Full Transcript:

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John Kennedy: Hello, welcome to Tape Notes.

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John Kennedy: I hope you’re well.

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John Kennedy: Happy New Year.

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John Kennedy: And we are very excited to kick it off with episode 150 of Tape Notes.

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John Kennedy: It seems so long ago we recorded that first episode with the amazing Rosie Lowe and David Kumu back in 2017.

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John Kennedy: I’m not sure we thought about how many episodes we do or how long it would last back then.

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John Kennedy: We just knew we really enjoyed doing it and loved talking to some of the best and most exciting artists and producers in the world.

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John Kennedy: And other people shared that passion, which explains how 150 episodes later we are here with a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers and a truly wonderful community of supporters on Patreon.

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John Kennedy: Thank you to all of you who have listened, watched, subscribed, messaged, enjoyed, and hopefully been inspired by the conversations on the podcast.

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John Kennedy: And to those of you who have stopped me in the street, said hello to me on the tube or asked that lovely question, are you the Tape Notes Guy?

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John Kennedy: Thanks for doing that.

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John Kennedy: It really brightens my day and encourages us to keep going.

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John Kennedy: We couldn’t do it without you and really now we do it because of you and there’s so much more to come.

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John Kennedy: But I won’t bang on about it.

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John Kennedy: On to episode 150.

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John Kennedy: Just before Christmas, I caught up with Australian Dance Trio, now living in the US., Rüfüs Du Sol, about their latest record, Inhale Exhale.

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John Kennedy: It was really great to speak to James, Jon and Tyrone, a truly transcontinental conversation with James and Jon, who were in Miami, playing back the music and Tyrone in San Diego on the West Coast.

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John Kennedy: It was really interesting to hear how they balance work as a trio, and they had some fantastic stories about sound baths, group breathing exercises and ice baths throughout their tours.

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John Kennedy: They truly approached this in a very holistic way.

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John Kennedy: As usual, the full video episode with screen capture of their sessions will be up on the Tape Notes Patreon page, and highlight videos will be coming out on YouTube throughout the week.

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John Kennedy: If you’d like to find out more about becoming a Patreon member, head to the Tape Notes Patreon page at patreon.com/tapenotes.

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John Kennedy: As well as access to the full video episodes, which often include additional material from the conversations.

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John Kennedy: Becoming a Patreon also gives you access to episode gear lists, episode previews and the opportunities to ask questions to upcoming guests among many other things.

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John Kennedy: We’re incredibly grateful for the support of all of our patrons, and we’re so pleased to hear how many of you have been enjoying the interviews.

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John Kennedy: So thank you to those of you that have joined us there.

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John Kennedy: Thank you also to our wonderful partners at Tape It, the iPhone recording app, designed specifically for musicians.

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John Kennedy: More on them later in the episode.

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John Kennedy: But now, without further ado, let’s get started.

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John Kennedy: Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music.

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John Kennedy: Every episode, we’ll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio.

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John Kennedy: So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath.

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John Kennedy: Hello, I’m Jon Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes are Rüfüs Du Sol to talk about how they wrote, recorded, and produced the album Inhale, Exhale.

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John Kennedy: Rüfüs Du Sol are a three-piece Australian indie dance group consisting of Tyrone Lindqvist, John George, and James Hunt.

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John Kennedy: The trio came together in 2010 with a shared passion for electronic music, drawing inspiration from iconic acts like Chemical Brothers and Royxop.

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John Kennedy: Initially performing under the name Rüfüs, they released two EPs, Rüfüs in 2011, and Blue in 2012 before rebranding as Rüfüs Du Sol.

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John Kennedy: Their debut studio album Atlas arrived in 2013.

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John Kennedy: Praised for their experimental blend of melodic and atmospheric sounds, the record reached number one on the Australian album charts.

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John Kennedy: Their second record, Bloom, released three years later, continued their upward trajectory, topping the charts once again with notable tracks like Inner Bloom, signaling the shift towards a richer, darker sound that would define their later musical style.

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John Kennedy: Throughout their career, the trio has released five studio albums and garnered significant international acclaim.

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John Kennedy: Their achievements include winning a Grammy for Best Dance Electronic Recording in 2022, embarking on global tours and performing at renowned festivals such as Coachella and Lollapalooza.

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John Kennedy: Their latest album, Inhale Exhale, released in 2024, digs into themes of personal transformation, love and emotional depth, all conveyed through their distinctive fusion of organic and electronic sounds.

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John Kennedy: Today, I’m at home in Morden, South London and I’m joined by James and John from their Miami studio and Tyler joins us from his home in San Diego.

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John Kennedy: And what better way to start than by hearing something from the record.

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John Kennedy: This is Music Is Better.

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John Kennedy: Music is better.

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John Kennedy: It is Rüfüs Du Sol from the Inhale Exhale album.

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John Kennedy: And I’m very pleased to say that I am connected to all of Rüfüs Du Sol.

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John Kennedy: We’ve got Tyrone in San Diego.

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John Kennedy: Hello, Tyrone.

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James Hunt: Hey, how you doing?

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John Kennedy: And then on the other side of the United States, we have James and John in Miami.

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James Hunt: Hello, how you doing?

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Jon George: Hey there, happy to be here.

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John Kennedy: So you’re miles away from home in Australia.

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John Kennedy: How long have you been residents of the US?

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James Hunt: We’ve lived here for almost eight years.

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James Hunt: We all moved to LA.

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James Hunt: We lived in a house together on Rose Avenue in Venice.

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James Hunt: And then we scattered across LA, different parts of LA.

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James Hunt: And then me and John moved out to Miami about 18 months ago.

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James Hunt: And Ty moved down to Encinitas, that’s very close to San Diego.

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James Hunt: So that resulted in us figuring out how to write music together while living in different parts of the country, I guess.

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John Kennedy: Wow.

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John Kennedy: So is Inhale Exhale an experiment in action then?

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John Kennedy: No, is it the result of this experiment?

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John Kennedy: Are you on two different sides of the United States actually creating and writing together in that way?

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John Kennedy: Is that what happened?

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Jon George: Yeah, very much so.

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Jon George: We sort of knew going into this record, it was going to be different and we were going to have to try and figure it out.

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Jon George: And at the start of the process, I guess, we were hoping that we would be able to be writing sort of separately like this a little bit more.

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Jon George: But I guess we found the sweet spot in setting up these sort of two-week studio sessions, say in the middle of the country in Austin or over in LA.

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Jon George: And we would just get fully involved in the process and do two-week intensives.

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Jon George: And we’d start the songs from there and then we would come back and flesh them out more separately in our own studios.

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Jon George: But it was definitely an experiment.

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Jon George: And we figured out this week’s spot a little later on.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, I like that idea that you met somewhere in the middle just to reacquaint yourselves with each other.

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John Kennedy: That’s excellent.

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John Kennedy: So the first track that we’re going to look at in depth is Pressure.

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John Kennedy: So maybe we could have a blast of the Master of Pressure.

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John Kennedy: And then we’ll find out how you created it.

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James Hunt: Perfect.

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James Hunt: We’ll have a blast of the Master.

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John Kennedy: Just a little taste of Pressure by Rüfüs Du Sol from Inhale Exhale.

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John Kennedy: So that’s how it ended up.

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John Kennedy: How did it start?

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James Hunt: Yeah, I guess the way this song started was, you know, we’ve been discussing this concept of starting a track based around like a riff, like a massive riff for a while, and we tried a few different approaches.

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James Hunt: But basically, you know, having a song be built around just a hook and the hook being like the bass line and however that’s expressed, if it’s on a synth or a specific analogue synth.

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James Hunt: So we tried that a few times, but we were in LA, so in one of these two week writing periods we had.

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James Hunt: And then I remember we were working on something else and Ty had, I’m not sure if you’d written it outside of the studio or if you were jamming on the piano, but Ty brought in this, just this riff, this bass line.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, so while we were doing the like separate writing sessions, the guys wrote a lot of material and I wrote a lot of material too.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And so there was a lot of like off cuts in terms of like the production for the guys with a lot of the beats and a lot of almost song starter ideas, things that we could take into each session to start building and fleshing out a song pretty fast so that those two week periods were really effective essentially.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And so this bass line and the vocal melody, the starting like pull me down, that was written like while we were separate, while I was just at home with the bass line and the bass sounded very different and the the vocals pretty similar, but the lyrics aren’t there.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s kind of like this mumble jumble idea and then kind of ends with you’ll never break me down, like the hook there.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And so, while we were in the session, you know, there was a handful of times where we would be like, oh, what do we want to do today?

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Or we’d be, you know, simmering on an idea.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And then one of us might bring a piece, like an idea for us to hash out on.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And this bass line and that vocal melody was one.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: I think there’s a recording that I sent to James of like, it’s like an iPhone recording of me improvising the vocal melody, just finding it really in those initial moments.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: I found that really easy.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: It was like having a simple bass, like on a mini V or something, on a session, a looped beat or a hi-hat or something.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And then I would kind of jam a vocal and just press record on my iPhone and see if anything would come.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, there would be like, you know, most of it’s all crap.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But, you know, there’s a handful of cool stuff anyway, showing that baseline idea was, we were like, all right, let’s see where this kind of takes us.

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James Hunt: Here’s the little voice recorder thing you sent me, Ty.

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James Hunt: It’s like-

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, I think it’s towards the end, Rick.

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James Hunt: Here’s the break me down thing.

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James Hunt: I think it’s coming.

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James Hunt: Yeah.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Okay.

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James Hunt: Yeah.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: So, you’ll never bring me down.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: I think it eventually gets to break me down.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But it’s one of those funny times, like it feels funny listening back to it, because it’s like this vulnerable space in a studio where you’re like, you know, you’re in this place of excitement.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s like when we’re writing in the studio, it’s kind of where you go.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: You’re like, whoa, and you’re these kids, and I think your egos, yeah, kind of left at the door, which is nice.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And you fantasize about this thing.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: So just hearing that snippet in terms of like, it sounds so silly.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But in my head, I’m hearing this big thing.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But really, it sounds quite small and simple.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: I think I remember my wife coming in as well.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And I was like, oh, hear this bass line.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And she’s like, oh, yeah, it’s cool.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Maybe you get over it after a while.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But now she loves it, you know.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s just like the context for us, I think, is we can hear the ballpark of a big idea.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think we know when that’s there.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: But initially, maybe to someone else, it would be like, well, I don’t know what that is, you know.

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John Kennedy: Yeah.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Anyway, yeah.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: So we brought that idea in.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And then the guys kind of took it a lot further as well.

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John Kennedy: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: So how do you do that?

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John Kennedy: How do you take that initial kernel of an idea and develop it into this big thing that ends up on the record?

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James Hunt: Yeah, I guess for this specific idea, and also in general, I think on this record, we were finding more interesting ways of getting texture out of sounds through saturation and whether that’s utilizing, you know, me and Jon bought a bunch of outboard gear.

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James Hunt: So, we got like the culture vulture and those kind of things to run things through, but also soft synths, like satin is something we were using a lot.

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James Hunt: But essentially, you know, finding ways of getting character out of a sound by like distorting all the harmonics.

00:14:52.198 –> 00:14:59.558
James Hunt: So, basically, it was a very obvious like direction for this to go in for the production and what the production identity could be.

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James Hunt: So we tried a lot, there’s a huge graveyard of ideas, basically of just different ways that we were just trying to express that main bass line.

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James Hunt: And at the same time, we’re kind of building beats around it.

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James Hunt: And, you know, we built a kind of library of drums that we, you know, could pull in, especially because we only had two weeks to work on an idea.

00:15:19.878 –> 00:15:26.378
James Hunt: So that would help us to like get to the core of some kind of groove quicker referencing stuff that we DJ.

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James Hunt: But it kind of took two weeks.

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James Hunt: Like we’re in the studio, we’d come back to it and try a different bass sound.

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James Hunt: So I’ll play some of the old ones that didn’t make it.

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James Hunt: I can’t remember what half of these are, but.

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James Hunt: That’s a Serum patch that we made.

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James Hunt: We use the Prophet 6 a lot in the studio, and I really like using the drive on that, especially when the resonance is up, so that the harmonics just get, you know, crunched and destroyed into obliteration, and so I think a bunch of these are that.

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James Hunt: Like, this is that, there’s this kind of noise on it.

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James Hunt: That’s another one.

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James Hunt: Not that.

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James Hunt: I think by the time we left the initial writing sessions, we still hadn’t found the kind of bass sound that we ended up with.

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James Hunt: But that’s definitely, like, utilizing those production springboards gives some momentum for us, as Ty is generating more sort of lyrics and top lines.

00:16:37.255 –> 00:16:41.455
James Hunt: Me and Jon are, like, nerding out on that kind of stuff, and we all are.

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James Hunt: But I think that helps create momentum for us.

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James Hunt: And this song in particular is like an experiment in saturation and distortion and seeing how we could make it feel really aggressive, but also feel electronic and still tie into our larger body of work.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, because one of the things that always strikes me about Rüfüs Du Sol is how, unlike quite a few electronic artists, it’s about the songs and your very kind of song-based band, I think, and that’s one of the reasons why people connect with you because they fall in love with these songs and the statements, the words and the messages that you’re conveying lyrically as much as the ideas that are there in the sound.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: I think that’s what’s really special about the three of us, really, that I’ve grown more and more grateful for just the differences in us as three guys, you know, and our influences and our love of music.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: We have such a similar crossroads.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Somewhere in the middle, there’s a love we all share, you know, as a consistent love of something.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And then there’s offshoots, you know, like whether, you know, it’s alternative rock based stuff that maybe I really like listening to.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: Sure, I know John, Hugh John electronic like more club friendly tracks and started off DJing like when we’d finished school.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And like James has a real, a whole versatile, being a drummer growing up and playing jazz and rock, whatever you have, it’s like a very wide scope of music that has influenced you.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: So you fast forward to us being in a band.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: And I don’t know why, but the cross section of those three people makes for, yeah, a love of music and a love of songs and a love of DJ sets and more electronic experimental tracks and then more club dance ready numbers that, you know, follow a groove, maybe don’t have a vocal, maybe it’s more about the way that it makes your body move.

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Tyrone Lindqvist: So it feels nice to hear that you like, that there’s songs there because I think that is really important to us.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, I’m glad you agree.

00:19:05.495 –> 00:19:07.835
John Kennedy: And yeah, it seems really important and really crucial.

00:19:07.835 –> 00:19:10.235
John Kennedy: And what happened next with Pressure then?

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John Kennedy: Now after you were exploring all these different sounds and in the meantime Tyrone was working on the words, you know, I like the idea that you’ve got these defined roles that you can kind of get on with something, you know, like you meet up, you start writing together, then you all kind of know what you’re going to do when you separate and that you can concentrate on evolving something separately, but bring it back together.

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James Hunt: Yeah, exactly.

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James Hunt: It’s very cool that there’s three of us and we can all work on stuff in parallel.

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James Hunt: But I’d say the next thing is we kind of were building this beat up.

00:19:46.075 –> 00:19:56.295
James Hunt: And so there was a couple of loops that I generated on my flight, I think, just like basically, you know, I really love texture in a beat and in general.

00:19:56.295 –> 00:20:04.555
James Hunt: So like, you know, playing with electronic music and things that are synthesized, but counteracting it with just interesting samples and loops and stuff.

00:20:04.735 –> 00:20:13.815
James Hunt: So there was just definitely, you know, this like marching vinyl kind of like eighth note hi-hat sample.

00:20:13.815 –> 00:20:19.575
James Hunt: There was that, there was these kind of low end toms that we were basically referencing some stuff we would DJ.

00:20:19.575 –> 00:20:25.275
James Hunt: So, you know, utilizing this low end tom to play off the kick.

00:20:27.015 –> 00:20:29.535
James Hunt: So we were basically just trying to build up a groove.

00:20:31.195 –> 00:20:35.755
James Hunt: And then there’s a few extra little like textural things, like that.

00:20:35.755 –> 00:20:36.555
James Hunt: What’s this thing?

00:20:36.555 –> 00:20:38.335
James Hunt: Oh, yeah.

00:20:38.335 –> 00:20:40.975
James Hunt: The is basically like a group in itself.

00:20:40.975 –> 00:20:46.815
James Hunt: That’s just like a white noise saturated against like a sort of like 808 kick.

00:20:46.815 –> 00:20:49.275
James Hunt: So it just like crunches really interestingly.

00:20:49.275 –> 00:20:59.235
James Hunt: Basically, there’s always like interesting kind of like points of texture that I really love that, you know, it’s like simple, but it gives the beat like a little bit more of a world and the ecosystem it lives in.

00:21:05.400 –> 00:21:07.700
James Hunt: And we tracked some live hats as well.

00:21:08.840 –> 00:21:14.640
James Hunt: So basically, we liked that this groove is, it’s very simple, it’s very 8th note driven.

00:21:14.640 –> 00:21:18.420
James Hunt: And there’s a bunch of tracks that we were referencing that are in that vein.

00:21:18.420 –> 00:21:20.300
James Hunt: It’s very simple, very driving.

00:21:20.300 –> 00:21:25.360
James Hunt: We tried some more 16th-y hats, things that were busier, which we do on other tracks well.

00:21:25.360 –> 00:21:32.340
James Hunt: But for this, we liked that it was a really simple kind of bed for the bassline to sort of move around and undulate around.

00:21:32.340 –> 00:21:33.880
James Hunt: And then it’s uncluttered.

00:21:34.000 –> 00:21:36.760
James Hunt: It’s like there’s less space being utilized.

00:21:36.760 –> 00:21:39.200
James Hunt: We try to make sure we don’t over-clutter stuff.

00:21:42.720 –> 00:21:44.020
John Kennedy: And here comes the bass.

00:21:44.020 –> 00:21:44.700
James Hunt: Yeah, exactly.

00:21:44.700 –> 00:21:49.560
James Hunt: And that’s the final thing that we did, in terms of the patch that the bass that we used.

00:21:49.560 –> 00:21:51.520
John Kennedy: And is this all done in Ableton?

00:21:51.680 –> 00:21:52.080
James Hunt: Yes.

00:21:52.240 –> 00:22:00.040
John Kennedy: So and kind of doing it live, experimenting as you go along, letting the track run and adding things, subtracting things.

00:22:00.040 –> 00:22:06.740
Jon George: Yeah, I think particularly for this one, we spoke about this actual sort of straighter feeling of the drums.

00:22:06.740 –> 00:22:09.480
Jon George: And James did a bunch of experiments from the plane.

00:22:09.480 –> 00:22:19.440
Jon George: And me and James also had recorded a lot of like different things here at our studio in Miami, in prep for sort of these sessions, which we could easily pull in different elements from.

00:22:19.440 –> 00:22:29.880
Jon George: But I like that we sort of try and create, like as much as we like to be free and jam, and try a bunch of things, we also like to discuss, you know, maybe what the path forward for a track could be.

00:22:29.880 –> 00:22:33.560
Jon George: And this sort of straight chugging thing seemed really on point.

00:22:33.560 –> 00:22:39.800
Jon George: And I think that along with this, we were trying to find some largeness, like down in the bottom end.

00:22:39.800 –> 00:22:48.680
Jon George: So we ended up, I think, adding this sub sort of pump to really keep that body moving down below, whilst still having this huge riff on top.

00:22:48.980 –> 00:22:53.280
John Kennedy: So…

00:22:53.280 –> 00:22:58.920
James Hunt: Basically, it’s just an eighth note, like, serum thing that we made as a pulse, like Jon was saying.

00:22:58.920 –> 00:23:04.120
James Hunt: And then as the bassline developed, these kind of like pitch bends were added.

00:23:04.120 –> 00:23:07.160
James Hunt: So we just tracked that to the eighth note bass.

00:23:07.160 –> 00:23:08.560
James Hunt: So it’s just locked.

00:23:08.560 –> 00:23:12.440
James Hunt: So…

00:23:12.440 –> 00:23:13.980
James Hunt: Like they both kind of drop off like that.

00:23:21.488 –> 00:23:30.548
Tyrone Lindqvist: When we initially had that bass line, and we were trying things, we didn’t have those bends in there, and it sounded a little too robotic, or it didn’t have life.

00:23:30.548 –> 00:23:55.448
Tyrone Lindqvist: And like we were saying, like us having some influence of rock or something like, and us trying to emulate a big riff without it feeling like a guitar or a bass, but to be an echo of that, it’s like when we just played it on the synth as it was without any bends, it just sounded a bit lifeless or it didn’t have, it didn’t feel real.

00:23:55.448 –> 00:24:10.708
Tyrone Lindqvist: And so adding just that small thing, like the bends on a synth just pushed it, whether it was 10%, 5%, 20%, closer to a guitar or a bass, kind of made it feel more earthed.

00:24:10.708 –> 00:24:12.148
John Kennedy: Yeah, no, it’s really good.

00:24:12.168 –> 00:24:27.448
John Kennedy: I mean, it gives it that kind of more organic feel of somebody actually playing that time and time again, round and round, as you would if you were playing a more straightforward instrument than the synths that you’re using.

00:24:27.448 –> 00:24:29.088
James Hunt: Yeah, exactly.

00:24:29.088 –> 00:24:34.488
James Hunt: I think another interesting thing with this track that it’s kind of, it was kind of serendipitous almost.

00:24:34.488 –> 00:24:41.468
James Hunt: It was when we were jamming on the idea, and there was a, you’ll never bring me down or break me down, whatever that lyric was.

00:24:41.468 –> 00:24:44.008
James Hunt: And then we do a lot of cross pollination.

00:24:44.008 –> 00:24:47.388
James Hunt: So we’ll have like a vocal chop or like a beat in another track.

00:24:47.868 –> 00:24:50.508
James Hunt: And then we’ll just Frankenstein it into the new track.

00:24:50.508 –> 00:24:53.788
James Hunt: And we’re hemorrhaging things from different ideas all the time.

00:24:53.788 –> 00:25:01.728
James Hunt: So like an interesting thing was this chop that you pulled in, Jon pulled in, that was from a track that didn’t make it from the last record.

00:25:01.728 –> 00:25:10.988
James Hunt: And basically it doesn’t really, it’s hard to tell what it says or sounds like, but in context, when Jon pulled it in, it sounded like it was like, break me down.

00:25:10.988 –> 00:25:11.628
James Hunt: It’s like this thing.

00:25:16.728 –> 00:25:18.668
James Hunt: This is like chorus, vocal chop thing.

00:25:18.668 –> 00:25:21.328
James Hunt: I think it’s a splice, some splice thing that got chopped up.

00:25:21.828 –> 00:25:26.168
James Hunt: But then in the context, it sounded like it was saying like, break me down, break me down.

00:25:26.168 –> 00:25:27.508
James Hunt: We were like, that’s sick.

00:25:27.508 –> 00:25:28.148
James Hunt: That’s pretty sick.

00:25:28.148 –> 00:25:43.208
James Hunt: And at the same time, we’d been discussing, like there’d been a few ideas that in parallel, we’d been considering like recording a gospel choir for, you know, for like some more housey kind of vocals or some like nice choral moments.

00:25:43.208 –> 00:25:49.348
James Hunt: So this is one of those things that we then had a gospel choir sing in a really staccato way.

00:25:49.348 –> 00:25:55.628
James Hunt: We basically, me and Jon were back in Miami, but Ty went into a studio with this gospel choir.

00:25:55.628 –> 00:25:57.768
James Hunt: There were four of them or six of them, I think.

00:25:57.768 –> 00:25:58.848
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, there were six singers.

00:25:58.848 –> 00:26:02.028
Tyrone Lindqvist: There was four girls and two guys.

00:26:02.028 –> 00:26:05.948
Tyrone Lindqvist: And they kind of tracked six songs with us.

00:26:05.948 –> 00:26:12.208
Tyrone Lindqvist: We didn’t know whether we were going to use any of it, but we were just trying and it was just like a half day in a studio with them.

00:26:12.208 –> 00:26:24.168
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it was really cool to just hear these ideas that might be like little small snippets of samples or us mumbling a melody, you know, with an idea of a lyric for them to sing.

00:26:24.168 –> 00:26:34.528
Tyrone Lindqvist: It was cool to hear it come to life and they definitely added a lot just in terms of, damn, I don’t know, you know, it’s something that we can’t do.

00:26:35.268 –> 00:26:36.308
John Kennedy: How would you direct them?

00:26:36.308 –> 00:26:50.988
John Kennedy: And if you’re basing it from a little snippet of a chopped up sample, then do you write out a phrase for them to sing, or do you play that chop and get them to replicate it, or do you have to explain it in greater detail?

00:26:50.988 –> 00:26:56.988
Tyrone Lindqvist: In this case, we knew we wanted to do Break Me Down, just because the chop itself already sounded like that.

00:26:56.988 –> 00:27:02.608
Tyrone Lindqvist: And the feeling that was in the sample was close enough to what we wanted to get.

00:27:02.768 –> 00:27:08.668
Tyrone Lindqvist: So, we just knew that we were trying to get in the ballpark of whatever that was with these words.

00:27:08.668 –> 00:27:13.648
Tyrone Lindqvist: We weren’t really trying to offer a new feeling.

00:27:13.648 –> 00:27:27.428
Tyrone Lindqvist: This was probably less of a gamble, in that we felt like we could achieve the sound of that sample with these words, and yeah, that was basically the driving force.

00:27:27.708 –> 00:27:39.028
Tyrone Lindqvist: So, we would just listen back briefly and then kind of direct or ask for it to be more staccato, or that one was quite easy for them to get.

00:27:39.028 –> 00:27:39.968
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah.

00:27:39.968 –> 00:27:41.808
John Kennedy: And then, what do you do with the track?

00:27:41.808 –> 00:27:46.668
John Kennedy: Do you use it both, or do you just use the gospel choir now?

00:27:46.668 –> 00:27:48.548
James Hunt: We tried a few different approaches.

00:27:48.548 –> 00:27:53.208
James Hunt: Like, I think we tried layering the original thing with the gospel.

00:27:53.208 –> 00:27:59.868
James Hunt: There’s obviously a lot of takes, so we tried having some more variation and letting the different takes progress after each other.

00:27:59.868 –> 00:28:19.468
James Hunt: But in the end, we kind of treat it like a sample and kind of warped the timing of it a little bit, so it still felt like the audio chop feeling of the original thing, because there’s always this thing of an initial spark of an idea, and then the more we deviate from it, a lot of the times we’ll come back to whatever that initial magic was.

00:28:19.468 –> 00:28:29.148
James Hunt: And obviously in this case, we liked that there was an actual well-recorded gospel and there was size and scale in that, and that they were saying these words that were more intentional.

00:28:29.148 –> 00:28:32.948
James Hunt: But at the same time, we kind of tried to match the sort of timing of it.

00:28:32.948 –> 00:28:35.608
James Hunt: So this is like where it ended up.

00:28:38.948 –> 00:28:47.408
James Hunt: And so we had, we tweaked the sort of like fall off of the pitch and sort of like meticulously went through getting the timing right.

00:28:47.408 –> 00:28:52.528
James Hunt: I think when we’re on a film clip shoot, I think we were playing with it on the laptop somewhere.

00:28:53.128 –> 00:29:00.128
James Hunt: But that’s kind of the genesis of that thing, which feels like it adds a lot of energy to the track and that kind of wildness.

00:29:00.128 –> 00:29:02.048
James Hunt: And it ties it in.

00:29:02.048 –> 00:29:12.048
James Hunt: There’s like a homogeneity of tying it in with the rest of the record, where we’ve peppered in different sort of gospel vocals and whatever that aesthetic is.

00:29:12.048 –> 00:29:13.028
James Hunt: So yeah.

00:29:13.028 –> 00:29:13.908
John Kennedy: It’s really effective.

00:29:13.908 –> 00:29:29.228
John Kennedy: I mean, across the whole of the album, the backing vocals, at times they are backing vocals, but there are a vocal presence that is there on the track that isn’t tie or isn’t necessarily tie immediately.

00:29:29.228 –> 00:29:38.388
John Kennedy: I did wonder, is that a multiple of tie doing all these different things because it’s such a great other element to the songs?

00:29:38.388 –> 00:29:38.908
Jon George: Yeah.

00:29:38.908 –> 00:30:08.288
Jon George: I think we’ve always enjoyed, like Tyrone’s obviously a wizard at being able to create all these different harmonies and creating a choir of himself, but we also enjoy being quite fluid with that, being able to fly in samples and get initial sparks and then elaborate on that or twist and turn that or whether it’s me or James putting in some little idea that Tyrone gets to re-sing or ends up staying in the track itself, which will be the wilder samples.

00:30:08.288 –> 00:30:13.428
Jon George: But I think that there’s like a real nice looseness to how we approach that.

00:30:14.288 –> 00:30:24.728
Jon George: And then in general, I love the fidelity of having a real choir and having that mood throughout the record and we’ve done that in the past too, so it feels nice.

00:30:24.728 –> 00:30:25.628
John Kennedy: Yeah, definitely.

00:30:25.628 –> 00:30:31.148
John Kennedy: And at what stage do you approach arranging the track and the arrangement of the track?

00:30:31.148 –> 00:30:35.308
John Kennedy: Because you’re gathering all these different elements, you’ve got a lot of different things going on.

00:30:35.308 –> 00:30:35.908
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:30:35.908 –> 00:30:39.348
John Kennedy: You want to put it in some kind of order.

00:30:39.348 –> 00:30:47.668
James Hunt: I think the arrangement came within the first two-week block to some degree, in terms of just fleshing out a structure.

00:30:47.668 –> 00:31:10.848
James Hunt: Definitely because we had limited time in the studio, and then we were going to go away for how many weeks, we would make it definitely a goal to finish some kind of structure and have a vague mix down so that we could be playing it, sitting on it, ruminating on it, seeing how it sits, letting it sort of like simmer, instead of just leaving it as sort of like an unfinished loop.

00:31:10.848 –> 00:31:19.948
James Hunt: And I also think the time pressure of having those two week blocks and forcing us to get the idea done was a good thing.

00:31:19.948 –> 00:31:44.868
James Hunt: And I think we’ve always kind of operated this way, but instead of leaving something as like a loop or just like a verse chorus, if it feels like there’s something potent in it, we do try to flesh out the structure and see where it goes because the structure and the arrangement results in us adding elements that it sounds like it might need for like the final chorus or what’s going to happen in the breakdown, what would feel exciting.

00:31:44.868 –> 00:31:52.988
James Hunt: Do we do something that we haven’t done before in a breakdown or do we go with where the song’s heading because maybe that’s what the listener will want?

00:31:52.988 –> 00:32:09.988
James Hunt: So we had a general arrangement, but then I’d say towards the end of the writing process of the album, we were back in the studio in LA and then I think we were just adding some more kind of color and candy and sort of embellishing the aesthetic of the song.

00:32:09.988 –> 00:32:13.768
James Hunt: But around that period, there was a session, I think it was like 3 a.m.

00:32:13.768 –> 00:32:29.268
James Hunt: or something, we were in the studio and then we were playing with, I think, the MS-20, putting the rezo up on complete, just slamming the rezo up and then sort of just making these like alien kind of almost theremin noises, like wooo, you know, just, it’s very wild and weird.

00:32:29.268 –> 00:32:48.648
James Hunt: And then Ty jumped on the computer and we basically set up a single note MS-20 patch for him and he was basically jamming on the idea of like creating a melody out of the automation of the resonance and it just, it was so, it felt so exhilarating.

00:32:48.648 –> 00:32:51.708
James Hunt: We loved how like wild and kooky it was.

00:32:52.348 –> 00:32:57.508
James Hunt: And basically he was drawing it in manually and sometimes it wouldn’t catch the note quite like exactly.

00:32:57.508 –> 00:33:00.608
James Hunt: So there’d be this interesting like half note.

00:33:00.608 –> 00:33:07.408
James Hunt: It’s just very specific and I think the specificity of it made it more interesting than just drawing notes in on a sine wave or whatever.

00:33:07.408 –> 00:33:07.728
James Hunt: Yeah.

00:33:07.728 –> 00:33:08.528
James Hunt: So this is that.

00:33:25.783 –> 00:33:33.183
John Kennedy: And so when Ty was doing this, he was listening to the track at the same time, and just kind of coloring it in, in a way.

00:33:33.183 –> 00:33:34.663
Jon George: Yeah, exactly.

00:33:34.663 –> 00:33:41.903
James Hunt: Yeah, we were just soloing some of the chords and the lead, but through that whole period, there’s a buildup.

00:33:41.903 –> 00:33:47.183
James Hunt: There’s also this really interesting thing where there was a drum chamber, like a reverb chamber, sorry, in the studio.

00:33:47.183 –> 00:33:52.003
James Hunt: So we played the drums, the beat that we’d made through it and recorded it back into itself.

00:33:57.043 –> 00:33:58.843
James Hunt: So there’s that going on.

00:34:00.863 –> 00:34:03.543
James Hunt: It was like a flanged 16th Night thing.

00:34:03.543 –> 00:34:06.563
James Hunt: It was just elements of tension, I guess.

00:34:06.563 –> 00:34:06.903
Jon George: Yeah.

00:34:06.903 –> 00:34:16.823
Jon George: I think this wildness that we were playing through with this track, obviously based around what was experiments in saturation and stuff, created this wildness to the track.

00:34:16.863 –> 00:34:23.963
Jon George: But I love that with the arrangement, it was always about this big build, a build of tension and then the pressure release.

00:34:24.683 –> 00:34:27.623
Jon George: I guess that’s what the initial spark was.

00:34:27.623 –> 00:34:37.683
Jon George: Even Tyrone’s vocal starting with this pre-chorus, you vibe before it drops, and then it goes into the first verse after that, and the second verse is almost in the breakdown.

00:34:37.683 –> 00:34:44.083
Jon George: So it felt pretty unique in the way that we just kept changing things up for ourselves and building things differently.

00:34:44.783 –> 00:34:55.303
Jon George: And then this wildness and this breakdown with everything starting to come together into this last little experimentation to a verse stretching a vocal just before the last drop.

00:34:55.303 –> 00:35:00.283
Jon George: Was just us again, just having fun with playing with things a little bit outside of the box.

00:35:00.283 –> 00:35:00.883
James Hunt: Yeah.

00:35:00.923 –> 00:35:03.863
James Hunt: There’s this, yeah, basically this climax moment like Jon was saying.

00:35:13.926 –> 00:35:18.726
James Hunt: And so with that, we obviously want it to be, it’s very climactic, dramatic.

00:35:18.726 –> 00:35:25.546
James Hunt: And then we’re also playing with, I really like using texture mode on, or tone mode, I think.

00:35:25.546 –> 00:35:28.906
James Hunt: But basically, we took Tyrone’s vocal, and we were just like…

00:35:31.246 –> 00:35:44.186
James Hunt: It’s almost like that old jungle vocal, the time stretch kind of effect, having it feel like Tyrone’s voice is being sucked into a blender, and destroyed, and crunched, and crushed.

00:35:45.466 –> 00:35:48.526
James Hunt: You know, just like, stuttering.

00:35:48.526 –> 00:35:51.886
James Hunt: We were playing with, you know, parallel processing of his voice.

00:35:56.866 –> 00:36:01.286
James Hunt: With like a kind of, like, almost Leslie-like chorus to it, and there’s this in the background.

00:36:05.126 –> 00:36:06.666
James Hunt: With that time stretch to it as well.

00:36:07.506 –> 00:36:13.586
James Hunt: Yeah, so there’s just a lot of little iterations of production experimentation to make it feel like there’s life to it.

00:36:13.586 –> 00:36:16.506
James Hunt: And it’s, you know, not clean or sterile.

00:36:16.506 –> 00:36:20.106
James Hunt: There’s like grit and life to it, I guess.

00:36:20.106 –> 00:36:20.846
John Kennedy: Yeah, totally.

00:36:20.846 –> 00:36:23.146
John Kennedy: And do you have input on that, Ty?

00:36:23.146 –> 00:36:28.666
John Kennedy: I mean, do you trust these people to manipulate your voice in any way they like?

00:36:28.686 –> 00:36:29.326
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:29.386 –> 00:37:20.386
Tyrone Lindqvist: I mean, it’s yeah, it’s a cool, yeah, in the studio while we’re together, there is a real beautiful trust that we’ve gotten better at as a band over the years in us, you know, focusing on the things that we love to focus on, whether I’m focusing on lyrics or the melody or something, and the guys are focusing on like the aesthetic of the song or the beat or, yeah, the structure or we’re kind of fleshing things out, but there’s always an awareness from each of us as to what is going on in the studio and you’re getting influenced by if a beat or if it’s 16th hats, you know, it’s going to influence my choice of vocal melody or rhythm and vice versa, if I’m singing something, it might influence, you know, a particular sound or a…

00:37:20.386 –> 00:37:23.706
Tyrone Lindqvist: So most of the things are happening within the studio.

00:37:23.946 –> 00:37:38.266
Tyrone Lindqvist: And then when we step like while we’re together and then while we step away and we, you know, go our separate ways and the guys are fleshing out different ways of affecting things, yeah, there’s a back and forth that happens.

00:37:38.266 –> 00:37:42.686
Tyrone Lindqvist: I’d say 80% of the time, it’s pretty much like, yeah, I really love it.

00:37:42.686 –> 00:37:50.586
Tyrone Lindqvist: And that could be from affecting the vocal or, you know, and sometimes there’s a pushback where it’s like, oh, I can’t understand what I’m saying here.

00:37:50.586 –> 00:37:51.606
Tyrone Lindqvist: I remember that with this one.

00:37:51.646 –> 00:37:55.706
Tyrone Lindqvist: It was the distorted vocal of like, because I could take the pressure.

00:37:55.706 –> 00:37:57.246
Tyrone Lindqvist: That lyric wasn’t there before.

00:37:57.246 –> 00:38:04.226
Tyrone Lindqvist: And for me, I was like, oh, I really feel like that gives the song the identity for me.

00:38:04.226 –> 00:38:06.706
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s like, it used to just be, you’ll never break me down.

00:38:06.706 –> 00:38:11.966
Tyrone Lindqvist: And so that was kind of like the finishing piece of the puzzle for me.

00:38:11.966 –> 00:38:16.146
Tyrone Lindqvist: But finding the middle ground, because what the guys were pushing for was really cool.

00:38:16.146 –> 00:38:20.226
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like the driven vocal so that it felt a little more characteristic.

00:38:20.526 –> 00:38:25.786
Tyrone Lindqvist: It had a little more life and it wasn’t maybe as on the nose where you’re hearing the lyric.

00:38:25.786 –> 00:38:26.466
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah.

00:38:26.466 –> 00:38:28.246
Tyrone Lindqvist: So I love what they were pushing for.

00:38:28.246 –> 00:38:36.866
Tyrone Lindqvist: And the middle ground, finding that where it’s like, you still have that texture and drive on the vocal, but you can still hear what’s being said.

00:38:36.866 –> 00:38:45.526
Tyrone Lindqvist: So I don’t know, there’s I think there’s always like a really cool push and pull between us and the middle ground of where we end up is always fun and nice.

00:38:45.526 –> 00:38:48.106
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it’s something that we believe in this program.

00:38:49.566 –> 00:38:51.966
Tyrone Lindqvist: And feel is authentic.

00:38:51.966 –> 00:38:55.506
John Kennedy: I mean, with the this track, there’s a tension within the music.

00:38:55.506 –> 00:38:57.766
John Kennedy: There’s a tension almost within the words as well.

00:38:57.766 –> 00:39:03.026
John Kennedy: Know that it seems to be a song about resilience and survival in a way.

00:39:03.266 –> 00:39:09.466
John Kennedy: And that’s kind of echoed a bit in in the way that the song builds and climaxes.

00:39:09.486 –> 00:39:13.346
John Kennedy: Know, nothing will defeat you, people.

00:39:13.346 –> 00:39:14.586
James Hunt: Well said.

00:39:16.426 –> 00:39:19.426
John Kennedy: We’re conscious of the time, so we want to move on to our next song.

00:39:19.426 –> 00:39:24.306
John Kennedy: Maybe we could kind of have a blast of the ending of of Pressure.

00:39:24.306 –> 00:39:26.606
John Kennedy: It would be great to kind of round off in that way.

00:39:26.606 –> 00:39:27.166
James Hunt: Let’s do it.

00:40:26.822 –> 00:40:28.682
John Kennedy: Pressure, Rüfüs Du Sol.

00:40:28.682 –> 00:40:33.722
John Kennedy: And the next song we’re going to look at from Inhale Exhale is Fire Desire.

00:40:36.422 –> 00:40:44.682
John Kennedy: This episode is brought to you by Roland Cloud, a service giving you access to Roland’s suite of iconic software synthesizers, drum machines and sampled instruments.

00:40:44.682 –> 00:40:50.862
John Kennedy: And we have a special offer for any Tape Notes listeners, a 30 day free trial and 10% off membership.

00:40:50.862 –> 00:40:53.582
John Kennedy: And here to tell us more about it is Brandon from Roland.

00:40:53.582 –> 00:40:54.362
John Kennedy: Hi, Brandon.

00:40:54.362 –> 00:40:55.722
Brandon: Hello, thanks for having me.

00:40:56.262 –> 00:40:59.662
John Kennedy: Roland instruments are name checked all of the time by guests on Tape Notes.

00:40:59.662 –> 00:41:01.842
John Kennedy: What is the Roland Cloud?

00:41:01.842 –> 00:41:05.742
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00:41:05.742 –> 00:41:18.522
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00:41:18.522 –> 00:41:21.262
John Kennedy: You can access Roland Cloud across three different tiers.

00:41:21.262 –> 00:41:22.722
John Kennedy: What do they include, Brandon?

00:41:23.102 –> 00:41:30.122
Brandon: Well, the core tier is $3 a month, and that gets you just basic access to some of the apps and sound content for hardware mainly.

00:41:30.122 –> 00:41:32.142
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00:41:32.142 –> 00:41:38.402
Brandon: That’s at $10 a month, and that gets you our Zenology synthesizer, which kind of covers a little bit of the whole history.

00:41:38.402 –> 00:41:49.362
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00:41:49.362 –> 00:42:05.962
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00:42:05.962 –> 00:42:06.742
John Kennedy: Sounds amazing.

00:42:06.742 –> 00:42:08.942
John Kennedy: Tell us about the offer for Tape Notes listeners.

00:42:08.942 –> 00:42:21.302
Brandon: So for Tape Notes listeners, we have the Roland Cloud Ultimate free trial for 30 days, which gives you everything Roland Cloud has to offer, and also 10% off the price of a yearly Ultimate membership with the code tapenotesrc-1024.

00:42:22.602 –> 00:42:25.642
Brandon: And there are only 100 of these available, so don’t miss out.

00:42:25.642 –> 00:42:26.302
John Kennedy: Thanks, Brandon.

00:42:26.302 –> 00:42:39.362
John Kennedy: To try out Roland Cloud Ultimate for yourself and start using some of their iconic instruments, head to rolandcloud.com and use the code tapenotesrc-1024 for 10% off while supplies last.

00:42:39.362 –> 00:42:44.222
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at from Rüfüs Du Sol’s Inhale Exhale is Fire Desire.

00:42:44.222 –> 00:42:49.962
John Kennedy: So James and John, if you could play in the master, so we get an idea of of how it ended up.

00:42:49.962 –> 00:42:50.362
James Hunt: For sure.

00:44:17.367 –> 00:44:22.167
John Kennedy: Fire, Desire by Rüfüs Du Sol from Inhale, Exhale.

00:44:22.167 –> 00:44:24.007
John Kennedy: So that’s how it ended up.

00:44:24.007 –> 00:44:25.607
John Kennedy: How did it begin?

00:44:25.607 –> 00:44:28.187
James Hunt: This has been a long run in the making.

00:44:28.187 –> 00:44:29.647
James Hunt: We have a…

00:44:29.647 –> 00:44:31.307
James Hunt: There’s a shelf of songs.

00:44:31.307 –> 00:44:41.127
James Hunt: And sometimes when we write, start a song on a record, the writing process for a record will try to get it onto that record.

00:44:41.727 –> 00:44:51.467
James Hunt: And if it doesn’t work out or if we can’t find either the production execution or if it’s lacking the right release of a chorus, then it doesn’t make it and it goes on the shelf.

00:44:51.467 –> 00:44:54.307
James Hunt: So there’s a healthy number of tracks still on the shelf.

00:44:54.307 –> 00:44:56.407
James Hunt: Some of them are from like 10 years ago.

00:44:56.407 –> 00:45:00.587
James Hunt: But because we believe in them, we’ll try to re-approach them on every record.

00:45:00.587 –> 00:45:06.087
James Hunt: So the initial version of this started in 2018 when we were living in Venice together.

00:45:09.927 –> 00:45:15.127
James Hunt: There was always kind of this like broken beat identity to it.

00:45:15.127 –> 00:45:26.087
James Hunt: Basically, I think Ty went into the studio and I’d been working on some broken beat thing that was a bit sample-y and left field and it wasn’t really going to go anywhere in my mind.

00:45:26.087 –> 00:45:30.067
James Hunt: And then Ty came out and had generated this really interesting idea.

00:45:30.067 –> 00:45:31.527
James Hunt: A lot of the lyrics were already done.

00:45:32.787 –> 00:45:36.787
James Hunt: Or the ideas were there that have still remained to this day.

00:45:36.787 –> 00:45:39.167
James Hunt: And a lot of the cool kind of just like choices.

00:45:40.427 –> 00:45:45.447
John Kennedy: So this is the demo or the original version from 2018?

00:45:45.447 –> 00:45:46.247
James Hunt: Yes, this is it.

00:45:46.247 –> 00:45:46.467
John Kennedy: Right.

00:46:39.404 –> 00:46:43.064
John Kennedy: Interesting, so the music has changed quite a lot, really.

00:46:43.064 –> 00:46:46.824
John Kennedy: But the words are there, because the words are interesting.

00:46:46.824 –> 00:46:52.804
John Kennedy: I can’t work out, sometimes I listen to the song, and it seems really dark.

00:46:52.804 –> 00:46:55.244
John Kennedy: You know, there’s body lying on the floor.

00:46:56.624 –> 00:47:02.544
John Kennedy: And then other times it seems much more caring and loving.

00:47:02.544 –> 00:47:06.564
John Kennedy: And I’m sure it’s neither of those things, or maybe it is, I don’t know.

00:47:06.684 –> 00:47:09.424
John Kennedy: So, maybe that was another time of your lifetime.

00:47:10.564 –> 00:47:12.744
Tyrone Lindqvist: Well, yeah, it was a different time.

00:47:13.084 –> 00:47:16.524
Tyrone Lindqvist: I just met my now wife around that time.

00:47:16.524 –> 00:47:25.544
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think that what I like about this song is that it does feel like those early days of a relationship, where there is more like fire.

00:47:25.544 –> 00:47:28.144
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, there’s more passion, there’s more…

00:47:28.144 –> 00:47:31.364
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, you’re in like a honeymoon phase where everything is exciting.

00:47:31.364 –> 00:47:34.724
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I like that this song explores that.

00:47:35.664 –> 00:47:39.204
Tyrone Lindqvist: My wife had introduced me to this book by Stan Tatken.

00:47:39.204 –> 00:47:44.184
Tyrone Lindqvist: There’s like a relationship guy in terms of a healthy relationship.

00:47:44.184 –> 00:47:51.224
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think us being in a band, we didn’t really learn that necessarily as three guys in a band.

00:47:51.224 –> 00:47:57.524
Tyrone Lindqvist: You know, we would think about ourselves and each other and Rüfüs, the project that we would tour.

00:47:57.524 –> 00:48:00.844
Tyrone Lindqvist: And that was all we needed to care about and look after.

00:48:01.144 –> 00:48:09.044
Tyrone Lindqvist: And so it was, for me at least, a big learning process in learning how to be a good partner.

00:48:09.044 –> 00:48:18.244
Tyrone Lindqvist: And anyway, in that book, he speaks about the importance of referencing yourself and your partner as the king and the queen.

00:48:18.244 –> 00:48:27.244
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I really love that one lyric at the end of the chorus, where it’s like, my empire turning upside down, hold me now.

00:48:27.244 –> 00:48:31.224
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like it could have been my world’s turning upside down, or it could have been something else.

00:48:31.224 –> 00:48:42.644
Tyrone Lindqvist: But I love that Empire alluded to like the, yeah, the royalty, like it has a regalness to it, where it’s like the king and queen.

00:48:42.644 –> 00:48:49.044
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I don’t know, I love also the line of take a walk.

00:48:49.044 –> 00:48:51.904
Tyrone Lindqvist: You could take a walk through my head under my bed.

00:48:51.904 –> 00:48:55.824
Tyrone Lindqvist: Under my bed just felt like a little uncomfortable.

00:48:55.824 –> 00:48:58.724
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it’s like, what’s under, what’s in your closet?

00:48:58.804 –> 00:48:59.604
Tyrone Lindqvist: What’s under your bed?

00:49:00.304 –> 00:49:02.084
Tyrone Lindqvist: What are your little secrets?

00:49:02.084 –> 00:49:08.284
Tyrone Lindqvist: And just the excitement in those early days of relationship, where it’s like you really do want to know everything about this other person.

00:49:08.684 –> 00:49:10.944
Tyrone Lindqvist: You’re really curious.

00:49:10.944 –> 00:49:14.024
Tyrone Lindqvist: And there’s this, you can’t get enough of them.

00:49:14.024 –> 00:49:19.104
Tyrone Lindqvist: You know, it’s like an obsessive nature to it.

00:49:19.104 –> 00:49:23.504
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, that was where we were at in our relationship.

00:49:23.504 –> 00:49:26.264
Tyrone Lindqvist: And that’s also where we were at as a band.

00:49:26.364 –> 00:49:31.944
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think having just moved to LA, we were living in Rose Avenue together in this house.

00:49:31.944 –> 00:49:35.264
Tyrone Lindqvist: We were all living in this place and the studio was there.

00:49:35.264 –> 00:49:40.784
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, this particular song was, I can’t, it was at night.

00:49:40.784 –> 00:49:43.164
Tyrone Lindqvist: It was definitely nighttime when it came about.

00:49:43.164 –> 00:49:46.424
Tyrone Lindqvist: So there is this seductive nature.

00:49:46.424 –> 00:50:00.724
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, maybe it teeters on the line of creepy or, but I do think it comes from a desirable place as opposed to like a detective, you know, in a film noir kind of, yeah.

00:50:00.724 –> 00:50:02.124
John Kennedy: Let me see here.

00:50:03.844 –> 00:50:18.984
John Kennedy: But it’s interesting that it stayed where it was, you know, that you put it to one side, that you might have been working on it and maybe it came up as potential for a few different projects, but you didn’t develop it in the way that you have now until now.

00:50:19.024 –> 00:50:32.544
James Hunt: Yeah, it’s interesting, like, I guess, in reference to what we were talking about before, about the initial spark of something and whatever that spark is, if it is melodically or if there’s elements that came about initially.

00:50:32.544 –> 00:50:41.524
James Hunt: Interestingly, this one we came around, in terms of utilizing, like, you know, the winding lead that, you know, comes in, the gated nature of that.

00:50:41.524 –> 00:50:52.724
James Hunt: Some of those things felt like they retained, and then, but then the identity was always kind of confused, I think, or not confused, but, you know, it was kind of not sure what it was.

00:50:52.724 –> 00:50:56.484
James Hunt: I’ll play a few other just really short snippets of other things we tried.

00:50:56.484 –> 00:51:03.884
James Hunt: This is a version of it that I think we were going for, like, a more sort of Afro drum programming, four to the four thing.

00:51:17.137 –> 00:51:17.877
James Hunt: I go forward a bit.

00:51:24.677 –> 00:51:28.557
James Hunt: So, you know, that was that, another iteration from 2018.

00:51:28.557 –> 00:51:34.677
James Hunt: Again, you know, it was the drums being inspired by the rhythm, like the kuh, kuh, bah, yeah.

00:51:34.677 –> 00:51:40.337
James Hunt: But then that also felt like it didn’t articulate the idea or represent it in the best way.

00:51:41.237 –> 00:51:42.677
James Hunt: So, we kind of left it for that record.

00:51:42.677 –> 00:51:45.417
James Hunt: That was for Solace, our third record.

00:51:45.417 –> 00:51:49.677
James Hunt: And then for our fourth record, Surrender, we reattacked it.

00:51:49.717 –> 00:51:55.817
James Hunt: And from those sessions came this, like, one of my favorite breakdowns we’ve made, I think, is this, like…

00:51:59.417 –> 00:52:01.917
James Hunt: This is the 2020 version, right?

00:52:04.117 –> 00:52:09.137
James Hunt: So it’s like this OB6 patch that we used, and it just has this really interesting life to it, and the…

00:52:12.397 –> 00:52:15.877
James Hunt: Whatever the way it moves around, I always have loved, I think we’ve always loved that.

00:52:17.297 –> 00:52:20.117
James Hunt: So, that element came from those sessions.

00:52:20.117 –> 00:52:23.957
James Hunt: But then the way it drops, you know, is like still, I’ll play it.

00:52:38.417 –> 00:52:40.697
James Hunt: So, that was the drop we had for that.

00:52:40.697 –> 00:52:45.417
James Hunt: Again, I think me and Ty were pushing for it more to go on that record.

00:52:45.417 –> 00:52:49.197
James Hunt: And I think maybe I was like trying to force it, because I loved the song so much.

00:52:49.237 –> 00:52:54.897
James Hunt: But thankfully, Jon didn’t agree, and we listened to that, and I think it was a really good decision.

00:52:54.897 –> 00:52:57.977
Jon George: Yeah, we have a good democracy here.

00:52:57.977 –> 00:53:02.397
Jon George: So, if someone’s not really feeling something, this got really close to going on the record.

00:53:02.397 –> 00:53:06.737
Jon George: It was getting in the mixing stage and close to mastering stage even.

00:53:06.737 –> 00:53:12.737
Jon George: But I just didn’t, I wasn’t feeling it fully and was just trying to follow my gut with that too.

00:53:12.737 –> 00:53:19.077
Jon George: And I’m glad that we put it on the shelf and everyone was okay with that to bring up for this next record.

00:53:19.157 –> 00:53:25.777
Jon George: And then we really started to find what that identity was and something that, I don’t know, fit the record.

00:53:25.777 –> 00:53:29.837
Jon George: I think that maybe that is still a good version that was there.

00:53:29.837 –> 00:53:35.857
Jon George: Just like also just didn’t feel quite right amongst the rest of the songs that we had going for Surrender to me.

00:53:35.857 –> 00:53:43.297
Jon George: But I became much more satisfied with where we got the drum programming to and the feeling of the song.

00:53:43.297 –> 00:53:48.877
Jon George: And yeah, this extra sample use that we had in the final version, in the drops and stuff.

00:53:48.877 –> 00:53:54.257
Jon George: So it started to really make sense to me a lot more and yeah, got a lot more happy with it.

00:53:54.257 –> 00:53:59.657
John Kennedy: Maybe you could illustrate that by playing the parts of the new version, the current version.

00:53:59.657 –> 00:54:00.237
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting.

00:54:00.237 –> 00:54:02.977
John Kennedy: I mean, that’s like three albums in effect.

00:54:02.977 –> 00:54:05.897
John Kennedy: It’s kind of been a contender for three albums.

00:54:05.897 –> 00:54:07.497
John Kennedy: So it’s quite a long time.

00:54:07.497 –> 00:54:15.297
John Kennedy: But it’s great that you stuck with it, and it clearly meant a lot to you that you did stick with it because you could easily have just discarded it.

00:54:15.317 –> 00:54:15.797
James Hunt: Exactly.

00:54:16.857 –> 00:54:23.097
James Hunt: We’re believers in giving things many chances, especially if we connect with the core of it.

00:54:23.097 –> 00:54:48.717
James Hunt: And I think we all connected with the core of this idea in terms of the lyrical sort of direction, the top line, the chords that are in it, it feeling like a brooding and dark, and also it being an opportunity for like a broken beat when we’re predominantly referencing more floor to the floor, drum programming sort of references in relation to stuff we play in our DJ sets.

00:54:48.717 –> 00:54:54.777
James Hunt: And so it’s always, it feels like an interesting opportunity to break away from that, to create some dynamic on the record.

00:54:54.777 –> 00:54:58.497
James Hunt: And that’s what this felt like an exciting chance to do.

00:54:58.557 –> 00:55:12.897
James Hunt: So basically, once we had agreed on reattacking it with a few references in mind, basically we built, me and Jon came back to Miami and we were building some of these drum elements up.

00:55:14.177 –> 00:55:15.777
James Hunt: So I’ll show the drums.

00:55:19.097 –> 00:55:40.777
James Hunt: This is one thing that I thought was interesting to show is that some of the initial elements that I was playing with before me and Jon sort of assembled all these elements into the beat was using a EchoBoy, this kind of like, basically it’s like a impulse with a few little rim samples.

00:55:40.777 –> 00:55:51.777
James Hunt: And then basically, one thing that we love doing is kind of just running, hitting record and then just generating tons of stuff that we can then chop later.

00:55:51.777 –> 00:55:58.077
James Hunt: And chopping things as audio I think is really cool because then you’re kind of committing, you’re constantly committing.

00:55:58.077 –> 00:56:07.337
James Hunt: So that basically running that little like impulse thing into EchoBoy and then warping it, sort of like decapitating it a little bit.

00:56:07.337 –> 00:56:12.517
James Hunt: And then like swinging it to the swing of the track was one of the earliest things that I remember doing.

00:56:12.517 –> 00:56:21.557
James Hunt: And then it was like, sort of building up like a mixture of midi shakers, some live kind of like more lush shakers, again, like keeping everything really tight.

00:56:22.737 –> 00:56:27.637
James Hunt: I really wanted like an almond kind of break or a jungle think break, because this is like classic.

00:56:27.637 –> 00:56:30.137
James Hunt: And we haven’t really used that in the track before.

00:56:30.137 –> 00:56:31.937
James Hunt: So that was kind of the sort of basis.

00:56:31.937 –> 00:56:36.477
James Hunt: And then we started building up some more of the crunched like offbeat huts.

00:56:38.497 –> 00:56:39.977
James Hunt: Oh, this is the rim.

00:56:42.617 –> 00:56:51.377
James Hunt: Basically, we loved the feeling kind of crunchy, the rims being pitched down and like emphasizing like the note of the rim.

00:56:51.377 –> 00:56:52.757
James Hunt: So it was really tonal.

00:56:52.757 –> 00:56:57.037
James Hunt: And so then we were playing with like this offbeat sort of feeling.

00:56:59.297 –> 00:57:05.137
James Hunt: Like really distorting things, like crunching things, committing to audio again, pitching down.

00:57:05.137 –> 00:57:11.077
James Hunt: But it being a very specific kind of like aesthetic of beat, felt exciting to us.

00:57:13.197 –> 00:57:16.937
James Hunt: And then we played with a few different kick patterns.

00:57:16.937 –> 00:57:22.177
James Hunt: We wanted it to be broken beat, but we also didn’t want it to be cluttered or busy or complicated.

00:57:22.177 –> 00:57:26.037
James Hunt: So we ended up with that kind of pattern.

00:57:26.337 –> 00:57:30.177
James Hunt: There’s like space in it to let the bass kind of shine through.

00:57:32.597 –> 00:57:32.817
Jon George: Yeah.

00:57:32.817 –> 00:57:43.497
Jon George: I think having the focus on the offs here is really what helps bring it together in the record for me in the homogenous, having that homogenous feeling throughout the record.

00:57:43.497 –> 00:57:48.337
Jon George: Because it still feels like you’re moving 4-4 even though it’s this broken beat thing.

00:57:48.377 –> 00:57:49.157
James Hunt: Yeah.

00:57:49.157 –> 00:57:51.437
James Hunt: Exactly.

00:57:51.437 –> 00:57:55.297
James Hunt: So that was kind of like the main elements of the beat being generated.

00:57:55.297 –> 00:58:01.977
James Hunt: Another thing that I really like in this track that is kind of an identity of the production is things being studded.

00:58:01.977 –> 00:58:06.857
James Hunt: So we’re using a lot of gating, especially for the bass because it’s held.

00:58:08.017 –> 00:58:11.697
James Hunt: That’s just the held bass, but then we have this gate.

00:58:11.697 –> 00:58:13.577
James Hunt: That’s the extreme version of it.

00:58:13.577 –> 00:58:14.837
James Hunt: So there’s a bit of an attack on it.

00:58:14.837 –> 00:58:23.377
James Hunt: So then using that really subtly, so that it creates this subtle, like, whomp, is something that kind of came as we were developing the idea of the track.

00:58:23.377 –> 00:58:24.357
John Kennedy: How are you doing that?

00:58:24.357 –> 00:58:26.517
John Kennedy: Are you using a particular plug-in for that?

00:58:26.517 –> 00:58:32.797
James Hunt: I think we have used ShaperBox quite a lot, but this one, I think it was just a rim.

00:58:32.797 –> 00:58:33.517
James Hunt: There’s like a gate.

00:58:33.517 –> 00:58:35.597
James Hunt: We’re basically sending a rim.

00:58:35.597 –> 00:58:36.577
James Hunt: Maybe it’s this guy.

00:58:36.577 –> 00:58:37.997
James Hunt: Let me play it.

00:58:39.557 –> 00:58:46.357
James Hunt: It’s just a transient that’s to the swing of the track being received by the gate, this Ableton gate plug-in.

00:58:49.157 –> 00:58:51.197
James Hunt: There’s a bit of an attack, a bit of a hold.

00:58:51.197 –> 00:58:53.417
James Hunt: The floor is minus eight.

00:58:53.417 –> 00:58:55.017
James Hunt: Then it just subtly moves.

00:58:55.817 –> 00:59:00.957
James Hunt: With everything playing, you don’t really notice it, but you kind of feel it, especially on a nice system.

00:59:00.957 –> 00:59:13.417
James Hunt: When we did a listening party in Sydney, and we played the album for friends and family and a few fans, and I think that’s when I remember hearing that Womp properly for the first time and being like, damn, that sounds sick.

00:59:14.757 –> 00:59:15.537
John Kennedy: We did it right.

00:59:15.717 –> 00:59:18.277
James Hunt: We got to enjoy it on a really nice system.

00:59:18.277 –> 00:59:19.537
James Hunt: That’s really good.

00:59:19.537 –> 00:59:25.097
James Hunt: With that in mind, there’s a few instances of gating in the track.

00:59:25.097 –> 00:59:33.637
James Hunt: The pads at the start, it’s like a layer of a choir and this bendy serum patch I think that we made.

00:59:39.202 –> 00:59:54.162
James Hunt: Oh no, that’s actually Scarbo, which is by Teletone, who make these really sick boutique plugins we used a lot on this record, that kind of emulate like very tapey, analog sounding, sort of already processed, yeah, like synth patches.

00:59:54.162 –> 00:59:56.062
James Hunt: So that’s like a layer of that.

00:59:57.982 –> 01:00:07.042
James Hunt: But then again, there’s this like use of the gate, receiving like a swing, and then just, that’s the extreme version of it.

01:00:07.042 –> 01:00:12.262
James Hunt: Instead of just dialing in and out with automation, and the floor of it, so it just feels like it’s breathing a little bit.

01:00:12.262 –> 01:00:15.722
James Hunt: That’s just a way that we like to sort of add life to a track, I think.

01:00:15.722 –> 01:00:20.322
James Hunt: So yeah, there’s just a bunch of instances of things being swung and sitting on the groove of the track.

01:00:20.322 –> 01:00:31.602
James Hunt: And this is an element from the original idea from 2018, yeah, that Ty generated that is this like Moog siren that I’ll play for you guys.

01:00:33.202 –> 01:00:40.322
James Hunt: And I think it’s been printed with processing, and that sort of like Beats Mode gate thing that Ty did.

01:00:40.322 –> 01:00:44.982
James Hunt: You know, it’s like multiple instances of being printed, baked in, affected, printed.

01:00:44.982 –> 01:00:47.382
James Hunt: I guess we’ve like rehashed it over the years.

01:00:47.382 –> 01:00:58.362
James Hunt: So we basically just sort of like put a reverb on it, distorted that, gated that, EQ’d it.

01:00:58.362 –> 01:01:10.162
James Hunt: So it’s like, there’s just like five layers of processing that have occurred over the last six years that result in this, whatever that sound is, but it’s like really crunchy and it’s sitting in the swing as well.

01:01:10.162 –> 01:01:14.082
James Hunt: I feel like everything’s sort of glued together then for us.

01:01:14.082 –> 01:01:14.742
James Hunt: With like the…

01:01:30.195 –> 01:01:30.895
John Kennedy: Excellent.

01:01:30.895 –> 01:01:32.235
John Kennedy: I mean, it’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?

01:01:32.755 –> 01:01:46.875
John Kennedy: That kind of spirit of degradation to the sound quality of that just because, as you saved it and liked it and loved it and kept changing it, that almost brought a quality of its own.

01:01:46.875 –> 01:01:52.935
John Kennedy: As if you’d left it out in the rain, it had got a bit moldy, but you got to brought it back in.

01:01:52.935 –> 01:01:55.215
John Kennedy: That’s not a great analogy.

01:01:55.215 –> 01:01:56.715
James Hunt: That’s a good analogy.

01:01:56.735 –> 01:02:08.475
Jon George: Yeah, I think that some of the exciting parts, I guess, of rehashing the song was definitely this drums and this new feeling and leaning into this swing a bit more, and only keeping a couple of elements.

01:02:08.475 –> 01:02:18.815
Jon George: Then I guess another element that started to really bring the drop together or after these chorus feels, these post-chorus sample feels, was another exciting thing.

01:02:18.815 –> 01:02:33.655
Jon George: We often are going through splice or even just looking through all the dance tracks and looking for inspiration, whether we just take a note or a feeling and try and redo it ourselves in lots of different ways.

01:02:33.655 –> 01:02:34.555
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:02:34.555 –> 01:02:41.355
John Kennedy: Is there anything else we should hear from Fire Desire or should we move on to our final track?

01:02:42.515 –> 01:02:46.915
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think you were about to play the sample of the-

01:02:46.915 –> 01:02:49.635
Tyrone Lindqvist: that we found, the rain one.

01:02:49.635 –> 01:02:49.775
Jon George: Yep.

01:02:58.243 –> 01:03:05.723
Jon George: I think we were going through Splyce and through a bunch of different R&B type feelings, and it definitely added something new and fresh for us, I think.

01:03:05.763 –> 01:03:10.163
Jon George: So this, along with Dupre, this other, this Middle Eastern whale.

01:03:16.535 –> 01:03:19.575
Jon George: And then with the bass and drums, I guess, it feels good to hear like that.

01:03:28.230 –> 01:03:35.410
Jon George: So yeah, that was just a process of chopping up someone else’s, you know, spiced R&B vocal, I guess.

01:03:49.827 –> 01:04:03.967
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think one cool thing that I really do appreciate about us, and probably most musicians, is that we don’t really have a rule in terms of what should or shouldn’t be in a song, or how it comes to be.

01:04:03.967 –> 01:04:25.327
Tyrone Lindqvist: You know, like, we use splice and ready-made things, or vocal lines that exist there, or we could, you know, grab an AI-extracted vocal from an existing song from the 70s, you know, just to spark an idea or see where it takes us.

01:04:25.327 –> 01:04:32.427
Tyrone Lindqvist: And, you know, often we re-record or re-create the thing that might be very accessible.

01:04:32.427 –> 01:04:39.407
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like, say that sample from splices, you know, anyone in the world can grab that and can use it.

01:04:39.407 –> 01:04:48.127
Tyrone Lindqvist: And, yeah, I like that we were willing to just go, you know what, this is perfect, let’s not re-do it, let’s not re-create it, let’s not change the words.

01:04:48.127 –> 01:04:53.807
Tyrone Lindqvist: This, there’s a magic in this, whoever recorded it and made it, we should use this.

01:04:53.807 –> 01:05:04.427
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I like that about us, that we’re willing to try and grab anything from everywhere if it feels like it is the best for the song.

01:05:04.427 –> 01:05:07.307
John Kennedy: Yeah, whatever it takes, whatever works.

01:05:07.307 –> 01:05:08.507
James Hunt: That’s right.

01:05:08.507 –> 01:05:21.127
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting, I think, as people working within the world of electronic music and within the world of dance music, how now there are decades of dance music to reference.

01:05:21.127 –> 01:05:26.227
John Kennedy: And this constant evolution that is going on has kind of changed.

01:05:26.227 –> 01:05:35.987
John Kennedy: Because in the past, it used to be, right, we move on to the next thing and then we ditch that other thing, we move on to the next genre as things mutate and change.

01:05:35.987 –> 01:05:40.707
John Kennedy: Whereas now, you’re allowed the freedom to reference many different things.

01:05:41.027 –> 01:05:47.187
John Kennedy: And say, if we take this album as an example, you’re referencing 4 to the floor house music.

01:05:47.187 –> 01:05:49.887
John Kennedy: But with this, it’s a bit of broken beat.

01:05:49.887 –> 01:05:55.087
John Kennedy: You can even see a nod to hip hop within some of those sample uses in this track.

01:05:55.467 –> 01:06:02.447
John Kennedy: And then when you’re playing that section with Rain, that sample, that could be a burial tune or something in a way.

01:06:02.447 –> 01:06:04.607
John Kennedy: It has that kind of mood to it.

01:06:04.827 –> 01:06:07.427
John Kennedy: And you’re referencing it all now.

01:06:07.427 –> 01:06:18.747
John Kennedy: I think there’s been a change in the last few years that that more holistic or broader sense of history is being used all the time now.

01:06:18.747 –> 01:06:29.547
James Hunt: Yeah, I think that we love and find very interesting the cyclical nature of electronic music and that things are coming back in a vogue at different points.

01:06:29.547 –> 01:06:41.067
James Hunt: And we find ourselves referencing a lot of stuff that was predominant when we were kids probably, as well as stuff that’s contemporary, referencing our own stuff.

01:06:41.067 –> 01:06:44.947
James Hunt: I fucking love burial, huge fan of burial.

01:06:44.947 –> 01:06:58.807
James Hunt: So, you know, that kind of more interpretive type of electronic music as well, which is itself interpreting dance music as well as actual dance music and the entire spectrum of it, we find it endlessly fascinating.

01:06:58.807 –> 01:06:59.907
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, it’s great.

01:06:59.907 –> 01:07:02.187
John Kennedy: I love the way that you bring that all together.

01:07:02.187 –> 01:07:05.787
John Kennedy: We’ll take a quick break and the next song we’re going to look at is Exhale.

01:07:09.507 –> 01:07:15.507
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at from Inhale Exhale by Rüfüs Du Sol is the closing track on the album.

01:07:15.507 –> 01:07:19.367
John Kennedy: I guess one half of the title of the album.

01:07:19.367 –> 01:07:21.567
John Kennedy: We’ll find out more about that in just a moment.

01:07:21.567 –> 01:07:26.867
John Kennedy: So this is Exhale and James and John, if you want to play the master, that would be great.

01:08:58.716 –> 01:09:04.136
John Kennedy: Just a little taste, then, of Exhale from Inhale, Exhale by Rüfüs Du Sol.

01:09:04.136 –> 01:09:09.936
John Kennedy: It’s very easy to get lost in that track and forget to talk, do you?

01:09:09.936 –> 01:09:12.516
John Kennedy: I was really getting lost in the different sounds.

01:09:12.516 –> 01:09:16.976
John Kennedy: I’ve got to ask, that sounds like a cowbell, very, very low in the mix.

01:09:16.976 –> 01:09:18.796
John Kennedy: Is that a cowbell?

01:09:18.796 –> 01:09:19.756
James Hunt: Yeah, oh, close.

01:09:19.756 –> 01:09:20.996
James Hunt: It’s a glockenspiel.

01:09:20.996 –> 01:09:32.716
James Hunt: That was one of the, we can tell the story about how it was made, but basically we were trying to find ways to create time without a beat because this for us was a different closing track.

01:09:32.716 –> 01:09:43.576
James Hunt: Usually the closing track on our records will make more of a progressive or emotive, but still dance floor influenced piece of music.

01:09:43.576 –> 01:09:47.596
James Hunt: That’s been the case for the last four records, so we decided to flip it on its head.

01:09:48.256 –> 01:10:03.276
James Hunt: We were all discussing, I think, over lunch one day, let’s go in and make something completely different and beatless, and it’d be like a piece of music that is defined by how much space there is in it and negative space.

01:10:03.276 –> 01:10:08.596
James Hunt: So, with that in mind, when we were generating stuff, this is a basically, I’ll just play it.

01:10:08.596 –> 01:10:15.216
James Hunt: It’s a, we like that it kind of sounds like a train bell, you know, it’s like a train pulling in.

01:10:15.216 –> 01:10:22.236
James Hunt: But basically it is, if I just turn this off, it’s a glockenspiel pitched down like two octaves, I think.

01:10:26.596 –> 01:10:33.716
James Hunt: So I pushed it down, there’s some delay, reverb.

01:10:33.716 –> 01:10:35.716
James Hunt: You’re hearing out some of the harmonics.

01:10:35.716 –> 01:10:42.696
James Hunt: But essentially, yeah, it’s just like this, it feels like you’re in a, I don’t know, some surrealist dream and there’s like a train.

01:10:43.756 –> 01:10:48.336
James Hunt: Anyway, there’s a few instances of interesting pulse, so it’s cool you picked up on that.

01:10:48.336 –> 01:10:49.716
John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s great, it’s great.

01:10:49.856 –> 01:10:54.336
John Kennedy: And yeah, there’s layers of these things, these different sounds that are going on.

01:10:54.336 –> 01:10:57.576
John Kennedy: So Inhale Exhale is the title of the album.

01:10:57.576 –> 01:11:00.616
John Kennedy: Inhale starts the album, Exhale ends it.

01:11:00.756 –> 01:11:03.776
John Kennedy: So they kind of bookend the record.

01:11:03.776 –> 01:11:08.816
John Kennedy: Did you create those bits of music and then title the album?

01:11:08.816 –> 01:11:11.996
John Kennedy: Were they created with the title in mind?

01:11:11.996 –> 01:11:13.776
John Kennedy: Was it interlinked?

01:11:13.776 –> 01:11:14.016
Jon George: Yeah.

01:11:14.016 –> 01:11:20.176
Jon George: So this track had a working title of Daffodil for the rest of its life that we’ve known it.

01:11:20.176 –> 01:11:24.776
Jon George: And we sort of created a lot of the project titles for the record.

01:11:24.776 –> 01:11:35.176
Jon George: We like to do this every time we go into a record is to create a theme, I guess, rather than just having the A project, A project, B, we have different themes.

01:11:35.176 –> 01:11:46.536
Jon George: We’ve had space, I think on Atlas, we had different cities and it just helps us create some type of visual sometimes, or even just as easy as remembering which track is which.

01:11:46.536 –> 01:11:52.096
Jon George: But Flowers was the theme on this record, some type of floral feature.

01:11:52.096 –> 01:12:02.856
Jon George: And yeah, the track was one of our strongest tracks for a while there, like it came in about in the middle of the record writing process.

01:12:02.856 –> 01:12:08.656
Jon George: And we were pretty sure that this would be the perfect ending track as we’d sort of set out to do.

01:12:09.356 –> 01:12:22.876
Jon George: And then we went into this sort of process of we had maybe like 80%, 90% of the record done and we wanted to do like a listening session and play the songs to some people in LA.

01:12:22.876 –> 01:12:34.036
Jon George: And we used this opportunity of using a breathwork session in like, what do you call it, a sound healing space in Venice in LA.

01:12:34.036 –> 01:12:37.176
Jon George: It has this like beautiful set up, wooden floors.

01:12:37.656 –> 01:12:41.516
Jon George: People put down like yoga mats and have a pillow.

01:12:41.516 –> 01:12:48.696
Jon George: And you basically put on blindfolds and this teacher will take you through a breathwork session.

01:12:48.696 –> 01:12:51.996
Jon George: So we did a Q&A talking about the record.

01:12:51.996 –> 01:12:57.476
Jon George: And we also then have these amazing speakers in this acoustically built out room.

01:12:57.476 –> 01:12:58.156
Jon George: It’s beautiful.

01:12:58.156 –> 01:13:06.456
Jon George: So everyone was led through, I guess, this breathwork session which sort of fires your senses and takes you into a different world.

01:13:06.936 –> 01:13:14.116
Jon George: Whilst doing the breathwork and then we played back a few of the songs, including this song, Daffodil.

01:13:15.236 –> 01:13:22.336
Jon George: And I think after leaving that session, we’d spoken a lot about breath and we were still trying to come up with an album title.

01:13:22.336 –> 01:13:29.956
Jon George: And it sort of appeared after that as Inhale and Exhale being something we believe strongly in.

01:13:29.956 –> 01:13:35.216
Jon George: We do breathwork before we go on stage and that’s been a big part of our lives for the last few years.

01:13:35.316 –> 01:13:46.836
Jon George: So I think we even once we had sort of discussed this being the album title, we then went into writing an intro song for the whole album.

01:13:46.836 –> 01:13:51.236
Jon George: And it felt quite fitting to have that as Inhale track.

01:13:51.236 –> 01:14:01.436
Jon George: So that the whole album can be sort of this one big cycle of inhale and an exhale breath, and then back on again to repeat the whole album again if you want.

01:14:01.436 –> 01:14:04.156
Jon George: So we sort of had a bit of fun playing into that.

01:14:04.316 –> 01:14:07.196
Jon George: And that’s sort of how that exhale title came out.

01:14:07.196 –> 01:14:07.656
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:14:07.656 –> 01:14:09.356
John Kennedy: Really, really interesting.

01:14:09.356 –> 01:14:10.656
John Kennedy: And what kind of breath work?

01:14:10.656 –> 01:14:14.096
John Kennedy: I mean, so this probably could be a whole podcast.

01:14:14.096 –> 01:14:16.636
John Kennedy: And so just breath work.

01:14:16.636 –> 01:14:19.036
John Kennedy: But how do you do this?

01:14:19.036 –> 01:14:20.336
John Kennedy: So what are you doing?

01:14:20.496 –> 01:14:27.396
John Kennedy: And say before, when you’re on the stage, before you take to the stage, how do you do it?

01:14:27.396 –> 01:14:29.056
James Hunt: I guess it depends on the day.

01:14:29.056 –> 01:14:45.796
James Hunt: Like if we’re quite exhausted, which is frequently the case, then our trainer who comes on the road with us would lead us through like the like very short, like kind of almost hyperventilating and then holding the breath in, holding it out.

01:14:45.796 –> 01:14:48.816
James Hunt: We do a few rounds of that and it kind of like charges you up.

01:14:48.816 –> 01:14:55.796
James Hunt: Or if we’re feeling like there’s a lot of nervous energy, then we’ll sort of do down regulating breath work where we’re doing like box breathing.

01:14:55.796 –> 01:14:58.556
James Hunt: It’s like four in, four hold, four out, four hold.

01:14:58.556 –> 01:15:00.356
James Hunt: There’s a few different like techniques.

01:15:00.356 –> 01:15:13.176
James Hunt: I don’t know the specific terminology of them, but basically it’s like, it’s also a cool way to just like connect as a unit before I go on stage, especially for some of these, you know, these huge shows we’ve been lucky enough to play over the last few years.

01:15:13.176 –> 01:15:19.416
James Hunt: It’s a way to connect and then also to like come into your own body again, if you’re in your head.

01:15:19.416 –> 01:15:28.836
James Hunt: I feel like we performed the best we have sort of in the live shows because of that practice and like, you know, then we have an ice bath set up when we finish the show.

01:15:29.576 –> 01:15:35.636
James Hunt: We all do ice baths and yes, we’ve implemented a lot of cool kind of practices into the way we tour.

01:15:35.636 –> 01:15:37.056
John Kennedy: Yeah, sounds amazing.

01:15:37.056 –> 01:15:45.536
John Kennedy: Sounds amazing and that experience of listening to the album in that situation you outlined, John, sounded amazing as well.

01:15:45.536 –> 01:15:49.896
John Kennedy: You know, those are lucky people, I think, who got to listen to it in that way.

01:15:49.896 –> 01:15:50.776
John Kennedy: Fantastic.

01:15:50.776 –> 01:15:53.156
John Kennedy: Sounds like a really clever thing to do.

01:15:53.156 –> 01:16:03.316
John Kennedy: You’ve got these these clever approaches to things with the breathing and the listening, you know, a way of allowing yourselves to reassess in a different environment.

01:16:03.316 –> 01:16:03.656
Jon George: Yeah.

01:16:03.656 –> 01:16:06.636
Jon George: I think it’s something that we’ve connected with over the years.

01:16:06.636 –> 01:16:12.336
Jon George: We used to be a bit more of a, you know, we used to do things quite differently back in the day when we started.

01:16:12.336 –> 01:16:30.056
Jon George: And over time, we realized what was going to make this sustainable for ourselves and to reignite passion and stuff in the studio or be able to operate at a different level, even if it’s just as better collaborators in the studio together.

01:16:30.056 –> 01:16:41.016
Jon George: Sort of these ideas of breath work and ice ballads and things like that is just a really quick way almost to re-center, to ground ourselves and to reconnect between each other.

01:16:41.016 –> 01:16:43.276
Jon George: So it’s something that we often do.

01:16:43.276 –> 01:16:48.756
Jon George: And it was really cool to do that as a sort of listening session focus group.

01:16:48.756 –> 01:16:51.716
Jon George: There was different people with some type of interest in the band there.

01:16:52.416 –> 01:17:02.876
Jon George: And you know, I think that that place in particular, Open in Venice, like have used our music throughout some of their breath working sessions before.

01:17:02.876 –> 01:17:08.456
Jon George: And it feels quite natural and organic to be able to lean into that.

01:17:08.456 –> 01:17:09.056
John Kennedy: Excellent.

01:17:09.536 –> 01:17:11.136
John Kennedy: Sounds fantastic.

01:17:11.136 –> 01:17:11.356
John Kennedy: Right.

01:17:11.356 –> 01:17:16.116
John Kennedy: So where did it start with Exhale or Daffodil as it was known?

01:17:16.116 –> 01:17:18.016
Tyrone Lindqvist: I actually can’t really remember.

01:17:18.036 –> 01:17:22.336
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think we built it around the chords and vocal melody.

01:17:22.336 –> 01:17:28.756
Tyrone Lindqvist: Essentially, we were trying to keep it really stripped back and just trying to highlight the vocal.

01:17:28.756 –> 01:17:51.796
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I can’t remember how the idea of doing using a vocoder came about, but somewhere in the studio that came about, it’s like, OK, maybe if this vocal melody is sung through a vocoder, so that’s the only time that you hear the chords to contextualize the simple melody, the vocal, that was exciting to us.

01:17:51.796 –> 01:17:56.956
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I guess like lyrically as well, I think the lyrics came out really fast.

01:17:56.956 –> 01:17:58.556
Tyrone Lindqvist: They were all written in that day.

01:17:58.556 –> 01:18:02.436
Tyrone Lindqvist: All the melodies were written in that first day.

01:18:02.436 –> 01:18:10.656
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s very rare for us to finish a song in a day, but this was a case where it happened, in what, two days, you know?

01:18:10.656 –> 01:18:17.416
Tyrone Lindqvist: And all the recording of the vocals, I think 90% of them are the things that are in there now.

01:18:17.416 –> 01:18:27.116
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I don’t know, I think that the chorus came pretty quick, like till the end of my last breath, I’ll be yours until I’m gone.

01:18:27.256 –> 01:18:34.016
Tyrone Lindqvist: I can’t even remember what they are, but I love that it was a blatant simple love song.

01:18:34.016 –> 01:18:37.236
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think in general, we love making love songs.

01:18:37.656 –> 01:18:41.416
Tyrone Lindqvist: If you were to break it down to the simplicity of it.

01:18:41.416 –> 01:18:56.056
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think one trick, not tricky, one thing I connect with in songs is when there’s an air of doubt, or like something that isn’t like, I love you screaming off the top of a mountain top.

01:18:56.056 –> 01:19:04.376
Tyrone Lindqvist: There’s, yeah, when I connect with something like that, it’s very rare and it’s amazing when it’s just an overt love song that is very positive.

01:19:05.496 –> 01:19:11.056
Tyrone Lindqvist: But the ones that I connect with most are the ones that have a bit more humanity or an air of doubt.

01:19:11.056 –> 01:19:21.836
Tyrone Lindqvist: So, knowing that we had the chorus that was closer to standing, you know, on a mountaintop screaming, I love you, the first lyric felt really important.

01:19:21.836 –> 01:19:27.256
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it being like, I don’t know why I left you alone.

01:19:27.256 –> 01:19:29.036
Tyrone Lindqvist: I’m not sure I will.

01:19:29.036 –> 01:19:33.616
Tyrone Lindqvist: I like that it sets you off on a tone of like, what’s this song going to be about?

01:19:34.236 –> 01:19:41.176
Tyrone Lindqvist: It doesn’t sound like it’s a, you know, it doesn’t sound like everything is all perfect.

01:19:41.176 –> 01:19:42.876
Tyrone Lindqvist: There’s imperfection.

01:19:42.876 –> 01:19:46.996
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I just thought, I like that in terms of the lyric, that felt really important.

01:19:46.996 –> 01:20:01.176
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think that that is something that we do a lot in our songs is to have an air of doubt in terms of the words, even within a sureness, because I feel like that feels true to life.

01:20:01.276 –> 01:20:11.356
Tyrone Lindqvist: It feels, you know, for us, a song, one of our prime goals is just for it to feel somewhat authentic or real.

01:20:11.356 –> 01:20:14.276
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, I really like that.

01:20:14.276 –> 01:20:15.496
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it’s hard to remember.

01:20:15.496 –> 01:20:22.616
Tyrone Lindqvist: I’m not as good at remembering, you know, how what came and when it came in terms of the development of the track.

01:20:22.616 –> 01:20:26.876
Tyrone Lindqvist: But I do know the melody and the lyric came pretty quick.

01:20:26.876 –> 01:20:27.516
James Hunt: Yeah, that’s right.

01:20:28.776 –> 01:20:34.396
James Hunt: Yeah, yeah, it was because we started this in Austin, I think it was November last year.

01:20:34.396 –> 01:20:39.896
James Hunt: And yeah, Ty basically, I think we were working on some other track, maybe hit a wall with it.

01:20:39.896 –> 01:20:42.816
James Hunt: And then Ty was jamming on something.

01:20:42.816 –> 01:20:49.276
James Hunt: He played it to us and he was playing it to us on the piano, the main chords and the vocal melody.

01:20:49.276 –> 01:21:00.396
James Hunt: And then, yeah, I don’t know when that idea came, but we decided to just basically play, have the chords only appear through the vocal, so essentially what a vocoder is.

01:21:01.576 –> 01:21:05.036
James Hunt: So we had that.

01:21:05.036 –> 01:21:17.616
James Hunt: And then at some point, I think we used like a crude gate of like, we had the Super 6, this is a synth that we were playing a lot with on this record, that we love, like it’s so stereo and sounds so fat.

01:21:17.616 –> 01:21:21.476
James Hunt: But we just basically set like a really crude gate, so there’s like the bottom end to the vocoder.

01:21:29.236 –> 01:21:43.756
James Hunt: And we liked that that left a lot of negative space for whatever color we wanted to play with, or it being, there’s a lot of tension in that, like in the space between the vocals, especially at the start, because there’s no sounds yet, there’s no pulse.

01:21:43.756 –> 01:21:50.556
James Hunt: So we liked that it was just like, I don’t know, it felt like a moment of time standing still a little bit.

01:21:50.556 –> 01:21:52.976
James Hunt: We liked leaning into that.

01:21:52.976 –> 01:21:55.156
James Hunt: So that was the start of the idea.

01:21:55.156 –> 01:22:20.916
James Hunt: And then we kind of had fun with playing with Candy, and I kind of want to play one thing that I thought was interesting about the texture of the track, which is these like, these like crystal bell things, which essentially is a, basically it’s a Slate and Ash plugin called Choreographs, which is a really sick contact plugin that we love.

01:22:20.916 –> 01:22:28.596
James Hunt: And so this thing I was jamming on was splitting up the scale into, on different arpeggios, playing at different rates.

01:22:30.776 –> 01:22:43.076
James Hunt: And then having each note having like a, basically using expression control in Ableton, so it’s like a random input, so each note gets panned slightly differently, so it’s kind of dancing around the stereo field.

01:22:46.836 –> 01:22:49.416
James Hunt: You know, and that just felt like a really interesting bed, I guess.

01:22:49.416 –> 01:22:54.436
James Hunt: And having them all kind of open up, as the track opens up, it feels like it’s sort of pillowing out.

01:22:54.436 –> 01:22:57.576
James Hunt: We were playing with these kind of tension strings.

01:22:59.496 –> 01:23:05.016
James Hunt: And basically, it just felt like interesting tension for us to be jamming on.

01:23:05.016 –> 01:23:08.996
James Hunt: And as the track builds, there’s this like bass that we tracked on the MS-20.

01:23:11.136 –> 01:23:16.736
James Hunt: So we like that there’s like a, I guess like an undercarriage of rhythm as well.

01:23:16.736 –> 01:23:20.336
James Hunt: And this thing is just, you know, it’s like we love the MS-20.

01:23:20.456 –> 01:23:24.536
James Hunt: We always have like, there’s like that noise on the filter sounds so nice.

01:23:24.536 –> 01:23:35.516
James Hunt: We play with different kind of processing, like using this emulator of the Culture Vulture to kind of add some grit and sort of embellish the noise of it.

01:23:35.516 –> 01:23:40.116
James Hunt: And we like that there’s a contrast of like prettiness with grit as well.

01:23:40.116 –> 01:23:41.356
James Hunt: So it kind of earths it a bit.

01:23:41.356 –> 01:23:43.956
James Hunt: So not everything is just pretty.

01:23:43.956 –> 01:23:44.876
James Hunt: I thought that was cool.

01:23:44.876 –> 01:23:45.936
Jon George: Yeah.

01:23:45.936 –> 01:23:51.336
James Hunt: And basically, because there’s so much negative space, we were able to like fill the space with interesting noise.

01:23:51.336 –> 01:23:53.936
James Hunt: So there’s a bunch of stuff.

01:23:53.936 –> 01:24:00.956
James Hunt: For me, it sounds a lot like, like radiohead, like spinning plates, kind of affects everything being reversed, you know?

01:24:00.956 –> 01:24:09.056
James Hunt: So we were like sending, you know, crash cymbals through delays and then reversing that and printing it and then reversing that.

01:24:09.056 –> 01:24:14.516
James Hunt: You know, so it’s super iterative, committing, committing, committing, like we were talking about before.

01:24:14.616 –> 01:24:19.116
James Hunt: It’s just like layers of recording and processing and recording and processing.

01:24:19.116 –> 01:24:21.456
James Hunt: And then you get like really interesting results, like.

01:24:28.258 –> 01:24:31.758
James Hunt: Whatever that is, it sounds very digital, which I think is cool as well.

01:24:31.758 –> 01:24:36.578
James Hunt: It’s like a cool choice, because we’re also going for the organic, very textual sounds.

01:24:36.578 –> 01:24:41.418
James Hunt: But then in contrast, we’re like, I don’t know, that feels like really radiohead to me as well, I think.

01:24:41.418 –> 01:24:45.458
James Hunt: And I think we liked that, like the aesthetic of that.

01:24:45.458 –> 01:24:47.298
James Hunt: And I guess there was so much negative space on the track.

01:24:47.298 –> 01:24:51.398
James Hunt: It was an interesting experiment to fill that space without overfilling it.

01:24:51.398 –> 01:24:52.098
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

01:24:52.098 –> 01:24:53.798
John Kennedy: Do you ever overfill it?

01:24:53.798 –> 01:24:57.798
John Kennedy: Do you ever think, oh no, we’ve done too much.

01:24:58.078 –> 01:24:59.238
James Hunt: I think we do.

01:24:59.238 –> 01:25:04.418
James Hunt: Like, inherently, because there’s three of us, and we’re all producing and writing at the same time.

01:25:04.418 –> 01:25:06.878
James Hunt: Sometimes things will layer up quickly.

01:25:06.878 –> 01:25:12.218
James Hunt: And, you know, so it’s then a good skill to be cutthroat and be like, is that serving the track?

01:25:12.218 –> 01:25:14.678
James Hunt: But, you know, it’s not, that’s not always the case.

01:25:14.678 –> 01:25:18.518
James Hunt: I feel like we’re usually pretty good at listening to what the track needs.

01:25:18.518 –> 01:25:22.938
James Hunt: And then we’re all kind of on the same journey as to generating what that thing is.

01:25:22.938 –> 01:25:28.878
James Hunt: Or we like, we do a thing called the bass wars, when we’re like trying to find what the bass line of a track is.

01:25:28.878 –> 01:25:30.858
James Hunt: And we’re all in different sense, like, no, I think it’s this one.

01:25:30.858 –> 01:25:33.598
James Hunt: It’s like a 1-8-D, do, do, do, do.

01:25:33.598 –> 01:25:33.958
James Hunt: That’s cool.

01:25:33.958 –> 01:25:35.518
James Hunt: But I’ve got this like eighth note thing.

01:25:36.438 –> 01:25:41.998
James Hunt: And so we’re all kind of like battling, but for with the same goal in mind of like finding the identity.

01:25:41.998 –> 01:25:48.918
James Hunt: So, you know, it’s not always that we’re just like layering for the sake of layering, but it has happened here and there.

01:25:48.918 –> 01:25:56.078
James Hunt: And I think we’ve gotten better and better at, you know, communicating and saying, I think that thing maybe doesn’t work.

01:25:56.078 –> 01:25:56.758
James Hunt: This doesn’t work.

01:25:56.758 –> 01:25:58.418
James Hunt: This doesn’t serve the track.

01:25:58.418 –> 01:26:05.818
James Hunt: Or we should highlight this so that the space isn’t just cluttered and you can hear the focus of things.

01:26:05.818 –> 01:26:06.138
James Hunt: Yeah.

01:26:06.138 –> 01:26:08.158
James Hunt: So, I don’t know, it’s an ongoing thing.

01:26:08.158 –> 01:26:12.638
James Hunt: This is like the piano that I think we tracked in the studio in Austin.

01:26:12.958 –> 01:26:16.198
James Hunt: It’s like a studio that Willie Nelson used to work in a bunch.

01:26:16.198 –> 01:26:22.538
James Hunt: So there’s like all these, there’s a beautiful piano in there, like old accordions and heaps of like old guitars and memorabilia.

01:26:22.798 –> 01:26:22.938
James Hunt: But.

01:26:37.103 –> 01:26:40.603
James Hunt: And that’s basically the initial chords that Ty played us.

01:26:40.603 –> 01:26:45.423
James Hunt: So we tracked them and they come in sort of towards the end of the track as it builds.

01:26:45.423 –> 01:26:46.403
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah.

01:26:46.403 –> 01:26:58.263
Tyrone Lindqvist: I like that a lot of the track is building and there is like a tension that we had and the vocoder is there all the way up until the last sort of lift and drop.

01:26:58.263 –> 01:27:03.103
Tyrone Lindqvist: You know, we didn’t know where the song was gonna end or what the structure was gonna be.

01:27:03.103 –> 01:27:07.643
Tyrone Lindqvist: We knew that we didn’t want it to go to a full beat or a drop, but we wanted…

01:27:07.643 –> 01:27:10.183
Tyrone Lindqvist: It felt like it needed a release of some sort.

01:27:10.183 –> 01:27:16.463
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, the last vocal melody felt like, oh, this is it.

01:27:16.463 –> 01:27:18.603
Tyrone Lindqvist: This feels like a lift of some sort.

01:27:18.603 –> 01:27:42.203
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I don’t know if it was an intentional thing that we did or a happy mistake, but the vocoder isn’t happening when I’m singing, ah, forever, which when we listen to it now, it’s like, it really is a release in that there’s always this tension of the vocoder going on when the vocal is.

01:27:42.203 –> 01:28:01.643
Tyrone Lindqvist: So as soon as you take that away and replace it with a piano that’s quite harmonious and isn’t too cluttered and narrow and thick in terms of the frequencies that it’s taking up, it felt like a real liberating lift, which felt nice and lyrically, which was interesting.

01:28:01.643 –> 01:28:10.983
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think on the first night, the lyrics were something like, till I’m in heaven, like I’m yours till I’m gone.

01:28:10.983 –> 01:28:20.263
Tyrone Lindqvist: And when we came in the next day, I think Jon was like, yeah, I don’t connect with that particular like lyric, which is really fair.

01:28:20.523 –> 01:28:38.323
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like, I think in my brain, I wasn’t thinking, I think we as a band have not really sat specifically in any religion or anything, you know, I think we’re spiritual guys and we, you know, have our own beliefs and, and I love that.

01:28:38.323 –> 01:28:41.763
Tyrone Lindqvist: And maybe the word heaven was a little weighted in a way.

01:28:41.763 –> 01:28:46.983
Tyrone Lindqvist: And that made sense to me, but to me, I’m like, what the hell is the solution going to be?

01:28:47.443 –> 01:28:56.383
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I like that we were throwing ideas around and our creative director, I think, was like, well, what about I’m forever?

01:28:56.383 –> 01:29:00.143
Tyrone Lindqvist: It was like, well, yeah, that sounds great, but what then?

01:29:00.143 –> 01:29:05.863
Tyrone Lindqvist: And then it was like a simple, I’m forever yours till I’m gone or till I’m done.

01:29:05.863 –> 01:29:09.063
Tyrone Lindqvist: And it just felt so much better.

01:29:09.063 –> 01:29:14.303
Tyrone Lindqvist: It was so, so much better than the thing that we had the night before.

01:29:15.443 –> 01:29:21.823
Tyrone Lindqvist: And yeah, I would have not known that, you know, I wouldn’t have found that answer at all by myself.

01:29:21.823 –> 01:29:37.363
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I love that we’re a unit that challenges each other and, you know, ideas can come from anyone down to, you know, our artistic directors in there with us vibing out or we have a videographer in there filming a bunch.

01:29:37.363 –> 01:29:41.803
Tyrone Lindqvist: You know, she’ll, you know, if we ask her a question, she’ll have an idea or something.

01:29:42.943 –> 01:29:54.423
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s cool and I’m really grateful that that’s where we ended up because it is, to me, a more profound line, like a more simple and honest line is maybe what I mean.

01:29:54.423 –> 01:29:55.483
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:29:55.483 –> 01:30:05.823
John Kennedy: I think we should maybe have a blast of the ending with the piano and then we’ll go to the questions that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast and we’ve got some Patreon questions as well to ask you.

01:30:05.823 –> 01:30:09.143
John Kennedy: So maybe we could revisit that piano ending.

01:30:09.243 –> 01:30:09.423
James Hunt: Yeah.

01:30:09.423 –> 01:30:17.263
James Hunt: Just before we play the end, I’d just love to solo the piano in terms of it being a closing track and showing the kind of…

01:30:17.263 –> 01:30:18.543
James Hunt: I feel like we’ve done this a few times.

01:30:18.543 –> 01:30:22.683
James Hunt: We like the idea of crunching things into the abyss a little bit.

01:30:22.683 –> 01:30:31.663
James Hunt: And it’s like things are being dissipated into the void of space or something as being like the way the song closes out.

01:30:31.663 –> 01:30:47.743
James Hunt: So we have the piano, but we’re bringing up this Valhalla reverb on it, and then this dynamic tube saturator, so it’s just becoming more crunched and crunched.

01:30:47.743 –> 01:30:50.503
James Hunt: And we kind of did that with every element in the track.

01:30:50.503 –> 01:30:52.943
James Hunt: Towards the end, it just becomes like this…

01:30:54.123 –> 01:30:56.143
James Hunt: Yeah, it gets crunched and you almost hear like the…

01:30:56.143 –> 01:31:02.123
James Hunt: It’s starting against itself and it felt like a natural way to close out the record, I guess.

01:31:02.123 –> 01:31:03.663
John Kennedy: Yeah, it works pretty well.

01:31:04.083 –> 01:31:05.083
Tyrone Lindqvist: I love that.

01:31:05.083 –> 01:31:22.503
Tyrone Lindqvist: I was just going to say that like the one other thing in just in terms of the lyrics that I found interesting is that I don’t know, I feel like this song, for me, is a real reflection of a more mature relationship too.

01:31:23.423 –> 01:31:31.503
Tyrone Lindqvist: In terms of fire desire being the early days of like where there’s passion and excitement, you’re in a honeymoon phase of a relationship.

01:31:31.503 –> 01:31:39.823
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think I’ve been married for three years and in the relationship for seven or eight years, somewhere around there with my wife.

01:31:41.023 –> 01:31:42.623
Tyrone Lindqvist: Things do change.

01:31:45.723 –> 01:31:50.123
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s nice to have those reminders of the fire desire, like the track, the feeling.

01:31:50.123 –> 01:31:51.383
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s nice that we have that.

01:31:52.403 –> 01:32:04.323
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I don’t know, I just really love a new found commitment in a relationship where you’re really, yeah, you’re committed to people.

01:32:04.323 –> 01:32:09.863
Tyrone Lindqvist: I’m committed to this one person for the rest of my life and I embrace their change.

01:32:09.863 –> 01:32:13.803
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like I embrace, there’s a line that’s like, you could go anywhere you want.

01:32:13.803 –> 01:32:14.963
Tyrone Lindqvist: I would love you still.

01:32:14.963 –> 01:32:22.683
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I see that, you know, in my relationship, and I love that, that feels special to me.

01:32:22.683 –> 01:32:27.243
Tyrone Lindqvist: It’s a real deep commitment, you know, in terms of us having a kid.

01:32:27.243 –> 01:32:31.023
Tyrone Lindqvist: And just I really love that.

01:32:31.023 –> 01:32:37.183
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think for us as a band as well, just having, we’ve undergone a lot of change, you know, as a unit.

01:32:37.183 –> 01:32:41.963
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think we’ve been together for 14, 15 years.

01:32:41.963 –> 01:32:48.523
Tyrone Lindqvist: I think it is natural when you’re in relationship with someone to have to embrace all of them.

01:32:49.023 –> 01:32:59.223
Tyrone Lindqvist: Like, as they change, you know, things look different for me, John and James, independently than what they did 10 years ago.

01:32:59.223 –> 01:33:03.123
Tyrone Lindqvist: And we look to each other and go, yeah, I accept you.

01:33:03.123 –> 01:33:06.523
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I feel that with my wife.

01:33:06.523 –> 01:33:10.003
Tyrone Lindqvist: And I think that it’s a subtle, small thing.

01:33:10.003 –> 01:33:22.743
Tyrone Lindqvist: But I love that this song, for me, leans into that more mature relationship and that deeper commitment of like, you know, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.

01:33:22.743 –> 01:33:44.323
Tyrone Lindqvist: Yeah, I just wanted to say that because I love when lyrics in a song come from a specific place, but they land in a place of more of a universal picture where it’s not too specific to a listener, but where it’s coming from is a more specific source.

01:33:45.163 –> 01:33:47.763
John Kennedy: Yeah, totally.

01:33:47.763 –> 01:33:51.343
John Kennedy: Let’s hear the end of the song and then I’ll ask you these questions.

01:33:51.903 –> 01:33:52.203
Tyrone Lindqvist: All right.

01:35:24.797 –> 01:35:28.797
John Kennedy: Taking us off into space, possibly.

01:35:28.797 –> 01:35:33.937
John Kennedy: It is Rüfüs Du Sol with Exhale, the closing track to the Inhale Exhale album.

01:35:33.937 –> 01:35:41.537
John Kennedy: And before I let you go, we have the regular questions we ask everybody who comes on Tape Notes, and also a couple of Patreon questions that I’m going to ask you now.

01:35:41.537 –> 01:35:48.597
John Kennedy: So Stephen got in touch to say, what is the most exciting thing you’ve learned in music production recently?

01:35:48.597 –> 01:35:49.577
John Kennedy: It’s a big one.

01:35:49.577 –> 01:35:50.917
James Hunt: It’s a big one.

01:35:50.957 –> 01:36:01.897
Jon George: Well, yeah, it’s funny, like we’ve been out of the studio, we finished this big two years of writing or a year and a half at least, and we’ve just been on a break, so I guess we’re just coming in a little fresh.

01:36:01.897 –> 01:36:21.677
Jon George: But the biggest thing I’ve just had fun with over this record writing process is, we used to be much more in the box when we first started writing, and then slowly over the albums, we were able to start collecting more gear and having more fun with working with the hardware.

01:36:21.677 –> 01:36:33.497
Jon George: So, on this record, I guess it was really fun to lean into this more analog, and particularly playing with different distortion.

01:36:33.497 –> 01:36:41.317
Jon George: And like James was saying earlier in the interview, we have this outboard rack here that we had a lot of fun just crunching.

01:36:41.317 –> 01:36:48.657
Jon George: Whether things made it on the record or not, I think that it was fun to play with what’s bringing out different harmonics and being able to shape that.

01:36:49.357 –> 01:36:59.257
Jon George: We have like a transient shaper and everything inside our box, inside our rack, sorry, and these guitar pedals, to be able to send stuff to here in our studio.

01:36:59.257 –> 01:37:07.097
Jon George: So just having fun with the looseness of that and just recording takes has brought a lot of life back into the studio for us.

01:37:07.097 –> 01:37:23.357
Jon George: For me at least, as much as I love being able to manipulate anything in the box, it’s just something fun and lively about having that rawness and seeing what happens when you distort things and clip things and have fun with that.

01:37:23.357 –> 01:37:24.897
John Kennedy: Yeah, completely.

01:37:24.897 –> 01:37:28.957
John Kennedy: And that in a way ties in to the next question from Jenna.

01:37:28.957 –> 01:37:37.017
John Kennedy: Are there specific emotions that you find more challenging to express through sense and production and how do you overcome that?

01:37:37.017 –> 01:37:52.177
James Hunt: That is a good question because I think it’s really easy to express emotions, like maybe more moody and darker or more spacious or not heavier but more weighted emotions.

01:37:52.177 –> 01:38:16.757
James Hunt: At least for me, I feel like it’s probably unanimous, but through a synth as into what I’m saying is to express joy or happiness through a synth, it’s easy for it to sound cheesy, I think is one thing we found, especially through even though we have this amazing array of synthesizers and the Prophet 6, the OB6 and everything that we are lucky enough to have.

01:38:17.677 –> 01:38:23.397
James Hunt: It’s really easy to make a sick cinematic, dark soundscape.

01:38:23.397 –> 01:38:29.917
James Hunt: It’s like we could do that for days on end and we do that, and we’ll spend hours just making moody soundscapes.

01:38:29.917 –> 01:38:39.137
James Hunt: But to do it in a way that evokes joy, there’s a sweet spot and that’s something I think we’ve found how to do, but it’s easy to overstep.

01:38:39.857 –> 01:38:47.217
James Hunt: So in terms of expressing through gear and through toys, that’s probably my answer on that, I guess.

01:38:47.217 –> 01:38:49.417
John Kennedy: And to overcome it, is it trial and error?

01:38:49.417 –> 01:38:53.797
John Kennedy: You just have to throw yourself at it and work your way through.

01:38:53.797 –> 01:38:54.577
James Hunt: Yeah, I believe so.

01:38:54.577 –> 01:38:56.017
James Hunt: I think it’s trial and error.

01:38:57.057 –> 01:38:57.997
James Hunt: It’s always iterative.

01:38:59.257 –> 01:39:03.717
James Hunt: When something sticks, often it’s a happy accident or it happens organically.

01:39:03.717 –> 01:39:06.997
James Hunt: Rarely do we force it into existence.

01:39:07.457 –> 01:39:16.957
James Hunt: Every now and then we do, but for the most part, if the thing works initially, then it’s like being an antenna for the idea.

01:39:16.957 –> 01:39:24.637
James Hunt: And if we’re an antenna and we receive the idea and it’s sick and captivating and the spark feels good, then we know there’s something in that.

01:39:24.637 –> 01:39:33.957
James Hunt: And yeah, so I guess trial and error just generating a lot and then we’ll just stumble upon the thing, I guess.

01:39:33.957 –> 01:39:42.157
John Kennedy: So the first of our questions that we ask everybody is about tech and whether there’s a piece of equipment or something that you can’t live without.

01:39:42.157 –> 01:39:47.697
John Kennedy: It could be to do with this project or it could be just in general.

01:39:47.697 –> 01:39:57.597
John Kennedy: Do either of any of you have a particular attachment to something or have a particular value for something that you use to create?

01:39:57.597 –> 01:40:03.757
Jon George: I think, I mean, just in general as a project, I think that we, the most used piece of gear would be the Prophet 6.

01:40:04.797 –> 01:40:10.417
Jon George: We have like, I think we own about 10 of them with all the stage gear that we have as well.

01:40:10.417 –> 01:40:20.937
Jon George: And then, I think just me personally, I think that one of the biggest revolutionary plugins we’ve had has been ShaperBox and the way that you can manipulate and use things with that.

01:40:20.937 –> 01:40:31.957
Jon George: There’s a whole world of things from side-chaining to adding sounds to create better transients or to make things pop through, shape things in different ways has been really fun.

01:40:33.537 –> 01:40:42.277
James Hunt: I think, it’s not a specific plugin, but I really love and have loved all of the soft synths, like the instruments from Slate and Ash.

01:40:42.277 –> 01:40:49.877
James Hunt: They have a really cool array of plugins that I’ve dipped my toes into like modular a few times and I’ve never dived in.

01:40:50.297 –> 01:40:53.197
James Hunt: We’ve had some time off over the last month, so I’ve been diving in.

01:40:53.197 –> 01:40:56.497
James Hunt: But again, it feels like a dangerous wormhole to be entering.

01:40:56.497 –> 01:41:04.617
James Hunt: But I feel like these plugins emulate the kind of like controlled chaos of modular systems or like the…

01:41:04.617 –> 01:41:10.677
James Hunt: That’s something I love in production is emulating some controlled chaos even if it’s with LFOs or whatever.

01:41:10.677 –> 01:41:14.157
James Hunt: But these plugins, I feel, do it in a way that’s really interesting.

01:41:14.157 –> 01:41:27.057
James Hunt: And as opposed to with the Prophet 6 where we’re dialing in patches and we’re making exactly what we want, it’s like that’s the classic thing of flicking through presets and you’ll discover something really interesting like Exhale.

01:41:27.057 –> 01:41:33.917
James Hunt: There’s a few, like the little arpeggios in it, the fluttering arpeggios are from one of their plugins.

01:41:33.917 –> 01:41:38.057
James Hunt: And it inspired this part because it sounded so interesting.

01:41:38.057 –> 01:41:39.017
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:41:39.017 –> 01:41:42.757
John Kennedy: The other thing we hope to get from people is advice.

01:41:42.757 –> 01:41:50.717
John Kennedy: So, I mean, you’ve been doing Rüfüs Du Sol now, as you were saying, Ty, for 14, 15 years, you’ve become very successful.

01:41:50.717 –> 01:42:04.017
John Kennedy: Have you learned something along the way that you would want to share with other people or maybe, you know, your success is born from somebody sharing some wisdom with you that you carry with you and that you could pass on?

01:42:04.017 –> 01:42:10.797
James Hunt: Well, I remember reading a gem from, I don’t know if it was the…

01:42:10.797 –> 01:42:12.957
James Hunt: Oh, rest in peace to Quincy Jones, by the way.

01:42:12.957 –> 01:42:15.197
James Hunt: But I think it was a quote from him, honestly.

01:42:15.197 –> 01:42:16.277
James Hunt: And it was just very simple.

01:42:16.277 –> 01:42:19.377
James Hunt: It’s like, if it moves you, then it will move someone else.

01:42:19.377 –> 01:42:29.097
James Hunt: And basically, I like in that hypersimplification, that it is a reminder to listen to your own internal barometer of taste.

01:42:29.097 –> 01:42:45.577
James Hunt: And while it’s eternally helpful to be referencing other people’s music when you start, which is definitely what we’ve done to learn how to do specific things production-wise or in terms of chord progressions or whatever it is.

01:42:45.577 –> 01:42:56.337
James Hunt: The referencing is helpful, but the more you are just yourself or the more idiosyncrasies and unique choices that you would make, the more interesting I think the music is.

01:42:56.337 –> 01:43:03.577
James Hunt: And then the more if you listen to, if you would want to listen to this piece of music, do you like it yourself?

01:43:03.577 –> 01:43:08.157
James Hunt: As you start to filter in the noise of, oh, this audience might not like it.

01:43:10.077 –> 01:43:11.637
James Hunt: I think it becomes more overcomplicated.

01:43:11.637 –> 01:43:26.617
James Hunt: And we’ve learned time and time again that when we listen to our own tastes as creators, then we have more success in terms of making the thing that we want to make and that years down the track we’ll still be very proud of and we still love.

01:43:26.617 –> 01:43:26.837
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:43:26.837 –> 01:43:27.757
Jon George: Love that.

01:43:27.757 –> 01:43:29.977
John Kennedy: That’s great.

01:43:29.977 –> 01:43:38.977
John Kennedy: Thank you so much for giving us your time and for putting in all that work to get the stems ready and be able to go through them and find those demos.

01:43:38.977 –> 01:43:43.177
John Kennedy: You know, that is really, really lovely of you to do that.

01:43:43.177 –> 01:43:46.837
John Kennedy: It’s been brilliant to talk to you about the new album, Inhal, Exhale.

01:43:46.837 –> 01:43:50.237
John Kennedy: We should play one more song from it as a kind of outro track.

01:43:50.237 –> 01:43:53.897
John Kennedy: I know that we had considered talking about The Life at one point.

01:43:53.897 –> 01:43:56.177
John Kennedy: It’s one of the songs that we would look at.

01:43:56.177 –> 01:43:59.037
John Kennedy: And maybe we should choose that as an outro.

01:43:59.037 –> 01:44:02.557
John Kennedy: And maybe you could tell us a little bit about The Life before we hear it.

01:44:02.557 –> 01:44:04.277
James Hunt: Yeah, we’d love to play that track.

01:44:05.557 –> 01:44:08.117
James Hunt: That’s another one that we started on a previous record.

01:44:08.117 –> 01:44:14.077
James Hunt: We started it in 2020, I think, when we started writing Surrender, our last record.

01:44:14.077 –> 01:44:17.057
James Hunt: And again, we hadn’t found the identity of it.

01:44:17.057 –> 01:44:27.697
James Hunt: We eventually found the identity of it in terms of the break beat in that as well as having a similar kind of aesthetic to the almost burial-esque crunch of Fire Desire.

01:44:27.697 –> 01:44:32.617
James Hunt: And we developed a lot of the music, pulled some samples in, but we didn’t have a chorus vocal.

01:44:32.777 –> 01:44:35.957
James Hunt: So then we started writing this record.

01:44:35.957 –> 01:44:51.157
James Hunt: Tyrone brought in this chorus vocal and the lyric, and it sort of tied the whole thing together and felt like it was almost in terms of like the production assist a song to Fire Desire as being songs that both offered something similar on the record, but also very different.

01:44:51.157 –> 01:44:53.457
James Hunt: And yeah, we love this one.

01:44:53.457 –> 01:44:55.137
James Hunt: We can’t wait to play this live as well.

01:44:55.137 –> 01:44:59.157
James Hunt: We’ve been just imagining how this will sound in a live setting, so.

01:44:59.157 –> 01:44:59.797
James Hunt: Yeah.

01:44:59.797 –> 01:45:02.637
John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s one of my favorites, I think.

01:45:02.637 –> 01:45:04.597
John Kennedy: Thank you all so much for your time.

01:45:04.597 –> 01:45:05.837
John Kennedy: Really appreciate it.

01:45:05.897 –> 01:45:08.517
John Kennedy: And here is the last selection then from Inhale, Exhale.

01:45:08.517 –> 01:45:12.077
John Kennedy: This is The Life by Rüfüs Du Sol.

01:45:30.097 –> 01:45:35.377
John Kennedy: Thank you for listening, and in particular, thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on Patreon.

01:45:35.377 –> 01:45:39.897
John Kennedy: I’m just one part of the team that brings you Tape Notes, and it relies on your support.

01:45:39.897 –> 01:45:47.897
John Kennedy: Access to Patreon includes the full length videos of new episodes where possible, ad free episodes, and detailed gear lists among many other things.

01:45:47.897 –> 01:45:51.677
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01:45:51.677 –> 01:45:56.817
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01:45:56.817 –> 01:46:00.357
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01:46:00.357 –> 01:46:01.917
John Kennedy: Once again, thank you for listening.

01:46:01.917 –> 01:46:03.197
John Kennedy: Until next time, goodbye.