QLS Classic: The Avalanches

The Avalanches' debut album Since I Left You, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, not only "cracked our skulls open", it's also one of Quest's "top 10 albums of ALL time"

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Hey, what's up, y'all? Back in 2021, Fonte, Sugar Steve, and I sat down with The Avalanches. And as I say in the intro, this Australian duo lit a fuse for me as a producer with their visionary approach to sampling and making music. Since this classic QLS interview, Robbie and Tony have put out some recent singles, including collaborations with Jamie XX. This conversation was a lot of fun for me, and you'll hear why. Questlove Supreme Classic with The Avalanches. All right, enjoy.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme. I'm your host, Questlove. With us, we have fragmented supremers. We've got Fonte in the house. What's up, brother? I'm still here, man. What up? What up? We're here. Sugar Steve?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Yep, I'm not fragmented. I've never missed a show, except the ones you told me not to attend.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Wait, when did I ban you?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  That purple roundtable joint.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Oh, you're holding that against me?

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Yes. But let's move on.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Shots fired in the intro.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Ladies and gentlemen, I will say that probably our guests have single-handedly at least changed, and I'm making this introduction personal, I'm making it about me, not about you or the audience. I'll say that our guests today have single-handedly probably changed my trajectory, or changed my perspective on how to deliver music. And that's pretty much all I can say. I heard their debut album, and it just cracked my skull, cracked all of our skulls open in a way that really hasn't, really hasn't done that probably since the days of prime

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Bomb Squad productions of like Public Enemy and Ice Cube, or even the Three Feet Behind Rising and De La Soul's Dead albums of the early 90s. I'll say that Rick Rubin has taught us on this show that editing is necessary for smart pop music-making, and, you know, the ability to leave the basic necessities for, you know, for the most part of that theory, you know, with self-editing, has worked miracles for pop music in the last 70 years. But our guests have done the opposite of that, and they've left no stone unturned as far as Sonic Landscape.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Their forever classic debut album, now 20, 20 years old, called Since I Left You, is probably, personally, one of my top 10 favorite albums of all times. With over 1,000 mind-staggering samples and soundbites, we all got to investigate how this was made. When we found out that they wanted to come on the show, it was an instant yes on my part. Same here, yeah. Yeah, I'm just honored they're here to share their story with us, because I don't even know if I can properly explain to you how important their art is. But ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Questlove Supreme, The Avalanches. We have Robbie and Tony. Robbie, what's your last name?

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Teta.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Robbie Teta.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Teta.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Teta, okay. Welcome Robbie Teta and Tony DeBlasi to Questlove Supreme.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Where are you right now?

• 4:47Speaker 04

  We're in Melbourne.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  How is it over there right now?

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's pretty good. We had, we had like a really hard lockdown last year, but we're coming out of it now just really good. We just played our first live show in, you know, three years on Friday.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Wow. What was that like, man?

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, it was incredible. It was, it was so amazing, you know, just to be with the people again and, you know, I don't know, it was just, it just felt like at the start, it felt really strange, like, you know, it was a little bit rusty, but then you kind of get into it for 20 minutes, and you're like, I remember what it's like. And instead of being scared, it's like this joyous experience. And yeah, I mean, we've just missed the same match, so it was so good.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  So it's hard, like, working your muscle memory for what the show was? When you, well, with this particular show, was it, was it crafted from scratch, or was it the show that you were developing around the time when COVID first hit us?

• 5:47Speaker 04

  No, it was from scratch. So it was a lot. It was like our hometown, first show back, brand new show. All the equipment too has been like in storage and all covered in dust and, you know, it was like, everybody was like. Family and friends. Yeah. Yeah, we had a few technical issues that we, that we both, it seems like every, like whenever there's a first show, there's always a few things that go down or go wrong, but in the end, it was, it was really incredible. We got so much love from the audience and.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  I would imagine that the, the amount of, of research that you have to put into your product as far as your creativity is concerned, that, I mean, was this time off with COVID? Was it a total 100% time off for, for you guys? Or was it just like, okay, let's go back to woodshed and create new product? Or did you just stop, period, and just, you know, kind of see what happens until the world opens?

• 6:49Speaker 04

  It was tough. I mean, we went, we were finishing an album as, as COVID hit, and we kind of got that done and got that, got that ready to go. But like Melbourne's lockdown, we were in it for like 200 days. It was one of the hardest lockdowns in the world, and you couldn't, you could only leave your house for an hour a day.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  There was a curfew in the evenings. 8:00 PM till, till 5:00 AM, you couldn't go outside your house.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Well, you guys did it right.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  You actually did it right, and, you know, the world would have actually caught up to you guys and, you know, because after some point, once we saw your numbers go down, and then like a whole bunch of movie productions and a lot of my friends in the industry were going to Mel, you know, going over, over there to Australia, to, to New Zealand over there, because you guys were just doing it right. So, but you, you had to be strict with it.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  We had to be strict. I mean, the payoff was like, we got to do a show, you know, like now, you know, and things are opening up. But at the time, it was hard and, like, we thought, well, we've got all this free time, we'll be creative. But it was pretty intense, and the city was, you know, a ghost town. And really, it made me learn how much that we rely on the collective energy and other people to, to feed our creativity. So even though we had this spare time, like, we didn't write a lot last year because it was just kind of getting through day by day, you know, the lockdown was.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  No, I hear you.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  And very uninspiring. Yeah.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Well, both of you were DJs for starters. Like, what got you interested in DJ culture? Like, how did it hit you over there?

• 8:25Speaker 04

  We actually, well, we grew up in different suburbs of Melbourne, and then both ended up in the same country town during high school, and that's where we met and became friends. Since we weren't DJs, initially, we were like bad punk musicians. Punk musicians.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  And we say punk because we were so bad at playing.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  It was noise, noise.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  It's kind of like the Beastie Boys story, like. I was about to say, it's Beastie Boys, yeah. Yeah, you start off punk, and then, you know.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  That's right. And we, so we were just, I mean, I had no money or whatever, so we were buying old guitars and broken guitars and organs in junk stores, and then we started to find all these old records. And it just sort of grew from there. I was doing a, a film school course at university, and they had a big studio for all the film scores. And of course, everybody doing that course wanted to be like a famous director, so nobody wanted to do the soundtrack. So I just had the studio to myself for like three years, and there was an old Ensonic sampler in there that I learned how to use, and started sampling all these junk store records, and it just grew from there, really.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So how old were you when you made the transition to DJ-oriented music, like away from punk and more into what we now know as DJ culture?

• 9:46Speaker 04

  I guess it was like a gradual process between the ages of like 16 and 20.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Okay. Was there a particular record that just spoke to you that said like, okay, this is the direction I want to go personally? For both of you, was there like one particular album that was?

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Uh, but for me, I reckon it was like some of Prince Paul's productions, The Bomb Squad, the things you mentioned.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I saw Prince Paul, he just remixed. Since I left you, I was listening to it earlier.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And because, you know, like the, the records we were finding in junk stores were just strange, weird records that weren't like sort of cool. Uh, like a lot of the beautiful funk and soul records from the States never made it out here, you know, so we were, they were junk store records.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  A lot of lounge music.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Exotica and strange stuff like that. And, and Prince Paul, I think, showed us that, you know, you can use anything and you can make music with humor from, from all these different bits and pieces. And we were like, we, we can do that, you know? And also we love like the Beach Boys and, and seventies rock and stuff. So we thought, imagine if we like, take his sort of approach, but like try and make like pop songs with it. And that's how the whole idea began.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  So how did you two meet each other?

• 11:04Speaker 04

  At high school.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  We met in high school. I, I, I was from Melbourne and at eighteen went and moved to this country town where I met Robbie and it was, it was a very, very for the, for the early nineties, very backward kind of place like country Victoria. And so it was just like a lot of football players and they were all the cool people and stuff like that. And like, so the music, people who are into music kind of gravitated to each other. So, so, um, we kind of started hanging out. And then the first thing I remember about Robbie was, um, like I was into all types of music, but he played me My Bloody Valentine and

• 11:43Speaker 05

  that just kind of broke my brain of like, what the hell is this? And I was like, oh, this is, this is really cool. I, I think I like this guy. I think I like his taste in music. And so, so from then, then on, we kind of, you know, just had a few other little small bands that, that were in, and then we both moved back down to Melbourne and started, you know, doing the punk thing just in our lounge room. Um, really badly. And, and it just kind of grew from there.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Did y'all, were y'all, any of y'all folks involved in music in any way? Or what did your, your, your parents do?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  No, I mean, my father was a, a pretty, a pretty, uh, my mom was a teacher, but I, I did, I do remember being fascinated with my father's record collection when I was a little kid. And when he would let me like, you know, handle the records, I'd, you know, obsessed with the liner notes and, you know, he had, he was like into like the band and Bob Dylan and Neil Young and Joe Mitchell and all that stuff. So.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Single songwriter stuff.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  I know that because you guys developed early, I guess, what, ninety-three, ninety-four is when you guys first started. So without sort of like culture colonialism, um, well, not culture colonialism, but just the, the idea of like, you know, now with the internet, uh, someone could release something and the entire world get it at the same time. Where, you know, really before nineteen ninety-seven, like just, it was regionalism, like certain parts of the world had certain types of music or whatnot. Now I know for Australia, kind of the inside joke, and again, this is before like the, the, really the, the age of the, the internet spreading, becoming law.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Like a lot of groups that were wildly popular, um, from America, from, that were wildly popular in Australia, really weren't that big in America. And I always wanted to know, I, I never got to talk to anyone like specifically from Australia or New Zealand to find out why. Like, I'll say that there was a point where like the Jurassic Five, pre-Fergie, Black Eyed Peas, uh, Ben Harper, like those acts could damn near sell out stadiums. And we'd hear it about in the United States, like, yo, man, do you know the Black Eyed Peas could sell out a stadium in Australia?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  And this is again, back when they were just like a, a club act, like a bar, you know, that, that sort of thing. But what, what, what is it? I noticed with Australia, especially for their, their embracing of like soul music, like you guys have that big giant soul festival down there where, you know, you guys have this, this, this festival for soul music that's sort of like Coachella, but it's just like all neo soul artists. And even now, everybody from Canberra, like, uh, and again, I, I, I've, my friends have told me that, you know, New Zealand and, and Australia, like, we tend to lump just that entire area one thing, but you know, I see this New Jersey. Right. And you guys are like, no, we're not the same, but,

• 14:52Speaker 02

  but there's so many like-minded, cool artists from down there that were like influenced by a certain type of soul music that's very niche to us here. Like, what, what was the, what's the radio like there? Like, wha- what is it that turned, uh, people on to that particular type of soul music? Whereas now, years later, like a lot of these acts are coming out that are like really incredible, like hiatus, coyote and, and, it's like a name of billion, but.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  What is it about? What was the music atmosphere like?

• 15:25Speaker 04

  It's a rock culture, I would say, like when we were starting out. So it's like, there's the pub venues. You know, there's a very heavy drinking culture in Australia. There's the pub venues and all the bands that we grew up with came through this pub scene. It's like hard rock and roll, like A C D C and this kind of thing. I guess there's the bad seeds, you came in the bad seeds as well, or the birthday party came out of that, that sort of dark pub scene as well in, in Melbourne. But then something started to change in the nineties, exactly like you're talking about. And I think it was just, uh, it was pre-internet, but people, there's just this passion for music that, that wasn't like that. And, and something just started, beautiful just started to grow. I don't know how it happened.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  But it, but it was very, very like when we started playing, it, you know, every band we played with was just two guitars, bass player, drums. And so we'd rock up with a sampler and, and the sound people were like, what's this? What do we, what do we do? And no one knew what it was. So I was like, in that, in that way, we were kind of breaking ground in this country as far as like, you know, every little festival we do, it was like, every band was the same guitar, drums, everything like that. And then we just have, you know, S nine hundred sampler and some shitty organs that work sometimes and, and didn't. And so I, so yeah, to your question, it was a very rock and roll, um, culture back then in Australia.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  So the S was the, the Kai S nine hundred? Was that your, your weapon of choice at the time? The Kai joint?

• 16:54Speaker 05

  That was the jam, yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  A nine hundred?

• 16:56Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Oh shit. Cause then they came with the nine fifty, the nine fifty. I think that was the one that, the premium used the nine fifty, but I remember the nine hundred.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Oh, we were loading, we were loading off, uh, the songs off floppy disk when we played live. Every song was on a different floppy disk.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  So we'd stop a song and then have to load for forty-five seconds and just sit there in silence. Or just try and make up some stupid banter in between, like some ends. Yeah, again.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Again. Go coast in the house. You, you guys and D'Angelo. Okay. That's good to know. To this day, D'Angelo still uses floppy disk. I didn't even know that.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  That, that can, that still. I didn't know they still made them. Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Do you know how hard they are to find?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Floppy disk.

• 17:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. We, we had to search the internet to find floppy disks.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  For this show we just did, yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Wait, so to this day you still use it? That's your weapon of choice?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  We, we wanted to pull out the old samplers for this show that we just did. So we wanted to bring back and, and really show how we made the music, but we couldn't find floppy disks anywhere.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Tony had to order them online and they arrived like two days before the show, just in time. So.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Wow. Really?

• 18:10Speaker 05

  We're not, we're not using that. We, we're kind of using computers now as, as our main backing track. So we're not relying on the, the forty-five second loads anymore. But we'll use the sampler as just to trigger samples during the show. Cause that's the way we used to do it. We, I mean, and it's such a fun, you know, it's, it's a fun way to do it.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  What was the period of which you guys discovered like breakbeat culture and as far as like, at, at least, I, I would like to think that you guys, you know, had to put a lot of time in researching like all the sounds and for, for, you know, for your arsenal of sounds, uh, your drums, your samples and whatnot. So at what point did you guys discover, or at least like pu- pu- do away with, uh, kind of your rock backdrop and get to what we know as like breakbeat culture?

• 19:01Speaker 04

  I think, I think it was like a gradual process and all of a sudden we realized, like, like I think we had, you know, all these big sounds and big dreams in our heads, but you know, no money. And then you start sampling an old orchestral record. Cause a lot of the records that we were finding in junk stores were like schmaltzy kind of like junk, like fifth Andre Cosco, Stellana's strings and, you know.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  James Last.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  All that stuff. But, but we were, we could find beautiful little bits and then realize we can create these, you know, big sounds with, you know, for, for, for two, for, from a two dollar record. And, and we gradually realized, look, we're not great musicians at guitar and we can't sing, but maybe we can invent our own little world. Um, if we don't, if we just use samples and it sort of grew from there. And then, um, you know, a whole bunch of records were coming out, like the, the, uh, Dust Brothers produced the, the.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Dust Brothers, yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  And, you know, there were early Chemical Brothers records and all these records had breakbeats. There was.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  DJ Shadow. He was like.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Uh, De La Soul and even like the Far Side records and, uh, all these kind of early hip hop records. And we kind of in our head, you know, it's because we're so geographically removed from, um, the rest of the world, you know, we would just get strange little influences coming through before the internet. So in some way, weird way, like a bit of Prince Paul, a bit of the Bomb Squad, a bit of the Beach Boys, a bit of My Bloody Valentine, all kind of made sense to us. And, um, it, we just kind of started developing our own sound from there.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  When, when you formed the group, uh, was it instantaneous that you called yourself the Avalanches? Or were you just like, you know, DJ Robbie, DJ Tony? Forty-nine FM, on down under.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  No, we, we had a few, we had a few name incarnations before we came up with the Avalanches.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  The Avalanche's name was actually on a, was a surf rock group from the fifties, one of these bands we sampled. And then, and we used to change our name every time we played. And that, that one just stuck.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Oh, it just stuck?

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Oh, just randomly you just decided to.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Maybe we had a goo- a good gig the day that we called ourselves the Avalanches and we went, ah, maybe this is an moment. We'll stick with this name. Cause I think we, we had a few gigs where we were different names, so.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  What was the first product that you guys worked on when you decided to form The Avalanches?

• 21:42Speaker 04

  It was like, I think it was a mixtape we made in the studio, I was talking about it, the film school studio that we made to send around to various promoters to try and get a gig, try and get shows. And then I think they pulled a couple of tracks off that and our friend put it out as our first seven inch, it was called Rock City. Yeah, I think that was the first release. We have a seven inch record.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, even then, like, was your theory, what was the theory based on how to create the music? I know a lot of times, especially with where we are today with hip hop culture in America, you know, and I won't say that flipping samples, of course, you know, flipping is a way of survival to at least avoid, you know, lawsuits or getting caught out there. But I mean, there's definitely a slew of producers that flip just for the sport of it, you know, especially like these post J Dilla times where he could take something, make it so unrecognizable that you

• 22:51Speaker 02

  don't know it. So, but for you guys, like, were you guys even aware of kind of sample culture, almost being an endangered species in the mid to late 90s to the point where, you know, now a lot of the backdrop from America is far from that. But were you guys aware of it then? Or was it just, you know?

• 23:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember, well, I think we were aware that records that were made in that way, that that were rare and were, and you know, to find, find them, they would like sort of these gems that would stick out. Like if a well-made sample-based record is just like such a beautiful thing and they don't come along all the time, you know, but we were, we kind of thought, no, like, we're a million miles from anywhere, no one's ever gonna hear this. So we can just sample anything and it's never gonna matter. We were just doing it for ourselves.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  Famous last words.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, wait, Fonte, I was gonna say, it's funny that he said that all the way in Australia, because that's also where I was when I decided to play Really Love, because I quite, I didn't understand.

• 24:07Speaker 06

  This is going everywhere.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought I was on some like local underground radio station that the world wouldn't hear of. And then that shit happened. Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  We've kind of got the same attitude to samples of just like, ah, we'll just use it and see what happens.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  No, it's quite soft in the mixer, you can't tell.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's, let's, we're 25 minutes in, let's cut to the goddamn chase. How? How?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  That's my first question. How? Can you tell us the story of Since I Left You? And it's hard to explain, it's really hard, even when, you know, that album's so perfect to me, that even when I explain to people who are, you know, just casual music listeners, like, they're still not getting the genius that every last thing you hear had to be manipulated and edited in a way so that it fits melodically, structurally. So, tell us the beginning of how you guys even thought to make this, this, this classic album.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  I think we, I mean, I'll let Tony jump in, but we were kind of doing gigs in these rock venues, we're using samplers and our friend Darren would emcee over the top and we had some live drums. And then as we got into the studio more, we realized it sounds so much cooler if we just remove ourselves from it, you know, remove our voices, remove any live drums and we'll do it just with samples. And it was almost like,

• 25:42Speaker 05

  It was a bit of a bad Beastie Boys or something to start off with, with this kind of rapping that was a little bit Dr. Octagon kind of lyrics and a big kind of beast. And it was, you know, some cool stuff, but then we didn't, you know, it was like, let's just make all the malady samples and use no voice.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  Man, how long was that, a process of working on that record? How long did it take y'all to make it?

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Probably like 18 intense months, but there was like, maybe three or four years of like, collecting samples before then and finding your way. And then it's almost like there's this, I mean, there's two sides to it. There's the technical side of how you actually make it with the samplers or whatever that we can talk about. But the other side of like, how you think, how, you know, how you conceive it or the feeling behind it is harder to talk about it because it's like, we just hit this period of a beautiful flow. And it was really just a love for music and discovery. And when I listen to it now, that's what I can hear, I can hear like, a 21-year-old me just so in love with music, sampling and discovering

• 26:48Speaker 04

  strange old records that that, I think that joy is just still what people can, is infectious.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  It definitely comes through.

• 26:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, it definitely came through for me. I think, you know, at the time when I discovered you guys, this was when my band, Little Brother, we had put out our first record, The Listening. And Amir, actually, had listed his, I guess, the top albums he was listening to at the time in Rolling Stone. And so he listed like, like 50 Cent, Little Brother, and then, you know, The Avalanche, Since I Left You. And I was like, all right, if he, if they on the same list with us, I know I shit banging, so these motherfuckers gotta have something. So I'm like, so I'm like, all right.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  That's how you discovered it?

• 27:30Speaker 06

  Straight up, yeah. I mean, I had heard of them. That was how I actually listened to them. Like, I had always seen, but like you said, you know, y'all kind of the rock culture and joint. So I just thought they were like a rock band. I thought they all was kind of like The Strokes or like, that was around that time. You know what I'm saying? I thought it was just that kind of, you know, that, that rock revival shit that was popping at the time. So I was like, all right, this is just another rock band. But then I heard the album and I hadn't heard anything. I just went into it blind. I was like, all right, well, let me check it out. And man, that shit blew me the fuck away. And the thing about it, like up until that point, you know, introduced him by DJ Shadow. I mean, we grew up on Bomb Squad and like Prince Paul and all these guys, Dust Brothers, all those guys doing that kind of collage and pace stuff. But when I heard Introducing, I was like,

• 28:14Speaker 06

  oh, wow, like, this is amazing. And it was something that kind of took it, for me, made it, it felt like y'all really, it made it more emotional. Like, that was, I think, maybe the first time sample-based music instrumental in that way. I was like, man, this is really emotional. But then, that was when I heard Introducing. But then when I heard y'all shit, and that damn Three, Two Hearts and Three Four Times, bro, I played that shit, man, I played the MP3 tags off that motherfucker, bruh. Listen.

• 28:43Speaker 06

  I ran that record in the ground, man. And, and the thing, you know, when Tony, you were talking about just kind of that spirit of just, you know, the, of, you know, that discovery, the thing that I always liked about all you guys' records is that it, the way you use the samples, it doesn't feel like in kind of just a bastardized way, it really makes you want to search what you guys use. It makes you more, for me, just as a lover of music, it just made me more curious to know more about the stuff you guys use. And like, even like with Since I Left You, you know, the way it starts is, you know, Since I Left You. But then at the end, when you bring back the, just can't get you ever since the day I met you. It's like a story.

• 29:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I was like, yo, that shit is so fucking dope. Yeah. So like, how do y'all plot all that shit out? And like, I know the sample you say you use was like the S, you using the S900, were you tracking it on tape? Was it, like, was it Pro Tools at that time? Like, how were y'all storing all these ideas?

• 29:44Speaker 04

  It was like, S900, and then we got a S2000, which had more memory, Akai S2000. We were like, oh, this is, this is insane. We're gonna be able to do anything with this. No stopping us now. So, and by that, I think by the time we were making Since I Left You, we had a zip drive for the two Akai S2000s.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Yes, sir. Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Get the fuck out of here, yo.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  I know. It was literally just that and, and a shitty old turntable and $2 junk store records and.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Motherfucker, what?

• 30:19Speaker 04

  But you know what? That, the limitation is, is what is beautiful because then it's

• 30:23Speaker 06

  What drives the ingenuity?

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then we had a, there's an op code program called Studio Vision. It was a sequencer, it didn't have any audio, but that ran MIDI into the samplers. And so that's how we could sequence the samples. And it was all done like that. And if I came to work again in the morning, like, there was nothing on tape, no Pro Tools, I would have to load it all up again and to hear what the song sounded like and to remember, you know, or if I wanted to burn a demo, make a demo, I'd have to like, bounce it, burn it onto CD, put it in my CD Walkman and go for a walk or something to have a listen to it. Like, that's where we're at. Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I was gonna ask, do you have all the discs saved from that album? Or was it just like, once you track it and once it's on tape or once it's, you've recorded, then you just unplugged your machine and that's it? You don't save the samples? You don't, any of those things? Like, is there, like, if I were to ask you, like, could you get the, either Diners Only?

• 31:30Speaker 06

  The stems from whatever.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, Pablo Cruz, like, could you actually get the floppy disk?

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Some of them I've got. I've got some. And I've got, I've kept most of the records. When I sold my record collection, but I kept all the Since I Left You ones. And we, and we just found the stems recently from, because we eventually tracked it to an early version of Pro Tools when we went to like a proper studio. We were like, wow, this is like,

• 31:55Speaker 04

  and they had like about four different engineers helping us to like get it from this, from out the back of our samplers onto recording into Pro Tools. And then we mixed it from there. So we've got those stems and some of the, some of the floppy disks.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 32:30Speaker 07

  My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way, and I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like, what matters now? Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt, and music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Mario Lopez from All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops, while Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at traded. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Okay, so what is the, what is the accurate number? I know that, you know, sometimes these stories can be exaggerated. How many samples do you believe are on that album?

• 33:55Speaker 04

  I've got no idea. I reckon there would be, like, I think I figured it out once by working out how much the S5000 could store and how many samples in a program and, um, cause it was every, every zip, every song was, you know, the sampler memory was full. So it was probably like around 3,000, cause all the little drum hits and little bird noises.

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Money. Yeah. Yo, I will say, man, when y'all use the, uh, the part that got me, cause like, I mean, I listened to the record, I was like, okay, that's dope. The part where I realized that, I'm like, okay, they know what's up. When y'all use the Raekwon, the avalanche rock, I was like, oh shit, I was like, yes, yes.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so your guess, like, I've read 900 samples, I've read 4,000 samples. I mean, of course, for the legend of it, 4,000 samples is a way better thing. And I believe, you know, I believe anything, but, eh, baseball guess, baseball estimate.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  I think two, two to 3,000, like, like when you consider every little drum hit and everything, cause it was, it was a lot.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  So, okay, when you're, when you guys are at least at the, let's say the 90% mark, let's say that you have 15 songs down already, as you're creating this album, in your mind, are you like, there's no way in hell, we can ever clear this or sell this to the outside world? Like, I mean, at this rate, is it just a passion project to you?

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  I agree. But, but I think we were just thinking, not even of the legality of the whole thing. We were just like, trying to put together this amazing thing and, David was just kind of, the record company, you do your thing and just get it out. So it was good for us because we didn't have that limitation, whereas now we're, you know, we have to be more aware of samples we use and, you know, clearing and all that kind of stuff. But back then, it was still a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a, more of a free-for-all, I guess, would you say, Robbie?

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, but also, nobody knew who we were, like, we didn't, we didn't think anyone would ever, you know, it would get a wide audience. So in that way, we were free to do whatever, to sample whatever we wanted, you know, like, we kind of just didn't really, like, I think as we, as it was growing, we knew, we were very passionate, and we knew that it was this beautiful thing, but we certainly didn't expect it to be, become what it was. So we weren't restrained by thinking that, you know, we have a high profile and people are gonna, a lot of people are gonna hear this record.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  Uh, we've done an EP before that as well and didn't clear one sample from it. So we just kind of like, didn't care.

• 36:56Speaker 06

  Be nice.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  All right, so.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  We can't, can't do that anymore.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, when I was gonna ask, so, um, when people came to y'all about, you know, samples and stuff, what was it like? Were they like honored? Were they like, like fuck you, pay me? Like, what was the, what was the feeling like?

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Back then, it was, it was pretty nice. I mean, some people didn't even know what sampling was, or, you know, we would track down someone who they'd inherited like their grandfather's, um, catalog, you know, in a Willis, they didn't even know they had it, and we would find them and say, hey, you know, you own this music and, um, so, and some people just were like a flat-out no, like Rodgers and Hammerstein and people like that.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Oh, so there's songs that did not make it?

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Samples, samples that didn't make it, yeah. And then, uh, other people like John Cale, like, he was super cool, cause like, uh, that song, Two Hearts in Three Four Time, it was gonna work out that like, there was five main samples and they all wanted 20% each, so we were gonna get nothing. And, and John Cale was like, no, no, we, the sample owners should all take a little bit less, so the dudes that made the song can get a little bit too, and so.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  What the, what?

• 38:11Speaker 06

  That's what's up.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Wait a minute, yo, no, wait, that never happens.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  That, that's probably never happened again.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  It's never happened again.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Can y'all represent us, please? Wait a minute, this, this, this never ever happens in real life, yo.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  This is being unknown in Australia.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I got people that like, come after me for like a snare drum.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Let alone, and want like 70% of it, that's a snare drum.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so when you're, this, this was on, uh, XL Recordings, so when you played the final product to your company, how long did it take for them to even start the process to clear this? Cause again, like I.

• 38:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, man, yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Usually, okay, the, so the obstacles that I run into are, okay, say, uh, I create a song and, uh, okay, I have this situation once where I used Hey Bulldog by The Beatles, and they wanted like 100% of the publishing, which then left no space for like the other things I sampled. And I, I've learned, I've learned at least in the last 10 years that relationships are key to making these things happen, and oftentimes lawyers and red tape, lawyers and administrative people are kind of the, the demons of the situation.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  And half the time, if you can get to the actual artists themselves, then you can, you know, sort of iron out and make it smooth. So, again, how?

• 39:56Speaker 05

  We, we had this, we had this amazing lady called Pat Shanahan, who, I mean, she would have been in her 60s or 70s, she just passed away recently. Um, so she would clear all our samples for us, and she'd done like Beastie Boys records and Ice-T and all stuff like that. So she used to work at Island Records for many years and had a lot of contacts just through the whole industry. So when we were clearing a sample, she, she would be like, hey, I know him, I used to work with him at here, or I know, so she had a lot of personal relationships with all these people.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Relationships, okay.

• 40:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, so that helped us so much. Um, and, and she would just be able to get things over the line for us that, that, you know, if it was a lawyer or anything, or anyone else like that, it just wouldn't have happened. So we were, I mean, we were so lucky to have her, um, for that record and the one after.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Wonderful lady, and, yeah. She became a dear friend, actually, Pat, she was just the most, most lovely lady, and I think she, she worked with, who did she work at before Island? I can't remember, but she sort of knew everybody in the industry since like the 60s, and had seen that there was a niche, uh, for someone who just specifically cleared samples. And so I think she left the record label, and then the first record she cleared was like the Tone Loc record or something like that. And then she did Ice-T, and then she did Beck and the Beastie Boys, and, um, yeah, so she helped us a lot. And then there were other personal relationships, like Richard Russell at XL, um, helped us clear the Madonna sample, uh, in second track.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that was to be, even when I heard it in the car, now, my, my story of hearing it, I heard that album on my birthday, I was doing a DJ gig in Indiana, and I was born in January, so it was like cold, and, um, the guy that picked me up from the airport played it, and, um, you know, because the album runs, uh, sort of as a continuous flow, like it doesn't go from song to song, I just thought he was, you know, normally, when the guy picks me up from the airport, they're always like sneaking their.

• 42:12Speaker 06

  Trying to play their beats.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. So.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Complaining.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, no, but for real, from like, from the airport to my hotel room, I was under the impression he was playing me his shit, and that's just, that had me wide open, and then like finally he gave me the bad news 20 minutes into it, like, oh, no, no, no, this is some cats from Australia, uh, called The Avalanches. I was like, oh man, I thought it was your shit, all right, nevermind.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  I was just about to sign you, man.

• 42:42Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  What, what wound up happening? I asked him, can I borrow the CD so I could hear it, and like. Actually, the same story with Little Brother. When I heard Fonte's thing, like, I rarely have dedicated so many, like, a lot of hours just to listen to product over and over and over again. And I just, I just couldn't believe it. Well, because you guys worked on, and what you said earlier about how limitation, uh, studio limitations makes you more creative, that makes sense, because a lot of my favorite guys, like yous, you know, with Fonte's group, what did you guys do everything on, Fruity Loops?

• 43:25Speaker 06

  Everything was Fruity Loops and a Compaq. We had, we had a Compaq computer.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Fruity Loops and, you know, I know guys-

• 43:32Speaker 06

  Cool Edit Pro, that was what we recorded the vocals in, Cool Edit Pro.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Or Sony Acid, like, something real primitive.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  So, what I want to know is, how do you, how do you bend samples to your will melodically, especially back then? Without, you know, the aid of a MacBook Pro to instantly, you know, you could do that-

• 43:55Speaker 05

  Time stretching and-

• 43:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, mixing key and all that shit.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  But how are you able to bend these samples to your will so that they melodically fit the song? And with, with that primitive equipment, how?

• 44:10Speaker 04

  I, I think it comes back to what you're saying about just how limitations can be really, uh, powerful, because it was just like, I just remember going, this, this Akl Sampler, I'm just gonna get really fucking good at this one thing, and that's all I'm gonna do, you know? And so, once, it just becomes almost invisible, so you're not even thinking about how to use it, you know it so well. And so, it was just, just literally tuning samples in the sampler. So, um, you know, you might have, start with a drum beat and, uh, kind of a beginning sample, and the beginning sample just kind of gets you going, it might not even be there at the end. But then it was just literally getting samples in tune, um, and a whole bunch of samples

• 44:52Speaker 04

  just on the MIDI keyboard that are living in the sampler's memory, and, and playing around, and then going, oh, that might be a verse, that might be a chorus, I'm kind of stuck, save it, put it away, maybe give it to Tony, he'll see if he can find a sample for it, and slowly and slowly the layers build up. So it's just using your ear, tuning samples by ear.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  So-

• 45:12Speaker 06

  That is not easy to do, people, that is, that is, that is not easy to do.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Which leads to my next question. So, when I asked the Bomb Squad how they created Nation of Millions, I guess Keith Shockley explained to me that, basically, the process that they were doing, they would have jam sessions. So the way that the engineer was set up was Eric Sattler had his sampler on his side of the room, uh, Keith Shockley was probably on turntable doing his stuff, and then Hank would have his bits, and they would start with a drum beat, and when they were satisfied, their, their theory was that if you took everything away, like, are the drums banging enough? Like, the drums have to be perfect.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Once the drums are there, then each chef would add their particular ingredient into the, the, the musical stew until it felt complete and felt right. So how, how do you guys source, or, like, what's the back and forth or the work process to adding things? Like, you know, whose idea was it like, oh, I got this horse noise over here? Even with the first song on Wildflower, where the kid is talking, I don't know if that's a soundbite, and you guys manipulated his voice to go right in key with that intro,

• 46:37Speaker 02

  but, you know, even with the, the, the Wildflower intro, like, how do you guys, how do you guys communicate back and forth, like, what gets inside the, the, the, the meal? And, and also subsequently, how do you tell each other that doesn't work? Like, uh, okay, I don't know if that fits or whatever, or is it just like, whatever works, thrown in?

• 47:01Speaker 05

  I, I think, I mean, definitely Robbie is the, the great producer of, of the records, and, and it's almost like where, you know, we, we used to have all the other members in the band, and we'd, you know, have a little sample, you know, loops, a couple of things that'd go together or something like that, but then kind of give them over to him where he's putting it all together and, you know, chopping up everything, and, I mean, it's just, what he's amazing at is just doing all the, the layers and, um, the incredible production work, and, you know, the horse noises, and all, all that kind of thing.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that horse noise, man, I was like, the hell?

• 47:41Speaker 04

  That was, that was because, no, no, I heard, I was like, uh, it was like DJ Mugs and Cypress Hill, and you know that squeal noise he had?

• 47:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  I'm gonna try and make a noise like that, and then I was just watching an old western movie, and there was this horse, I was like, that, that might work, so.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  How'd you get the horse to clear the sample?

• 48:02Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 48:03Speaker 06

  That first man.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  The horse to this day still doesn't know that he's on the record.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Okay, well, how did you guys even know? Because movie soundbites are also, um, a big part of the, the, kind of the, the, the structure here. How, how did you guys even source or even figure out clearing all of the non-musical elements of the song that had to be cleared? Like, I'm certain that with movie dialogue, or was it just like the Wild West? Like, if they come to you, then you admit it, or? Never mind, this is-

• 48:47Speaker 06

  Please don't incriminate yourself.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  I think, never mind, I got my answer.

• 48:55Speaker 06

  This is, this is Questlove Supreme, not DJ Black.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Oh my God, don't never compare me to him.

• 49:04Speaker 05

  Would you like our answer or the record label's answer?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Never mind, I, I just, never mind, forget it, forget it.

• 49:12Speaker 06

  One, uh, one thing I was, I was curious to know, um, for two things. One, um, just the making of a Wildflower, because, you know, we've read a lot, and if you guys have talked a lot about the making of Since I Left You. Wildflower was like, other than D'Angelo's Black Messiah, that was, those were neck and neck, those were like my two most anticipated records of that decade.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  And took just as long.

• 49:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, just as long. And, and I remember we, you know, I was, we'd been hearing about it for a while, and I was like, it dropped, and I was like, holy shit, this is really here. And, um, you know, it was really inspiring to me because it sounded like you guys picked up, like, right where you left off. It didn't even, you, you could listen to Since I Left You and Wildflower back to back, and, uh, aside from the cameos, you know, you would sound like they were done at the same time. So I was curious to know, just, uh, you know, working on that record, and, you know, what took so long? A, what took so long from, uh, Since I Left You to Wildflower, and two, uh, the, you guys picking your MCs, because you really pick, you know, guys that weren't, you know, like, you know, Danny Brown and Camp Lo, and, you know what I mean?

• 50:15Speaker 06

  Like, you guys worked with some kind of unorthodox, uh, people, so how do y'all go about choosing it?

• 50:21Speaker 04

  That, I mean, Camp Lo, that first Camp Lo, Up Town Saturday Night, was like our all-time favorite record, we'll just play that non-stop, and some great sampling in that record too. So, and we actually sampled Camp Lo on Since I Left You, so it was really nice to kind of go full circle and then work with them.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Whenever we played live, we'd always have a bit where Lucchini would, um, come in after a song, so we were massive Camp Lo fans.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Before you answer Fonte's question, how, how did you guys, how did you guys deliver the album live? Like, how does that even happen? Or what's the, like, I only saw you guys, when you guys finally came to The Tonight Show for the Wildflower album. That's the first time I got to see you, like, actually perform. But when you're, when you made Since I Left You, then how do you decide how to deliver this in concert?

• 51:20Speaker 04

  We still, when we were touring Since I Left You, we were still like, in live band mode, because that's, we still had that element from, you know, when we were starting out. So we would sort of do like, kind of like, it was like a big party with live drums, and kind of like, I don't know-

• 51:38Speaker 05

  Bass guitar, some keys. But, but most of everything was just like on a, on a MIDI keyboard, and we'd have the samples, it would just be that key, chorus, break, horse. So it was, it was just triggering live, and then the drummer playing along to it, so there's no like, you know, time code or anything into a computer or anything like that when we did tours Since I Left You. So it was still pretty organic in that way.

• 52:06Speaker 06

  One of the guys in your band, man, uh, homie, I'm a big fan of, uh, Jonty, how did y'all, how did y'all hook up? And what's his role in you guys' band?

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, he was, uh, part of our touring group for, around the Wildflower era. We came and did Cottella, and, and we, I think we heard his first EP, and it was really cool, and then he did some vocals on Wildflower, and then we were like, come, come on the road, yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  And so, he also, he also did a, um, it was a Since I Left You, uh, he put a band together of about fifteen musicians and played Since I Left You front to back.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Really?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  And, and did it live around Australia, and we were like, oh, let's, let's go check this out. And it was kind of like, really weird to just be, you know, we hadn't played, yeah, and we hadn't played so long, and we're just like, hey, we should get back on the road, like, do this ourselves. But it was really, it was really cool to see, and, and, um, and from there, I mean, you know, we developed a relationship, um-

• 53:08Speaker 06

  Nah, he's, he's really dope, I'm a big fan of his, man. Yeah, but what, so, but the, the gap between the first album and Wildflower, you know, that eighteen years, sixteen years, whatever, um, what, what happened?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  I gotta admit, I thought they threw you guys under the jail. I really admit, I was like, oh. They got thrown under the jail. You ain't got our money, fuck it, y'all go to jail.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  I mean, I mean, there's many ways to answer that question, but the short answer is like was like,

• 53:42Speaker 04

  you know, you make since I left you with no money, no equipment. You have a success, you get an advance to make your second record, you buy all this equipment. And then, but it doesn't flow and it doesn't happen.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  The magic has lost.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Sitting there messing around with compressors all day and like outboard gear. And we had none of that before and it took a long time to get back to that point of realizing it's not about that. It's just about your imagination, a turntable and a sampler. And you can add all that shit later in the studio, but it was like, you've got to write the songs, the beautiful songs first, you know, and all the gear in the world that will help you. But you know, we were young and we had to learn that ourselves. And now we're back to like, I don't have a studio in my house anymore. Like I just back to the same simple.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Basic.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  I started.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  So you purposely wanted to go back to square one?

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, it took us 16 years to realize that.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  But eventually, and I, and the thing is like, like in all honesty, as, as the time went on, kind of since I left you started to grow in stature. So we were, a, a, a lot of pressure started to build and then that pressure, you know, came a little bit from the record company, just from fans in general and everything. When's it going to happen? And that got to us a, a, a lot as well, I think, as it went along and, and you know, we, and then like Robbie said, we kind of just got back to the essence of what it was all about. And almost just in our own personal journeys, kind of decluttered our minds and stopped with all the pressure within ourselves and just let go of all that, that gulf of all the equipment.

• 55:19Speaker 05

  And from that point, like it didn't take that long at all to finish.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  I was, I'm just curious, what, so what equipment did you use for Wildflower and, and the new one specifically? Same, the same.

• 55:33Speaker 05

  No, we use Pro Tools for this one. We, we were using Vision for, for since I left you, which that program actually, they stopped making it in 1997. So, and Robbie was still using that up to 2016.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Hey, if it ain't broke.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  How long did it take you to learn how to master, um, updated equipment? Or were you just stubborn? Like I'll never, if it's this or nothing?

• 56:09Speaker 04

  I, I was stubborn for a long time.

• 56:15Speaker 04

  But now I'm just like, it's Pro Tools and I just edit in Pro Tools and it's just like second nature to me again. So it's just like, it's just like a tape recorder and it reminds me of like, when I was like 15 and learning how to make tape loops and stuff, you know, it's like, as long, as long as I keep it simple, you know, I, it's, it's cool.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  What, what's the, what's, what are the pros and cons to, you know, in Pro Tools, you're now able to see your music and your samples. Um, and back in the day you couldn't. So what, what are the advantages and disadvantages to that, if any?

• 56:50Speaker 04

  That's an amazing question because you're so right. I mean, you can't see the waveforms within the sampler, you know, you don't see, you're just listening and you're kind of like looking at the window almost, you know? So it's just a feeling thing and it has been a big change because, you know, Pro Tools can grid everything so easily and everything can get tight and like.

• 57:10Speaker 05

  You can make so many different versions of, of the one song. And it's almost like you, you can again, get too out of control with.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Too many options.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Limitlessness of things like Pro Tools and, and even just going back to Wildflower, the way, you know, we, we used to sample, just, just pick up a record, put it on, find a sample from a, you know, put a beat, simple like that, but, but during Wildflower, we, we just for some reason would go, okay, let's just, you know, collect samples. So we just collect samples with that, like thousands and categorize them without even really making songs. We're just like, we'll do that later. So it almost became like this.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Story.

• 57:49Speaker 05

  A, an administration process of making music.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  So, so that just that the limitlessness of that.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  16 years later, we're like, that doesn't work.

• 58:01Speaker 05

  It's not working.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna ask, just in the, uh, 16 years, you know, between those records, um, were your, what were you guys' main source of income? Like, how was y'all able to stay going for that long?

• 58:14Speaker 04

  It was a struggle, you know, and it's not, it's certainly not, not what people think. It's like, you know, being in a band and like, for example, the song since I, like talking about sample clearance, like the song since I left you is like, I don't own any of it, you know, it's all owned by samples. So we don't get really royalties to live off. So it was tough and we would get offers to do some big shows in that time, but we kind of thought, you know, if it gets to like 2010 and we haven't put a new record out, we can't, we don't really want to go and do a show because it just seems like we're.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  An oldies ad.

• 58:47Speaker 05

  Rehashing. Yeah, I mean, you know, maxing out credit, maxing out credit cards.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Were, were you guys, did you ever opt or consider like just going back to your roots and DJing? Like just doing DJ sets as a duo, but without the pressure of here's our new album, that sort of thing?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  We did that a few times and that, and that was able to, um, to earn us some, some income.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:17Speaker 05

  Um, we did like a, a, a couple of songs for a musical, King Kong musical that was here in, in Melbourne. So that kind of helps it. And we did have a lot of help from the record company.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  Who, who had just signed to, so it was like an independent record company who were just like being.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Modular.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  Half, half, yeah, half bought out by Universal, which has a lot of money. So, so you know, our, our man there, Steve Pav, uh, Steve Pav would really help us out by constantly asking them if we can have a little bit more. And say, it's just around the corner, you know, six months away. Six months later, it'd be the same thing. So.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Finesse.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  He was wonderful, actually.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was really good before that.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 1:00:28Speaker 07

  I'm like a kid when, when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions, you know? Whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign, you know, there's every night you play a show and, and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are, are the expert here.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jason Timp from Hoops Tonight with Jason Timp. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  I always wanted to know, okay, so I'm, I'm not, I'm, I'm probably closer to, to Robbie's theory on kind of staying, uh, intentionally ignorant to technology so that it doesn't destroy me. You know, like I don't, I don't, that's my excuse. Like I don't want to learn all this technology because then I'll lose what I had in my magic period, that sort of thing. But I have to know, um, so when I first saw the demonstration of, I hope I'm saying this right. And I, I prefaced all that to say like, I really don't know the technical terms, but, uh, with the program Melodyne

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  that enables you to sort of like erase the DNA of a song. Um, like if I, I could take a Stevie Wonder song and erase his vocals out of it and make it just an instrumental, that sort of thing. When I first saw that, I saw it at Jazzy Jeff's house and the first thing I said to him was, yo, like, I can't wait to see what happens when the avalanches get a hold of this machine where they can now really manipulate and bend sounds to the, you know.

• 1:02:54Speaker 06

  Or like y'all on, or like Ableton, like the avalanches were Ableton. It's like, that's fucking scary.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. So like, have you guys even created songs to that level? Like it's, it's weird. I, I don't know if someone has fully taken advantage of, like it's, to me, it seems so grandiose and so intimidating that I haven't even, I, I think maybe once last year I decided like, all right, let me, let me take the Fender Rhodes from this particular song that I don't have the stems to and see if I could build a song from that. But besides that one moment, like I, I kind of thought it was going to be just a, a flood of

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  kind of a, a return or at least a part two of the sample Wow, Wow West that was, you know, 86 to 92, that sort of thing. But what this sort of sampling, have you guys ever been, have you guys even decided or considered that level of sampling where you start erasing the DNA of, of samples that exist to create new material? I hope I asked that question right.

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:05Speaker 05

  Totally did. It, it's, it feels like it's a strange kind of.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Also feel like it's a.

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  Concept.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  A crime. So.

• 1:04:12Speaker 05

  A little bit, a little bit.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  I feel every time I use it, I asked someone last week to like, you know, extract some vocals from a song and even then I felt guilty. So my heart wasn't into making it. You know, no, it's, it's, it's, it'll, cause it'll start off innocent now with just music, but then who knows like what they'll use it for 30 years from now. With identity theft. So I think I'm kind of scared of jumping in that pool because I feel like this is the beginning of the danger period. But what is your relationship with that level of, of technology and sampling?

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  I don't think we've thought about it too much. I know we bought Maladine maybe three years ago and I personally haven't used it once. We were like, yeah, it's gonna be great. Kind of looked at it, went, no, not now. But I feel like that's kind of in a way dishonoring the sample and the people who played on it. And I don't know, maybe if that's just kind of an old fashioned attitude and then the future is just gonna be like taking out, you know, Stevie.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  There was never that one song, you were like, man, if I could just get rid of the vocals on that.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  I guess, yeah, we try and do that with filters, but um, you know, who knows what the future holds. I don't know how Robbie thinks about that, but.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  I don't know. Like, I think there's some cool stuff, like you mentioned Ableton and stuff, like been able to stretch a sample like a really, really, really far way further than we have could. Like, we've done some of that kind of stuff. But I also love, you know, the art form of like, like, say, the vocal sample for Since I Left You has got music underneath. We just had to filter it and then I had to chop it very finely, but you can still hear all these little bells and stuff. And it all adds to this sort of magic, even though it's an attitude and stuff. It's like, it's kind of, it's kind of beautiful that way, too. You know, I think things would get quite clean and really like pristine sounding if you can like forensically remove elements, but I don't know if it would still have the magic.

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it take away like the layers that you don't necessarily hear, but you feel. And then if you do take them away, you're like, hang on, something's missing here, but I can't tell what it is.

• 1:06:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's the thing with like sample based music. It's just so like, even when like trying to replace stuff or, you know, and it's just like, dude, when you sample something, you're not just sampling that song, you're sampling that day, you're sampling the engineer, you're sampling the outboard gear. You know, there's so many things that made it what it was. And when you start manipulating that, a lot of times you can't kind of get too far away from home to where you lose the magic.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's like a spirit, a spirit in the music.

• 1:06:58Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, engineers should get paid for samples.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  Shut up, Steve.

• 1:07:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's real rap. I'm gonna start a petition.

• 1:07:10Speaker 06

  On the Sugar Network.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Hey, oh, another question I have. Um, I have a theory, but I want to see if I'm correct. Um, what was the, what was the inspiration for the Wildflower album cover?

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  It was that Sly Stone cover.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  I knew it.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  When I first saw it, I was like, wow. When, when, literally when I first saw it, I was like, wow, like in an alternative world where Sly was, was happy with his life and everything was going swimmingly. This would have been the album cover to There's a Ride Going On.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  And always, wow, okay.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  That was it. And we actually got it, uh, found a world quilting champion who, she lives in Nebraska. And she quilted that cover for us and we just took a photo of it. So we wanted it to look real like the Sly cover, you know.

• 1:08:05Speaker 06

  Wow. So that's an actual quilt. Yeah, she made it.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a quilt.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:08:10Speaker 06

  Oh shit.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  No, I thought it was Anna made it. You said, oh my God, you're right. I'm looking at it right now.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  Wow, do one of y'all own it? I was about to say, yeah, who got it?

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 05

  He still sleeps with it on his bed.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  You do?

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  Congratulations, Robbie. I will be coming there for it.

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  Yo, man, I wanted to ask y'all, um, on the, on the new record, man, bruh, where did y'all find Terrence Trent Darby?

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Yo.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  For real. I mean, he's Sananda, Sananda, Montreal. That's, you know, where he goes by. It's been going by for the past few years, but uh, yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  How did you find it?

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  So happy.

• 1:08:51Speaker 04

  I can't remember how we got in touch, but we had this song and Tony and myself and our collaborator on this record, Andy, it was like this beautiful piece of music. We had this Vashti Bunyan vocal and it was honestly not gonna make the record because it was like, there's just no voice that can, that can fit. And I can't remember, one day it was Tony and myself, we just had this idea and we were like, we wonder if we could ever get in touch with him or if he would know who we are. And somebody got in touch with Sananda and it's been honestly the most incredible, it's one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. He's the warmest.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  I was afraid to answer. I didn't know.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, he is incredible dude. He's been so open hearted and just so generous with his time. That's probably the most beautiful thing that like people just don't dial in a vocal and here you go. It's like so generous with their time to go back and forth and really get something that feels like it was meant to be there, you know.

• 1:09:52Speaker 06

  Y'all tracked that together or was, would he track it on his side?

• 1:09:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, he tracked it on, on his side, but there was a lot of back and forth with emails and stuff and, and his, his emails are an absolute joy to read. It's, he is, he's so eccentric, but smart and expressive in his emails and he's just a, like Robbie go, we couldn't do email from Sanando and I go, send it. I want to read it. It's like a highlight. It was so amazing to read and then.

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  Poetry, really beautiful.

• 1:10:23Speaker 05

  Real poetry and just listening to his voice, it's like, it is one of the great voices in my opinion of all time. He is, still incredible. Like I listen to that song and I still just go, what a vocal performance. It's incredible, incredible.

• 1:10:43Speaker 06

  So on the other side, I guess maybe the, to the polar opposite of that or Tricky, what was that like?

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  That was wonderful.

• 1:10:53Speaker 06

  I love him, man. I love him, man.

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  Actually, actually, we should have mentioned when we're talking about 90s sample music too, like his first record.

• 1:11:00Speaker 06

  Massive Attack. Oh yeah, Max and Kanye.

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that, that was stuff that was filtering through to us from, from England at the time too. So it was like, he was one of our heroes, you know, and, and that Massive Attack records and he was in Berlin making a record. He's, he just put that record out last year. It's a really great record and he was just like, I happen to be in the studio right now. What have you got? And we would just send him a song, the first song. The next morning, you know, came back with full lyrics and, and, and then he was like, that was great. Send me another one. And we ended up, that went on for like two weeks. We did like eight songs together. And, and then we got like a message from his management to our management who didn't know anything about this. And they were like, are you guys recording together?

• 1:11:44Speaker 04

  What, you've made half a record? What's going on? Like we need to do some paperwork or something. But um, yeah, that was, he was like, just, he was on a hot streak making that record. So he was like, anything you can send me, I'm on fire at the moment.

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  And, and it is so good when it's, when it's just the artist to artist as well and it's not going through. So, you know, the management obviously didn't know what was happening or whatever. And we were just doing our own thing without all that. And, and it's, that, that's, you know, such a rewarding relationship for us to kind of, you know, have that situation with people we grew up listening to and our heroes and everything. And, and I think you get it to so much of a more pure product when it's not, you know, through their people, through their people and all that stuff.

• 1:12:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, like you guys, the people y'all pick, man, I, you know, I can't front, like it is pretty much, I mean, it's, it's like a dream, you know, just, just me being just the music nerd I am. Like the people you get on every record, I'm like, yo, like that was a perfect fit. And when I saw that it was, you know, Terrence Trent Darby, he was on this one and then Tricky. But when I saw that y'all got fucking Cornelius, I was like, yo dude, like, they've been in my iTunes or some shit. Like y'all must know, like what was, I'm like, dude, they're picking all my guys. So what, what, what was he like, man? What was it? What was it like working with him?

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  Well, I don't, I don't know what to say about Kega really. He's like, he's a dear friend and we met him like in 2001 or something because he put out that album Phantasma.

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  And we were making Since I Left You, listening to that album and just going, this is.

• 1:13:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, mic check. That was my shit.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  Mic check, exactly. But it's kind of like Disney.

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five. Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yes. Because Tokyo is only like same time zone as here in 10 hours. We go a lot to DJ and so we've become friends over the years and he'll always show us like record stores and everything. He's the, this Swedish guy. And then, um, he just happened to be in Los Angeles doing a show when we were there recording. So that song just came about like.

• 1:13:54Speaker 05

  And it was Robbie's birthday at the time.

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Speaker 05

  But the recording, recording with him was.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  Happy birthday.

• 1:14:00Speaker 05

  The recording with him was so incredible, the process, because we kind of had the, the beat just going and he just had a guitar there and he'd be like, all right, let's do some takes and just, you know, and it'd just roll around. And so we'd sit there and go.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:14:17Speaker 05

  Then the next take.

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  And then it just all started layering up that you got that we're all like, okay, okay. And then towards the end, everyone's like, oh, we understand now. So he had this whole thing and he said it was like 12 layers of different guitar traps. That he was just like making and it just that, I mean, that's how the song came about.

• 1:14:39Speaker 06

  Nah, that's him.

• 1:14:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was so incredible to watch. It was fucking impressive.

• 1:14:44Speaker 06

  Fantasma, like Fantasma, like Fantasma, like that fucked me up when I heard it. And then the one that like, when I think it was after I graduated college, when he came with Point, like I played, I still play that record, like, you know, I love that album, man. He's, he's a nut. I love him.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Hey, can I ask, uh, what was it like working with Johnny Marr?

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  That was another one that was done remotely. Um, but I still remember the morning, actually, that, um.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  You didn't get to nerd out on any Smith's questions or?

• 1:15:14Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness. I, I, I think we would have overwhelmed him, I think.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, when he, when he came to sit in with us, like, I think we, I, that's probably the only time that we really nerded out on like, tell us more stories, you know, that sort of.

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  But we actually met, we, we saw him even before we approached him to, to play on the track. Uh, we were like, he was at the next table at us at Fuji Rock Festival, like just backstage. And we're both just going, go up to him and ask him, no, you go up, come on, say something, ask if he wants to be in. And we were meeting for about 15 minutes. We tried to psych each other up to go up to him. And in the end, we were just like, no, we can't do it. But, you know, we, we got in contact eventually and he was, he was really great. And he actually sent us a message after The Divine Call, which the, the song he's on, it kind of got some playing England. And he's like, thanks, guys. My kids think I'm cool again now.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Hey, have you guys even considered or thought, thought about releasing like all instrumental versions of the last two records?

• 1:16:23Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Just for the Avalanche purists or whatever, like just to, to hear it. Cause sometimes I, you know, I, I know that you guys are going through a progression and you're the, the, you know, the, the metamorphosis of the group sort of blooming, but. So there's no, just, there's not an instrumental mixed version of, of, of any, of any of this stuff out there?

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  No, no, but we have them.

• 1:16:50Speaker 05

  We have them. Yeah. I think everything we do, we do, we can, we can send them over.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Send it to me. Okay, great, go, go, go.

• 1:17:00Speaker 06

  That's really what the fuck you wanted to add.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  Is that what this interview's about?

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to see the, now, um, will you, do you, do you guys ever think that you'll try to do another all instrumental, um, project? As far as I know, you're probably working on something now and I just don't know.

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're starting another record now. I think, yeah, cause it's just like, I mean, working with vocalists like that for us is almost like, it's still, you know, an act of curation and almost sampling in a way, but I, I feel like we're, we're, we're making a slight turn back towards just a sample based record.

• 1:17:39Speaker 06

  Well, whatever, whatever the next record is, I'm putting my beard in, I won't in on that motherfucker. So.

• 1:17:47Speaker 06

  Hey, listen, man, even if it's just an interlude, just talking, yeah, whatever.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 1:17:55Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel. My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way. And I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like, what matters now? Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt. And music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Lunchbox from the Bobby Bones Show. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an all wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or an adventure ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade in. Get a deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  This is probably the least that I've inserted questions in an interview, only because I feel like every question that I want to know the answer to is almost like inconsequential, like just, okay, that particular snare that you use on this song versus the frog noise is something. Wait, I do, I do want to know who, who, uh, decides the concept for your videos?

• 1:19:50Speaker 06

  Man.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Especially with Frankie Sinatra, like, or just all your videos, all your videos are just some next level shit. Like who, who comes with those concepts?

• 1:20:01Speaker 05

  It's, it's mainly the, the video people. So we get, we get pitched some things and then we kind of, I guess, just pick the craziest one.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:20:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I, yeah, I, I was Frankie Sinatra, I met, I hope this doesn't sound bad, but we, we actually had a Zoom or a Skype with the, the producers who were gonna be shooting the video and they were French and like we struggled to understand what.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  You're just like, uh, do whatever you want to do, guys. You're French, you know what you're doing.

• 1:20:37Speaker 05

  Kind of sounds.

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  But they seemed like lovely people. So we were like, okay.

• 1:20:41Speaker 05

  So sweet. And, and the lady had this beautiful voice. It was almost like a movie, like, was your songs with, oh, look. And they're like, oh, look, cool.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Wow. Wow.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  Can I ask one more question?

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  So in messing with loops and samples and beats and, and things like movie dialogue and, and horses and everything that you, that you end up creating your music, uh, with.

• 1:21:14Speaker 03

  How often do you go in with, with an idea, I'm going for something specific, but then as Quest 11, I am constantly talking about, um, yeah, some kind of happy accident happens and ends up being better than your original idea or different. And, um, how often does that play into what we hear in the final product?

• 1:21:39Speaker 04

  It happens all the time. Really, that's almost the whole thing. Like, you know, like I can, we, we will talk about like where we want to try and go next, but you, but you can't predict the mood you're gonna be in and the record you're gonna be sampling at that time. And maybe just one little like bit of atmosphere at the end of someone's song or something. It's like, and you're just in the right mood to hear how you could flip that moment, you know?

• 1:22:07Speaker 06

  That's the catalyst.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  Or like if you put something, if you put something, um, in the wrong spot and then, you know, if you put it a beat behind or something and suddenly you're a rhythmic genius.

• 1:22:25Speaker 04

  But that's also like our friendship too. It's like having to be able to tell each other that, you know, that thing you made yesterday morning in five minutes is like, is better than the thing you spent a month on when you had this big concept and, you know, it's like, yeah, you just captured some magic there and that's, we should roll with that, you know?

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

  And I think that was, that was also part of Wildflower too, was like that magic of the five minutes, finding the great loop and everything. And then we would just layer and layer and layer. And in the end, the, the initial thing is like this much of something that's like that. And then we, like, we went through a process towards the end of, of, you know, making it where we just took a lot of that away. And this started to shine again. I don't know. Yeah.

• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  So dope. Um, Kurt Vile, man. Uh, I, how did y'all hook up with him? His record, uh, He's Alright. That's like, I love that song and I always dug him. How did y'all hook up?

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  It was, that was like the last song we finished for the record. And once again, it was a beautiful piece of music, but we just, and I, I just play his records like all the time. So huge fan. And, um, we just reached out.

• 1:23:29Speaker 06

  He's Philly. He's Philly.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was about to say, he's from my town.

• 1:23:33Speaker 04

  We just reached out on Instagram and he was like down for it. I think he might've meant, messaged us about something else in the past. And then we're like, we've got this song and, um, yeah, he just did this beautiful kind of like poetic rambling, spoken word thing. That was beautiful. I still remember the day that that arrived, actually. It was like.

• 1:23:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm like, I remember the day that, that Robbie played it to me after he put the vocals into the track. And we'd had that track for a long time. And it was just kind of like, what, what do we do with it? Like, is it a melodic kind of thing? And then he played me the thing that Kurt did and I was just like, play it again. And he played it again. And I just went, that's done. That's perfect. That, that's exactly what it, you know, just one of those things where you're like, you don't have to um and ah about it. It's like, oh, do we have to change it around a little bit? Or maybe if we cut this bit out, perfect. It just felt so good. And it was just like, that's it. That, that's done.

• 1:24:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. What made y'all come back? Cause I'm be real with you. I was surprised to see that we got Avalanche's album in 2020. Cause after Wildflower, I was expecting, all right, it'll be another 10 years before we go. I, I was ready to wait it out, but y'all came back. I was like, all right. Um, what, what led to the, I guess, the quicker turnaround in records? Like where are y'all at now in your lives where y'all can kind of turn them around a little quicker?

• 1:24:50Speaker 04

  I think we were just freed up from the long 16 year, you know, we felt the pressure to follow up since I left you. And, and, and then once we made another really great sample based record in Wildflower that we felt like, you know, that, that was a really worthy follow up to Since I Left You, we just felt free. And, you know, we just got back to the very simple flow of creating and not overthinking. And it's just flowing really quickly. We've already got a bunch more songs as well. And.

• 1:25:17Speaker 05

  And it's, it's so, it's so fun to be an actual touring band and not, you know? Broke musicians in their houses, working around sixteen years. You know, it's like Coachella and we're doing Glastonbury and like, wow, we should have been doing this ten years ago. So that's like, that's inspiration for us and, and.

• 1:25:37Speaker 06

  Bring me my money.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  I love it.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Wait, my, my last question about a guest on your record.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  What was the process of like working with Rivers Cuomo?

• 1:25:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, Weezer, yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  And did you, did you resist any Pinkerton fan out moments or just, you know?

• 1:26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was so cool. And I think we grew up loving like, you know, we have a love for like the Beach Boys. And he's someone who I can hear that in his music and he's like, can write such an amazing pop hook. You know, and I mean, Tony can tell the story, but we, I think we'd already tracked the song and then he was in Melbourne. Did we meet him beforehand, Tony or?

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  No, he, so he'd sent us like the vocal. So he had like sent a spreadsheet with three different lyric, lyric paragraphs.

• 1:26:34Speaker 04

  He had spreadsheets of all his hooks, like just in a spreadsheet laid out.

• 1:26:39Speaker 05

  And, and he was like, choose one, choose one.

• 1:26:45Speaker 05

  But we, we need to hear the melodies. Like we want to hear how it goes. So he's like, okay. And he, he sent the melodies for, for each, you know, little lyric thing he had and.

• 1:26:55Speaker 02

  So he just sends you a whole bunch of hooks and you could choose one?

• 1:26:58Speaker 05

  He said, he said three.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  No one does that.

• 1:27:01Speaker 06

  Not at all.

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  So in the end, we were just like, they're all really good. Can we have them all?

• 1:27:09Speaker 05

  I mean, we worked them all into the, into the track eventually and, and you know, like the outro and the verse of the chorus. And so that, that made up the three different things, but, and so we ended up meeting him in Melbourne. And like they were out, they were supporting the Foo Fighters at like a big stadium and we're like, okay, we'll, we'll go. So Robbie and I spent a day like looking at all the coolest bars to take him in, in Melbourne. And you know, you want to impress him and do all these really cool things. And in the end it was raining. And all he wanted to do is like, we got some umbrellas from the hotel. He just wanted to walk around the city in the rain. And then we stopped at a Starbucks and had a coffee and spoke for about an hour and then went back to the hotel.

• 1:27:52Speaker 05

  So I was like, okay, I guess we might be going to this cool bar where there's like, you know, Hall of Girls and all this crazy shit going on. We'll just sit in Starbucks. But in that way, it was like perfect.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Well, actually, wait, speaking of your Beach Boys fandom, assuming, assuming that the woman who worked with you for sample clearances is the same lady that cleared the samples for Paul's Boutique. I don't know which albums she did it for, but I would assume it's Paul's Boutique because there's a lot of samples. Are, were you guys even aware of Brian Wilson's hip hop album that was produced by the Dust Brothers?

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  This is a quick question.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Does not know about this.

• 1:28:33Speaker 05

  Are you serious?

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. So, uh, I guess the, the story is that, um, you know, I mean, at the time when the Beastie Boys first signed to Capitol, I guess, uh, Brian Wilson had gotten a copy of Paul's Boutique and was kind of impressed because they explained to him like how the album was made and how all these samples and that sort of thing. He was really impressed by it. So he hit up the Dust Brothers and said, um, I, I too want to do, uh, an album. And he wound up making a, I think they made like five or six songs together. And one of them, I think was called Smart Girls or whatever, but it's, it's like.

• 1:29:15Speaker 06

  This is Brian, he rapping or it's just?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. I think if you YouTube, if you, if you YouTube it.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  I'm gonna check this out.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  You're messing with me.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. Cause the thing is, is that every time I tell the story, I'm like, wait a minute. I know, I know for starters that I actually talked to Brian Wilson about this in person and I talked to the Dust Brothers. But even in my mind, I'm like, wait, did I imagine that? But, um, it's no.

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  It doesn't seem real.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  Wait, is it still on, on YouTube? Yeah. He, he did it. He did a song. Okay. So Smart Girls. Yeah. Smart Girls, uh, Capitol rejected the album, but it's still out there. It's, it came out in 1991. And, um, yeah, Matt, Matt Dyke, like the, the.

• 1:30:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Those, those guys produced it. And, um, yeah, it was, it was the Brian Wilson rap album. It was called Sweet Insanity. Yeah.

• 1:30:29Speaker 05

  That, that's a, that seems like a fitting title for it.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. Um, guys, I, I, I just want to say, um, just, you know, like I, I try to keep my cool with, with guests. You know, half the time on this platform, but yeah, man, I, I want to thank you guys personally because I, I will say that in hearing your record, that's what really planted the seed in my head on how my DJ gigs should go. Because I just never thought, I mean, yeah, like I, again, I was raised on that certain Bomb Squad type of hip hop that anything could go. But when, when, when I heard this album, that's when I realized like, oh,

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  anything can really happen in a DJ set in a sort of a creative context. So I, I will say that after hearing your album, and I guess I heard it in 2000, 2001. Like that's when I just totally wiped the slate clean of what was current, what was then my DJ sets. And my whole goal was like, well, I'm just do what the Avalanches do and just throw any and everything in my DJ set. Be it something normal, something off kilter, something unorthodox, something, you know, just, I, I thank y'all for that. Like you guys were definitely the impetus to like my, my, my DJ rebirth

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  that I've been running away with like for the last 20 years, man. But you, you guys are, are, are, are true geniuses, man. I, I thank you for doing the show with us.

• 1:32:12Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you. That's really kind.

• 1:32:14Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Thanks, nah, man.

• 1:32:16Speaker 05

  This has been, yeah, this has been so fun.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks, thanks.

• 1:32:20Speaker 05

  Really.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  All right. Well, are, are you done?

• 1:32:24Speaker 06

  Uh, oh, I was just gonna ask, I guess my last thing, um, the other artists, like kind of soul artists in, uh, in you guys region. So yeah, Australia. So like, I'm thinking, um, of course, Highest Coyote, um, uh, Fat Freddy's Drop. I know they're kind of more of a ska kind of band. Lisa Kukala, like what relationship do you have with that community? Um, the, the soul, you know, I guess R and B community. Um, what's that like?

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  Well, we're, we're just like kind of a couple of old men who like meet each other on the park bench every day and talk about the weather or whatever. Like we don't like, I guess we're often traveling, but we're kind of not really like.

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  Out and about.

• 1:33:10Speaker 06

  On the scene.

• 1:33:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  Except that, uh, except to say that there is just like, it's just a very warm music community here in Melbourne. Everybody's very supportive. I think it's maybe because it's so geographically isolated. It's like, there's, there's just like, um, it's very supportive. Anyway, we always feel very supportive.

• 1:33:30Speaker 06

  That's what's up.

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Steve? Last words?

• 1:33:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. You left me out of the Michelle Obama episode and the Jimmy Fallon episode as well.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 1:33:45Speaker 06

  Great callback, great callback.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  On behalf of Questlove Supreme, Fontigllo and Steve, we'd like to thank the Avalanches, uh, for, for kicking it with us. Oh my God.

• 1:33:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. This is, I never thought, yeah, I, I'm, I've, I don't think I've ever read an interview with y'all, let alone, you know, saying half interview. So this was, this is a dream come true, man. Thank you guys for hanging out.

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  This, yeah, seriously, it's been so much, so good, so much fun.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:34:11Speaker 06

  Thank you guys.

• 1:34:12Speaker 04

  Very much.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  Thank you guys. On behalf of Fontigllo, unpaid bill and Laia and, and, uh, Shigga Steve, Questlove. And this is Questlove Supreme. We will see you next week. Let's go, Ray. Thank you.

• 1:34:28Speaker 06

  Hey, this is Shigga Steve. Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at Q L S. And let us know what you think and who should be next to sit down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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