Full Transcript:

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John Kennedy: Hello, welcome to Tape Notes.

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John Kennedy: Before we jump into this week’s episode, I wanted to let you know that we’re on the hunt for an intern to join the video side of Tape Notes.

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John Kennedy: Full job description and how to apply can be found on our link tree across any of our socials.

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John Kennedy: Now, we have got a very exciting new episode for you.

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John Kennedy: I sat down with Liam and Chris, who are Maribou State, to talk about their amazing third album, Hallucinating Love, which just came out last Friday.

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John Kennedy: It was lovely to meet them and really interesting to hear how they approach writing and recording as they got some rules and techniques to both encourage their creativity and also to prevent them getting lost in it.

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John Kennedy: Their music has so many aspects to it, so many textures and layers.

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John Kennedy: It was really fascinating to find out how they make it from taking their whole studio to an Airbnb in remote country locations to inviting a gag of mates down to shake up the atmosphere and provide extra inspiration.

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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.

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John Kennedy: If you d like to find out more about becoming a Patreon member, just head to the Tape Notes Patreon page at patreon.com/tapenotes as well as access to the full video episodes, which often includes additional material from the conversations.

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

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John Kennedy: Highlight videos will be coming out on YouTube throughout the week and keep an eye out there for a chance to win a very exclusive signed test pressing of Hallucinating Love.

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John Kennedy: Thanks also to our partners at Tape It, the iPhone recording app for musicians.

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John Kennedy: More on them later in the show.

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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 John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes are Maribou State to talk about how they wrote, recorded and produced the album Hallucinating Love.

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John Kennedy: Maribou State are a British electronic duo consisting of Chris Davids and Liam Ivory.

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John Kennedy: Both growing up in Hertfordshire, the pair first met as teenagers performing in bands together.

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John Kennedy: But it wasn’t until their university years that they discovered a shared passion for music production and in 2011 joined forces to form Maribou State.

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John Kennedy: While they initially gained traction through a series of EPs and singles, their breakthrough came with the release of their debut album Portraits in 2015.

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John Kennedy: Written and recorded in Liam’s parents’ shed, the album earned critical acclaim for its atmospheric blend of emotive instrumentation and rich textures and catapulted the pair on to the international stage.

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John Kennedy: Building on this success, their second album, Kingdoms in Colour, arrived in 2018.

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John Kennedy: Inspired by their extensive world tours, the duo incorporated influences from cities like Beijing, Delhi and Lisbon.

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John Kennedy: The result was a vibrant, eclectic mix of electronic funk, soul and world music.

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John Kennedy: Since then, Maribou State have become a staple of the global dance music scene, performing on iconic stages like Glastonbury and the Sydney Opera House, and setting out tours across the UK, Europe and North America.

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John Kennedy: Their most recent record, Hallucinating Love, arrived in January 2025, and features vocals from longtime collaborators Holly Walker and North Downs, and a whole host of friends at their countryside writing retreats.

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John Kennedy: Today, I’m at Strongroom Studios in London, and I’m joined by Chris and Liam, and what better way to start than by hearing something from the record.

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John Kennedy: This is Passing Clouds.

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John Kennedy: Absolutely beautiful.

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John Kennedy: That is Maribou State with Passing Clouds from the Hallucinating Love album.

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John Kennedy: And I’m very pleased to say that I have Chris and Liam, who are Maribou State, sat in front of me.

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John Kennedy: Hello, how are you?

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Liam Ivory: Hey, very good.

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Liam Ivory: How are you, John?

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John Kennedy: I’m very well, thank you.

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John Kennedy: And what a beautiful choice you made from the album.

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John Kennedy: That really has kind of mellowed me out.

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John Kennedy: I’m maybe too relaxed, but it’s so good to have you here.

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John Kennedy: Lots of people were interested in getting Maribou State on Tape Notes.

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John Kennedy: And I guess we’re here to talk about three tracks from the album.

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John Kennedy: This is, would you say the third Maribou State album is that because there’s been the Fabric record, there’s a remix of the second album, but officially the third record.

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Chris Davids: Yeah, this is our third album.

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Chris Davids: There’s another record that was pieced together through all our first releases that got bunched up and released as an album, but me and Liam actually never signed off on that.

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Chris Davids: Sorry, sorry, sorry.

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Chris Davids: It doesn’t count to us.

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Chris Davids: But yeah, this is our third record.

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John Kennedy: But you had a lot of EPs, didn’t you, before you left?

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Liam Ivory: EPs and mixes and stuff, like you said.

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Liam Ivory: But yeah, we kind of look at the studio album in the traditional format and this is the third, like, original songs written by me and Chris, produced by us.

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Liam Ivory: So yeah.

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John Kennedy: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: And what did you want to do this time around?

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John Kennedy: Because it’s taken a while.

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Liam Ivory: It’s taken a long time.

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Liam Ivory: I mean, historically, it’s taken a long time.

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Liam Ivory: The first and second also took multiple years.

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Liam Ivory: Honestly, we didn’t really know what we wanted to do with this.

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Liam Ivory: It kind of came to us as we were writing it.

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Liam Ivory: And the reason, partly, the reason it took a long time was because during the writing process, Chris and I were both struggling with physical mental health issues and it slowed the whole thing down a lot.

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Liam Ivory: And actually, the silver lining was that’s what the album became about.

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Liam Ivory: It became about resilience and became about hopefulness and kind of pushing through hard times and looking to the future.

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Liam Ivory: And that’s where the title comes from and a lot of the lyrics on the record.

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Liam Ivory: And just the spirit of it, like the sound of it, that’s all wrapped up under that banner.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

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John Kennedy: So, so we’ll find out about that as we go through the album, I guess.

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John Kennedy: So the first one we’re going to look at is Blackoak, which is also the opening song on the album.

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John Kennedy: So maybe if we could have a blast of the master, we’ll find out all about it in just a moment.

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John Kennedy: Maribou State’s with Blackoak from the album Hallucinating Love.

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John Kennedy: So where did it all start with that?

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John Kennedy: There are so many questions, but I don’t want to just ask them all at once.

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Chris Davids: So we first started, the very initial idea started when we did a writing trip in January, 2021.

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Chris Davids: And it was me, Liam, and two other people, our bass player, John Joe Williams and Jack Sibley, who’s someone we collaborate with a lot.

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Chris Davids: He also features as North Downs on the previous record.

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Chris Davids: And we went down to this place in Somerset for like three weeks.

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Chris Davids: We set up a studio in one of the bedrooms there.

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Chris Davids: It was super isolated at the time.

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Chris Davids: I think it was like snow, it was covered in snow when we were down there.

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Chris Davids: And this was on the first day, once we got all set up, we did this thing that we tend to do when we’re writing, which is we set a timer for like two hours.

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Chris Davids: And write an idea in that time and then have a break and then come back and do the same thing and try and do it like three or four times in a day.

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Chris Davids: And then at the end of the day, we’ll look at all the different ideas and just go with the one that we’re almost drawn to.

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Chris Davids: And this was one of those first ideas.

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Chris Davids: I don’t know where it was placed in that, but yeah, we came back to it at the end of the day and we’re like, okay, there’s definitely something in this.

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John Kennedy: That’s really interesting to actually set a timer.

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John Kennedy: Does it go off?

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Liam Ivory: It does, yeah, we use our iPhone and set it off.

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Liam Ivory: We need the urgency.

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Liam Ivory: We can dilly dally in the studio and I think with electronic music in particular and because neither of us sing, what a song is can literally be infinite to us in terms of what samples we use, what instruments we use and we’ve got a lot of different synths in the studio and we play acoustic instruments as well.

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Liam Ivory: We need that timer to be focusing, don’t overthink it because we both overthink ideas.

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Liam Ivory: We can have this closed-minded thinking when we’re working, of what it’s going to be, is it right?

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Liam Ivory: But actually, when you got the timer on, all that goes out the window and you’re just messing around playing, you don’t care and you end up with some weird and wonderful ideas.

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John Kennedy: Do you look at the clock then when you conscious?

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Chris Davids: No.

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Chris Davids: Try not being until the end.

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Liam Ivory: We do time checks, don’t we?

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Liam Ivory: Some will be like 20 minutes, come on.

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Chris Davids: Yeah, so right at the end, then we’ll start checking and then actually that adds this deadline onto it where you’re like, whilst there is a bit of pressure on it, which sometimes can not be healthy, it funnels it through this like, okay, we’ve got 20 minutes, let’s just throw, let’s structure it out, let’s not overthink that, let’s add another part, this is missing an element here and it just gets a more fully formed idea out a lot quicker.

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Liam Ivory: I guess it’s like a reduced version.

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Liam Ivory: They say the deadline creates artwork, cloud boys, when do you stop working on it?

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Liam Ivory: When do you put the last stroke on a painting?

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Liam Ivory: This for us, we struggle with that, so this for us is a way of just getting the ideas down and when it’s done, it’s done.

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Liam Ivory: And then we’ll leave it there.

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John Kennedy: I think that sounds really constructive.

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John Kennedy: And when that bell goes, is it tools down, straight out of the door?

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Liam Ivory: Straight for a cup of tea, yeah.

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Chris Davids: Most of the time, the other times, we’ll be like, do you know what, no, just quickly finish that.

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John Kennedy: Because everybody talks about being in the mood and in the groove and in the zone and so you don’t want to negate that, do you?

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Chris Davids: Yeah, this is the, this is, you know, it works as an exercise and you know, obviously it’s not something that we do all the time, but I think in this instance, it worked in our favour because there are often times when, you know, you don’t want to be restricted to a certain time and you want to carry on, like you said, you’re in, in that flow.

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Chris Davids: But for this it did.

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Chris Davids: And I’m pretty sure we did stop after the two hours and then.

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Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah.

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Liam Ivory: And sometimes like it will stop and we’ll feel like there’s more to do, but we’ll bank that.

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Liam Ivory: We’ll be like, that’s cool.

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Liam Ivory: If we come back to this one, we know we could do this idea or Jack’s excited about this, or Chris has got this idea.

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Liam Ivory: So that’s, if we come back to this demo, that stuff we can then tap into.

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Liam Ivory: It’s not always there when you do come back to it, sadly.

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John Kennedy: So when you would go back in the room after your break, you’d start something else entirely.

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Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah.

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John Kennedy: And do you have anything that you can show us from that first session?

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Chris Davids: From the first session?

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Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah.

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Liam Ivory: As in some of the other sketches.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, I’m just trying to know what happened in that two hours that led to Blackoak.

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John Kennedy: What was the kernel of the idea?

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Chris Davids: Yeah.

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Chris Davids: So I mean, that is just in the file there.

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Chris Davids: It is just that first thing.

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Chris Davids: So it just started off as a drum loop that we had.

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Chris Davids: And then John Joe brought this small Casio keyboard that he’d had.

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Liam Ivory: MVT400.

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Chris Davids: Okay, nice.

00:13:10.831 –> 00:13:11.671
Chris Davids: He’s done the research.

00:13:11.671 –> 00:13:13.271
Chris Davids: Something like that.

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Chris Davids: So we, I guess it’s quite a, not a primitive bit of kit, but it’s something that he’d had for ages, but we’d never used it before.

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Chris Davids: So even though it only has like eight sounds on it, every sound was quite exciting because we’ve got, we had a bunch of kit, we’ve used them so many times.

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Chris Davids: So we loaded that up and it just had this little, I think it was a flute patch or string patch.

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Liam Ivory: Yeah, something like that, yeah.

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Chris Davids: And I remember putting the chords down on that.

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Chris Davids: And then that was all the idea was initially, and maybe some string lines and stuff, but it just started off like this.

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John Kennedy: So is that the Casio there?

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Chris Davids: I think at this point, it is layered with some strings as well.

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Liam Ivory: We didn’t even have the bass in that two hours, I think, did we?

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Chris Davids: To be fair, that is a version that’s like a little bit, that was at the end of the trip, this version.

00:14:13.002 –> 00:14:15.242
John Kennedy: That’s a bit more advanced.

00:14:15.242 –> 00:14:21.022
Chris Davids: Let’s, if you want to hear that original, I mean, it’s not wildly different to that.

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Liam Ivory: Yeah, I think with Blackoak, the interesting thing was the drum break and the cassio chords, they really were the feeling of the track, and something that we did struggle with when making this was producing it, and then we kept building it up too much, and it always kept going too far, and then felt like it lost the essence of the track, and it was always us coming back to the early sketch and soloing it, like as a reference in the file, and listening and be like, why does this feel different?

00:14:47.042 –> 00:14:57.382
Liam Ivory: Like it took a while to figure out, but there was something quite magical actually, about just that sound of the drums and the chords together, like it really connected with us.

00:14:57.622 –> 00:15:00.222
Liam Ivory: It felt really nostalgic, I think.

00:15:00.222 –> 00:15:03.642
Liam Ivory: Felt like we tapped into a bit of a different sound for us.

00:15:03.642 –> 00:15:06.762
Liam Ivory: As basic as it is, it just triggered something.

00:15:06.762 –> 00:15:17.162
John Kennedy: And it feels quite, I’m trying to think of the right word to describe it, but it feels as if it’s just been there all the time, but also somehow sophisticated.

00:15:17.162 –> 00:15:18.322
John Kennedy: No, it’s an interesting thing.

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John Kennedy: One of the big questions for me about this album is about the strings, about the string sound that you’re using, because it’s all over the record in different ways.

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John Kennedy: Now, are those samples?

00:15:29.542 –> 00:15:30.502
John Kennedy: Are they a mellotron?

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Liam Ivory: It’s a mix, actually.

00:15:31.982 –> 00:15:32.342
Chris Davids: Yeah.

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Chris Davids: So a lot of the time, we’ll write the string parts using keyboards or Kontakt or sample strings or-

00:15:41.882 –> 00:15:42.382
Chris Davids: Guitar.

00:15:42.442 –> 00:15:44.102
Chris Davids: All right with guitar, yeah.

00:15:44.102 –> 00:16:01.562
Chris Davids: So it initially starts as that, but the end version, 90 percent of the time is then recorded for an artist that we use called Matthew Kelly, who then reinterprets the ideas and layers them up with probably 200 channels of viola, violin, and cello.

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Chris Davids: So I’d say the majority of the time, it’s that.

00:16:03.422 –> 00:16:07.402
Chris Davids: I think there’s been very few occasions where we’ve stuck with just the original sample.

00:16:07.402 –> 00:16:08.402
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:16:08.402 –> 00:16:09.042
Liam Ivory: They’re in there.

00:16:09.102 –> 00:16:09.862
Liam Ivory: It’s like a bit of a mixture.

00:16:09.962 –> 00:16:14.002
John Kennedy: But it’s a combination which helps create that sound, because it’s quite a unique sound.

00:16:14.002 –> 00:16:16.782
John Kennedy: No, it’s quite different.

00:16:16.782 –> 00:16:21.582
John Kennedy: You can tell it’s a string section of some kind, but how do you create that?

00:16:21.902 –> 00:16:22.702
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

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Liam Ivory: I mean, there’s a lot of layering going on, and often the original guitar line, say, or synth line that the string part was wrote on, we’d even maybe reproduce that, re-record that properly, and then bed that back in as well.

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Liam Ivory: And so you just can’t really hear the full tonality like you’re not quite sure if it is strings or guitar or synth, and it’s that in between that we really love.

00:16:44.762 –> 00:16:45.482
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:16:45.482 –> 00:16:47.522
John Kennedy: So what happened now with Blackoak?

00:16:47.522 –> 00:16:51.702
John Kennedy: How did you progress after you’d had that loop and those chords?

00:16:51.702 –> 00:16:55.742
Chris Davids: Do you want to hear anything from the original project, or should we just go forward now?

00:16:55.742 –> 00:17:03.442
Chris Davids: Do you know, we’ll just we’ll carry on from the last point that you had, I think, because maybe it wasn’t, maybe the original file wasn’t called…

00:17:03.442 –> 00:17:04.822
Liam Ivory: Blackoak, yeah.

00:17:04.822 –> 00:17:08.102
Liam Ivory: The name came from a voice note, didn’t it?

00:17:08.502 –> 00:17:12.742
Liam Ivory: The area, I think the area we were in was called the Blackoak Downs, I think.

00:17:12.742 –> 00:17:20.322
Chris Davids: I think it was just, to be honest, we didn’t know that the area was like, on a map, the area was called something wildly different.

00:17:20.322 –> 00:17:28.102
Chris Davids: But when you record something on your iPhone, it sometimes gives you a kind of random name as to where you are.

00:17:28.102 –> 00:17:31.462
Chris Davids: And for this, it happened to be just called Blackoak.

00:17:31.462 –> 00:17:31.902
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:17:31.902 –> 00:17:35.182
Chris Davids: And I’m sure it has some relevance to where we weren’t.

00:17:35.182 –> 00:17:37.002
Chris Davids: But we just named the file that at the time.

00:17:37.302 –> 00:17:39.122
Chris Davids: And it just stuck.

00:17:39.122 –> 00:17:42.942
Chris Davids: But you know, it’s one of those ones where it never seemed like the right name for the song.

00:17:42.942 –> 00:17:47.602
Chris Davids: And then we were in a session with a singer called Guida.

00:17:47.602 –> 00:17:52.262
Chris Davids: And she looked at the song names on the board and she was like, Blackoak, that’s an amazing name for a song.

00:17:52.262 –> 00:17:53.462
Chris Davids: And me and Liam were like, yeah, really?

00:17:53.462 –> 00:17:54.962
Chris Davids: It was just the name of that.

00:17:54.962 –> 00:17:56.162
Chris Davids: Just the name of the area.

00:17:56.162 –> 00:17:58.602
Chris Davids: And then ever since that point, we were like, maybe it could be the name.

00:17:58.602 –> 00:17:59.542
Chris Davids: And then it stuck.

00:17:59.542 –> 00:18:03.622
Chris Davids: And now it feels like, you know, totally true to the track itself.

00:18:04.382 –> 00:18:13.982
Chris Davids: But yeah, so after the initial chords and drums went down, then the string line was written on a Juno synth.

00:18:13.982 –> 00:18:16.942
Chris Davids: So that’s the part that comes in.

00:18:19.582 –> 00:18:21.202
Chris Davids: So that’s the final version.

00:18:21.202 –> 00:18:24.382
Chris Davids: But it was initially written on this.

00:18:44.055 –> 00:18:45.515
Liam Ivory: A little bit more avant-garde, that one.

00:18:45.515 –> 00:18:49.295
Chris Davids: Yeah, a little bit more fruity.

00:18:49.295 –> 00:18:51.295
Chris Davids: So we had that part.

00:18:51.295 –> 00:18:58.635
Chris Davids: And then I think after that, we figured it needed a change in the emotion behind the track.

00:18:59.635 –> 00:19:10.635
Chris Davids: So Liam and Johnjoe went downstairs in the house and started writing a mid-late part or just a B section, whilst me and Jack carried on working at something.

00:19:10.635 –> 00:19:15.935
Chris Davids: That’s something we’ll do quite a lot, is sort of tape different parts of the track and we’ll split up.

00:19:15.935 –> 00:19:22.475
Chris Davids: Even if it’s just Liam and I, Liam might go in another room and carry on working on something and I’ll flesh something else out.

00:19:22.475 –> 00:19:27.115
Chris Davids: It’s just quite a good way of then getting that fresh perspective on it when you bring it back in the room.

00:19:27.115 –> 00:19:27.595
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:19:27.595 –> 00:19:30.715
Chris Davids: So yeah, you and Johnjoe I think went down and did.

00:19:30.715 –> 00:19:35.135
Liam Ivory: Yeah, we wrote the chords which ended up becoming the mid-late, or at least the original mid-late.

00:19:35.135 –> 00:19:36.835
Liam Ivory: The mid-late was changed.

00:19:36.835 –> 00:19:37.815
Chris Davids: And the pre-chorus as well.

00:19:37.815 –> 00:19:39.375
Liam Ivory: The pre-chorus stuff, yeah.

00:19:39.375 –> 00:19:40.175
Chris Davids: So this section.

00:19:50.759 –> 00:19:52.499
Liam Ivory: And then the sample went in, didn’t it?

00:19:52.499 –> 00:19:54.639
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:19:54.639 –> 00:19:59.879
Chris Davids: So yeah, then we had all the kind of, the backbone of the track, I guess, at that point.

00:19:59.879 –> 00:20:10.379
Chris Davids: Then I went downstairs and just sat with a bunch of different acapellas and just searching for just to find something that just gelled with this.

00:20:10.379 –> 00:20:15.919
Chris Davids: And we had some stems from Andrea Triana from a remix that I think Jack had done.

00:20:15.919 –> 00:20:16.959
Liam Ivory: Jack did, yeah, yeah.

00:20:16.959 –> 00:20:19.099
Chris Davids: I can’t remember the name of the song.

00:20:19.179 –> 00:20:19.919
Chris Davids: It was called…

00:20:19.919 –> 00:20:21.679
Liam Ivory: Isn’t it called I’ll Do That For You?

00:20:21.679 –> 00:20:23.039
Chris Davids: It is called I’ll Do That For You.

00:20:23.039 –> 00:20:24.659
Chris Davids: Yeah, yeah.

00:20:24.659 –> 00:20:25.739
John Kennedy: Which is what she sings.

00:20:25.739 –> 00:20:26.359
Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:26.359 –> 00:20:28.619
Chris Davids: Which is what she sings.

00:20:28.619 –> 00:20:32.599
Chris Davids: So I chopped that up, brought that upstairs, showed it to the guys.

00:20:32.599 –> 00:20:39.659
Chris Davids: I think I got really excited about it at the time and I came back upstairs being like, I’ve got the right vocal and I showed it to everyone.

00:20:39.659 –> 00:20:42.899
Chris Davids: And it was sort of mixed emotions at the time.

00:20:42.899 –> 00:20:46.199
Chris Davids: I don’t know for whatever reason, but it was a bit like, yeah, no, it’s good.

00:20:47.179 –> 00:20:48.199
Chris Davids: It’s right.

00:20:48.199 –> 00:20:49.719
Chris Davids: And so I felt a bit deflated.

00:20:49.739 –> 00:20:52.539
Liam Ivory: It’s tough working in the Maribou camp.

00:20:52.539 –> 00:20:53.039
Chris Davids: It’s right.

00:20:53.039 –> 00:20:58.999
Chris Davids: But then I think, I think we finessed it all together and then got it to a point where we’re all really happy with it.

00:20:58.999 –> 00:21:01.859
Chris Davids: But yeah, the original, the original vocal is this.

00:21:02.039 –> 00:21:06.419
Liam Ivory: I go back to the tide, I do that for you.

00:21:06.419 –> 00:21:10.539
Chris Davids: And if your world’s breaking into…

00:21:10.539 –> 00:21:14.239
John Kennedy: So Jack had got these stems because he was doing a remix of this song.

00:21:14.299 –> 00:21:15.599
John Kennedy: Yeah, that was already out.

00:21:15.599 –> 00:21:16.039
Chris Davids: Yes.

00:21:16.039 –> 00:21:16.339
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:21:16.339 –> 00:21:17.139
Chris Davids: Yeah, exactly.

00:21:17.139 –> 00:21:18.759
John Kennedy: Called I’ll Do That For You.

00:21:18.759 –> 00:21:23.039
Liam Ivory: And then, yeah, I think from that point, the bass was already in, wasn’t it?

00:21:23.039 –> 00:21:29.359
Liam Ivory: I think when you were chopping the vocals up, me and John Jo were going through the bass, trying to get a good take down.

00:21:29.359 –> 00:21:31.539
Chris Davids: Yeah, in fact, that was a big story.

00:21:31.539 –> 00:21:32.919
Chris Davids: That was a part we jumped past, wasn’t it?

00:21:32.919 –> 00:21:33.179
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:21:33.539 –> 00:21:34.779
Chris Davids: While after the chords and stuff.

00:21:34.779 –> 00:21:40.199
Chris Davids: I guess the bass line is probably one of the most important parts of this track.

00:21:40.199 –> 00:21:41.919
Liam Ivory: We’ve always struggled recording bass as well.

00:21:42.579 –> 00:21:46.239
Liam Ivory: We know the tone that we want and we’ve wanted it for years and we’ve never got it.

00:21:46.239 –> 00:21:49.499
Liam Ivory: And this was the same in the early version.

00:21:49.499 –> 00:21:51.479
Liam Ivory: We just couldn’t get that tone.

00:21:51.479 –> 00:21:54.339
Liam Ivory: And we went through loads of different takes with this bass.

00:21:54.339 –> 00:21:57.279
Liam Ivory: Eventually it was captured for a guitar amp, wasn’t it?

00:21:57.279 –> 00:21:58.679
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:21:58.679 –> 00:22:00.039
Liam Ivory: Hot Rod, Fender.

00:22:00.039 –> 00:22:00.499
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:22:00.499 –> 00:22:03.979
Liam Ivory: That’s how we got it in the end with like a, was it 57 even as well?

00:22:03.979 –> 00:22:04.599
Chris Davids: I can’t remember.

00:22:04.599 –> 00:22:09.799
Chris Davids: I think the actual recording is the same one that we did in the demo.

00:22:11.139 –> 00:22:21.979
Chris Davids: But it’s worth saying that like me and Liam have not just struggled to get the right bass tone, but also the right parts, because we can both play bass, but we’re not, we’re not good bass players by any stretch.

00:22:21.979 –> 00:22:26.359
Chris Davids: But John Joe, this was the first time we worked with him on any music.

00:22:26.359 –> 00:22:42.899
Chris Davids: So I think I said at the start, he plays bass in the live band, but he, this, yeah, this is one of the first ideas we did together and he just put down this bass, which is, me and Liam were so excited about when he put down, because again, it’s not when none of the bass parts we’ve write previously would actually.

00:22:42.899 –> 00:22:44.539
Liam Ivory: They’re accompaniment parts, aren’t they?

00:22:44.539 –> 00:22:48.299
Liam Ivory: They back up what’s going on with the guitars or the synths or whatever.

00:22:48.299 –> 00:22:53.519
Liam Ivory: So to have someone throwing in that rhythm, thinking about it in a different way.

00:22:53.719 –> 00:22:57.539
Liam Ivory: I don’t even think he was that excited by the bass line, but we were, we were like, this is amazing.

00:22:57.539 –> 00:23:00.399
Liam Ivory: We were like, sounds like an old French touch house tune or something.

00:23:00.399 –> 00:23:00.539
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:23:01.919 –> 00:23:02.819
Liam Ivory: Yeah, cool.

00:23:02.819 –> 00:23:04.099
John Kennedy: Let’s get it playing.

00:23:04.099 –> 00:23:04.219
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:23:04.219 –> 00:23:04.619
John Kennedy: Let’s hear it.

00:23:11.544 –> 00:23:28.964
John Kennedy: Do you think, in a way, Neumann, if he’s been playing with you live, that he’s soaked up all your music and has an idea of where you’re coming from and what works and being in your world, that he was able to somehow channel that into what he might come up with writing with you?

00:23:28.964 –> 00:23:30.644
Liam Ivory: Yeah, hopefully, that’s, yeah.

00:23:30.644 –> 00:23:49.584
Chris Davids: I think definitely he did really try and get his head into it when we came on that trip, and he would sit down and write things and be like, this feels like a Maribou idea, because his own tastes are, you know, he’s got very diverse tastes, but I think definitely he would have absorbed what we’ve done.

00:23:49.584 –> 00:23:51.504
Liam Ivory: He brought a very different energy to that trip.

00:23:51.504 –> 00:23:53.084
Liam Ivory: Like he was very focused.

00:23:53.084 –> 00:23:55.044
Liam Ivory: He was very like, come on, let’s go.

00:23:55.044 –> 00:24:00.164
Liam Ivory: I like, actually it’s worth saying, so those kind of writing trips, that’s like the backbone of how we actually make the albums.

00:24:00.164 –> 00:24:01.964
Liam Ivory: We’ve done them for years.

00:24:01.964 –> 00:24:09.284
Liam Ivory: We have a studio in London, we did, and that we always have a studio when making an album, and that’s the kind of hub, but we need to get out of the city.

00:24:09.484 –> 00:24:29.604
Liam Ivory: We need to get away from normal life, get into isolation to write the ideas, and the bulk of the albums were written, at least like the main tracks on each one, were written on these isolated writing trips, which is basically us just finding a remote Airbnb, cottage, house, whatever, moving our kit there, spending two or three weeks, phones off, just like getting into it.

00:24:29.604 –> 00:24:31.224
John Kennedy: And how much kit do you bring down?

00:24:31.224 –> 00:24:32.564
Liam Ivory: Oh, all of it.

00:24:32.564 –> 00:24:33.324
John Kennedy: So that’s a lot.

00:24:33.864 –> 00:24:36.744
Liam Ivory: It’s a full two-day pack down, load up a van.

00:24:36.944 –> 00:24:38.744
John Kennedy: Is it similar to your tour setup?

00:24:38.964 –> 00:24:40.544
Liam Ivory: No, it’s our full studio rig.

00:24:40.544 –> 00:24:41.104
John Kennedy: Oh my god.

00:24:41.104 –> 00:24:44.884
Liam Ivory: We take all the outboard gear and all the mics and everything, and it’s hell, to be honest.

00:24:45.804 –> 00:24:49.444
Liam Ivory: And yeah, I have to wire up the patch bay.

00:24:49.444 –> 00:24:50.304
Liam Ivory: That’s my job.

00:24:50.304 –> 00:24:54.924
Liam Ivory: So I’m just there for like six, seven hours, like getting everything, communicating and talking.

00:24:54.924 –> 00:25:01.524
Liam Ivory: But once we were there, and especially with this trip, it was all snowy, we were in the hills down in Taunton Way.

00:25:01.524 –> 00:25:02.304
Liam Ivory: It was amazing.

00:25:02.304 –> 00:25:04.384
Liam Ivory: It’s a great place to work and write.

00:25:04.384 –> 00:25:04.944
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:25:04.944 –> 00:25:13.444
John Kennedy: So I mean, you go to a lot of lengths, but to create the right environment, which is also a different environment to the one that you’re used to, just to change things up.

00:25:14.004 –> 00:25:14.384
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:25:14.584 –> 00:25:17.944
Chris Davids: And it’s something that we’ve done since the very beginning.

00:25:17.944 –> 00:25:25.484
Chris Davids: And it started with Jack Sibley, me and Liam getting together to write some stuff for our project and also for his.

00:25:25.484 –> 00:25:31.404
Chris Davids: But it initially started in just like a small barn where we all, I think there was one double bed there.

00:25:31.404 –> 00:25:36.284
Chris Davids: So one of us had to sleep on the floor, which we didn’t know how to turn the underfloor heating off.

00:25:36.364 –> 00:25:39.244
Chris Davids: So one of us was just sweating and…

00:25:39.244 –> 00:25:40.184
John Kennedy: Would you take turns to?

00:25:40.184 –> 00:25:42.424
Chris Davids: We all rotate.

00:25:42.424 –> 00:25:46.844
Chris Davids: But back then we had, I think we had two keyboards, we had a laptop obviously, and then…

00:25:46.844 –> 00:25:50.024
Liam Ivory: We had a Nord Stage and a Korg MS-2000B.

00:25:50.024 –> 00:25:50.304
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:25:50.424 –> 00:25:51.844
Liam Ivory: Oh, and a Prophet 8.

00:25:51.844 –> 00:25:52.544
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:25:52.724 –> 00:25:54.584
Chris Davids: And then a couple of pedals or whatever.

00:25:54.584 –> 00:25:59.764
Chris Davids: But then the last trip that we did, actually the last trip was slightly different because we hired a bunch of kit.

00:25:59.764 –> 00:26:02.084
Chris Davids: But on this trip, you know, it was the full studio.

00:26:02.084 –> 00:26:10.964
Chris Davids: So like Liam said, he had a slog setting all of this up, upstairs, you know, me, Jack and John were chipping a little bit, but we just kind of get in the way.

00:26:11.524 –> 00:26:13.264
Chris Davids: So Liam takes it.

00:26:14.404 –> 00:26:15.884
John Kennedy: That’s tricky.

00:26:15.884 –> 00:26:17.224
John Kennedy: What else should we hear from the track?

00:26:17.224 –> 00:26:21.604
John Kennedy: Because in a way, the track builds up, you introduce the vocal in quite a subtle way.

00:26:21.604 –> 00:26:31.224
John Kennedy: It’s kind of like it’s outside or something, and then you bring it inside and the beat kicks up a bit, and the vocal becomes a real focal point.

00:26:31.224 –> 00:26:40.824
John Kennedy: And it’s really interesting that it’s a pre-existing vocal, that it is a sample, but listening to it was quite interesting because it sounds like it’s written for the song, I think.

00:26:40.824 –> 00:26:50.724
John Kennedy: And also it ties in with what you were saying about what was going on in your lives and how that fed in to what you wrote, and what she’s saying seems to tie in with that.

00:26:50.724 –> 00:26:53.384
Liam Ivory: Yeah, I think we were unconsciously drawn to it for that reason.

00:26:53.384 –> 00:26:59.904
Liam Ivory: Like I said, at that time, especially, we weren’t aware what the record was going to be about, or really how much we were both struggling.

00:26:59.904 –> 00:27:07.184
Liam Ivory: We kind of knew it, but I think across the album there’s lyrical themes that we were just drawn to, and this was one of them.

00:27:07.184 –> 00:27:12.544
Liam Ivory: And Andrea actually came in and re-recorded a couple of bits of it as well to get the part right.

00:27:12.544 –> 00:27:22.424
Liam Ivory: But yeah, the way the vocals delivered on this is an interesting one for us, because we have quite a basic default of making choruses really big or drops really big.

00:27:22.424 –> 00:27:31.024
Liam Ivory: And with this one, we really wanted to try and nail a feeling of like a record in a club, you know, where everything builds and then it just drops down and that’s enough.

00:27:31.784 –> 00:27:36.064
Liam Ivory: And we felt like we caught that on the writing trip.

00:27:36.064 –> 00:27:41.064
Liam Ivory: But when we were back working on it in the studio and producing it more and more, it just wasn’t landing right.

00:27:41.064 –> 00:27:45.284
Liam Ivory: And this track actually, this took a long time to make.

00:27:45.284 –> 00:27:54.784
Liam Ivory: Considering it actually does sound quite simple on paper, like compared to some of our other tunes, but there was so much fine tuning with this and so much intricate work and like so much mixed stuff.

00:27:54.784 –> 00:27:56.984
Liam Ivory: And I think we had 25 versions of it.

00:27:57.524 –> 00:28:00.104
Liam Ivory: Altogether 25 demos of this same tune.

00:28:00.104 –> 00:28:05.384
Liam Ivory: Drums are a bit more produced, bass is a little bit more, vocals are pulled back, like just all these varying versions of them.

00:28:05.384 –> 00:28:13.404
Liam Ivory: It took so long to get it to a point where it felt right, but then it also sonically was where we wanted the new record to be.

00:28:13.404 –> 00:28:16.944
Liam Ivory: And actually once we nailed it, we were like, that’s the benchmark.

00:28:16.944 –> 00:28:20.784
Liam Ivory: Like Blackoak was finished a long time before any other track on the album.

00:28:20.784 –> 00:28:24.384
Liam Ivory: And we were just like always pointing to that as like, this is how it should sound.

00:28:24.384 –> 00:28:26.924
Liam Ivory: Like all the other songs in the album shouldn’t need to sound as good as this.

00:28:26.924 –> 00:28:27.984
John Kennedy: Right.

00:28:28.104 –> 00:28:30.244
John Kennedy: We should hear more of it.

00:28:30.244 –> 00:28:32.644
John Kennedy: Feel free to play and talk.

00:28:32.644 –> 00:28:40.984
Chris Davids: So I guess maybe the middle eight was the next part, which again we’d fleshed out on that first session with the chord changes.

00:28:40.984 –> 00:28:45.984
Chris Davids: And I think by the end of that first session, it was just left at being.

00:28:50.804 –> 00:28:53.084
Chris Davids: It was just chords in the middle eight.

00:28:53.084 –> 00:28:56.064
Liam Ivory: Was there not a, no synth line?

00:28:56.064 –> 00:28:58.064
Liam Ivory: No, just a chord build.

00:28:59.264 –> 00:29:10.224
Liam Ivory: So that’s the thing, when that building up into the last chorus drops really well, but then the minute you start putting melodies in and producing that making, as we always do, we lean into those melodic moments.

00:29:10.224 –> 00:29:15.904
Liam Ivory: Once that middle eight sounds really full, and then we listen to it drop, and we’re like, ah, the drop doesn’t sound very good now.

00:29:16.024 –> 00:29:17.944
Liam Ivory: And then we have to try and correct that.

00:29:17.944 –> 00:29:18.904
Liam Ivory: And it was, yeah.

00:29:19.124 –> 00:29:20.624
John Kennedy: So how did you correct it then?

00:29:20.624 –> 00:29:21.644
John Kennedy: No, what did you do?

00:29:21.644 –> 00:29:29.504
Chris Davids: Well, so after that writing chip, we came back, and we worked with string arranger Matt Kelly.

00:29:29.504 –> 00:29:38.264
Chris Davids: So he re-recorded all the string parts, but then he actually wrote his own part for the middle eight, which was this.

00:29:53.459 –> 00:29:58.719
Chris Davids: So, it’s really beautiful, like lovely sort of melancholy string part.

00:29:58.719 –> 00:30:03.179
Chris Davids: And we sat with it for a bit, but in the end, we sort of decided there was just-

00:30:03.179 –> 00:30:03.979
Liam Ivory: Too many strings.

00:30:03.979 –> 00:30:07.619
Chris Davids: Just really, the whole song became very string heavy.

00:30:07.619 –> 00:30:11.879
Chris Davids: It didn’t really take you on much of a departure then in this section.

00:30:11.879 –> 00:30:14.439
Chris Davids: So, we sort of left it for a bit.

00:30:14.439 –> 00:30:22.479
Chris Davids: And then a few months later, I was at home and then started, I think I just listened to this part and then had a melody in mind.

00:30:22.559 –> 00:30:34.599
Chris Davids: So, I just recorded some some vocals to it, with the idea being a different melody, not necessarily anything vocal, but I’ll show you the part initially.

00:30:44.152 –> 00:30:48.452
Chris Davids: So me singing very angelically on that.

00:30:48.452 –> 00:30:56.112
Chris Davids: So that part was written, and then I think just added a bunch more samples to it so it sounded a bit thicker.

00:31:03.707 –> 00:31:08.427
Liam Ivory: There’s always this attempt to make things sound like samples, even though they’re not.

00:31:08.427 –> 00:31:09.987
Liam Ivory: That’s something we’ve done for years.

00:31:10.287 –> 00:31:11.247
John Kennedy: Why is that?

00:31:11.247 –> 00:31:14.987
Liam Ivory: We like the sound of sampling, and it’s really hard to find the samples that we want to use.

00:31:15.007 –> 00:31:18.107
Liam Ivory: Or sometimes you can’t clear them, or sometimes it’s just more fun.

00:31:18.107 –> 00:31:20.987
Liam Ivory: Like, we enjoy making our own samples.

00:31:20.987 –> 00:31:31.647
Liam Ivory: And actually, it’s a good segue to talk just briefly about something we do and we did at the start of this record, and we’ve always done it with Jack Sibley again, is we self-label them sound harvests.

00:31:31.787 –> 00:31:38.627
Liam Ivory: And what we do is we get together normally with a few beers, and we just get really, really experimental in the studio.

00:31:38.627 –> 00:31:43.447
Liam Ivory: And we create long recordings of the weirdest, like, signal paths we can think of.

00:31:43.447 –> 00:31:45.707
Liam Ivory: And we basically create our own sample library.

00:31:45.707 –> 00:31:50.467
Liam Ivory: And the whole time we’re doing it, all the gains are up high, so there’s noise on everything.

00:31:50.467 –> 00:31:58.447
Liam Ivory: Even at times, we’ll put a mic in the room and we’ll just, like, jingle stuff on a table or keys or whatever, or tickle piano keys really lightly.

00:31:58.447 –> 00:32:03.607
Liam Ivory: We make everything sound really tactile and really sampled, like it’s a old record, old field recording.

00:32:03.607 –> 00:32:06.127
Liam Ivory: But it’s all of our synths and it’s all of our melody choices.

00:32:06.127 –> 00:32:08.247
Liam Ivory: It’s things we would do on an instrument.

00:32:08.247 –> 00:32:08.787
Liam Ivory: And then we…

00:32:08.987 –> 00:32:15.927
John Kennedy: So this is you surrounded by all your equipment, all your instruments, and just kind of working your way around the room, just creating…

00:32:15.927 –> 00:32:18.647
Liam Ivory: Yeah, just plug that into that, into that, into that, and then stick a mic in.

00:32:18.647 –> 00:32:19.987
John Kennedy: But still, in the moment.

00:32:19.987 –> 00:32:20.607
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:32:20.607 –> 00:32:27.307
John Kennedy: So almost like you’re jamming together, but kind of you’re also conscious that, no, we’re trying to just create a variety of sounds that we could use.

00:32:27.487 –> 00:32:31.687
Liam Ivory: And it’ll be like, right, let’s pick one, we start with one instrument, like let’s go with the Juno.

00:32:31.687 –> 00:32:38.367
Liam Ivory: We’ll spend an hour, two hours running the Juno through pedals, through different processes, micing it, putting it for a guitar ramp, then reprocessing that.

00:32:38.367 –> 00:32:48.927
Liam Ivory: And each time switching who’s playing, just doing bass stuff or lead parts, and then we just create hours and hours and hours of recordings, and then we re-sample those bits.

00:32:48.927 –> 00:32:55.847
Liam Ivory: That’s also a good example just there of how we just like to make things feel sampled and we’ll throw in little details and sounds and textures.

00:32:55.847 –> 00:32:56.747
John Kennedy: Can you play that again?

00:32:57.047 –> 00:32:58.107
John Kennedy: Yeah, sure.

00:32:58.107 –> 00:33:03.967
Liam Ivory: Like Chris said, he was talking about a vocal part, but then that was the approach to make it sound right, was adding all those bits in.

00:33:03.967 –> 00:33:06.967
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:33:06.967 –> 00:33:12.327
Liam Ivory: It’s almost like the artifacts you hear from a sample, bits that are still left on the record that you couldn’t EQ out or cut out.

00:33:12.327 –> 00:33:16.667
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:33:16.667 –> 00:33:18.267
John Kennedy: But they’re all your own creations.

00:33:18.367 –> 00:33:19.767
John Kennedy: No, I love this.

00:33:20.147 –> 00:33:25.847
Chris Davids: So initially, it was just my vocal and then a sample of some voices.

00:33:27.987 –> 00:33:28.467
Chris Davids: But then, we’ll layer.

00:33:28.467 –> 00:33:30.247
Liam Ivory: Even then, there’s some reverse stuff in there.

00:33:30.247 –> 00:33:32.227
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:33:32.227 –> 00:33:34.207
Chris Davids: Even in its base form.

00:33:34.207 –> 00:33:37.967
Liam Ivory: Just to say, each track’s got about 500 channels in it.

00:33:37.967 –> 00:33:41.107
Liam Ivory: They’re a nightmare to get your head around.

00:33:41.547 –> 00:33:42.847
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:33:42.847 –> 00:33:46.667
Chris Davids: But then, this was from one of the recording sessions where-

00:33:46.667 –> 00:33:47.287
Liam Ivory: Taping jingles.

00:33:47.827 –> 00:33:48.047
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:33:48.047 –> 00:33:54.907
Chris Davids: It’s just loads of bells in a room going through the tape machine and on the piano, but just turned up really loud.

00:33:54.907 –> 00:34:01.987
Chris Davids: So, actually, to most people, this would sound wrong, you know, because you got the buzz on the left ear.

00:34:01.987 –> 00:34:06.587
Chris Davids: But that sort of just creates a nice layer with the vocals.

00:34:06.587 –> 00:34:08.547
Chris Davids: Just makes it a little bit more textural.

00:34:10.447 –> 00:34:14.567
Chris Davids: And then, I think we like it layered up with strings.

00:34:16.547 –> 00:34:21.147
Chris Davids: So, aren’t really doing the same melody, but they kind of complement it nicely.

00:34:21.147 –> 00:34:23.727
Chris Davids: And then also these Ms-20 bits.

00:34:31.734 –> 00:34:35.714
Liam Ivory: That sound there is a really good one to talk about, because that’s some…

00:34:35.714 –> 00:34:37.214
John Kennedy: That’s specifically played for this song.

00:34:37.214 –> 00:34:37.954
Liam Ivory: Yeah, exactly.

00:34:37.954 –> 00:34:41.674
John Kennedy: The other bits were kind of part of the sound harvest, which could be used anywhere.

00:34:41.674 –> 00:34:51.294
Chris Davids: Yeah, so the other stuff that Liam’s talking about is more just, we’ll have these experimental sessions and then chop them all up, and then we can bring them in as and when.

00:34:51.294 –> 00:34:56.434
Chris Davids: There’s not any of, there’s only that tape sort of jingly part in there.

00:34:56.434 –> 00:35:04.914
Chris Davids: But this Ms-20 part is another thing that we’ll tend to do is we’ll get a melody and we’ll just record it on a bunch of different instruments.

00:35:04.914 –> 00:35:09.094
Chris Davids: So Ms-20 being one of them, then sometimes we’ll do it on a piano.

00:35:09.094 –> 00:35:12.494
Chris Davids: A lot of the time we’ll back up stuff with guitar as well.

00:35:12.494 –> 00:35:14.754
Chris Davids: And it just creates just a bit of a thicker layer.

00:35:14.754 –> 00:35:24.514
Chris Davids: Like we did it initially because we couldn’t get the audio quality that we wanted when we were using maybe soft synths back in the day or just this Ms-2000 that we had.

00:35:24.514 –> 00:35:26.094
Liam Ivory: Yeah, everything sounded one dimensional, didn’t it?

00:35:26.194 –> 00:35:31.714
Chris Davids: So we would then record it with a guitar and whatever else we had just to thicken it out.

00:35:31.714 –> 00:35:35.674
Chris Davids: But then over time that just became part of the sound and we really liked it.

00:35:35.674 –> 00:35:37.574
Chris Davids: So we continue to work with it.

00:35:37.574 –> 00:35:43.894
Chris Davids: It just can be, we know that when we write a melody, we’ll know that, OK, right, we need to do that.

00:35:44.434 –> 00:35:47.214
Liam Ivory: Yeah, it’s a big job ahead of us.

00:35:47.214 –> 00:35:51.034
Liam Ivory: I think it kind of leads into a good point about the sounds that we like.

00:35:51.174 –> 00:35:54.314
Liam Ivory: And it’s what I mentioned at the start about sitting in between everything.

00:35:54.454 –> 00:35:58.074
Liam Ivory: It’s this otherworldly sounds where you can’t tell where it’s from.

00:35:58.074 –> 00:35:59.014
Liam Ivory: And we really like that.

00:35:59.014 –> 00:36:00.394
Liam Ivory: And the Ms-20 is a great example.

00:36:00.394 –> 00:36:06.114
Liam Ivory: Like when we play the Ms-20, which is like my favourite synth, I think probably one of yours as well.

00:36:06.114 –> 00:36:18.734
Liam Ivory: Like the way we process it and play it, we’re making it kind of sound a bit like, I don’t know, like a talk box with a vocal, or maybe it’s like even like a sax sound and like we’ll make it sound really organic so that it’s a synth that sounds like a real instrument.

00:36:18.734 –> 00:36:34.634
Liam Ivory: And then similarly, we’ll record some woodwinds or sax and then we’ll process it so much that it sounds electronic and we like to switch things on top of their heads and like just invert the reality of it so that you can’t really tell what is making that sound, but we just love that full picture.

00:36:34.634 –> 00:36:36.314
Liam Ivory: Like that just sounds really interesting to us.

00:36:36.314 –> 00:36:40.014
Liam Ivory: And once we get that balance, it’s almost like, right, yeah, that’s it.

00:36:40.014 –> 00:36:40.294
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:36:40.294 –> 00:36:47.194
John Kennedy: I mean, there is a real mystery to the Maribou State sound in a way, which is one of the reasons why it connects, I think.

00:36:47.194 –> 00:36:50.854
John Kennedy: You have created your own world that is very special.

00:36:51.634 –> 00:36:54.054
John Kennedy: And clearly, a lot of work goes into it.

00:36:54.054 –> 00:36:57.074
Chris Davids: But it’s a lot of fun, I think.

00:36:57.074 –> 00:37:01.634
Chris Davids: And we don’t sit down with the intention of being like, let’s make this sound like a talkbox.

00:37:01.634 –> 00:37:05.274
Chris Davids: But it’s just the thing that we’re drawn to.

00:37:05.274 –> 00:37:11.254
Chris Davids: We don’t like anything that is just too electronic, that just use electronic stuff or the other way.

00:37:12.234 –> 00:37:17.374
Chris Davids: It’s probably just from the music that we grow up listening to, it’s just a mix of stuff.

00:37:17.374 –> 00:37:22.034
Chris Davids: And I think this project just felt right being a balance, between that.

00:37:22.034 –> 00:37:30.794
Chris Davids: But the last thing on this Midlate was then me, Liam and Jack all stacked up the choir parts together.

00:37:30.794 –> 00:37:40.974
Chris Davids: And we went up into the upstairs of our studio, which had like a big sort of like workspace up there that was all sort of had wooden paneling up there.

00:37:40.974 –> 00:37:42.234
Chris Davids: So it sounded quite nice.

00:37:42.234 –> 00:37:47.614
Chris Davids: So we just put the mics one side of the room and me, Liam and Jack just sang that choir part there.

00:37:48.194 –> 00:38:00.914
Chris Davids: But what we did was we pitched the song down a couple of semitones so that when we sang the part and pitched that part back up to fit into the track, it had like a totally different tone to it.

00:38:00.914 –> 00:38:02.994
Chris Davids: So it didn’t sound like us.

00:38:02.994 –> 00:38:05.994
Chris Davids: But we’ll do that with multiple different pitches.

00:38:05.994 –> 00:38:10.054
Chris Davids: So we’ll have one that goes five semitones up or one that’s pitched down.

00:38:10.054 –> 00:38:11.114
Chris Davids: So it creates this.

00:38:11.114 –> 00:38:13.654
John Kennedy: Are you able to isolate these and illustrate that?

00:38:13.654 –> 00:38:14.134
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:38:14.134 –> 00:38:16.214
Liam Ivory: This is a big vocal processing technique for us.

00:38:16.214 –> 00:38:17.214
Liam Ivory: We do it with Jack a lot.

00:38:17.414 –> 00:38:19.334
Liam Ivory: We’ll do it with the harmonies, we’ll do it with…

00:38:19.614 –> 00:38:31.054
Liam Ivory: Say there’s a low octave part, we’ll sing it at the right pitch and then we’ll drop the track down three semitones, sing it again, put it up three semitones, sing it again, bring them both back to zero so they’re the right tune.

00:38:31.054 –> 00:38:34.874
Liam Ivory: But then the formants of them sounds completely different and you get different vocal tones.

00:38:34.874 –> 00:38:40.774
Liam Ivory: It starts to change, again, you can’t tell where that voice has come from.

00:38:42.994 –> 00:38:55.194
Chris Davids: So that’s one where it’s just Jack singing and he’s just pitched up two semitones, but it’s on this sort of stretch format called beat, so it slightly glitches when you hear it back.

00:38:55.194 –> 00:38:56.154
Chris Davids: But then with us.

00:39:05.107 –> 00:39:09.947
Chris Davids: Just a disclaimer, we know we can’t sing, but it’s fine, we’re happy with that.

00:39:09.947 –> 00:39:12.887
Chris Davids: So that again is all pitched up.

00:39:12.887 –> 00:39:15.927
Chris Davids: Oh, this one’s on repitched, so that means like when…

00:39:15.927 –> 00:39:17.247
Liam Ivory: It emulates like a record, doesn’t it?

00:39:17.247 –> 00:39:19.127
Liam Ivory: The faster it goes, the higher the pitch.

00:39:19.127 –> 00:39:25.387
Chris Davids: Yeah, so we would have slowed Blackoak down to 80 BPM, like you would on a turntable.

00:39:25.387 –> 00:39:35.587
Chris Davids: So the pitch is lower, but also it’s a lot slower, and then recorded it to that, recorded the vocal part to that, and then pitched the vocal up to the same speed as the original Blackoak.

00:39:35.587 –> 00:39:36.927
Chris Davids: So it becomes a lot faster.

00:39:36.927 –> 00:39:38.827
John Kennedy: Are you able to show that?

00:39:40.547 –> 00:39:43.027
Liam Ivory: Yeah, if you take the warp off, you’ll hear the original.

00:39:43.027 –> 00:39:47.847
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:39:47.847 –> 00:39:50.467
Chris Davids: So that was how it was recorded, and then.

00:39:53.707 –> 00:39:54.787
John Kennedy: And then the track?

00:39:54.787 –> 00:39:54.887
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:39:54.887 –> 00:39:56.527
John Kennedy: If you’re able to bring the track in, so that we can.

00:40:04.787 –> 00:40:06.307
Liam Ivory: Let’s solo the whole choir section, don’t we?

00:40:06.307 –> 00:40:14.347
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:40:14.347 –> 00:40:25.587
Chris Davids: So, individually, it all sounds a bit rubbish, to be honest, but then when it stacks up together, then it just, you wouldn’t, it just sounds like it’s loads of different people rather than just three people stacking it up.

00:40:25.587 –> 00:40:26.947
Liam Ivory: It’s out of necessity, really.

00:40:27.287 –> 00:40:30.387
Liam Ivory: We don’t have the means to record lots of different people.

00:40:30.387 –> 00:40:33.827
Liam Ivory: So, in the moment, we’re like, this needs a choir, we’ll just do it ourselves.

00:40:33.987 –> 00:40:35.747
Liam Ivory: We’ll just figure that out and we can’t sing.

00:40:35.747 –> 00:40:37.727
Liam Ivory: So, how do we make it sound interesting?

00:40:38.147 –> 00:40:45.007
John Kennedy: It’s really great because it helps create that kind of feel that you might get from an old jazz record that might have a choir on it.

00:40:45.147 –> 00:40:54.307
John Kennedy: I’m thinking of Sun Ra and the way that he used vocals and how he might have a whole, everybody singing or one person singing and then they all come in.

00:40:54.347 –> 00:41:00.327
John Kennedy: But it creates a certain kind of sound quality that you can only get if you’re recording a load of people in one space.

00:41:00.327 –> 00:41:06.867
John Kennedy: But you create that yourselves without the necessity of having lots of friends or paying people to come in.

00:41:06.867 –> 00:41:10.907
Liam Ivory: Yeah, well, that’s the interesting thing is we also do record our friends a lot.

00:41:10.907 –> 00:41:14.727
Liam Ivory: And we did it on the last record and we did it again here.

00:41:14.727 –> 00:41:17.147
Liam Ivory: This isn’t the best example to show.

00:41:17.147 –> 00:41:18.987
Liam Ivory: There’s another track we’ll look at in a minute.

00:41:18.987 –> 00:41:25.067
Liam Ivory: But yeah, we call them like the Friends Choir and they came down to some of the writing trips and we do record them.

00:41:25.067 –> 00:41:32.967
Liam Ivory: And then you have got like 10 or more like individual voices and it creates more of a traditional choir sound, although none of them are singers themselves either.

00:41:32.967 –> 00:41:34.867
Liam Ivory: So it’s a bit more gang vocal kind of.

00:41:35.527 –> 00:41:43.107
Liam Ivory: So with Blackoak, you’ve got our choir that we did and you’ve got Andrea’s vocal and then you’ve got the Friends Choir as well.

00:41:43.107 –> 00:41:43.567
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:41:43.807 –> 00:41:45.207
Liam Ivory: Are they in the final one?

00:41:45.207 –> 00:41:46.507
Chris Davids: No, not in this part.

00:41:46.507 –> 00:41:49.207
Chris Davids: But they are on the chorus.

00:41:50.647 –> 00:41:55.107
Chris Davids: We got everyone to stack up the Do That For You lyric by Andrea.

00:41:55.107 –> 00:41:57.467
Chris Davids: So right at the end.

00:41:57.467 –> 00:41:58.827
Chris Davids: Where is it?

00:41:58.827 –> 00:42:04.887
Chris Davids: Oh, this is we stacked it up again in the same way as before, like in the upstairs room and pitching it around.

00:42:07.067 –> 00:42:08.847
Liam Ivory: That’s 636 on that song, isn’t it?

00:42:10.447 –> 00:42:12.867
Liam Ivory: Yeah, very springy.

00:42:12.867 –> 00:42:15.647
Chris Davids: And then we got all our friends to do it as well.

00:42:15.647 –> 00:42:17.507
Chris Davids: Do that for you.

00:42:19.087 –> 00:42:20.727
Chris Davids: Do that for you.

00:42:20.727 –> 00:42:25.667
Chris Davids: Which has definitely got more of like a gang wire sound to it.

00:42:25.667 –> 00:42:27.547
Chris Davids: But it’s very subtle in the mix.

00:42:27.547 –> 00:42:33.367
Chris Davids: I don’t even know if you can really tell it’s there, but it just gives the last chorus just a little bit.

00:42:33.367 –> 00:42:34.647
John Kennedy: Maybe we need to round things up.

00:42:34.647 –> 00:42:38.387
John Kennedy: We could have a blast of the master with all of that stuff in there.

00:42:38.387 –> 00:42:40.067
Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah, great, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:40.067 –> 00:42:40.707
Chris Davids: Of the section.

00:42:40.707 –> 00:42:41.567
Chris Davids: And the middle eight.

00:42:41.567 –> 00:42:41.727
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:43:04.182 –> 00:43:13.022
John Kennedy: It really creates a nice communal feel to the song, though, and to the whole sound of it, which involves the listener, in a way.

00:43:13.022 –> 00:43:13.382
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:43:13.382 –> 00:43:14.582
John Kennedy: You kind of feel brought in.

00:43:14.582 –> 00:43:15.142
Liam Ivory: Totally.

00:43:15.142 –> 00:43:17.262
John Kennedy: That you could be part of that little choir.

00:43:17.262 –> 00:43:23.342
Liam Ivory: Absolutely, and you know, even just the process of having our friends on the record is so important to us.

00:43:23.342 –> 00:43:34.982
Liam Ivory: It’s like, it kind of immortalizes the community that we have on the music, and they’ve always been so inspirational for us and so supportive of the project that it just feels nice.

00:43:34.982 –> 00:43:38.682
Liam Ivory: Like Chris was saying, you can’t really even hear them, but it’s just nice to know that they’re on there.

00:43:38.682 –> 00:43:42.142
Liam Ivory: Yeah, just kind of makes it feel more grounded, I guess.

00:43:42.142 –> 00:43:43.522
John Kennedy: Yeah, totally.

00:43:44.922 –> 00:43:46.342
Liam Ivory: I can hear them.

00:43:47.842 –> 00:43:51.242
John Kennedy: But you can’t say, oh, that’s Tony and that’s Sarah.

00:43:51.602 –> 00:43:58.962
Liam Ivory: There is a couple of them that you can hear, you’re like, they’re definitely singing a lot louder, slash shouting because they’ve had a few too many beers.

00:43:59.002 –> 00:44:00.942
John Kennedy: Yeah, brilliant.

00:44:00.942 –> 00:44:02.022
John Kennedy: So that is Blackoak.

00:44:02.022 –> 00:44:05.662
John Kennedy: We’re going to take a quick break and the next one we’re going to look at is Otherside.

00:44:05.662 –> 00:44:06.142
Liam Ivory: Yes.

00:44:06.142 –> 00:44:06.442
John Kennedy: Great.

00:44:09.422 –> 00:44:13.842
John Kennedy: This episode is being supported by Tape It, the iPhone recording app for musicians.

00:44:13.842 –> 00:44:24.802
John Kennedy: As many of the fantastic artists and producers on Tape Notes have mentioned, recording voice memos, field recordings and capturing ideas on the go is crucial to the creative process, and Tape It makes it effortless.

00:44:24.802 –> 00:44:35.882
John Kennedy: With Tape It, you can record straight from your lock screen, capture ideas in stereo, choose between multiple recording formats, drop markers to highlight key moments, and create shared mixtapes with friends and collaborators.

00:44:36.262 –> 00:44:41.162
John Kennedy: You can even view your recordings on a map so you’ll always remember where inspiration struck.

00:44:41.162 –> 00:44:47.042
John Kennedy: Whether it’s a quick melody or a full song idea, Tape It helps you stay creative without the clutter.

00:44:47.042 –> 00:44:53.902
John Kennedy: So click the link in a recent episode Show Notes, or head to tape.it forward slash tape notes to download Tape It for free.

00:44:53.902 –> 00:44:59.742
John Kennedy: And for even more, check out Tape It Pro and use promo code Tape Notes for 20% off.

00:44:59.742 –> 00:45:02.402
John Kennedy: That’s tape.it forward slash Tape Notes.

00:45:02.402 –> 00:45:03.502
John Kennedy: Now on with the show.

00:45:06.322 –> 00:45:08.322
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at is Otherside.

00:45:08.322 –> 00:45:11.342
John Kennedy: But before we do that, I want to ask a question that a lot of people have asked.

00:45:11.342 –> 00:45:16.042
John Kennedy: So we’ve asked people who are patrons on Patreon to come up with questions for you.

00:45:16.042 –> 00:45:18.602
John Kennedy: And a lot of people were really interested in getting in touch.

00:45:18.602 –> 00:45:27.602
John Kennedy: So Ben Blackadder, Ruslan Balatov, Kem Levin and David Schultz were all wondering, how has your process evolved since the first two albums?

00:45:27.602 –> 00:45:29.802
John Kennedy: Are you still doing things the same way?

00:45:29.802 –> 00:45:32.042
John Kennedy: Or have you developed your new techniques?

00:45:32.602 –> 00:45:33.642
Liam Ivory: Great question.

00:45:33.642 –> 00:45:35.482
Liam Ivory: I guess the answer is a bit of both.

00:45:35.482 –> 00:45:40.562
Liam Ivory: The kind of fundamental drive to be experimental has stayed the same.

00:45:40.562 –> 00:45:42.502
Liam Ivory: And that’s what brought me and Chris together originally.

00:45:42.502 –> 00:45:48.602
Liam Ivory: And that’s been the driving force throughout all the records, is being as experimental as possible.

00:45:48.602 –> 00:45:51.702
Liam Ivory: But we’ve learned a lot over the years and we’ve learned a lot from collaborating.

00:45:51.702 –> 00:45:55.302
Liam Ivory: We’ve learned a lot from working with Jack and our processes have changed.

00:45:55.302 –> 00:46:11.682
Liam Ivory: And we like to create little processes, things like the timer idea and other bits that we can talk about like we often generate ways of writing and producing to be productive and to generate sounds or certain pedal chains and we kind of keep them in the locker and we return to them.

00:46:11.682 –> 00:46:18.122
Liam Ivory: And like the Arsenal is built over the years to allow us to, I guess to have more options when we’re in the studio.

00:46:18.122 –> 00:46:20.722
Liam Ivory: But the core of it, I’d say, is kind of stayed the same.

00:46:20.722 –> 00:46:29.882
Liam Ivory: It’s just we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire more kit as we’ve gone on and have like a bigger studio, a bigger space to work in with more interesting stuff.

00:46:30.882 –> 00:46:34.922
Liam Ivory: But yeah, at the heart of it, it’s just the experimentation that’s kind of-

00:46:34.922 –> 00:46:42.062
Chris Davids: I think a lot of the process over the past few years has been about trying to get back to how it was when we started.

00:46:42.062 –> 00:46:47.862
Chris Davids: Because as time goes on and you acquire more kit, we’ve acquired more kit and we’ve had more options.

00:46:47.862 –> 00:46:51.762
Chris Davids: I think that’s also been really detrimental to what we’ve been doing.

00:46:51.762 –> 00:47:05.382
Chris Davids: And I think we’ve tried to carve out a different way of working it and not like a big part of the process back in when we first started was get an idea and then just sit through and just throw loads of different ideas into it.

00:47:05.382 –> 00:47:10.862
Chris Davids: Lots of samples and that’s kind of where all the texture and stuff comes from in the music.

00:47:10.862 –> 00:47:24.122
Chris Davids: But as we carried on with the third album, I think that sort of started to fall to the wayside a little bit and we were more focused on just what is the idea, which is a really good thing, but I think we lost a lot of our sound when we were doing that.

00:47:24.802 –> 00:47:32.182
Chris Davids: So we were having to sort of go back to the drawing board a little bit and be like, okay, well, this is the way that we get really excited by music.

00:47:32.182 –> 00:47:35.482
Chris Davids: It is by throwing paint at a wall and seeing what sticks.

00:47:35.482 –> 00:47:39.682
Chris Davids: And it also is about limitation sometimes and stripping away all of our kit.

00:47:39.682 –> 00:47:49.422
Chris Davids: And sometimes going away on a writing trip and maybe not using everything or hiring different kit or so it has sort of changed.

00:47:49.462 –> 00:47:53.202
Chris Davids: But I think the fundamentals are the same now.

00:47:53.202 –> 00:48:04.382
Liam Ivory: Yeah, also just to add that process of taking something too far and then coming back to like a centre point, that’s also been kind of woven throughout the years of making music together.

00:48:04.382 –> 00:48:15.942
Liam Ivory: Whether it’s getting a new bit of kit or starting to work with tape and then making everything lo-fi, like we often push the boundary and then we decide that’s too much and then we draw it back.

00:48:15.942 –> 00:48:23.342
Liam Ivory: And that’s what we’re constantly doing is drawing things back to like Chris said to feel how it used to feel or to capture the raw essence of it.

00:48:23.342 –> 00:48:28.962
Liam Ivory: Like that’s our center point and we’re often just skating over it and then dragging it back to that point.

00:48:28.962 –> 00:48:29.282
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:48:29.282 –> 00:48:32.522
John Kennedy: And I mean, you started really quite young, didn’t you?

00:48:32.522 –> 00:48:36.262
John Kennedy: And in terms of experimenting, how did you approach that man?

00:48:36.262 –> 00:48:44.542
John Kennedy: Were you people who had learned a particular instrument or were you people who were like already embracing recording and making music that way?

00:48:44.542 –> 00:48:45.762
Liam Ivory: It’s different for both of us.

00:48:45.762 –> 00:48:47.462
Liam Ivory: We both did start playing in bands.

00:48:47.702 –> 00:48:51.302
Liam Ivory: Like my first instrument was guitar, just self-taught and then went on to keys.

00:48:51.302 –> 00:48:56.402
Liam Ivory: But I actually, in terms of experimentation, mine came through the genre of music.

00:48:56.402 –> 00:49:02.422
Liam Ivory: So when I was doing music at school for GCSE, a module they had was like sequencing.

00:49:02.422 –> 00:49:04.262
Liam Ivory: That was the first time I’d seen Cubase.

00:49:04.262 –> 00:49:05.362
Liam Ivory: And that really blew my mind.

00:49:05.562 –> 00:49:12.142
Liam Ivory: And it kind of came at the same time that I was getting into Apex Twin, Chris Clark, like kind of intelligent dance music stuff.

00:49:12.142 –> 00:49:16.162
Liam Ivory: So I was trying quite badly, but I was trying to make that kind of music.

00:49:16.242 –> 00:49:30.582
Liam Ivory: And that’s where the experimentation was coming from was just like, after spending so many years listening to quite structured, like punk, pop punk stuff, it was like thinking about sounds in a very different way and like thinking about rhythms in a different way and just trying to push those boundaries.

00:49:30.582 –> 00:49:31.142
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:49:31.362 –> 00:49:33.162
John Kennedy: And how did you, but you were at school together.

00:49:33.162 –> 00:49:35.202
Chris Davids: Yeah, we were at school together.

00:49:35.202 –> 00:49:44.582
Chris Davids: For me, it more came in the form of songwriting, because I was not really into making electronic music at the time, but I was in a band and I’d write the songs for the band.

00:49:44.582 –> 00:49:51.702
Chris Davids: And so it was more trying to understand how a song is structured and how to write lyrics and things like that.

00:49:51.702 –> 00:49:56.262
Chris Davids: So that was my sort of initiation really into music.

00:49:57.322 –> 00:49:59.722
Chris Davids: And then I sort of put it down for quite a while.

00:49:59.722 –> 00:50:10.622
Chris Davids: And then when me and Liam started working in a band together, that’s when I started getting into working on logic, I think at the time, and then experimenting with sounds that way.

00:50:10.622 –> 00:50:12.702
Chris Davids: But that was more when I was like 20.

00:50:12.722 –> 00:50:13.882
Liam Ivory: It was when we went to uni, wasn’t it?

00:50:14.242 –> 00:50:14.862
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:50:14.862 –> 00:50:20.302
John Kennedy: Because did I read this correctly that you got your first remix commission at the age of 16?

00:50:20.302 –> 00:50:21.262
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:50:21.262 –> 00:50:22.702
John Kennedy: Reworking Hadouken.

00:50:22.702 –> 00:50:23.182
Liam Ivory: Exactly.

00:50:23.182 –> 00:50:23.562
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:50:23.562 –> 00:50:32.442
Liam Ivory: In a previous band, which the way we got it was, so Emily from Hadouken, her sister went to our school, right?

00:50:32.442 –> 00:50:32.942
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:50:32.942 –> 00:50:37.442
Liam Ivory: And our singer at the time basically called up the house phone and just like, is Emily there?

00:50:37.442 –> 00:50:38.802
Liam Ivory: And just asked if we could do a remix.

00:50:39.182 –> 00:50:43.842
Liam Ivory: And then we got an email from Universal or someone a bit later saying about the remix.

00:50:43.842 –> 00:50:45.142
Liam Ivory: But yeah, that was the first.

00:50:45.142 –> 00:50:45.722
John Kennedy: That’s pretty cool.

00:50:45.722 –> 00:50:48.522
Liam Ivory: We got checked for 200 pounds and we were absolutely buzzing.

00:50:48.522 –> 00:50:51.382
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:50:51.382 –> 00:50:51.982
John Kennedy: Fantastic.

00:50:51.982 –> 00:50:52.282
John Kennedy: Right.

00:50:52.282 –> 00:50:53.642
John Kennedy: Let’s get into the music again.

00:50:53.642 –> 00:50:56.302
John Kennedy: So Otherside is the next song we’re going to look at.

00:50:56.302 –> 00:50:58.742
John Kennedy: So if you could give us a blast of a master, that would be brilliant.

00:52:05.102 –> 00:52:22.702
John Kennedy: It is Other Side by Maribu State, and it’s interesting hearing that having heard Black Oak, because it’s quite a contrast, but also interesting in light of you, Chris, saying that you started out in terms of songwriting and focusing on that, because this is a more straightforward, conventional song structure to quite a few of your tracks.

00:52:22.860 –> 00:52:23.900
Chris Davids: Yeah, yeah.

00:52:24.260 –> 00:52:30.620
Chris Davids: But oddly, it was started pretty much in the same day, or the same couple of days as Blackoak.

00:52:30.620 –> 00:52:32.660
Liam Ivory: Yeah, with the two hour timer thing.

00:52:32.780 –> 00:52:35.880
Chris Davids: So yeah, it was in a similar sort of period.

00:52:36.880 –> 00:52:49.600
Chris Davids: But yeah, in the end, it’s ended up becoming a fully fledged song, and that is partly down to us, but also to the people that we were working with on it, because we collaborated a lot on this track.

00:52:49.600 –> 00:52:59.080
Chris Davids: We worked with Johnjoe and Jack who were down there, but then obviously Holly Walker came on board, and she always takes the drive and see when it comes to lyrics.

00:52:59.080 –> 00:53:07.480
Chris Davids: But again, there’s always this push and pull with having a verse part, but then also the chorus feeling something that feels very unique to us.

00:53:08.520 –> 00:53:18.220
Chris Davids: In this song, for example, there’s a sample in the chorus that was made up by chopping up vocals from another session that we did with a singer called Guida.

00:53:18.900 –> 00:53:23.980
Chris Davids: So that created the chorus, and then we put the vocals on from Holly.

00:53:23.980 –> 00:53:29.980
Chris Davids: So yeah, the song structure is never really done in a way of like sit down at the piano and be like this is the verse, this is the chorus.

00:53:30.080 –> 00:53:30.740
Chris Davids: It tends to be like-

00:53:30.740 –> 00:53:31.820
Liam Ivory: It’s more like patchwork, isn’t it?

00:53:31.820 –> 00:53:32.540
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:53:32.540 –> 00:53:32.840
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:53:32.840 –> 00:53:33.880
Chris Davids: Gets pieced together that way.

00:53:33.880 –> 00:53:56.200
Liam Ivory: This song actually in particular has got a very interesting kind of history timeline, the way it came together in terms of the original demo, and then there’s like two or three whole songs that exist with different vocalists, and eventually, we’ll go through all of it and you can hear it, but eventually it ends up kind of a mix of all of it, and actually Holly’s vocal is taken from a demo from our second album.

00:53:56.480 –> 00:53:57.940
Liam Ivory: They never made the record.

00:53:57.940 –> 00:54:01.180
Liam Ivory: So we ended up, I think the track was going to get binned at one point.

00:54:01.180 –> 00:54:08.920
Liam Ivory: We were like, it’s not working, and then very last minute in the process, Chris tried this old acapella on it and that kind of saves it, but we’ll go through it.

00:54:08.920 –> 00:54:09.260
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:54:09.260 –> 00:54:12.260
John Kennedy: So maybe, I guess we start with the demo if you’ve got that.

00:54:12.260 –> 00:54:17.680
Liam Ivory: So I am conscious of playing this because I feel like we’ll probably lose a bit of respect for people.

00:54:17.680 –> 00:54:20.280
John Kennedy: But this is the original.

00:54:20.340 –> 00:54:20.860
John Kennedy: Impossible.

00:54:20.860 –> 00:54:25.560
Liam Ivory: This is the original chorus to Otherside.

00:54:34.440 –> 00:54:35.460
John Kennedy: And is that Holly’s voice?

00:54:35.460 –> 00:54:37.440
Liam Ivory: No, that’s the song, that’s just an a cappella.

00:54:37.440 –> 00:54:37.900
John Kennedy: Right, okay.

00:54:43.900 –> 00:54:45.140
Chris Davids: Wild class bang of that, I think.

00:54:46.400 –> 00:54:48.180
John Kennedy: I can hear that on the radio.

00:54:48.860 –> 00:54:55.740
Liam Ivory: We spoke to Jack Saunders at Radio 1 yesterday, and he quoted about how poppy this song was for us.

00:54:55.740 –> 00:55:00.560
Liam Ivory: And I was thinking, God, if you had the original, it would blow your mind.

00:55:00.560 –> 00:55:02.080
Liam Ivory: So that was the original vocal.

00:55:02.080 –> 00:55:08.700
Liam Ivory: We knew it was cheesy, but we kind of liked it, and we thought maybe if we can produce it in the right way, that could be a big release on the chorus.

00:55:08.700 –> 00:55:10.460
Liam Ivory: So that was from the first trip.

00:55:10.460 –> 00:55:13.960
Liam Ivory: When we left that trip, we had that vocal.

00:55:13.960 –> 00:55:22.800
Liam Ivory: There were kind of very loose verse ideas from Jack vocally, but they’re kind of just very loose, kind of murmurings, nothing really of note.

00:55:22.800 –> 00:55:28.860
Liam Ivory: But so that was kind of the basis of Otherside from that trip, and it was similar to Blackoak in a sense.

00:55:28.860 –> 00:55:33.820
Liam Ivory: It was like chord progression, bass line from John Joe, and then a drum sample, drum loop.

00:55:33.820 –> 00:55:35.800
Liam Ivory: And that was kind of the basis of it.

00:55:35.800 –> 00:55:40.300
Liam Ivory: But yeah, we sat with this vocal for a while, and we kept going off and on it.

00:55:40.420 –> 00:55:45.480
Chris Davids: And we even got Jack to re-vocal it.

00:55:48.060 –> 00:55:49.300
Liam Ivory: Sorry, Jack.

00:55:53.440 –> 00:55:55.500
Chris Davids: So basically, it got worse.

00:55:55.500 –> 00:55:56.260
Chris Davids: It got a little bit worse.

00:55:56.260 –> 00:55:57.700
Liam Ivory: It got worse before it got like that.

00:55:57.700 –> 00:55:59.660
John Kennedy: I’d quite like that.

00:55:59.660 –> 00:56:12.340
Chris Davids: But I mean, yeah, fair play to Jack, because he spent ages recording that and also doing it in a way similar to the trick that we said about in Blackoak, where we recorded all the vocal parts at different pitches.

00:56:12.340 –> 00:56:20.580
Chris Davids: He did that with this vocal and then would cut the phrasing so you heard all the high pitch stuff for one lyric and then the low pitch stuff.

00:56:20.580 –> 00:56:26.520
Chris Davids: So we were trying to make something that was really cheesy feel a bit more tasteful.

00:56:26.520 –> 00:56:31.460
Chris Davids: But yeah, in the end, I think we just decided that that melody in itself was just not the one.

00:56:31.540 –> 00:56:33.800
Chris Davids: And we parked the track then.

00:56:33.800 –> 00:56:50.560
Liam Ivory: Yeah, and in picking up on a point Chris mentioned, because we’ve done this before, often for choruses, like a tool we’ll use when we can’t think of a chorus is chop up samples and then structure the chorus out with that and then we’ll re-vocal it and we’ll re-lyric it.

00:56:51.000 –> 00:56:59.560
Liam Ivory: So we’ll just use the acapella as a means of a voice, but we’ll just chop it, reorder it, pitch it, and then that will generate the melody.

00:56:59.640 –> 00:57:02.380
Liam Ivory: And that’s kind of how this chorus came about.

00:57:02.380 –> 00:57:05.960
Liam Ivory: So here’s some of the original acapellas that were presented.

00:57:15.007 –> 00:57:16.987
Liam Ivory: There’s stuff like that, I’m like…

00:57:24.567 –> 00:57:27.647
Liam Ivory: It’s like nonsensical stuff, but it’s like creating a framework.

00:57:27.647 –> 00:57:30.647
Liam Ivory: And then so we all went away on the writing trip.

00:57:30.647 –> 00:57:32.247
Liam Ivory: It was actually in Safferton by then, wasn’t it?

00:57:32.247 –> 00:57:32.467
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:57:32.467 –> 00:57:33.627
Liam Ivory: So it was another writing trip.

00:57:33.627 –> 00:57:38.247
Liam Ivory: So this got parked for over a year, maybe, for being too poppy.

00:57:38.247 –> 00:57:42.407
Liam Ivory: And then when we went on another writing trip, our A&R came down.

00:57:42.407 –> 00:57:45.227
Liam Ivory: He was nearby seeing family, Adrian Kemp at Ninja Tune.

00:57:45.227 –> 00:57:49.047
Liam Ivory: And we played him a load of demos and he was like, this is your hit.

00:57:49.047 –> 00:57:50.307
Liam Ivory: This is the one you need to work on.

00:57:50.307 –> 00:57:51.687
Liam Ivory: Because we weren’t sure what to work on.

00:57:51.687 –> 00:57:54.087
Liam Ivory: So yeah, there was, I guess.

00:57:54.087 –> 00:57:59.567
Chris Davids: I think we were a bit, at the time we were like, okay, maybe there, maybe there.

00:57:59.567 –> 00:58:05.347
Chris Davids: Because we’d really like the main thing about the original was just this bass line and the drums.

00:58:05.347 –> 00:58:10.727
Chris Davids: It was something, I think the one thing we always try and do is try and hit new ground with everything.

00:58:10.727 –> 00:58:15.687
Chris Davids: Every track on the record has always got to be something that fills up we haven’t done before.

00:58:15.687 –> 00:58:24.107
Chris Davids: And for us, that bass and the drums were a massive departure from, it was really, really quite poppy.

00:58:24.107 –> 00:58:32.147
Chris Davids: I remember at the time we were a bit unattracted to it because we were like, it felt like a Solange song or something like that, which felt a bit too far for us, but.

00:58:32.147 –> 00:58:33.307
Liam Ivory: We do like Solange though.

00:58:33.307 –> 00:58:34.227
Chris Davids: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:34.527 –> 00:58:41.247
Chris Davids: But you know, in terms of for us, that wasn’t the right fit, but yeah, we really like that bass part.

00:58:41.467 –> 00:58:50.687
Chris Davids: And when Adrian heard it, I think we heard it with or without the old vocal, but it just sparked something of us being like, okay, well, let’s give it another go.

00:58:50.687 –> 00:58:54.227
Chris Davids: And that’s what led on to this part where we all split off.

00:58:54.227 –> 00:58:56.387
Chris Davids: And did we all split off or?

00:58:56.387 –> 00:59:01.367
Liam Ivory: Yeah, we all split off and we all brought together different samples as a contender for the chorus.

00:59:01.487 –> 00:59:04.927
Liam Ivory: And then the one that was picked eventually was…

00:59:06.567 –> 00:59:07.947
Liam Ivory: Oh, this is the original.

00:59:11.607 –> 00:59:16.387
Liam Ivory: So that was just an improv vocal take that we did with a singer called Guida.

00:59:16.387 –> 00:59:16.887
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

00:59:16.887 –> 00:59:18.547
Liam Ivory: And this is the…

00:59:19.667 –> 00:59:22.627
Liam Ivory: That’s it pitched up and chopped into place.

00:59:27.067 –> 00:59:29.347
Liam Ivory: So then that became the main part of the chorus.

00:59:31.507 –> 00:59:34.927
Liam Ivory: And then we got Jack and I think Andrea was on that.

00:59:34.927 –> 00:59:40.187
Liam Ivory: Or just some other vocalists we work with just to back it up and we put lyrics to it.

00:59:40.187 –> 00:59:45.307
Liam Ivory: And initially that was the chorus that we had without any Holly.

00:59:48.067 –> 00:59:49.647
John Kennedy: And again, I mean, the words are real defined.

00:59:49.647 –> 00:59:52.907
John Kennedy: There’s nothing that you could say, oh, they’re singing these words.

00:59:52.907 –> 00:59:53.547
Chris Davids: Yeah.

00:59:53.547 –> 00:59:57.087
Chris Davids: I think the only thing that we all picked up on was that it said all the things you do.

00:59:57.087 –> 00:59:57.287
John Kennedy: Right.

00:59:57.907 –> 01:00:00.107
Chris Davids: And that, that did stick.

01:00:00.107 –> 01:00:02.427
Chris Davids: It is basically the same.

01:00:02.427 –> 01:00:04.827
Chris Davids: We just rolled with all the things you do all the time.

01:00:04.827 –> 01:00:07.607
Chris Davids: And that’s what Jack and Andrea sang over it.

01:00:07.607 –> 01:00:10.927
Chris Davids: And that then became sort of the basis of the track.

01:00:10.927 –> 01:00:16.307
Chris Davids: And until Jack then wrote, I think Jack put a verse on it.

01:00:16.307 –> 01:00:17.687
Liam Ivory: Yeah, I got it here if you want to listen.

01:00:17.687 –> 01:00:19.367
Liam Ivory: So this is the first verse from Jack.

01:00:48.980 –> 01:01:04.680
Chris Davids: So yeah, Jack wrote that part, which at the time we were all into, and it kicked into the chorus, which again, it sort of connected, and it had this kind of contrast between Jack’s quite melancholy verse and then this quite bright poppy chorus.

01:01:05.300 –> 01:01:08.560
Chris Davids: And then I think we were working on something different.

01:01:08.560 –> 01:01:09.760
Chris Davids: Me and Liam were working on something different.

01:01:09.760 –> 01:01:12.480
Liam Ivory: There was a Holly verse before, wasn’t there?

01:01:12.480 –> 01:01:13.340
Liam Ivory: When was Holly’s verse?

01:01:13.340 –> 01:01:15.100
Liam Ivory: Did they come after this?

01:01:15.300 –> 01:01:16.560
Liam Ivory: I’m trying to remember why.

01:01:16.560 –> 01:01:19.100
Chris Davids: We tried some stuff with Holly maybe after.

01:01:19.100 –> 01:01:19.640
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:01:19.640 –> 01:01:21.300
Chris Davids: In between, I can’t remember.

01:01:21.300 –> 01:01:23.140
Chris Davids: There was definitely a few.

01:01:23.140 –> 01:01:25.040
Liam Ivory: Yeah, because there’s a verse here.

01:01:30.680 –> 01:01:33.620
Liam Ivory: So this is Holly having a crack at an original verse for this as well.

01:01:35.380 –> 01:01:38.460
Liam Ivory: I mean, I’m showing you snippets, but these are full songs.

01:01:38.460 –> 01:01:41.700
Liam Ivory: Yeah, like we’ve done the whole verse, chorus, verse like all the way through.

01:01:41.700 –> 01:01:44.660
John Kennedy: So, I mean, you’ve got the track sorted pretty much.

01:01:44.660 –> 01:01:48.340
John Kennedy: So, it’s now trying to find the ideal vocal melody.

01:01:48.340 –> 01:01:52.640
John Kennedy: And well, you kind of got the vocal melody, but the right verse, the right chorus.

01:01:52.640 –> 01:01:54.020
Chris Davids: Yeah, exactly.

01:01:54.080 –> 01:01:56.300
Chris Davids: But I think actually between…

01:01:56.480 –> 01:02:07.240
Chris Davids: So, we were quite set on it being Jack’s vocal, and then he wrote a middle eight part for it, which, Liam, I’m sure you’ll have that there.

01:02:07.240 –> 01:02:07.600
Chris Davids: Because that…

01:02:16.980 –> 01:02:18.140
Liam Ivory: More of that pitching there.

01:02:18.140 –> 01:02:19.360
Chris Davids: So, that was at the original.

01:02:19.360 –> 01:02:20.160
Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah, that’s Jack’s.

01:02:21.480 –> 01:02:27.080
Chris Davids: Okay, so Jack wrote that part, which me and Liam both really liked.

01:02:27.080 –> 01:02:28.280
Chris Davids: And then we got…

01:02:28.280 –> 01:02:32.220
Chris Davids: We invited all of our friends down to this house that we were staying at.

01:02:32.220 –> 01:02:33.240
Chris Davids: This was part of a…

01:02:33.240 –> 01:02:36.840
Chris Davids: This was in like May 22…

01:02:36.840 –> 01:02:37.780
Liam Ivory: I’ve written down the dates.

01:02:37.780 –> 01:02:38.960
Chris Davids: May 22.

01:02:38.960 –> 01:02:41.040
Liam Ivory: It’s been a long couple of years.

01:02:41.040 –> 01:02:44.100
Chris Davids: But loads of our friends came down.

01:02:44.100 –> 01:02:44.700
Chris Davids: Like it was really…

01:02:44.700 –> 01:02:46.160
Chris Davids: I remember it being really hot that weekend.

01:02:46.160 –> 01:02:47.420
Chris Davids: There was a pool at the house and stuff.

01:02:47.500 –> 01:02:50.140
Chris Davids: So we were all out having barbecues and stuff.

01:02:50.140 –> 01:02:52.840
Chris Davids: And we were quite…

01:02:52.840 –> 01:02:56.360
Chris Davids: To be honest, we were really unsure if the idea was going to work or not.

01:02:56.360 –> 01:03:06.020
Chris Davids: Because the idea of inviting 15 or 20 mates down when you’re supposed to be writing music and knowing our friends as well, like they would like a few drinks.

01:03:06.020 –> 01:03:07.560
Chris Davids: We were a bit worried, to be honest.

01:03:07.560 –> 01:03:10.260
Chris Davids: But it ended up being really, really productive.

01:03:10.260 –> 01:03:14.680
Chris Davids: And they ended up being part of a couple of songs that were written.

01:03:15.540 –> 01:03:20.720
Chris Davids: But then the other main focus was that we got them to record loads of the choir parts on the songs.

01:03:20.720 –> 01:03:26.480
Chris Davids: And Jack had just written that part for The Middle Eight of Otherside the day or so before.

01:03:26.480 –> 01:03:31.580
Chris Davids: So it was a new idea that, again, the lyrics were just a bit nonsensical, to be honest.

01:03:31.580 –> 01:03:33.020
Chris Davids: But we were just like, let’s not overthink it.

01:03:33.020 –> 01:03:34.520
Chris Davids: Let’s just get them to record.

01:03:34.520 –> 01:03:35.980
Chris Davids: I feel I’m getting stronger by now.

01:03:43.020 –> 01:03:44.760
Liam Ivory: Heavily processed, but yeah.

01:03:44.780 –> 01:03:46.660
Liam Ivory: It’s everyone on the stairwell.

01:03:46.660 –> 01:03:48.860
Chris Davids: And so they all recorded that part.

01:03:48.860 –> 01:03:53.340
Chris Davids: And that, I think, was how this song was basically left at that trip at that point.

01:03:53.340 –> 01:03:54.940
Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

01:03:54.940 –> 01:03:59.720
Liam Ivory: There’s some guitar bits that went in back in London, I think, did they?

01:03:59.720 –> 01:04:00.460
Chris Davids: Oh, the…

01:04:00.460 –> 01:04:02.560
Liam Ivory: The main guitar chorus.

01:04:02.560 –> 01:04:06.640
Chris Davids: Yeah, that went in in Tapperton, to be fair.

01:04:06.640 –> 01:04:07.880
Liam Ivory: But yeah, so this got parked.

01:04:08.620 –> 01:04:10.080
Liam Ivory: And we just couldn’t quite figure it out.

01:04:10.220 –> 01:04:17.900
Liam Ivory: I can’t even remember really now why we started challenging Jack’s verse, because we’d named the song and everything and we recorded finals.

01:04:17.900 –> 01:04:19.100
Liam Ivory: I can’t remember why.

01:04:20.060 –> 01:04:23.640
Liam Ivory: We started working with Holly on this album actually quite late in the process.

01:04:23.640 –> 01:04:25.620
Liam Ivory: It wasn’t even sure if we were going to work with her.

01:04:25.620 –> 01:04:31.760
John Kennedy: Because Holly Walker, we should explain if you’ve not been listening to the Maribou State album, but you’ve worked with her from the beginning.

01:04:32.240 –> 01:04:33.540
Liam Ivory: Pretty much from the start, yeah.

01:04:33.540 –> 01:04:39.660
Liam Ivory: One of the first, we did a couple of EPs on our own, but she was the main vocal feature we started working with.

01:04:39.660 –> 01:04:47.460
Liam Ivory: We put out a track called Tongue, which was actually in some ways like a rewrite or remix of a demo she already had.

01:04:47.540 –> 01:04:50.420
Liam Ivory: Then we’ve worked with her on the other two albums.

01:04:50.420 –> 01:05:00.100
Liam Ivory: At this point, a year or two into writing this record, we hadn’t really spoken or seen her since finishing touring in 2019, and then obviously with COVID and everything.

01:05:00.100 –> 01:05:07.160
Liam Ivory: So there wasn’t any plans to be in the studio, but quite late in the day, we just said, let’s get into the studio.

01:05:07.160 –> 01:05:16.480
Liam Ivory: We were like, look, the album, and this is the thing, at this point, the album was kind of done in a sense because there was enough tracks, and we thought it was done.

01:05:16.480 –> 01:05:18.300
Liam Ivory: So we said to Holly, won’t you come in?

01:05:18.300 –> 01:05:22.900
Liam Ivory: No pressure, let’s write some music, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work because the record’s done.

01:05:22.900 –> 01:05:28.600
Liam Ivory: And she was like, I only want to do this if it’s like a big track, you know, I don’t want to just do some little album detail stuff.

01:05:28.600 –> 01:05:31.700
Liam Ivory: It’s like, let’s go for a single, let’s go for a big song.

01:05:31.700 –> 01:05:38.420
Liam Ivory: So obviously we had this Otherside track, which we knew was more of a song kind of structured thing and definitely on the poppy side for us.

01:05:38.420 –> 01:05:40.400
Liam Ivory: So we’re like, maybe this is the one.

01:05:40.400 –> 01:05:44.500
Liam Ivory: And Holly had a crack at the verses, but they weren’t quite landing, to be honest.

01:05:44.500 –> 01:05:50.160
Liam Ivory: And we were chopping and changing between Jack’s vocal and hers and couldn’t decide which one to do.

01:05:50.160 –> 01:05:53.060
Liam Ivory: And yeah, I don’t know the timeline of this, but I think it was quite late in the day.

01:05:53.060 –> 01:05:57.520
Chris Davids: I think it was with Holly, Holly worked on the verse, then we ended up taking it.

01:05:57.520 –> 01:05:59.100
Chris Davids: And then Jack did the vocal.

01:05:59.100 –> 01:06:10.700
Liam Ivory: And then eventually, very late in the day, Chris took the a cappella off a tune called Otherside, which was a demo that was a contender for the single on Kingdoms in Colour.

01:06:10.700 –> 01:06:15.460
Liam Ivory: And it was a contender with Nervous Ticks, which was one of the bigger tracks off that record.

01:06:15.460 –> 01:06:17.000
Liam Ivory: We had both of them finished.

01:06:17.000 –> 01:06:20.080
Liam Ivory: We wanted 10 tracks on the album, so we were like, let’s pick one.

01:06:20.080 –> 01:06:21.420
Liam Ivory: And we ended up picking Nervous Ticks.

01:06:21.420 –> 01:06:25.860
Liam Ivory: So this is the original Otherside, which is quite interesting to hear.

01:06:25.860 –> 01:06:27.100
Liam Ivory: This is where the vocal came from.

01:07:19.342 –> 01:07:24.422
John Kennedy: It still sounds good, I mean, it sounds like you could easily have included that on that album.

01:07:24.422 –> 01:07:29.962
Chris Davids: It’s quite interesting, it’s so much more somber than I remember it being.

01:07:29.962 –> 01:07:31.262
Liam Ivory: Yeah, it’s a lot slimmer.

01:07:34.822 –> 01:07:34.942
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:07:38.122 –> 01:07:39.742
John Kennedy: So, this will be interesting to see.

01:07:39.742 –> 01:07:43.042
John Kennedy: Did you have to speed up the vocal to go with otherside?

01:07:43.042 –> 01:07:48.002
Liam Ivory: It’s interesting because that’s a lot slower and it’s a lot lower.

01:07:48.002 –> 01:07:55.062
Liam Ivory: And Holly really just showed us how talented she is by singing this.

01:07:55.342 –> 01:07:57.502
Liam Ivory: We said to her, look, we’ve been experimenting a lot with pitching.

01:07:58.142 –> 01:07:59.522
Liam Ivory: We can play around with it.

01:07:59.522 –> 01:08:00.602
Liam Ivory: We can drop the track down.

01:08:00.602 –> 01:08:01.482
Liam Ivory: We can slow it down.

01:08:01.482 –> 01:08:03.282
Liam Ivory: We can drop the pitch.

01:08:03.282 –> 01:08:04.722
Liam Ivory: And she was like, no, I think I can do it.

01:08:04.722 –> 01:08:06.202
Liam Ivory: And with a big old warm up.

01:08:06.202 –> 01:08:10.342
Liam Ivory: And she managed to sing it at the right pitch, at the right tempo.

01:08:10.342 –> 01:08:12.282
Chris Davids: Especially that mid-later bit.

01:08:12.282 –> 01:08:12.442
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:08:12.442 –> 01:08:13.662
Liam Ivory: That’s why I just wanted that to play out.

01:08:13.702 –> 01:08:17.562
John Kennedy: So, had you experimented by taking the vocal from the other side?

01:08:17.562 –> 01:08:18.142
Liam Ivory: Yeah, exactly.

01:08:18.142 –> 01:08:19.822
John Kennedy: And played it over the instrumental?

01:08:19.822 –> 01:08:24.082
Chris Davids: So, this was about a month before the album was supposed to be handed in.

01:08:24.082 –> 01:08:26.442
Chris Davids: Like Liam said, the record was written.

01:08:27.062 –> 01:08:30.342
Chris Davids: And we were going with Jack’s vocal on this track.

01:08:30.342 –> 01:08:32.862
Chris Davids: It was originally called People All Around.

01:08:32.862 –> 01:08:39.402
Chris Davids: But there was just something in that last month with the pressure of the deadline that just sort of cast a bit of clarity over everything.

01:08:39.402 –> 01:08:40.702
Chris Davids: And I was in the studio.

01:08:40.702 –> 01:08:42.282
Liam Ivory: We actually cut three other tunes as well.

01:08:42.282 –> 01:08:42.462
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:08:42.622 –> 01:08:48.942
Chris Davids: So, I think last minute there was like three songs that just got cut and then three new songs brought on.

01:08:48.942 –> 01:08:51.522
Chris Davids: Which for us is quite a lot to take on.

01:08:51.522 –> 01:08:55.202
Chris Davids: Because, you know, each song isn’t just done over the course of a couple of days.

01:08:55.962 –> 01:09:03.222
Chris Davids: But, I, for whatever reason, was listening to this, the original of Otherside, didn’t think it was right.

01:09:03.222 –> 01:09:14.162
Chris Davids: So, got Holley’s vocal from this old song, put it over the top, and it just landed perfectly around the chorus sample with all the things you do.

01:09:14.162 –> 01:09:18.582
Chris Davids: And I remember doing it at the time and just like, you know, like get punching the air.

01:09:19.702 –> 01:09:24.922
Chris Davids: This is great, showed it to Liam, Liam was the same, but like, this is what we needed, showed it to Jack.

01:09:24.922 –> 01:09:26.542
Liam Ivory: We were nervous about showing Jack, do you remember?

01:09:26.542 –> 01:09:34.442
Liam Ivory: Cause at that time, his vocal was the main vocal, and we were like, Jack, I know you’re singing on this, but this is Holley’s old acapella, what do you think?

01:09:34.442 –> 01:09:35.602
Liam Ivory: And he was like, yes!

01:09:35.602 –> 01:09:46.702
Chris Davids: And that’s really, you know, that’s, it takes a lot, I think, to, you know, when you’ve spent a lot of time writing lyrics for something, to then be like, do you know what, this is the best song.

01:09:46.702 –> 01:09:46.842
Chris Davids: And he-

01:09:46.842 –> 01:09:48.242
Liam Ivory: He’s a true producer in that sense.

01:09:48.822 –> 01:09:50.282
Liam Ivory: The song is the most important thing.

01:09:50.282 –> 01:09:54.002
Liam Ivory: He’s like, if he loses the vocal feature, whatever, that sounds better.

01:09:54.062 –> 01:09:54.842
Liam Ivory: It’s admirable.

01:09:54.842 –> 01:09:55.962
Chris Davids: That was a really nice moment.

01:09:57.262 –> 01:09:58.522
Chris Davids: And then we sent it to Holly.

01:09:58.522 –> 01:10:05.242
Chris Davids: And I think, understandably, Holly was just a bit more hesitant about it because this is an old song she’d written for something totally different.

01:10:05.242 –> 01:10:10.702
Chris Davids: And we’d just then taken the acapella and pitched it up and whatever, manipulated it and put it onto this song.

01:10:10.702 –> 01:10:15.562
Chris Davids: So it took her a little while to come around to the idea of us using it.

01:10:15.962 –> 01:10:19.202
Chris Davids: But I think after a couple of weeks, she sat with it.

01:10:19.202 –> 01:10:22.322
Liam Ivory: Let me get like a text out of the blue being like, it’s a banger.

01:10:23.482 –> 01:10:29.402
Chris Davids: At first, I think it was a bit more, yeah, a bit more, you know, I think when you’ve spent time working on something, it sounded confused to her.

01:10:29.402 –> 01:10:30.422
Chris Davids: It was one song that she sang like…

01:10:30.422 –> 01:10:32.482
Liam Ivory: Holly’s a very traditional songwriter in that sense.

01:10:32.482 –> 01:10:37.982
Liam Ivory: Like the song to her, if manipulated, she’s pained over every detail of it.

01:10:37.982 –> 01:10:44.702
Liam Ivory: If moved slightly, if this verse is put after this, you know, like little bits, to us, that will really upset things for her.

01:10:44.702 –> 01:10:46.302
Liam Ivory: So it doesn’t make sense and like…

01:10:46.302 –> 01:10:53.642
Liam Ivory: So yeah, like you said, I understand that it was probably quite a shock, but she did eventually come around and hear the magic in it.

01:10:54.382 –> 01:10:56.042
Liam Ivory: We did question it a bit though as well, didn’t we?

01:10:56.042 –> 01:11:00.262
Liam Ivory: Because it felt quite hectic, like knowing the vocal.

01:11:00.262 –> 01:11:06.702
Liam Ivory: Do you remember those times where we were like, there’s a sample and there’s a guitar and the chorus and then there’s Holly singing the verse and it’s like a lot faster.

01:11:06.702 –> 01:11:10.782
Liam Ivory: And once it was recorded properly, I think it really made sense.

01:11:10.782 –> 01:11:13.262
Liam Ivory: Should we play the pre-chorus bit?

01:11:13.262 –> 01:11:13.942
Liam Ivory: Just so you can hear.

01:11:14.082 –> 01:11:15.522
Liam Ivory: Yeah, hear Holly singing.

01:11:22.362 –> 01:11:25.422
John Kennedy: So this is Holly re-recording the vocal.

01:11:25.702 –> 01:11:32.142
Liam Ivory: Yeah, just singing super like top of her range, like such a mouthful of words to get out there as well.

01:11:32.142 –> 01:11:35.102
Liam Ivory: And like the rhythm of it, like I play it in context.

01:12:02.255 –> 01:12:04.355
John Kennedy: And are her vocals processed on that?

01:12:04.355 –> 01:12:04.835
John Kennedy: Is there a-

01:12:05.215 –> 01:12:05.475
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:12:05.475 –> 01:12:06.195
John Kennedy: What are you doing there?

01:12:06.195 –> 01:12:08.395
Chris Davids: They’re very simply, actually.

01:12:08.395 –> 01:12:11.555
Chris Davids: I think they would just run through guitar pedals, which we wouldn’t normally do.

01:12:11.555 –> 01:12:17.835
Chris Davids: But again, because of the deadline, we were just like, do you know what, let’s just roll with whatever sounds good.

01:12:17.835 –> 01:12:19.695
Chris Davids: Let’s not do a thousand different processes.

01:12:19.695 –> 01:12:28.135
Chris Davids: So we put it through a Moog delay pedal, and then a spring reverb, the 555 space echo.

01:12:28.135 –> 01:12:31.115
Chris Davids: And then I think we layered a couple of other bits with it afterwards.

01:12:31.115 –> 01:12:35.895
Liam Ivory: Yeah, Holly’s got a really bright voice, so I think that worked just going through a guitar pedal.

01:12:35.895 –> 01:12:38.375
Liam Ivory: It would have been capturing on a U87.

01:12:38.375 –> 01:12:47.455
Liam Ivory: We also did a bit of, we did this on the last record, but we’d often double mic with a Coles and a U87, and then we’d just blend to put body into or top.

01:12:47.455 –> 01:12:49.475
Liam Ivory: Just as a fail safe, we did it with Jack as well.

01:12:49.475 –> 01:12:54.475
Liam Ivory: We’ll just capture with two mics, and we’ll find the mix between that suits the tone.

01:12:54.475 –> 01:12:57.155
Liam Ivory: This actually has got some EMT plate as well.

01:12:58.575 –> 01:13:03.055
Liam Ivory: At 1087 Studios we were working at, they had a plate there which we run some stuff through.

01:13:03.055 –> 01:13:06.735
Liam Ivory: But yeah, the processing for us is hilariously simple on this.

01:13:06.735 –> 01:13:08.515
Liam Ivory: It’s two channels.

01:13:08.515 –> 01:13:13.395
Liam Ivory: It’s like destructive, just Holley through the pedals, through the 555, and then there’s some EMT.

01:13:13.795 –> 01:13:28.235
Chris Davids: The interesting thing about that is that this is one of my favorite vocal processes that we’ve done, and we’ve got so detailed, and I remember Nervostix had loads of different channels, Holley recorded loads of double parts, cassette tape, reel to reel.

01:13:28.235 –> 01:13:40.275
Chris Davids: Yeah, and it sounds great, but I just like the simplicity of this, and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do more on this record, is try and simplify things, even though we haven’t done that really.

01:13:40.275 –> 01:13:42.055
Chris Davids: Even though you’ve still got 500 channels.

01:13:42.055 –> 01:13:44.775
Liam Ivory: Well, this one’s 442 actually.

01:13:44.775 –> 01:14:00.275
Chris Davids: But yeah, it is still a battle between simplifying things, but then also retaining the sound that we’ve created over the years, and I think if we were to just strip it all down and do 8 channels, it wouldn’t sound like us.

01:14:01.115 –> 01:14:09.275
Chris Davids: Maybe at some point we will try and do that, and it will go off in a totally different direction, but I think for now, it’s not what we enjoy listening to.

01:14:09.275 –> 01:14:10.495
John Kennedy: Yeah, fantastic.

01:14:10.495 –> 01:14:11.595
John Kennedy: This is fascinating.

01:14:11.595 –> 01:14:17.515
John Kennedy: We’re going to take a quick break, so maybe let’s have a quick blast to the master, just to round things off.

01:14:17.515 –> 01:14:19.075
John Kennedy: So this is how it ended up.

01:14:53.078 –> 01:14:54.098
Liam Ivory: We should talk about guitar.

01:14:54.258 –> 01:14:55.878
Liam Ivory: We’ve not mentioned guitar once.

01:14:55.878 –> 01:14:57.038
John Kennedy: The guitar’s nice on this track.

01:14:57.038 –> 01:14:57.378
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:14:58.178 –> 01:15:05.358
Chris Davids: I mean, the guitar stuff on this was just, it all came at different times, all the different melodies.

01:15:05.358 –> 01:15:16.718
Chris Davids: So the one in the chorus is quite like a typical thing that we do where we call and response chorus vocals with guitar melody, and that was written down in the writing trip.

01:15:16.718 –> 01:15:23.378
Chris Davids: And we tend to layer a lot of the guitar with like bells and things like that, again, to create a bit of a thicker sound.

01:15:23.378 –> 01:15:39.558
Chris Davids: And there’s some guitar at the beginning of the song, which is a melody that’s been played in, but then run through, we’ve got a Moog Matriarch synth, so we just put it through that, and then you can like turn the noise up on it, and you get this sort of layer of…

01:15:39.558 –> 01:15:40.418
Chris Davids: Crust.

01:15:40.478 –> 01:15:44.878
Chris Davids: Yeah, crusty, dusty guitar.

01:15:45.118 –> 01:15:52.998
John Kennedy: It’s interesting, though, because it’s like, often it’s rhythm guitar, but you’re creating melody at the same time that you can go away and…

01:15:52.998 –> 01:15:55.158
Liam Ivory: Oh, Roger’s over here.

01:15:55.158 –> 01:15:56.758
John Kennedy: No, it’s brilliant.

01:15:56.758 –> 01:15:57.778
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:15:57.778 –> 01:16:00.538
John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s quite nile, isn’t it?

01:16:00.538 –> 01:16:07.798
Chris Davids: I think it’s using guitar as an instrument to create some vocal melodies or not being able to properly sing, so using the guitar to do it.

01:16:07.798 –> 01:16:10.978
Liam Ivory: The Lyons also do start off more single notes, don’t they?

01:16:11.378 –> 01:16:13.478
Liam Ivory: And then they’re fleshed out to sound thicker.

01:16:13.478 –> 01:16:20.618
Liam Ivory: So it’s like the key melodies in single note stuff, solo, and then Chris will flesh it out and it will build the part up.

01:16:20.618 –> 01:16:23.838
Liam Ivory: And then it starts to become this more chordal rhythmical thing.

01:16:23.838 –> 01:16:24.238
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:16:24.238 –> 01:16:35.778
Chris Davids: This is probably just the story I’m telling myself now, but I think also a big part of it is not being able to play guitar very well and only knowing how to do like three string chords.

01:16:36.298 –> 01:16:43.978
Chris Davids: And that then really influences the playing style because it’s not really complicated, which then lends itself to being these simpler melodies.

01:16:43.978 –> 01:16:46.118
Chris Davids: And I think that’s really worked in our favor.

01:16:46.118 –> 01:16:48.658
Chris Davids: And I’ve even in the past, I’ve been like, do you know what?

01:16:48.658 –> 01:16:52.738
Chris Davids: I don’t want to get really good at guitar because I don’t want to change how this does play.

01:16:52.738 –> 01:16:53.558
Chris Davids: But I’m sure of it.

01:16:53.558 –> 01:16:57.458
Chris Davids: Like, cause we’ve worked with musicians that are incredibly good at what they do.

01:16:57.458 –> 01:17:08.378
Chris Davids: And when me and Liam are like, just play it a bit more clumsily, then there’s quite a barrier between, because it doesn’t sound, it sounds too like loose and it just sounds.

01:17:08.378 –> 01:17:11.758
Liam Ivory: We had that with Neil Cowley, do you remember doing piano?

01:17:11.758 –> 01:17:11.978
Liam Ivory: Yeah, yeah.

01:17:11.978 –> 01:17:15.498
Liam Ivory: And we were referencing the LCD sound system 4533.

01:17:15.498 –> 01:17:17.038
Liam Ivory: And we wanted the chords like that.

01:17:17.038 –> 01:17:19.118
Liam Ivory: And he was just like, it’s really relaxed.

01:17:19.118 –> 01:17:24.398
Liam Ivory: And he was just trying to do it, but he was playing so on point and it just didn’t sound the same.

01:17:24.398 –> 01:17:27.018
Chris Davids: So basically just unlearn your instruments.

01:17:27.018 –> 01:17:28.478
Liam Ivory: Well, it works for us.

01:17:29.758 –> 01:17:37.458
Chris Davids: But yeah, the time, again, the time is like not having a macular timing, it all works into our favour, I think, with the songs that we write.

01:17:37.458 –> 01:17:43.598
Liam Ivory: And actually just one point on that, the way we do it is we record lots and lots and lots of takes of the same thing.

01:17:43.598 –> 01:17:45.098
Liam Ivory: And then we’ll go for uncompit.

01:17:45.098 –> 01:17:53.058
Liam Ivory: And that also gives us the sound because we’ll pick the weird and wonderful little bits where there’s a mistake, the timing wasn’t supposed to be like that, but it sounds good.

01:17:53.058 –> 01:17:59.478
Liam Ivory: And it’s within, again, those nuances and the artifacts and the mistakes really that we find the gold.

01:17:59.478 –> 01:18:00.318
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:18:00.318 –> 01:18:01.018
John Kennedy: Fascinating.

01:18:01.018 –> 01:18:01.218
Chris Davids: Right.

01:18:01.218 –> 01:18:05.538
John Kennedy: We’re going to take a quick break and the next song we’re going to look at is Rolling Stone.

01:18:08.238 –> 01:18:10.438
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at is Rolling Stone.

01:18:10.438 –> 01:18:14.158
John Kennedy: But before that, I wanted to ask a couple more questions that have come through via Patreon.

01:18:14.158 –> 01:18:24.618
John Kennedy: Michael asks about a texture that you guys often use on vocals, maybe guitars too, sort of a pitch and formant shifting combo, but it sounds so clean and artefact free.

01:18:24.618 –> 01:18:27.878
John Kennedy: I was curious what you use for that, i.e.

01:18:27.878 –> 01:18:31.578
John Kennedy: in tracks like Rituals and Wallflower and Glass Houses and many other examples.

01:18:31.578 –> 01:18:34.478
John Kennedy: Is this a hardware perhaps or is it a…?

01:18:35.198 –> 01:18:41.218
Liam Ivory: I think if I’m correct in what this person is asking, it’s the layering and it’s pitching within Ableton.

01:18:41.218 –> 01:18:50.458
Liam Ivory: It’s making use of layering up parts and using the different algorithms like Complex Pro and Beats and Re-Pitch and stuff, similar to what we’re talking about with the vocals.

01:18:50.458 –> 01:18:53.218
Liam Ivory: I imagine that’s probably what they’re hearing in terms of the pitching.

01:18:53.218 –> 01:18:57.738
Liam Ivory: We don’t use any pitch pedals or anything like that or octave pedals and stuff.

01:18:59.358 –> 01:19:04.958
Liam Ivory: Our process actually is a lot like it’s not in the box, though we don’t really use many plugins.

01:19:04.958 –> 01:19:10.498
Liam Ivory: It’s mostly outboard stuff, but the whole pitching world and the editing is very much in the box and we do all that in there.

01:19:10.498 –> 01:19:12.198
Liam Ivory: So I imagine that’s probably what they’re talking about.

01:19:12.798 –> 01:19:22.658
John Kennedy: Yeah, and this is slightly different, but Christopher was wondering about when you’re recording and writing, do you ever find it difficult to ensure that you can replicate these songs live?

01:19:22.658 –> 01:19:23.058
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:19:23.058 –> 01:19:25.558
John Kennedy: Because the live thing is a big part of Maribou State now.

01:19:25.558 –> 01:19:26.498
Liam Ivory: It is, yeah.

01:19:26.498 –> 01:19:29.998
Chris Davids: But yeah, we try not to get caught up in it.

01:19:29.998 –> 01:19:38.558
Chris Davids: To be honest, I don’t know, I guess with this album, there hasn’t been anything that we haven’t ever really sat there in a track and been like, how are we going to do this?

01:19:38.778 –> 01:19:48.718
Chris Davids: Not recently, because a lot of things we can just put on samplers or like we’ll tend to do everything live, but also we do have some things on track.

01:19:48.718 –> 01:19:52.278
Chris Davids: But we’ll try and be as experimental as possible in recreating that.

01:19:52.278 –> 01:19:54.458
Chris Davids: We’ve been part of the fun as well.

01:19:54.458 –> 01:19:55.258
Liam Ivory: No, definitely.

01:19:55.398 –> 01:19:57.418
Liam Ivory: We’ve also been very lucky.

01:19:57.418 –> 01:20:04.158
Liam Ivory: Since we last toured, there’s been loads of new kit released that have made it a hell of a lot easier to translate this stuff live.

01:20:04.158 –> 01:20:06.838
Liam Ivory: Mostly naming the Quad Cortex.

01:20:06.898 –> 01:20:08.038
Liam Ivory: Right, yeah.

01:20:08.038 –> 01:20:12.078
Liam Ivory: You know that pedal, it basically is like an amp emulator.

01:20:12.078 –> 01:20:18.558
Liam Ivory: But just being able to recreate the exact tones of things and capture pedals and stuff and then have that on stage.

01:20:18.558 –> 01:20:21.078
Liam Ivory: Like we’ve now, each, me, John Joe and Chris have got one in our setup.

01:20:21.078 –> 01:20:25.098
Liam Ivory: And yeah, there’s been a lot of great new kit releases that made the process a lot easier.

01:20:25.098 –> 01:20:34.738
Chris Davids: But I think it’s worth elaborating on that because it is my, like, I’m not a massive kit nerd, especially anything that’s digital, but this, we got it.

01:20:34.858 –> 01:20:38.858
Chris Davids: And I was dead against taking my amp out of the live set.

01:20:38.858 –> 01:20:39.958
Chris Davids: I just like the sound of amps.

01:20:39.958 –> 01:20:41.618
Chris Davids: I like the idea that it’s analog.

01:20:41.618 –> 01:20:43.358
Chris Davids: But we got recommended this.

01:20:43.358 –> 01:20:46.678
Chris Davids: And I was like, okay, Liam, I think it was like, come on, we might as well just try it.

01:20:46.678 –> 01:20:47.838
Chris Davids: So we tried it.

01:20:47.838 –> 01:20:51.438
Chris Davids: And you can basically connect it up to any amp.

01:20:51.438 –> 01:20:57.618
Chris Davids: And then it sends a signal through the amp and replicates the tone of the amp entirely and then captures it.

01:20:57.618 –> 01:21:02.398
Chris Davids: And we did it with two of our amps and then also this bass amp.

01:21:02.418 –> 01:21:04.278
Liam Ivory: SVT classic, the Ampeg.

01:21:04.598 –> 01:21:05.338
Chris Davids: Ampeg one.

01:21:05.338 –> 01:21:07.838
Chris Davids: And it just sounds like 95%.

01:21:09.478 –> 01:21:10.058
Chris Davids: 99%.

01:21:10.438 –> 01:21:11.958
Chris Davids: Yeah, the same as the amp.

01:21:11.958 –> 01:21:15.698
Chris Davids: And after that, I was like, I’ve just got to let go of all of that.

01:21:15.698 –> 01:21:17.498
Chris Davids: I’ve got quite a luddite with things like that.

01:21:17.498 –> 01:21:25.258
Chris Davids: You know, we’re not want to change because I like, you know, I feel like there’s some history in the old stuff and there’s a tonality.

01:21:25.258 –> 01:21:31.598
Chris Davids: But when you’ve got something that can just take every tone that we’ve ever had and put it into a box and you can tour that around like that.

01:21:31.598 –> 01:21:32.758
Liam Ivory: And you can plug MIDI into it.

01:21:32.918 –> 01:21:34.778
Liam Ivory: No, you don’t have to switch your patches live either.

01:21:35.838 –> 01:21:38.398
Chris Davids: It is crazy and it just sounds so good.

01:21:38.398 –> 01:21:45.178
Chris Davids: So that for the live show has made a big difference to these guitar tones that we have because we don’t ever have the same guitar tone.

01:21:45.178 –> 01:21:50.538
Chris Davids: So it’s been really handy to be able to use this for different amps and then put effects on it that way.

01:21:50.538 –> 01:21:51.078
John Kennedy: Really interesting.

01:21:51.078 –> 01:21:52.358
John Kennedy: What’s the live set up?

01:21:52.358 –> 01:21:53.418
John Kennedy: How many people in the band?

01:21:53.418 –> 01:21:55.558
Liam Ivory: There’s five key players.

01:21:55.558 –> 01:22:04.278
Liam Ivory: So me and Chris kind of have the central set up with, I’ve got a Prophet 8, Ms-20, Moog Matriarch and a Nord Stage.

01:22:04.278 –> 01:22:05.978
Liam Ivory: So I’m mostly doing keys stuff.

01:22:05.978 –> 01:22:09.758
Liam Ivory: And then I’ve also got a SBD Sampler that I’m triggering stuff with.

01:22:09.758 –> 01:22:12.578
Liam Ivory: And then I play some percussion as well, actually.

01:22:12.578 –> 01:22:16.178
Liam Ivory: And then Chris does mostly guitar, but he has keys as well.

01:22:16.178 –> 01:22:19.138
Liam Ivory: So he’s got a stage piano for doing a lot of the piano bits.

01:22:19.138 –> 01:22:22.358
Liam Ivory: And then he’s got a sampler as well, Roland 404.

01:22:22.358 –> 01:22:23.998
Liam Ivory: You’re not doing percussion anymore, are you?

01:22:23.998 –> 01:22:25.118
Chris Davids: No, no, I haven’t.

01:22:25.118 –> 01:22:26.018
Chris Davids: I haven’t been a while.

01:22:26.518 –> 01:22:27.878
Chris Davids: And then got a 303.

01:22:27.878 –> 01:22:28.338
Liam Ivory: Oh, of course, yeah.

01:22:28.338 –> 01:22:30.958
Chris Davids: Which has been more linked in with some of the stuff and the new record.

01:22:31.258 –> 01:22:32.218
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:22:32.218 –> 01:22:33.478
Liam Ivory: That’s actually a good point.

01:22:33.478 –> 01:22:41.338
Liam Ivory: In terms of translating stuff to the live show, it mostly comes down to just adding more kit, much to the dismay of our management and tour manager.

01:22:41.338 –> 01:22:51.578
Liam Ivory: But we’re just like, if there’s an important sound on the record and we want to play it live, like the 303, I think Chris uses it in two songs, but it sounds amazing, so we’re going to take that with us.

01:22:51.578 –> 01:22:55.218
Liam Ivory: And then, yeah, we got a drummer who plays an acoustic kit, but he’s got some triggers on there.

01:22:55.218 –> 01:22:56.838
Liam Ivory: He’s got some pads and SPD.

01:22:56.838 –> 01:22:58.178
Liam Ivory: He’s got an electric kick pedal.

01:22:58.178 –> 01:22:58.938
Liam Ivory: He does percussion.

01:22:59.798 –> 01:23:04.918
Liam Ivory: And then our bass player, who’s actually kind of our percussionist, he was supposed to come down and play bass, but he mostly plays-

01:23:04.918 –> 01:23:05.858
Chris Davids: Ends up playing the triangle.

01:23:05.858 –> 01:23:07.098
Chris Davids: He plays it, yeah.

01:23:07.098 –> 01:23:15.858
Liam Ivory: He’s got congas and loads of like other little lovely percussion bits, but he plays, he’s got a Moog Sub-37, plays bass synth, he plays bass guitar, and he does percussion.

01:23:15.858 –> 01:23:19.498
Liam Ivory: And he’s also our kind of like hype man, isn’t he?

01:23:19.498 –> 01:23:21.318
Liam Ivory: Like the, he’s like the best.

01:23:21.318 –> 01:23:22.338
John Kennedy: Is this still John Joe?

01:23:22.358 –> 01:23:23.578
Liam Ivory: This is John Joe, yeah, yeah.

01:23:24.418 –> 01:23:28.438
Liam Ivory: He gives it a lot, especially when we play anywhere in the North.

01:23:28.438 –> 01:23:29.738
Liam Ivory: But yeah, that’s the full set.

01:23:29.738 –> 01:23:31.978
Liam Ivory: And then we have a vocalist, touring vocalist at the moment.

01:23:31.978 –> 01:23:35.518
Liam Ivory: We’re working with an amazing singer called Tallulah Ruby.

01:23:35.518 –> 01:23:37.618
Liam Ivory: And we started working with her just at the end of last year.

01:23:37.618 –> 01:23:39.878
Liam Ivory: She’s going to be touring with us all this year.

01:23:39.878 –> 01:23:45.158
Liam Ivory: And then for the bigger shows, we bring in strings, choir, woodwinds.

01:23:45.158 –> 01:23:47.518
Liam Ivory: Ali Pali is coming up for us and that’s going to be a big one.

01:23:47.518 –> 01:23:50.258
Liam Ivory: We’ve got a 12-piece string section, 12-piece choir.

01:23:50.698 –> 01:23:52.418
John Kennedy: And that’s three nights in a row, isn’t it?

01:23:52.418 –> 01:23:54.018
John Kennedy: So that’s going to be the same every night.

01:23:54.018 –> 01:23:54.838
Liam Ivory: Yeah, same every night.

01:23:54.838 –> 01:23:55.398
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:23:55.398 –> 01:23:57.998
Liam Ivory: Management also not happy with the cost of that.

01:23:59.218 –> 01:23:59.578
John Kennedy: Wow.

01:23:59.578 –> 01:24:00.398
John Kennedy: Sounds amazing.

01:24:00.398 –> 01:24:00.738
John Kennedy: Right.

01:24:00.738 –> 01:24:02.178
John Kennedy: Rolling Stone is the next song.

01:24:02.178 –> 01:24:05.218
John Kennedy: It’s actually the closing song on the album as well.

01:24:05.218 –> 01:24:08.158
John Kennedy: Let’s have a blast of the master and find out how you created it.

01:25:52.728 –> 01:25:54.748
John Kennedy: It is Rolling Stone by Maribou State.

01:25:54.748 –> 01:25:58.948
John Kennedy: It’s great listening to that and hearing all the little details that you put into all of your tracks.

01:25:58.948 –> 01:26:01.708
John Kennedy: Now, each one makes me smile when I hear it come in.

01:26:01.708 –> 01:26:02.988
John Kennedy: It’s so great.

01:26:02.988 –> 01:26:04.548
John Kennedy: So what happened here?

01:26:04.548 –> 01:26:06.448
John Kennedy: How did this start?

01:26:06.448 –> 01:26:11.108
Chris Davids: This started in, back in 2021, I think.

01:26:11.108 –> 01:26:13.128
Chris Davids: It was around Christmas.

01:26:13.128 –> 01:26:15.128
Chris Davids: And I’d gone into the studio.

01:26:15.288 –> 01:26:18.188
Chris Davids: I’m pretty sure I looked at the date of the file creation.

01:26:18.188 –> 01:26:21.168
Chris Davids: It was like just a couple of days before Christmas, on the 23rd.

01:26:21.828 –> 01:26:24.748
Chris Davids: And it was a bit of a challenging period at that time.

01:26:24.748 –> 01:26:30.168
Chris Davids: Someone really close to me tried taking their own life around that period.

01:26:30.168 –> 01:26:35.068
Chris Davids: And I was in the studio and I was, I guess probably as like a bit of escapism.

01:26:36.268 –> 01:26:42.928
Chris Davids: And stayed in really late that evening and just wrote a couple of ideas, but this was one of them.

01:26:42.928 –> 01:26:46.168
Chris Davids: And it was kind of a different idea.

01:26:46.168 –> 01:26:51.148
Chris Davids: Well, to be honest, it was just a totally different tempo of song to the final version.

01:26:51.148 –> 01:26:59.888
Chris Davids: But the lyrics, Rolling Stone, What a life you’ve had will take you home, were the main things that came away with from that session and the chords.

01:27:00.768 –> 01:27:03.568
Chris Davids: And that was sort of left there, really.

01:27:03.568 –> 01:27:05.348
Chris Davids: I sort of worked on it for that evening.

01:27:05.348 –> 01:27:11.348
Chris Davids: And then I think the following year came back into a session with Liam, played it to him.

01:27:11.348 –> 01:27:14.448
Chris Davids: So, and I can play you now the version that it was initially.

01:27:15.488 –> 01:27:17.648
Chris Davids: It’s a lot quicker than the final version.

01:27:17.648 –> 01:27:18.768
Chris Davids: So this is how it started.

01:27:51.872 –> 01:27:55.912
Chris Davids: So yeah, it was a lot faster than I’d recorded the initial vocal on it.

01:28:14.252 –> 01:28:15.952
Chris Davids: So, very melancholy initially.

01:28:17.146 –> 01:28:19.406
John Kennedy: A lot of the elements are there though, aren’t they?

01:28:19.406 –> 01:28:20.626
Chris Davids: Yeah, a lot of them.

01:28:21.406 –> 01:28:23.306
Liam Ivory: The feelings are, yeah.

01:28:23.306 –> 01:28:34.106
Chris Davids: So then me and Liam got together at the start of the following year, and I played in this, and instantly, I think Liam was like, that just feels like it should be the last track on the record.

01:28:34.166 –> 01:28:36.026
Chris Davids: It had like this sort of…

01:28:36.026 –> 01:28:37.526
Liam Ivory: Finality to it, I guess.

01:28:37.546 –> 01:28:41.606
Liam Ivory: It’s very, I guess, very emotive.

01:28:41.606 –> 01:28:43.866
Liam Ivory: I could sense what it was about.

01:28:43.866 –> 01:28:47.486
Liam Ivory: I don’t think we actually spoke about it at the time, but I could sense what it was about.

01:28:47.486 –> 01:28:49.526
Liam Ivory: It felt very…

01:28:49.746 –> 01:28:52.186
Liam Ivory: It felt very deep, you know what I mean?

01:28:52.546 –> 01:28:57.826
Liam Ivory: You could feel the heaviness of it, and I was just like, yeah, that’s how the album needs to close.

01:28:57.826 –> 01:28:59.386
Liam Ivory: We didn’t really know what the album is at this point.

01:28:59.426 –> 01:29:01.586
Liam Ivory: What’s this, like early 22?

01:29:01.586 –> 01:29:02.446
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:29:02.446 –> 01:29:04.966
Liam Ivory: Still a year or more away from handing it in.

01:29:04.966 –> 01:29:06.786
Liam Ivory: And it was just like, that’s the closer.

01:29:06.786 –> 01:29:09.626
Liam Ivory: Like just felt like completely right to me for that.

01:29:09.626 –> 01:29:12.306
Liam Ivory: And yeah, we started working on it probably over that summer.

01:29:12.306 –> 01:29:12.966
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:29:13.126 –> 01:29:24.346
Chris Davids: And one of the next things I guess we did with it was, took my vocals off obviously, and then down on this writing trip, this must have been that summer, I think.

01:29:25.226 –> 01:29:29.766
Chris Davids: When we had all our friends there, we got those guys to all sing the chorus of it.

01:29:29.766 –> 01:29:35.826
Chris Davids: So that then took it into this different space where it just had more voices obviously, but it just had more energy.

01:29:36.706 –> 01:29:39.366
Chris Davids: It felt less sad.

01:29:39.366 –> 01:29:41.666
John Kennedy: So I’m picturing them all around the pool.

01:29:44.006 –> 01:29:48.106
Liam Ivory: We had to drag them away from the pool and be like, come on, let’s record.

01:29:48.106 –> 01:29:49.366
John Kennedy: You mentioned the stairwell earlier.

01:29:49.366 –> 01:29:49.646
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:29:49.646 –> 01:29:53.006
Liam Ivory: So it was a beautiful old Gregorian manor house that we’d rented out.

01:29:54.066 –> 01:30:00.706
Liam Ivory: They had this amazing staircase where they went up to the first floor, and we got them all lined up on the stairs.

01:30:00.726 –> 01:30:12.086
Liam Ivory: Then what we did was we put a pair of U87s and a pair of Coles, we staggered it from the floor and then the floor they was on, and then the floor above as well, and then the floor above that.

01:30:12.086 –> 01:30:14.226
Liam Ivory: So we had, I think, eight mics altogether.

01:30:14.226 –> 01:30:18.806
Liam Ivory: So we were capturing them directly in their space and then trying to capture the building.

01:30:18.806 –> 01:30:22.746
Liam Ivory: Because that’s always been an important thing for us, is trying to make the records tangible.

01:30:22.866 –> 01:30:24.086
Liam Ivory: That’s why we filled record a lot.

01:30:24.086 –> 01:30:26.886
Liam Ivory: It’s like putting real life spaces into the music.

01:30:26.886 –> 01:30:31.986
Liam Ivory: So yeah, we caught a lot of the sound of that house by miking the upstairs corridors as well.

01:30:31.986 –> 01:30:33.066
John Kennedy: Wow.

01:30:33.066 –> 01:30:40.306
Liam Ivory: But, so after the writing trip, which was what summer, yeah, summer 22, this kind of got parked as well, didn’t it?

01:30:40.306 –> 01:30:42.346
Liam Ivory: For about a year, I think.

01:30:42.346 –> 01:30:45.746
Liam Ivory: We were frantically trying to generate enough ideas for the record.

01:30:45.746 –> 01:30:54.206
Liam Ivory: And to be honest, once things kind of felt like they were good enough, or the idea was that it got written on the board and it kind of got left, but it meant a lot of stuff was bottlenecking.

01:30:54.206 –> 01:31:00.386
Liam Ivory: And actually, the silver lining to that is, Rolling Stone wasn’t quite feeling right and we couldn’t quite get it right.

01:31:00.386 –> 01:31:04.166
Liam Ivory: And it was, I think, around the following, it was around the following summer, wasn’t it?

01:31:04.486 –> 01:31:12.606
Liam Ivory: That Jack Sibley came in and I can’t remember if we were playing him just this or playing him where the album was at and we played in Rolling Stone.

01:31:12.606 –> 01:31:16.366
Liam Ivory: And it would have been a bit more developed in the first demo that Chris showed us.

01:31:16.366 –> 01:31:18.406
Liam Ivory: We would have worked on it a bit, but it was effectively that.

01:31:18.726 –> 01:31:22.486
Chris Davids: Should I play a demo just prior to Jack?

01:31:22.486 –> 01:31:22.866
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:31:22.866 –> 01:31:23.586
Liam Ivory: Perfect.

01:31:23.586 –> 01:31:23.966
Chris Davids: Coming in.

01:31:41.262 –> 01:31:50.002
Liam Ivory: I guess you’d say this is the produced version of that style, the more garagy, skippy beat, upbeat version.

01:31:50.002 –> 01:31:56.402
Liam Ivory: And then Jack heard it, and he was like, it’s good, but it’s just not quite where it needs to be.

01:31:56.402 –> 01:32:03.222
Liam Ivory: And he was like, that’s the sort of song you can imagine sitting around a campfire and singing with people.

01:32:03.222 –> 01:32:06.222
Liam Ivory: So he was like, that was all the advice he gave.

01:32:06.222 –> 01:32:11.222
Chris Davids: Well, I think he just said at the time, there’s a real emotional quality to it.

01:32:11.302 –> 01:32:17.802
Chris Davids: But unfortunately, it’s been misdirected through this fast paced rhythm.

01:32:17.802 –> 01:32:24.542
Chris Davids: And I think, like Liam said, he said you can imagine it more being the sort of song you can hear around a campfire much slower.

01:32:24.542 –> 01:32:26.202
Liam Ivory: It was his Rick Rubin moment, wasn’t it?

01:32:26.202 –> 01:32:26.362
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:32:26.622 –> 01:32:29.002
Liam Ivory: He was just like, imagine that around a campfire.

01:32:29.002 –> 01:32:29.342
Chris Davids: But also-

01:32:29.342 –> 01:32:31.262
Liam Ivory: That’s the advice, we’re like, okay.

01:32:31.282 –> 01:32:32.482
Chris Davids: But also, it’s rough.

01:32:33.762 –> 01:32:37.342
Chris Davids: I think for me and Liam, we’re trying to be a bit healthier in the studio at the time.

01:32:37.562 –> 01:32:43.662
Chris Davids: And Jack came over, poured himself a massive whisky, sat down there, drank that, and then just came out of that one line.

01:32:43.742 –> 01:32:44.702
Chris Davids: We were like, do you know what?

01:32:44.702 –> 01:32:45.182
Liam Ivory: He’s right.

01:32:45.182 –> 01:32:45.662
Chris Davids: He’s right.

01:32:45.662 –> 01:32:47.042
Liam Ivory: Let’s do it.

01:32:48.662 –> 01:32:51.782
Chris Davids: But yeah, it was just that one bit of advice.

01:32:51.782 –> 01:32:57.342
Chris Davids: And then after that, that’s when the whole drum pattern got changed.

01:32:58.362 –> 01:33:01.462
Chris Davids: It got slowed down by like 10 or 15 BPM.

01:33:01.462 –> 01:33:02.182
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:33:02.182 –> 01:33:03.142
Chris Davids: But also-

01:33:03.182 –> 01:33:11.422
Liam Ivory: Which is the job in itself, getting everything pitched down and making it still sound like the quality is there and you haven’t lost the integrity of the samples.

01:33:11.422 –> 01:33:21.342
Chris Davids: But actually the good thing about the pitching down was that sometimes you can get it where you hear a song in one key and then you change the key of it and it does really change the feeling.

01:33:21.342 –> 01:33:25.162
Chris Davids: And it really enhanced the feeling of this song when it came down a semitone.

01:33:25.802 –> 01:33:29.122
Chris Davids: So it all had to be warped and then pitched down.

01:33:29.122 –> 01:33:33.802
Chris Davids: Like you know what I was saying earlier, like with a turntable, so the slower it is, the pitch changes.

01:33:33.802 –> 01:33:40.362
Chris Davids: So the whole thing was done like that to get it to the point where it was one semitone lower, which was about 10 or 15 BPM.

01:33:40.362 –> 01:33:45.502
Chris Davids: And then that was the sort of the starting point for carrying on with the track.

01:33:45.502 –> 01:34:00.502
Liam Ivory: Strip the drums out, put in some kind of like percussive-y tambourine-y stuff like, there’s a rhythm to it, but I guess it kind of was more meant to feel just like percussion, you know, tambourines on the campfire.

01:34:02.462 –> 01:34:03.442
John Kennedy: How do you create those?

01:34:03.442 –> 01:34:07.002
John Kennedy: Are those made afresh or are they loops that you get from somewhere else?

01:34:07.002 –> 01:34:08.762
Chris Davids: It’s a bit of a mixture.

01:34:08.762 –> 01:34:14.922
Chris Davids: So it’s partly the original drums from the first version.

01:34:16.042 –> 01:34:17.562
Liam Ivory: Yeah, just processed.

01:34:17.562 –> 01:34:24.382
Chris Davids: Yeah, put through lots of different outboard gear, distorted, and then just only using the mid-range from it.

01:34:24.802 –> 01:34:29.082
Chris Davids: So it’s still kept that same sort of like skippiness to it.

01:34:29.082 –> 01:34:34.842
Chris Davids: And then like lots of different drum loop samples that we’ve got and lots of individual hits.

01:34:34.842 –> 01:34:37.442
Liam Ivory: Yeah, we record a lot of drums and stuff ourselves as well.

01:34:37.442 –> 01:34:38.182
Liam Ivory: And percussion.

01:34:39.362 –> 01:34:40.682
John Kennedy: Do you have a full kit set up?

01:34:40.682 –> 01:34:43.182
Liam Ivory: Yeah, we’ve got a Ludwig…

01:34:44.202 –> 01:34:44.682
Chris Davids: Something over.

01:34:44.682 –> 01:34:46.102
Liam Ivory: Something from the 60s.

01:34:46.102 –> 01:34:47.642
Liam Ivory: Old kit, great kit.

01:34:47.642 –> 01:34:49.302
Liam Ivory: And we have a couple of the tunes on the record.

01:34:50.022 –> 01:34:51.722
Liam Ivory: We’ve tracked the drums entirely.

01:34:52.502 –> 01:34:54.182
John Kennedy: And played by you?

01:34:54.182 –> 01:35:01.842
Liam Ivory: No, we play a little bit, but on the ones that made it onto the record, it was our drummer from the live show, Johnny Cade, who played it.

01:35:01.842 –> 01:35:04.602
Liam Ivory: But yeah, but we also love recording single shot stuff.

01:35:04.602 –> 01:35:07.182
Liam Ivory: So we’ll track a lot of percussion.

01:35:07.182 –> 01:35:14.962
Liam Ivory: And actually a lot of the percussion, just looking at this here, a lot of it was done in the sound harvests stuff or previous sound harvests as well.

01:35:14.962 –> 01:35:24.762
Liam Ivory: So that’s another thing when we’re doing those big sample collection sessions, we’ll just set a metronome and we’ll track shakers at 16s, 32s, different tempos, bank all of that.

01:35:24.762 –> 01:35:31.362
Liam Ivory: So that when we’re working on an idea, the speed is there, we can just draw a shaker in, we can draw a tambourine, we’re like, here you go.

01:35:31.362 –> 01:35:36.602
Chris Davids: Also in this, there was a lot of stuff that we recorded live for it.

01:35:41.242 –> 01:35:47.822
Chris Davids: So that’s just like different cowbells, something there, I don’t know what it is, but like shakers and stuff.

01:35:47.822 –> 01:35:55.462
Chris Davids: It tends to be that Liam will go in one room and play different percussion and I’ll sit in the other room and then get some of the effects right on it.

01:35:55.462 –> 01:36:05.962
Chris Davids: And we’re always trying to, it’s really, we’ve always struggled, like putting recorded percussion and instrumentation on a track is really hard to get it to fit.

01:36:05.962 –> 01:36:22.222
Chris Davids: So we always are trying to record it in a way that sounds kind of vintage by using like running it straight onto tape and using effects, but then we’ll generally then pitch it up a little bit so you get some more of those like strange artifacts from Ableton Pitching.

01:36:22.222 –> 01:36:27.542
Chris Davids: But it is quite hard, I think, for us to get like recorded drums to just sit as they are.

01:36:27.542 –> 01:36:31.062
Chris Davids: It will always tend to be something that’s sampled, layered with it or…

01:36:31.062 –> 01:36:31.442
Chris Davids: Right.

01:36:31.442 –> 01:36:50.022
Liam Ivory: Even the drums that for a while we’ve settled on, they’d sit in the demo for a while and then they would eventually get bounced down to one, reprocessed, transiented, shortened, probably processed again, pitched down, then more layers go in and then they end up, a whole drum recording could end up being just one channel amongst like 30 other drum channels.

01:36:50.042 –> 01:36:54.662
Liam Ivory: It’s like the work with the drums never seems to be done, it’s always just adding and adding.

01:36:54.662 –> 01:37:02.762
Liam Ivory: And even when drums have been finished and they’ve been 50, 100 channels, half way through the process, Chris will just be like, I don’t like the drums anymore.

01:37:02.762 –> 01:37:06.122
Liam Ivory: And I’m like, well, you can fucking change them.

01:37:06.122 –> 01:37:08.842
Liam Ivory: Because we’ve spent hours and hours and hours on these drums.

01:37:08.842 –> 01:37:12.962
Liam Ivory: But yeah, it’s a constantly evolving part of the sound is the drums.

01:37:12.962 –> 01:37:14.202
John Kennedy: There are tensions sometimes.

01:37:14.862 –> 01:37:16.402
Liam Ivory: Oh, yeah.

01:37:17.602 –> 01:37:19.282
John Kennedy: So what happens next?

01:37:19.282 –> 01:37:21.482
Liam Ivory: So yeah, so the track’s been slowed down.

01:37:21.482 –> 01:37:27.502
Liam Ivory: We’ve created this percussion track that fills more communal campfire, woodstocky.

01:37:27.502 –> 01:37:32.562
Liam Ivory: And I guess like you said, John, before like the bones of the track from Chris’ demo were there.

01:37:32.562 –> 01:37:40.482
Liam Ivory: So there’s a lot of it was just re-recording, re-recording the piano, re-recording the guitar, just making things, bringing them up to the standard of the rest of the record.

01:37:40.542 –> 01:37:45.942
Liam Ivory: Because at this point, this is Summer 23, this is about six months off handing the record in finally.

01:37:45.942 –> 01:37:52.122
Liam Ivory: So it was taking shape and we kind of had more of a benchmark of how things needed to sound sonically.

01:37:52.122 –> 01:37:56.082
Liam Ivory: Something that did kind of change was this middle eight section.

01:37:56.082 –> 01:38:04.102
Liam Ivory: We were listening to it and I kept imagining, I actually kept originally imagining that there would be some kind of like speech running over it.

01:38:04.102 –> 01:38:08.662
Liam Ivory: I could hear like a kind of presidential type speech that just felt really kind of epic.

01:38:09.242 –> 01:38:13.042
Liam Ivory: And I think, did you find that spoken word thing that was…

01:38:13.042 –> 01:38:18.982
Chris Davids: I think we’d used it in one of the Sound Harvest things that we did.

01:38:18.982 –> 01:38:20.622
Liam Ivory: It was a YouTube video, wasn’t it?

01:38:20.622 –> 01:38:21.262
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:38:21.262 –> 01:38:25.742
Chris Davids: And Liam had said about putting something in that was kind of like a spoken word bit.

01:38:26.602 –> 01:38:31.822
Chris Davids: So we both then got this YouTube recording of something that we found a while back.

01:38:32.402 –> 01:38:43.002
Chris Davids: And I think we just took the recording and then Liam on one session on his own just ended up processing the whole thing or picking out certain words for it.

01:38:43.002 –> 01:38:51.322
Chris Davids: I can’t remember exactly how, but picked out certain words and just put it through lots of different guitar pedals and then sent that to me.

01:38:51.322 –> 01:38:53.662
Chris Davids: And then I chopped up the phrasing of it.

01:38:53.662 –> 01:39:02.622
Chris Davids: Because I think you’d structured it in one way or maybe something that was quite a bit longer and then I sort of chopped out the words to fit with the kind of the feel of the song.

01:39:02.622 –> 01:39:05.922
Chris Davids: And yeah, that ended up becoming this.

01:39:17.302 –> 01:39:22.502
John Kennedy: So, I mean, it’s interesting because listening to it, we can’t work out what it is.

01:39:24.382 –> 01:39:27.002
John Kennedy: But it was a speech that somebody made.

01:39:27.002 –> 01:39:36.002
Liam Ivory: It’s a spoken word piece on YouTube that we ripped, and then obviously have since cleared it with the original artist.

01:39:36.002 –> 01:39:38.202
Liam Ivory: Yeah, so it was just processed heavily.

01:39:38.202 –> 01:39:41.642
Liam Ivory: And then talking about the Moog Matriarch again, that was run through there.

01:39:41.682 –> 01:39:44.022
Liam Ivory: That’s all the noise you can hear, like the crustiness.

01:39:47.622 –> 01:39:48.982
John Kennedy: Would you be able to run through the parts?

01:39:49.082 –> 01:39:54.402
John Kennedy: Like maybe build up the track and tell us what each element is as you go through it.

01:39:54.402 –> 01:39:57.462
John Kennedy: I mean, obviously, there’s how many channels now on this?

01:39:57.462 –> 01:39:59.042
Liam Ivory: Yeah, what’s this one?

01:39:59.042 –> 01:40:00.802
Chris Davids: 400.

01:40:00.802 –> 01:40:01.422
Chris Davids: Yeah, there’s a lot.

01:40:01.422 –> 01:40:01.982
Chris Davids: I mean, there’s probably…

01:40:01.982 –> 01:40:03.442
John Kennedy: You need to identify every single…

01:40:03.442 –> 01:40:04.902
Chris Davids: No, we could just do the core ones.

01:40:04.902 –> 01:40:10.662
Chris Davids: But I mean, so as Liam played through the drums earlier, so…

01:40:11.942 –> 01:40:15.162
Chris Davids: Yeah, they’re all just made up of all the elements that we discussed.

01:40:15.462 –> 01:40:22.662
Chris Davids: So, then the next thing that was added was this guitar.

01:40:23.982 –> 01:40:26.782
Liam Ivory: And actually, possibly the only…

01:40:26.782 –> 01:40:30.382
Liam Ivory: Well, the first time really of starting to use rhythm guitar in a more traditional way.

01:40:30.382 –> 01:40:32.442
Liam Ivory: We’ve never really done that before.

01:40:32.442 –> 01:40:33.722
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:40:33.722 –> 01:40:35.302
Liam Ivory: This and I remember as well, right?

01:40:35.302 –> 01:40:37.722
Liam Ivory: The two that have got rhythm guitar.

01:40:37.722 –> 01:40:39.302
Chris Davids: Then these piano chords.

01:40:47.890 –> 01:40:58.230
Chris Davids: It’s kind of a weird timing, the loop, because they’re quite simple, they’re very simple chords, and actually it’s quite a chord pattern that we probably use quite a lot.

01:40:58.230 –> 01:41:03.550
Chris Davids: It seems to just capture the emotion that we’re most drawn to.

01:41:03.550 –> 01:41:05.010
Liam Ivory: Major chords.

01:41:06.170 –> 01:41:08.330
Chris Davids: Major chords.

01:41:08.330 –> 01:41:09.970
John Kennedy: Do you use panning a lot?

01:41:09.970 –> 01:41:11.870
John Kennedy: And do you hard pan things?

01:41:11.870 –> 01:41:18.930
Liam Ivory: Yeah, there’s, we use pan quite creatively, like there’s a lot of stuff moving, like all manner of things, really.

01:41:19.110 –> 01:41:24.110
Liam Ivory: We’ll stick stuff on one side, we’ll have it move across the take, we’ll split the sample up.

01:41:24.110 –> 01:41:36.830
Liam Ivory: Like with the guitar part in particular, on an old track, we, it was a kind of two note part, and what we did is we recorded all the low notes on one take and all the high notes on the other, then we panned them either side.

01:41:36.830 –> 01:41:41.330
Liam Ivory: So it sounded like the same guitar take where we had the ability to widen it and pull it back together.

01:41:41.330 –> 01:41:43.170
Liam Ivory: So yeah, we think about panning a lot.

01:41:45.530 –> 01:41:50.550
Chris Davids: Then this voice, this hum melody was added.

01:41:54.610 –> 01:41:56.670
John Kennedy: And who, is that you, Chris?

01:41:56.770 –> 01:41:58.090
Chris Davids: No, no, no, no, I wish.

01:41:58.090 –> 01:41:59.070
John Kennedy: Is that a sample?

01:41:59.890 –> 01:42:02.710
Chris Davids: It’s just some samples that we’ve collected over the years.

01:42:02.850 –> 01:42:07.310
Chris Davids: We’ve actually used that similar sample quite a lot across the last album.

01:42:07.310 –> 01:42:08.490
Chris Davids: It’s just a bit of a go-to.

01:42:08.490 –> 01:42:11.230
Chris Davids: It just has a really lovely ghostly sound to it.

01:42:11.790 –> 01:42:16.250
Chris Davids: And then, after that, there was this guitar melody added.

01:42:22.785 –> 01:42:24.425
Liam Ivory: Let’s play some strings as well.

01:42:28.705 –> 01:42:33.485
Liam Ivory: And then, I guess, all of the details and little percussive bits and synthy bits, which…

01:42:36.625 –> 01:42:39.205
Liam Ivory: Shadow tunnel thing, that’s a good example.

01:42:39.205 –> 01:42:40.345
Chris Davids: This is…

01:42:40.345 –> 01:42:42.005
Liam Ivory: Oh, it’s from The Market.

01:42:43.085 –> 01:42:43.985
Liam Ivory: Oh, yeah.

01:42:43.985 –> 01:42:56.225
Chris Davids: So, before me and Liam started fully getting stuck into the finish in the album, we ended up taking out this Marantz cassette field recorder out into Walthamstow Market.

01:42:56.225 –> 01:42:58.885
Chris Davids: And you, Liam, had that.

01:42:58.885 –> 01:43:01.725
Chris Davids: And I had a SOMA.

01:43:01.725 –> 01:43:06.805
Liam Ivory: The IFA, Teenage Engineering Electromagnetic Field Recorder, basically.

01:43:06.805 –> 01:43:12.445
Chris Davids: So, you go out and you just go around to metal objects and it creates all this weird noise and static.

01:43:12.445 –> 01:43:15.025
Chris Davids: So, we spent a good couple of hours just walking around.

01:43:15.045 –> 01:43:16.305
Liam Ivory: Looking like mentalists.

01:43:16.305 –> 01:43:19.245
Liam Ivory: Yeah, walking up to lampposts.

01:43:19.245 –> 01:43:22.945
Liam Ivory: I mean, it reacts to charge, the current stuff.

01:43:22.945 –> 01:43:27.505
Liam Ivory: It’s quite scary, actually, when you switch it on and you hear how much frequency there is.

01:43:27.505 –> 01:43:29.285
Liam Ivory: It’s just buzzing around our heads all the time.

01:43:29.285 –> 01:43:34.045
John Kennedy: So, you’re manipulating those sounds with that device and you were recording them on the Marantz.

01:43:34.525 –> 01:43:39.705
Chris Davids: No, actually, Liam was just getting field recordings on the Marantz, just of the atmosphere around us.

01:43:39.705 –> 01:43:43.825
Chris Davids: And then I was getting something separate, which was, I think it was that way around anyway.

01:43:43.905 –> 01:43:47.045
Liam Ivory: Yeah, we switched up throughout the day, but…

01:43:47.045 –> 01:43:55.185
Chris Davids: And we just had these long two-hour recordings of noise on one, on my side and then on Liam’s lots of like textual stuff.

01:43:55.185 –> 01:44:04.885
Chris Davids: So again, we chopped that up and then keep that as like a little sample bank and then dot it throughout the record, so that it has some cohesion for it.

01:44:05.045 –> 01:44:12.545
Chris Davids: But this little sample here in Rolling Stone, which is like this little, it just sounds like someone’s…

01:44:14.585 –> 01:44:15.165
Liam Ivory: I was whooping.

01:44:15.165 –> 01:44:16.145
Chris Davids: Just whooping.

01:44:16.145 –> 01:44:20.285
Chris Davids: But that’s just taken from the field recording of market noise.

01:44:25.125 –> 01:44:29.905
Liam Ivory: Field recordings have always been really important to us, but the purpose of them has changed.

01:44:29.905 –> 01:44:33.485
Liam Ivory: On the first record, it was trying to create sounds.

01:44:33.485 –> 01:44:40.365
Liam Ivory: I think Chris mentioned this earlier, like when we were in the box using VSTs and stuff, everything sounded cheap and plastic and we didn’t like it.

01:44:40.465 –> 01:44:50.325
Liam Ivory: So field recording gave us the chance to go out and capture real sounds and learn about noise and surface noise, and it just gave us the texture and the tangibility we needed.

01:44:50.385 –> 01:45:02.445
Liam Ivory: Then on the second record, it was about traveling and capturing sounds, like Kingdoms and Colors was very expansive in terms of audience influences and inspirations were drawn from our travels touring.

01:45:02.445 –> 01:45:06.825
Liam Ivory: So it was a really important tool to capture those places and bring them back into the record.

01:45:06.825 –> 01:45:11.405
Liam Ivory: But when we started Hallucinating Love, it was a tricky time.

01:45:11.765 –> 01:45:13.125
Liam Ivory: It was obviously just after COVID.

01:45:13.125 –> 01:45:16.865
Liam Ivory: I think Chris wrote the first demo around February 2020.

01:45:16.865 –> 01:45:18.705
Liam Ivory: So we were right in the thick of it.

01:45:19.625 –> 01:45:22.765
Liam Ivory: We wanted to capture some field recordings to go into the record.

01:45:22.765 –> 01:45:26.985
Liam Ivory: But I guess we just thought in our heads, we were going to capture way more across the years.

01:45:26.985 –> 01:45:28.305
Liam Ivory: But we were like, let’s just start.

01:45:28.305 –> 01:45:30.885
Liam Ivory: We’ve got the new SOMA electromagnetic thing.

01:45:30.885 –> 01:45:31.925
Liam Ivory: We got the Marantz.

01:45:31.925 –> 01:45:34.845
Liam Ivory: Let’s go out and just capture some bits just to start that.

01:45:34.845 –> 01:45:39.325
Liam Ivory: I think we even had a list, didn’t we, of all the places we were going to go and get field recordings.

01:45:39.405 –> 01:45:44.905
Liam Ivory: But seemingly, the world remained closed for a bit, and we were quite insulated in that.

01:45:44.905 –> 01:45:49.265
Liam Ivory: And with these field recordings, this is the only one we ended up using.

01:45:49.265 –> 01:45:56.865
Liam Ivory: And actually, one of the themes of the record that started to show its face over the years was what it means to be at home and what it means to be British.

01:45:56.865 –> 01:46:00.345
Liam Ivory: And just taking a look at our lives, really.

01:46:00.345 –> 01:46:07.705
Liam Ivory: And it was quite fitting in the end that we just ended up using this one field recording of a market which was down the road from where Chris lived.

01:46:08.945 –> 01:46:13.025
Chris Davids: Yeah, keeping everything is just a lot more centred around where we’re from.

01:46:13.025 –> 01:46:19.085
Chris Davids: I mean, yeah, field recordings had always been such a key way of us creating something that felt personal.

01:46:19.125 –> 01:46:33.985
Chris Davids: But I think in this album, we actually did more of that through the music and the lyrics rather than the field recordings and the field recordings we added in every now and then just to create a little bit more texture, I think, or little nuances like this.

01:46:34.265 –> 01:46:35.405
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:46:35.405 –> 01:46:43.865
Chris Davids: So after that, I guess the vocals, we, like I said earlier, we recorded that with a choir.

01:46:43.865 –> 01:46:49.205
Chris Davids: But then we also got lots of other artists we were collaborating with to sing the part.

01:46:49.205 –> 01:47:04.265
Chris Davids: And I mean, it’s actually not hugely noticeable in the end, but we recorded all these different layers of people singing the chorus and then chopped out phrases from each person.

01:47:04.265 –> 01:47:10.745
Chris Davids: So there’d be like the first rolling was sung by an artist we worked with called B and then Jack.

01:47:10.745 –> 01:47:13.225
Chris Davids: And then the next phrase would be sung by the choir.

01:47:13.225 –> 01:47:15.065
Chris Davids: So it created this like.

01:47:21.065 –> 01:47:25.065
Chris Davids: So you can just hear each phrase has kind of got a slightly different tone to it.

01:47:25.065 –> 01:47:25.265
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:47:25.385 –> 01:47:26.545
Liam Ivory: And be glitchy as well.

01:47:26.545 –> 01:47:26.725
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:47:26.725 –> 01:47:28.565
John Kennedy: It keeps changing throughout the song.

01:47:28.565 –> 01:47:28.665
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:47:28.665 –> 01:47:29.385
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:47:30.085 –> 01:47:31.525
Liam Ivory: Bon Iver inspired, I think.

01:47:31.525 –> 01:47:32.565
Chris Davids: Is it?

01:47:32.565 –> 01:47:32.825
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:47:32.825 –> 01:47:35.225
Liam Ivory: We’re on 22 million.

01:47:35.225 –> 01:47:36.485
Liam Ivory: That was what we were thinking.

01:47:36.485 –> 01:47:38.125
Chris Davids: Just that nice.

01:47:38.125 –> 01:47:40.585
Chris Davids: And then how did it get finished?

01:47:40.585 –> 01:47:41.985
Chris Davids: Oh, then I suppose the ending.

01:47:41.985 –> 01:47:42.225
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:47:42.225 –> 01:47:42.705
Liam Ivory: I was going to say.

01:47:42.705 –> 01:47:47.685
Liam Ivory: So Chris mentioned B, a singer called Obie Frankie, who actually did some touring with us.

01:47:47.685 –> 01:47:48.645
Liam Ivory: Amazing vocalist.

01:47:48.645 –> 01:47:51.985
Liam Ivory: And she came to a few of these writing trips.

01:47:51.985 –> 01:47:56.205
Liam Ivory: And there’s always like up for getting stuck in and helping us re-vocal parts.

01:47:56.205 –> 01:47:58.185
Liam Ivory: And she sings on a lot of the choruses and stuff.

01:47:58.385 –> 01:48:03.965
Liam Ivory: And she sings on the final vocal part of the whole album, which was a melody.

01:48:03.965 –> 01:48:06.125
Liam Ivory: Did you have this melody on a voice note?

01:48:06.125 –> 01:48:07.045
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:48:07.045 –> 01:48:11.685
Chris Davids: So a lot of melodies tend to just be recorded via voice note first.

01:48:11.685 –> 01:48:17.525
Chris Davids: If we’re playing a track and then if I get an idea that comes to my head, I’ll just do it on that.

01:48:17.525 –> 01:48:19.305
Chris Davids: But yeah, there was just this hum melody.

01:48:29.327 –> 01:48:38.207
Chris Davids: So that was just on my phone, and then Bea came to the session, and I think this originally started in the middle eight, didn’t it?

01:48:38.207 –> 01:48:39.487
Liam Ivory: It did, yeah, yeah.

01:48:39.487 –> 01:48:49.527
Chris Davids: So she just added, she sort of finished off the melody, and then added loads of harmonies to it, and then that became the ending part to the track, which you can hear.

01:49:06.525 –> 01:49:09.685
Liam Ivory: Much more traditional, not like our normal processing.

01:49:09.685 –> 01:49:11.925
Liam Ivory: That’s just a few different vocal parts.

01:49:11.925 –> 01:49:17.565
Liam Ivory: U87, 1176, lovely, simple.

01:49:17.565 –> 01:49:19.885
Liam Ivory: You can hear actually Woodwind in this as well.

01:49:19.885 –> 01:49:28.885
Liam Ivory: This is a guy called Mike Lusserge, who we work with, who tracked some, he came around to the studio and did a session with us and tracked these parts.

01:49:45.345 –> 01:49:47.125
Liam Ivory: So you hear all the cutting and the chopping.

01:49:47.125 –> 01:49:54.605
Liam Ivory: We often, we do these sessions, but to be honest, we often have quite a strong idea of how we want the parts to go.

01:49:54.605 –> 01:50:02.165
Liam Ivory: So we’ll go back in, and then we’ll, it’s the wonderful thing about Ableton, we’ll chop certain notes, we’ll pitch them, and we’ll change the part so that it fits right.

01:50:02.405 –> 01:50:12.625
Liam Ivory: So Mike would have laid down the kind of simple parts, and then as you can see on all the different places it’s been chopped, that’s where we’re correcting it and changing the harmony and making the part suit a bit better.

01:50:13.405 –> 01:50:28.285
Chris Davids: But this part, this whole section then, it’s definitely one of my favorite bits of the track, but it has like a really, like a medieval sound, almost like a pagan-y sound to the end of it, so the woodwind and the harmonies and just hearing the choir over the top of that.

01:51:11.715 –> 01:51:16.155
John Kennedy: Beautiful, I know what you’re saying about the medieval, medieval Maribou State.

01:51:16.155 –> 01:51:18.155
Liam Ivory: It’s a cliffhanger ending as well.

01:51:18.155 –> 01:51:22.935
Liam Ivory: I feel like that ends, and it half says the album’s finished, but it half says what’s coming next.

01:51:22.935 –> 01:51:23.475
Chris Davids: Part two comes in.

01:51:23.475 –> 01:51:25.275
Liam Ivory: Yeah, do you know what I mean?

01:51:25.275 –> 01:51:28.335
Liam Ivory: Kingdoms has got a very finite ending on it.

01:51:28.335 –> 01:51:29.275
Liam Ivory: So does Portraits.

01:51:29.275 –> 01:51:33.595
Liam Ivory: That’s like a, to be continued.

01:51:33.595 –> 01:51:40.695
John Kennedy: Well, we’re nearly at an end, so we kind of just have a few more questions for you, but that’s been absolutely amazing.

01:51:40.955 –> 01:51:43.635
John Kennedy: I’m going to ask one more Patreon question.

01:51:43.635 –> 01:51:45.895
John Kennedy: It kind of relates to what you’ve just been talking about in a way.

01:51:45.895 –> 01:51:52.835
John Kennedy: So this is from Ben who says, ear candy and intricate melodic details seem to have always been a key element in Maribou State tunes.

01:51:52.835 –> 01:51:58.615
John Kennedy: I love the way you create little call and responses between things and fill in the gaps with the melody with all these little details.

01:51:58.615 –> 01:51:59.575
John Kennedy: How do you approach this?

01:51:59.575 –> 01:52:00.895
John Kennedy: Is it trial and error?

01:52:00.895 –> 01:52:06.995
John Kennedy: Is it trialing little bits as you’ve recorded or seeing what works, or do you have an explicit idea for it beforehand?

01:52:06.995 –> 01:52:14.515
John Kennedy: In a way, that ties in with what you were just saying, because you do experiment, you do trial and error, but you also have a vision.

01:52:14.515 –> 01:52:15.615
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:52:15.615 –> 01:52:21.835
Liam Ivory: Interestingly, those little bits are often born out of putting too much into the file, like Chris was saying.

01:52:21.835 –> 01:52:27.975
Liam Ivory: When we’re writing a tune and they’re in the more earlier, less refined stages, we’ll kind of fill every gap.

01:52:27.975 –> 01:52:30.495
Liam Ivory: We’ll get bored of a section, like Blackoak is a good example.

01:52:30.495 –> 01:52:37.615
Liam Ivory: That used to have an intro that was 16 or 32 bars longer, and each section had a little synth part and a bell and then a little melody.

01:52:38.515 –> 01:52:48.635
Liam Ivory: But that’s kind of the way when we’re listening back to stuff, because we sip these demos for so long, we start to really notice where there’s space, and then we’ll be like, let’s put something in there, let’s put something in there.

01:52:48.635 –> 01:52:53.195
Liam Ivory: And they end up getting built up with those kind of, we call them silver sounds.

01:52:53.195 –> 01:52:54.715
Liam Ivory: They’re like our little silvery sounds.

01:52:54.715 –> 01:52:58.375
Liam Ivory: They’re not the main thing, but they help it shine and sparkle.

01:52:58.375 –> 01:53:07.975
Liam Ivory: And a lot of it gets called back until the point where the parts are in there are only the ones that we feel after listening over and over again really need to be in there.

01:53:07.975 –> 01:53:09.575
Liam Ivory: But the way they go in is very different.

01:53:09.575 –> 01:53:10.855
Liam Ivory: It could be from the sound harvest.

01:53:10.855 –> 01:53:11.755
Liam Ivory: It could be samples.

01:53:11.755 –> 01:53:14.515
Liam Ivory: It could be little mistakes, yeah.

01:53:14.675 –> 01:53:16.255
Liam Ivory: All sorts of things.

01:53:16.255 –> 01:53:19.815
John Kennedy: I like the way that you keep coming up with phrases for different parts of what you do.

01:53:19.815 –> 01:53:21.935
John Kennedy: You know, silver sounds, sounds harvest.

01:53:21.935 –> 01:53:22.615
John Kennedy: It’s really great.

01:53:22.615 –> 01:53:29.475
Liam Ivory: We joke about it with Jack in the studio where sometimes when we’re all really locked in, especially on these writing trips, we’re talking in a different language.

01:53:29.475 –> 01:53:34.155
Liam Ivory: And we’re like, if people heard us talking now, they would think we are like crazy.

01:53:34.155 –> 01:53:36.415
Liam Ivory: But it’s the only way to communicate it.

01:53:36.415 –> 01:53:38.335
Liam Ivory: And you’re like trying to get your point across.

01:53:38.535 –> 01:53:40.175
John Kennedy: That’s great.

01:53:40.175 –> 01:53:51.155
John Kennedy: One of the questions we ask everybody who comes on Tape Notes is about gear, whether there’s a particular favorite piece of gear that maybe applies to this album or one that would be across the whole of what you’ve been doing.

01:53:51.195 –> 01:53:56.875
Chris Davids: For this record, it was the Mogue Matriarch Synth.

01:53:56.875 –> 01:54:15.415
Chris Davids: It just got used on probably every song in some capacity, whether it was as a keyboard or as a synth doing like chordal stuff or arps, or we used it as a processing unit and run vocals for it because it has a really beautiful filter on it and you can drive stuff.

01:54:16.215 –> 01:54:17.375
Liam Ivory: And there’s delay as well, right?

01:54:17.375 –> 01:54:19.975
Chris Davids: Yeah, the stereo delay on it.

01:54:19.975 –> 01:54:25.155
Chris Davids: So yeah, I think for this record in particular, that’s been the best bit of kit.

01:54:25.155 –> 01:54:26.095
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:54:26.095 –> 01:54:28.555
Liam Ivory: And the CADAC tied between the two.

01:54:28.555 –> 01:54:29.655
Liam Ivory: Right.

01:54:29.655 –> 01:54:35.315
Liam Ivory: Processing though, interestingly, for this record, the things that have excited us most have been the processing.

01:54:35.315 –> 01:54:43.095
Liam Ivory: On the last record, it was very synth driven, buying new synths, which we did on this record as well, but we got way more into processing this time around.

01:54:43.095 –> 01:54:43.875
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:54:43.875 –> 01:54:45.015
John Kennedy: It’s very time consuming.

01:54:45.495 –> 01:54:56.935
John Kennedy: Your approach, because you look for so many different possibilities and keep feeding the possibility cabin or whatever you want to call it.

01:54:56.935 –> 01:55:06.515
Chris Davids: It’s something that I think initially has become the backbone of our sound, and it is driven by perfectionism, which is an unhealthy thing.

01:55:06.635 –> 01:55:20.715
Chris Davids: I think from the first album, there was so much time to just spend until four in the morning, throwing every single sample we had, and trying all these different things, and trying everything before we settled on one thing.

01:55:20.715 –> 01:55:24.035
Chris Davids: I think as we’ve gotten older, we’ve realized you can’t do that.

01:55:24.395 –> 01:55:27.335
Chris Davids: It’s not also a healthy way to work, it’s got us to where we are.

01:55:27.335 –> 01:55:33.655
Chris Davids: That’s why this album has been about striking this balance of like, you have to have limitations, things can’t be infinite.

01:55:34.295 –> 01:55:42.015
Chris Davids: So, it’s a challenge, though, when you’ve started out making music in one way and it’s felt natural and fluid to try and change that.

01:55:42.015 –> 01:55:52.135
Liam Ivory: It also presents new challenges, because when we, with this new approach of not overthinking and just kind of settling for things as they are, often that would happen in the demo writing stage.

01:55:52.135 –> 01:55:57.075
Liam Ivory: And then when we come to finalize the tracks, it’s really hard to see past that original demo.

01:55:57.075 –> 01:56:01.855
Liam Ivory: And if you’re not then taking the approach of trying everything under the sun to make it work, it’s like, well, what do you do?

01:56:01.855 –> 01:56:07.275
Liam Ivory: Because that kind of sounds good, but it sounds like a demo and then it just throws up more problems.

01:56:07.275 –> 01:56:11.795
Chris Davids: Yeah, it’s a nuanced process for us and it’s different for every song.

01:56:11.795 –> 01:56:20.515
Chris Davids: But yeah, it can be incredibly time consuming, but you know, there’s a lot of joy that comes out of these experimentations.

01:56:21.355 –> 01:56:26.175
John Kennedy: Yeah, and then onto the record and then in the live experience.

01:56:26.215 –> 01:56:26.995
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:56:26.995 –> 01:56:33.175
John Kennedy: I mean, practically everything you’ve played, I’m envisaging thousands of people singing those hums back to you.

01:56:33.175 –> 01:56:34.615
Liam Ivory: I hope so, yeah.

01:56:34.615 –> 01:56:35.535
John Kennedy: It’s going to be amazing.

01:56:35.535 –> 01:56:46.115
John Kennedy: And the last thing we ask is about advice, whether you’ve learned anything over this time being Maribou State that you would pass on to other people or maybe it’s something that somebody once said to you.

01:56:46.155 –> 01:56:48.075
Liam Ivory: Yeah.

01:56:48.075 –> 01:56:51.815
Liam Ivory: I think looking after yourself is the most important one.

01:56:51.815 –> 01:56:57.095
Liam Ivory: Something we’ve realized over the years is that this can be a really consuming process.

01:56:57.095 –> 01:57:02.915
Liam Ivory: And in some ways that’s healthy, but also it’s about making time for yourself as well.

01:57:02.915 –> 01:57:11.555
Liam Ivory: And just kind of taking it for what it is in terms of it is making music and it is amazing, but you need to make sure your physical mental health stays your priority throughout.

01:57:11.555 –> 01:57:23.415
Liam Ivory: I think that’s the main thing I’ve realized, especially when it comes to like late studio sessions, like we’ve been talking about, or when it comes to touring and being away, like it’s so easy to just follow this down the rabbit hole.

01:57:23.415 –> 01:57:29.115
Liam Ivory: But I think it’s important to try and find things in your life that keep you grounded, which in turn make this better.

01:57:29.115 –> 01:57:34.135
Liam Ivory: Like the happier you are, the healthier you are, the more grounded you are, the better music you’re going to write.

01:57:34.135 –> 01:57:34.995
Liam Ivory: Like that’s a given.

01:57:34.995 –> 01:57:40.755
Liam Ivory: So it kind of, yeah, I think it’s like striking a balance, basically, I think is the key advice I would give.

01:57:41.815 –> 01:58:00.095
Chris Davids: Yeah, and I would just add being, this is really relevant nowadays, but being as true to yourself as you can in the music that you write, because it’s so easy now to get caught up with like what your social media sort of character is going to be, and how much time you’re pouring into that.

01:58:00.095 –> 01:58:11.455
Chris Davids: But I think the most important thing is the music that you’re making, and making music that you really love, not music that you think a record label is going to like, or someone down the pub is going to like.

01:58:11.455 –> 01:58:20.015
Chris Davids: It’s just got to be about what you enjoy, and that then sort of has the ricochet effect, and people will appreciate that.

01:58:20.015 –> 01:58:22.455
Liam Ivory: Authenticity shines through, doesn’t it?

01:58:22.455 –> 01:58:26.275
Liam Ivory: Even in the world of social media, you have to be yourself and trust in your own vision.

01:58:26.275 –> 01:58:28.655
Liam Ivory: Yeah, that’s a very good point.

01:58:28.655 –> 01:58:30.195
John Kennedy: It’s been so great to speak to you.

01:58:30.195 –> 01:58:31.495
John Kennedy: Thank you so much for giving us your time.

01:58:32.275 –> 01:58:34.135
Liam Ivory: We’re such huge fans of the podcast.

01:58:34.135 –> 01:58:36.195
Liam Ivory: I just want to say it on air.

01:58:36.195 –> 01:58:37.515
Liam Ivory: We are so happy to be here.

01:58:37.515 –> 01:58:38.415
Liam Ivory: Thank you so much for having us.

01:58:38.475 –> 01:58:39.655
John Kennedy: That’s brilliant to hear, Liam.

01:58:39.655 –> 01:58:40.595
John Kennedy: Thank you very much.

01:58:40.595 –> 01:58:44.955
John Kennedy: And yeah, well, it’s been amazing to go on this little trip with you.

01:58:44.955 –> 01:58:47.395
John Kennedy: We should play one more selection from Hallucinating Love.

01:58:47.395 –> 01:58:48.335
John Kennedy: Cool.

01:58:48.535 –> 01:58:49.215
John Kennedy: What should it be?

01:58:49.215 –> 01:58:50.415
Liam Ivory: I remember.

01:58:50.415 –> 01:58:51.235
John Kennedy: No, all right.

01:58:51.235 –> 01:58:54.755
Chris Davids: It’s quite similar to Rolling Stone, maybe Peace Talk?

01:58:54.755 –> 01:58:56.115
Liam Ivory: Oh, no, no, definitely.

01:58:56.115 –> 01:58:57.075
John Kennedy: Peace Talk is nice.

01:58:57.075 –> 01:58:58.855
John Kennedy: Peace Talk is another thing, isn’t it?

01:58:58.855 –> 01:59:01.475
Liam Ivory: It’s one of our shared favourite tunes.

01:59:01.475 –> 01:59:02.735
John Kennedy: Who’s the vocal on Peace Talk?

01:59:02.735 –> 01:59:03.235
Liam Ivory: Holly.

01:59:03.235 –> 01:59:04.315
John Kennedy: Oh, it’s Holly.

01:59:04.355 –> 01:59:04.735
Chris Davids: Yeah.

01:59:04.735 –> 01:59:05.295
John Kennedy: Fantastic.

01:59:05.295 –> 01:59:06.115
John Kennedy: Okay.

01:59:06.115 –> 01:59:08.415
John Kennedy: Thank you very much, Liam, Chris.

01:59:08.415 –> 01:59:11.035
John Kennedy: And this is Peace Talk by Maribou State.

01:59:28.596 –> 01:59:33.916
John Kennedy: Thank you for listening, and in particular thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on Patreon.

01:59:33.916 –> 01:59:38.396
John Kennedy: I’m just one part of the team that brings you Tape Notes, and it relies on your support.

01:59:38.396 –> 01:59:46.396
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.

01:59:46.396 –> 01:59:49.756
John Kennedy: If you’d like to join, head to the link on our socials or website.

01:59:50.216 –> 01:59:55.336
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01:59:55.336 –> 01:59:58.876
John Kennedy: And on Discord, you can join the growing Tape Notes community.

01:59:58.876 –> 02:00:00.416
John Kennedy: Once again, thank you for listening.

02:00:00.416 –> 02:00:01.716
John Kennedy: Until next time, goodbye.