaker 1: That's what's up, Steve. That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you left me out of the Michelle Obama episode
Speaker 4: and the Jimmy as well.
Speaker 3: Be half a great callback, great callbacks. We have a
Speaker 3: quest love supreme fan Tikeolo and Steve. We like to
Speaker 3: thank the Avalanches uh for for kicking it with us.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah man, this is I never thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I don't think I've read an interview with y'all,
Speaker 3: let alone, you know, saying half interview, So this was
Speaker 3: this is a dream Cone Drew Man.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah, seriously, has been so good, so much fun.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you guys.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys on behalf of h Unpaid Bill and
Speaker 3: and and.
Speaker 1: Uh Steve quest Love and this is quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: We will see you next week next go right, thank you.
Speaker 5: Hey, this is Sugar Steed.
Speaker 4: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 4: QLs and let us know what you think and you
Speaker 4: should be next to sit down with us. Don't forget
Speaker 4: to subscribe to our podcast.
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