Episode 3: “THE ANTIDOTE” feat. Barrett Avner *PREVIEW*

write good songs, make good stuff. I mean, that's really the antidote. Yeah, reckless reckless band and go buck wild brother Bucky Buckykins. Okay. Hmm I Want to immediately get into the whole Curf the old geopolitical kerfuffle you want you want to go straight in Is that the I don't know let's let's see how it feels. Let's see how I feel I think maybe no we like indirectly Well, like allude to her or something I've honestly incredibly checked out of it. I saw a few DJs tweeting about it today and I was just like, I'm... I just can't even handle this. All of this is unhelpful and related to you and your ambitions. DJing, saying stuff is how I absorb all my news. Yeah, same now. This is the problem. When they're like... But like, COVID scold account tweets about encourages into the Gaza Strip. I'm sure it is, honestly. I'm sure they've pivoted in some way to just being sort of more all-purpose general scolds in a way that aligns pretty well with this whole conflict, this whole thing. I'm sure they found a way. Fuck those guys. Fuck who, sorry? Fuck those guys. Oh, yeah. Oh, wait, actually, sorry, dude, I got distracted by my phone. Fuck who? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm never the two together. No, no, no. Especially not using that kind of annoying tongue-in-cheek facetious way. I'm missing with that shit. Hey, what's up? One second. Oh, I didn't realize I was in a bathrobe. Sorry. i like it i like it you know if i go video off do whatever you prefer whatever you prefer yeah yeah as long as you give us kind of like periodic updates as as soon as there's kind of like a visual uh evolution whether it's rapistic or expressionistic oh wow can can you hear me yeah yeah we're good man we're good nice to nice to see you guys yeah good to see you briefly too dudes

Chest hair is looking strong. Oh, the what? The chest hair. Oh, shit. And like, you know, like from one hairy chested man to another, like big, you know, props. And from one severely lacking that department to you, to you both, I salute. Damn, I didn't expect you to have such like an Americanized accent. Your culture is a powerful force, man. You should pat yourself on the back. You're welcome. I'm a rootless cosmopolitan in the strictly literal face value definition of the term. I find my roots and I pay tribute to all corners of the former Commonwealth. That's great. As we should all. What's your chest hair maintenance regimen, if it exists at all? i don't have one but you're not like actively cultivating it either no no no no it's just uh just is what it is do you do you manscape in any meaningful way no really you're it's just it's just um it's just a thrush it's just an untamed thrush yeah i don't do anything respect what are you doing uh i i'll do a little bit a little bit of maintenance here and there under duress like it's it's never my initiative but um she's got a lot of needs needs in that respect she has needs in that in that respect also because my shit's fucked up it doesn't look it doesn't look good it doesn't like it doesn't have it's not like magnum pi style kind of um cool sensual uh chest hair it's bad not to mention the rest is it quite sparse yeah i meant more the more the pubic bit No, the pews are normal. And I mean, that's for the bonus content though, where I'll go into, I won't show up, but I'll go into detail using my rich vocabulary to describe it. Um, Barrett, what are you, what are you saying, man? How are you, how are you living? Uh, I'm doing okay. You know, it's, uh, it's just, um, you know, it's, it's like hard to describe. Things are very difficult to put into words right now. I think you've, you've typically found a way. Uh,

Yeah, I mean, it's it's just kind of, you know, there's a lot going on in the world. And I think that that always sort of puts a puts you in your place. And I also think people have been trying to describe there's a lot of people like really jumping the shark right now, you know, and they're really sort of upping the ante and laying it on heavy just because it's like. You know, the way media cycles, the way culture cycles, it's just, you know, people, there's really no sort of like, I'm not seeing a lot of like grace in what's going on. So that's just me. Well, your silence on the matters at hand has been deafening, Barrett. So maybe you should read about your policy. Do a side with your aspirations to grace and reduce your first instincts into a digestible little take unit. Have you considered that? um no barrett um you were in sick alps that's not an accusation that that seems to be a matter of historical record what do you mean were you in the band sick alps yeah yeah i was that that kind of blew my mind when i was doing my due diligence because i don't know what possessed me i was i was i kind of remembered remember this people were kind of like broadly talking about this about shit gays like 15 years ago or something when it's kind of like blog spot genres and that that led me to revisiting that you know that band psychedelic horror shit oh yeah we we played with them in columbus i became a really funny story about that matt he's still playing i guess kind of like in and around i You know, I fell out of contact with Time's New Viking and all of that stuff. This was so long ago. But I have a really fucking funny story about the time that we played with them. With Time's New Viking or Psychedelic Horseshit? Psychedelic Horseshit. What happened? So we played at this bar.

with that band slug guts and you know they're like kind of like heroin chic birthday party like australian uh kind of band there's this this is like you know before anything you get in trouble there's this uh thing on the bar menu called a hate crime i was like what's a hate crime and they're like you'll just have to find out and there's like really hot bartender and so we each got one and it's like she poured us a shot And we just all took it. And then she slapped all of us. So yeah, it was like, it was different times back then, you know, but. More enlightened age. More enlightened age. We were all just like, whoa, you know, kind of like, it's like a, like Looney Tunes. It's just like seeing like hearts and shit. It was pretty funny. How did you, did, how did Matt from Psychedelic Horseshit take, take being slapped, being hate crime? Oh, he didn't get hate crime. I actually think that girl might have been his girlfriend, weirdly. Damn, so this, I mean, this is good. This is the kind of like, the kind of deep cut industry tea that we strive to muckrake out of the swamps. Namely the fact that Matt from the shit gays band Psychedelic Horseshit had a hot girlfriend. This would have been what, like 15 years ago? No, it was around 10. 10 years ago? Yeah. Hell yeah. So you heard it here. CloudForm exclusive. But I guess, so I mean, so I was like revisiting these bands from that era. And I came, I had this like compulsion to listen to Sick Alps. And this is one song in particular. I'm really hoping you played on this. Fuck what's it called? It's called Sing Song Waitress.

Staring up at the breeze He's molded in a human shame Their martyrs Are as clear as the reeking oceans Their slogan Doesn't speak for the meat of a broken skull I didn't play on that one. That was when it was just Mike and Noel and what's-his-fucking-guy, the drummer, and Matt, other Matt. That guy, I don't know, I've heard a lot of stories about him, but that was a different era. I came in when things were getting more rock-y and less janky, experimental. You know, like that period was kind of sound like VHF records or, you know, like it had that silt breeze kind of sound and like, you know, just style and all of that stuff. So I kind of came after that. At that point, I had been playing with Son of Raw and I switched to them. So I kind of like I jumped, you know, I got traded to a different team. How did that come about? How fluid, how painless was that swap? I mean, it was pretty painless because at the time, this was centered around Drag City because both acts were on the same label. And I had been in the Drag City fold for a minute because my first band did a record for them, but we broke up. right after because they were pressuring us to tour and the bass player was like really agoraphobic and he couldn't tour and i was just like he was such a big part of the band and just like the concept behind it it's like i couldn't do it any like there was just no he was kind of like the guru of the band even though he was the bass player and synth player and so i just i couldn't do it and and we broke up and then i started playing i met cameron because i was in this kind of experimental duo it kind of sounded like the dead seed like daily dance and some of these other like amm but mixed with kind of more like shreddy guitar shit

Like I was really into like Henry Cow at the time. And, you know, Fred Frith had lived, was living in Oakland too. So we played with Sonara. We opened for them. And then we just got to, I got to be friends with those guys. So I started playing with them after I moved to LA actually to play with them. And then I moved to LA to play guitar for Cass McCombs. And that fell through. Oh, for real? Yeah. That's so funny. yeah it's really a friend of ours is dating him now that's like interesting yeah sorry go on um but so then you know like it was pretty seamless because it was like i had already been in like the drag city universe so to speak so like at that point noel had left the band and ty siegel was taking his place on like lead guitar and it was just kind of this random thing where they were like we want to like get more like rocking and like sort of you know mike he's a great songwriter he's a great singer he's not a great guitar player he's like you know he can hardly play basically uh and they're like we kind of like need a a lead guitar player like somebody who can like take us to like i don't know like the who or like the groundhogs or like kind of like they wanted to go in a more conventionally proficient sort of uk rock direction and so i guess like the label suggested me and that's kind of how that came about and that was it yeah you fuck with the who i mean i love the who sell out yeah i mean i i love like the 60s who specifically um i think pinball wizard was maybe the first that was like that like really activated something in me as like a infant essentially i like tommy too actually tommy's amazing five at leeds is so good oh my god that that live you see like that live album i think is like the best thing

To me, it's like the who sell out and live at Leeds. Those are my two, my go-tos. I don't really know the who sell out very well, but just like the whole, I mean, I kind of, I know the like premise or whatever, the concept. I remember like the visuals behind it being like really interesting and like, particularly for like the time, like hella advanced, also given just how like incredibly like famous and established they were. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that whole album, I love how it's like Roger Daltrey is like sitting in a bathtub full of Heinz baked beans. Yeah. And that's really stuck. I'm like, yeah, these are kind of like cartoonishly large commercial commodity products. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that was sort of. typical of the time you know warhol was was big at that moment you know it had it had sort of like a pop art bend to it yeah yeah yeah and so yeah i thought that was really interesting and also that's kind of like they're like one sort of like psychedelic album or like it has like a lot of a lot of tracks that are are quote unquote of that vibe you know like i can see for miles obviously i love that song that's like the one song i do know off that I love Tattoo also. I don't know that song, but I need to revisit. Rob, what's your UK classic rock schooling? It all comes from my parents, specifically my dad, right? I was just thinking about this. I basically never listened to The Hoop or The Rolling Stones because my dad was only into The Beatles. He was just of that age. Well, he was too young as well. All his music picks up with... like prog rock really so like yes and elp are you saying that he like he was wasn't he like he was into something that kind of like blew my mind we were talking when you're oh what prefabs bro was it no it was like i think it was more like contemporary like like clubby kind of oh my uncle's a big anaerobic sound fan you sure that's not what you're thinking no okay i'm trying to get him to go last night but he he wasn't on it in the end

That is unfortunate. What is your relationship or awareness or investment in UK electronic music? How well acquainted are you with that stuff, very broadly speaking? What era? Are we talking about a guy called Gerald? Are we talking about... uh you know metal like source direct like what what um are are we talking about like more like contemporary stuff i mean contemporary stuff i'm not i'm not super well acquainted with like really early kind of like rave shit myself oh you see like that's the stuff i was really into i was super into like like jungle and drum and bass and like goldie and stuff uh how do you get fed that being out in the states because to me it's such a uk-centric thing particularly jungle i was into graffiti and it was okay i was like a graffiti kid so it was it was like a part of that whole world like there was a there was this like graffiti supply store out in the valley called like freestylers or whatever and they had like a jungle drum and bass like record section oh okay so it was like It was kind of like a thing, especially like in the LA graph scene or graph world, like jungle and UK drum and bass was pretty sort of like big in that world at that time. So that's kind of how I got into it. Incredible. What kind of jungle and drum and bass are you into then? I'm assuming, are you talking all? think stuff from the 90s or do you go autonomic and afterwards as well like source direct is probably my is anything like rob bird uh i mean i even like this sort of like drill and base stuff too which uh who would who would you who would you say that is that would be stuff like you know luke vibert oh okay interesting yeah yeah yeah

uh it was kind of like the more glitchy yes especially like yeah i was into that i was also into you know just kind of like heavy because a lot of that shit was like so fucking heavy it and and it was made by a lot of people who were there's like mutant base and sort of like really sort of crazy like house like samples my favorite track is the raven by uh who who fucking oh ed rush not ed rush like that's like that's probably my favorite track of that sort of that sort of drill bass style But of new UK people, you know, I'm not that up on it, actually. I stopped listening to, like, techno, any sort of new techno at all. Like, I only listen to it. But I've always been into, like, electronic dance music ever since I was, like, 13, probably. That's something that kind of surprised me about you and your output. kind of realized through researching this episode that you did a record on leaving yeah in like 2017 and having listened to the podcast and you know the artist that you talk about off the top of my head is like people like wishbone ash and things like this but you have this long history with electronic music as well it's like that's really fucking cool man and actually going back and listening to the kind of like all the s candle work that you've done everything you talk about really registers um and yeah i guess it'd be great to know kind of yeah how how you came into like dance music and like maybe specifically techno ah techno specifically you know it's actually weird i i bought a green velvet cd uh because i thought he looked cool on the cover it was the one with like the green mohawk it's the one with a um message machine you know i don't need this shit

and it was like it was the scariest music i'd ever heard in my whole life and so i started buying like when i was a kid i used to get like uh mix mag and i got super into stuff like that and just kind of like early techno dj culture Coming from like more of like a, like this is before the internet. So it was all very like mainstream stuff. And then also there was a big moment in the late nineties when a lot of like, like trip hop artists and like drum and bass people were like the villains and bad guy movies, like tricky and like goldie. And so I was like massive attack too. And I got into like, And so I was like kind of exposed to this whole, like, I don't know, like electronic music thing, even though my dad was really into classic rock and like sort of like acid rock and Sabbath and stuff like that. And so I was always like really interested in, in both of those things, but like, I was always a guitar player. Like I didn't think like it didn't really open. Like I, I was always like, listen, like, like on tour or something like with sick Alps, we would, you know go to berlin and i'd be like going and buying like you know sonic ep by underground resistance and shit like that like i was like i want to go to like but just to listen to you know and i i love jeff mills jeff mills is like my favorite ever uh just in all the detroit techno shit to you know uh derek may you know like all that stuff like i've always been real like ever since like high school i was always really into it um but just as like a passive listener not even somebody who went to raves or was involved in rave culture like i i had no interaction with a culture it was like music i listened to in my headphones like i didn't want to listen to others like rock music or something so it's quite interesting you talk about some of those techno artists as well because i feel like they the way that they're

or the way that my understanding of their scene in Detroit worked and the way that they put out records where for a short while it was this very kind of insular community of like people sharing things very geographically specific and a lot of that still carries on now but that makes me think a lot of like another Detroit artist like Omar S and their kind of approach of making this music kind of just for themselves and the people around them and that kind of I feel like Woody that chimes a lot with the way that you talk about the Contain project. and your own music and running that as a label oh a hundred percent i mean that's the way i even when it comes to i mean i put the label on hold it started off as a label and turned into a podcast yeah and then now that covid's over i'm turning it back into a label again and And also putting out more books. I've got another book coming and just getting into like physical media. But I sort of see it as like the podcast is like me investigating things, you know, stuff that I may not know a lot about, stuff that I'm interested in. And for a while, like because we took such a long break and we were just making music for the show and like doing interludes and stuff like that. like the the show took over from the music but it was never supposed to be that way so i'm kind of dialing it i'm seeing if if one can i don't know be subordinate and supplement the other thing because i've already done the research like i know what i fuck with like i have my friends i have the people who like obviously like i'm no leader or anything this is all leaderless stuff we're just kind of like But I know more or less what I'm interested in already and what I'm interested in pushing and pursuing. And I think it's important to do your research in that. And yeah, it's like create your own sound and do it with your friends and do it with people who you develop relationships with. I think that's the only way to do it and just stay out of scenes.

Don't get tied in. You know, audience capture is, you know, it's such a big problem, I think, on just so many different levels. Do you find yourself at all suffering under that? Is that something that's maybe influenced your decision to push back towards music and away from a podcast? No, not really. I actually think I've navigated that pretty better than a lot of my peers. You know, I think a lot of people, got painted into this corner of being like reactionary and edgelordy and, you know, giving like too many hot takes. And I definitely entertained a bit of that. And I, you know, but at the same, and I think I had to at a given point, but I also, I think I have like the, because I'm a musician first and foremost, and because I've, you know. been in art shows and I just recently got into writing, this is a very new development for me. I always had something else to fall back on. So it wasn't like, I didn't feel like the level of insecurity, like I have to keep pushing the antics further in order to advance what I'm doing. Because this was all supplementary to the thing that I actually really love and care about, which is music. So that's... i think i think that's really helped in a lot of ways so who is listening to like like what are the kinds of people you think are attracted to the music that you have put out on contain is there like an i mean i know you're this maybe like coincides with with this idea of like audience audience capture but who is the archetypal contain listener slash consumer ah you know it's It's really funny. I mean, contained as a label, by the way. Sorry. Oh, as a label. You know, the reason why I started putting the music in the episodes and pushing that was because nobody actually listened to the music. Like the music hasn't done particularly well in any sort of commercial viable sense.

but it worked really well as complimentary to the kind of conversations that we were sort of conducting. And so I figured out really fast that, and part of the reason why I think the show has done well is because people say they like the music in the show and they like the fact that it's our music and it's like music that I've made or Alex has made or Evans, like whatever. And so I sort of figured out like a kind of like strange formula that like, maybe, maybe this isn't music for its own sake. Maybe it all has to work together in an intermedial or gestamped const work sort of way. And now it's like, this is kind of why I was talking about songwriting. I'm getting really into songwriting because I want to, I want to do stuff that can really just stand out on its own, really simple. like from the heart shit that just you know with good chord changes and chord progressions and and so i'm sort of i want to make music now that doesn't need a discourse like it's just it just is what it is and and i think that's sort of where we're trending me and alex and just like talking to other people who we want to we want to release stuff with in the future because Alex you mean Ebenezer Cool Water yeah Cool Water because he and like he does the music with me and he's I'm starting to do video stuff too and he like edits the videos and and he does the music and the label like I just do I do the podcast by myself but he does all that stuff also so Can I just say, like, of the contained stuff that I think it came out 2020, the Cool Water release has this song, A Breeze with a Face. So good. That is just mind-blowing. I've done this, like, over the summer, like, on at least, like, three or four occasions. Like, I've played that into this specific kind of, like, dub song called What You're Gonna Do by Kicking Productions. And, I mean...

I have to admit, it's Slade. Not to deep throat myself too sloppily, but it's genuinely Slade. So shout out to Cool Water for making that. That song deserves a lot more years. I think it's going to happen. Lies has reached out to him to put out a record. Music from memory has. He's doing an album for them. gonna take a long time to get pressed but they just complete he just completed an album for music for memory so it's like he is like getting actual like recognition from like heads you know like they're actually like oh well this guy makes some really good shit and i part of me you know because he was so obscure before i think the show actually helped you know Because as the show got bigger, more people wanted to listen to his music on its own. And so I think it's actually helped him in particular. And also working with other artists, too, as a producer. So like I said, I think it all kind of fits together as one thing. It's just the sum of many different parts. And so I don't even see it as a label, per se. But I'd like it to be that way eventually and just put out stuff that I think resonates with people on its own. Sometimes the model just naturally emerges from what you're doing, which is really affirming when you're able to find some configuration or the configuration finds you of all the things that you're interested in. and the the the puzzle pieces you didn't even know the puzzle you didn't even know you were sort of like making just kind of like purely organically falls together i think the the project or the kind of like the constituent elements of the projects the series of projects that you're undertaking like just kind of combine in a way that has its own internal logic that sort of always defies very very reductive description but also kind of like just implicitly

makes sense do you know what i mean right and i've always i've that's always been an intention of mine too like that's what i set out at least when me and alex were talking about it like this is what we set out to do and l records uh the subsidiary of cherry red which is like one of my favorite i mean i love you know momus and they put out the last felt record and the would-be goods and um I love Luis Felipe and stuff like that too. But one of the things that the, that I remember, like, I forgot the name of the main guy. It's not Alan McGee, obviously from creation. It's a, I forgot his name, but when he, he said, he's like, why did you pick L? Why did you pick the name L? And he said, because it didn't mean anything. And I thought it looked cool and it could mean many different things to many different people and give the project some, some space, you know, Because once you pigeonhole yourself as somebody who gives hot takes or somebody who makes club music or this or that, it becomes very difficult to expand and contract based on that. And I think that's the way a lot of actual brands are seeing things. which is why they make their logos so sort of non-descriptive. But I wasn't thinking about it in terms of like a commodity sense. I was thinking in terms of more like a personal, like how can we grow individually and collectively? And how can we collectivize a group of individuals based on a sort of shared frequency of wanting to engage with things in such a way? Totally, man. So who are you kind of, aside from Alex, like who are you working with? Like who, who in your kind of like immediate circle are you collaborating with most frequently and fruitfully? You know, lately, just in terms of my own stuff, I've just been working on songwriting, like just me and a classical acoustic guitar. That's kind of.

I've been working with videographers, and I've been doing experimental video stuff. I've been working with this girl, Leah, who makes movies with Bob Byington. So I've been working on visual stuff, more collaborative. And I don't want to say specific names yet. There's some really good people I've been working with, though. But in terms of the music side for now, it's just... it's basically just been me. And then Alex is kind of like waiting along for, I guess when I'm good, when I feel like developed enough to do what I want to do, then we're going to sort of move on it. But we have a lot of intros. I just, I basically just work with Alex. It's just me and him kind of. What's the status of the Ebenezer group? We're working on it. You know, that's, that's kind of my main thing at the moment, but. I've kind of, like I said, I wanted to, because I do want it to be based on like, not just like a vibe, but like songwriting. I'm just writing the songs right now that we can, because we've been trying to experiment with different sounds. Like the stuff that I gave to the TT comp was kind of our first, like, you know, like this is kind of what we're into doing, but we want to figure out a way to, Maybe either strip it down or make it expand on certain elements or qualities more. So that's basically what I've been working on. the miami story the song on that compilation is like private investigator exotica yeah because i really feel because you're talking about like trying to like like carve out the vibe as well as or the songwriting because i mean to me that like that's the vibe like that vibe is is in play that that's like

there's something in there there's something like really kind of like evocative in there that i want to see like fleshed out even even more fully yeah that's the decision that's what we're getting into and so for visually we want to do stuff like we like actually want to commit to like wearing trench coats like not in hell yes like we want to solve crimes no like actually this has been like in the works we're going to do a side podcast where we go around LA and we do like investigative like shit where we try to solve like, like it's almost like parapolitical mapping, but within like the music scene and we like expose people. We expose people and you expose bus stains in hotel rooms using blue light. So like, we actually like, this is kind of what I'm talking about. Like these. the absolute involvement of everything so the so ebenezer group is a project with me and alex and we yeah we have a track on the tt comp but we're also trying to turn it into an actual side like show like podcast show where we solve crimes and we talk about that's hella sick so we like actually fully are committed Because when I was a kid, one of the first jobs I ever wanted to have was to be a private investigator. I always wanted to be a detective when I was a little kid because I was really into Dick Tracy. Oh, Dick Tracy also just such a stimulating, fun, evocative, atmospheric world unto itself. If you read that shit in an early enough age, you're really like... it really like makes its mark on your consciousness oh a hundred percent so when I was a kid yeah so so Dick Tracy had a big uh impact on me and there was also like and it fits sort of aesthetically with like the whole Roger Rabbit like extended universe and so I was really kind of like interested in I I really liked Dick Tracy as a kid

It's pretty dark, especially for a kid's thing. Oh, yeah. It's pretty advanced shit, actually. I need to revisit that, man. I remember loving it as a kid. But also just something about the atmosphere also having this undertone that I found kind of scary. Oh, totally. I mean, there was actual death in the development of its characters. and you know like the sidekicks died and uh you know he was kind of like the inventor of the smart watch or something too because he had that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah mobile phone it was like a two-way radio on his wrist that he would like speak into so there was like all this like weird kind of like futuristic technology and uh and there was gadgets like i loved go-go gadget as a kid too so so yeah detected and exotica music and also like felt and but at the same time like we're talking about this in the second part which we recorded earlier about like the whole mystery guy kind of music dean blunt sort of thing it's like i don't want to also be in that category so in order to to not just be this like gimmick i have to write good songs so that to me is in order for this thing to go to where i wanted to go i have to do that because i've always been a side guy like i've always been like a lead guitar player or made techno like electronic music like ash raw or you know something like that and so i i never really developed like any sort of real songwriting skills and so the development of the group in order for it to have all of these components working together has to be centered around really good songs that has to be like the first thing because i i've got all the other down the concept is down the vibe is down it's all down it's all good but the one thing i have to work on is the songwriting so that's that's it

Get to it, man. I have a recommendation for you that I think might not sit well, given what I myself during my own private investigation have uncovered. The Red Hot Chili Peppers at a certain point in their career went on a similar journey of the soul to try to find their voice, to try to sharpen their own songwriting sensibles, which were always there. they as i understand it they hold up in a in their label paid for just like a shockingly expensive like chateau or like castle or some shit somewhere and for shante specifically just kind of like drenched himself in the beatles um just kind of like lived and breathed that every single day for just like an extended period and the result was blood sugar sex magic but if um your conversation with friend of pod ink and judd is to be believed um there's some uh there's some peppers uh skepticism on your end care to comment what's what's the beef man ah it's not a beef you know i don't have a beef with them i i love john for shante's guitar playing i think it's you know people call it like economical and soulful and you know i think that's a really great descriptor of it I'm not a huge Red Hot Chili Peppers fan. I like the early stuff. I like like because that's the stuff that my dad used to play. Like he used to play like freaky styley and, you know, stuff like that. Like those were the tapes my dad had. So when Blood Sugar Sex Magic came out, it was like I actually heard that stuff later. So it didn't really make sense to me just in terms of like in just a linear kind of way. But yeah, you know, It's funny that you talk about like holing yourself up. That's kind of what I'm doing now is like I'm sort of in the middle of nowhere, far away, and I'm just listening to Mickey Newberry. It's like I've already listened to Felt every day, all day for years to get the kind of like vibe down, you know, because Lawrence is such a master of, you know, not just.

the music but also like the aesthetic and the details that go behind everything which i think is really important that's something i think i i know how to do really well now um but right now it's just listening to mickey newberry and stuff that's like really an elvis like i just listen to elvis all day long and i'm like this is the like so for me it's not the beatles it's like elvis and mickey Seven lonely days and a dozen towns ago I reached out one night and you were gone Don't know why you'd run, what you're running to or from All I know is I want to bring you home it's so funny so my my dad's having like a similar kind of like elvis renaissance so we've like sat down and watched a bunch of his that like some like comeback era i forget what i guess he was playing in you know that like really iconic show yeah where he's like he's he's he got all trim again and he was like just mega sexy what was it live in was it what was is it live at memphis but that might it's the stage is like this is almost like this wrestler type like square and he's wearing just like black leather the black leather jacket like the show is like really stripped down yeah i forget what it's called i should really know this elvis live that much it might just be that simple but i've been as a result i've been rinsing kentucky rain the hot set great ass song so what what is your relation to the Beatles. You know, I never was a Beatles fan. Next question. Was it Elvis in person? I mean, which, which one are we talking about? What the show? There's the Elvis. There's like the Elvis NBC special. It was, it was, he'd, he'd been in a long streak of like, it's the 68 comeback special. That's it. Right.

That one's so fucking good. It's insane. It's fucking, it's goated. It's well and truly goated. Rob, you fuck with Elvis? No, I know nothing about him. Again, it's the same thing of like, I was exposed to all the music that my parents were, and then just deeply on my own shit from the age of 18 until now. So it's, I'm kind of in this very slow process of like now, like rediscovering a lot of old music. I actually saw you tweet about this, Barrett. I'm going to see Fairport in a couple of weeks. Oh, what? Yeah, this working men's club up north in Sheffield opposite my friend's house. Actually, I pulled out my dad's old copy of Legion Leaf and I've been banging that. But I actually wanted to ask you what 70s Fairport you recommend? Because I've only done late 60s so far. I like Babacom Lee a lot. That's the one I've been banging. And also... harvest for the moon sick i'm writing these down what's that song sloth on wait wait it's not no that's not it uh what what's wait no i got i got the album wrong sorry i don't know why it's escaping me right now i think it's just because i i have like a tension headache um what's the name of it oh rising for the moon listen to that album and also listen to the deluxe version with uh knocking on heaven's door bob dylan cover oh hell yeah it's so fucking song dawn is like that's this is like the cozy autumn album i go to just like all like every fall Morning shone among the shadows. Sunlight bled upon the silence. From the blackest night must come the morning sky. But yesterday was such a long time. Yesterday may last forever.

I think it's one original member. Let me have a look quickly. Because I'm not super familiar. My friend had a spare ticket, so I'm traveling up to go and see him. I was talking to my dad about this. They're still constantly touring the UK, and they do a festival every year as well. The show has completely carried on. Wow. Yeah, it's probably like Dave Swarbrick, I think. Oh, Simon. Okay, here it is. It's Simon Nickel, who's the original rhythm guitar player, but he played lead guitar after Richard Thompson left. And those albums that he did where he's the only guitar player, first off, he's one of the best rhythm guitar players ever. And his leads were fucking great, too. He played on Angel, Angel Delight and Babacom Lee. But he was great. Oh, Dave Maddox. He's an OG member. Dave. Oh, wow. Simon Pegg. He's another OG guy. And then so, yeah, it's Nickel Maddox and Dave Pegg. OK, sorry. Sorry about that. No, no, not at all. It's good to be talking to someone who knows their shit. i'm a huge fairport convention fan do you like uh did you there's that one of this is what my dad used to play me when i was a kid that like specific richard and linda thompson album oh yeah it's the best is that the one with like bright lights tonight on it and things like that yeah it's fantastic the bright lights tonight yeah i love that when i get to the border that song kills me Was there a little Brit undertone there in that delivery? Maybe. Are they English? Yeah. They're British. I don't know this. I got to get in on this. I know Fairport Convention, not like super well, but like a couple. It is indeed like hella autumn. This is good. This is kind of like an exchange. Rob will enter his greasy 68 Elvis era. I'll go Fairport style.

and Barrett will get into All Center. On this songwriting tip that you're on, Barrett, are there any contemporaries that you see in music at the moment that kind of embody this spirit that you're trying to get at? i'm just wondering if there's like i think him gets at it really well actually yeah true true true i think i think he's got a really good mix of thing of elements going on and so i i think you know i think organ tapes embodies this well and he sort of spawned a lot of this new kind of like interest in merging like the electronic sound cloud uh elements with acoustic kind of singer songwriter stuff and like the stuff i'm working on isn't doesn't necessarily sound like that at all but i think he i think he definitely embodies that really well and then also people like love fear and you know it's like everything on the comp sort of is is moving in that in that direction absolutely there's that like new thing on back work to oh the bambino dj chicken milk yeah right and that and that's tim's vocals on it and i'm just like huh yeah cool we're gonna um we're in the process it'll be like probably first quarter of next year we're putting out um full sounding if i may say so that's sick on tt okay the demo sound amazing it's gonna be good he's a damn he's a damn sweetie let that be known if that enhances your um your listening you know it's fine to me like we were talking about what we briefly mentioned uh sound like just like sort of at least like appreciation for sam hyde working as kind of like a general litmus test for whether or not someone's working to talk to um the flip side of that is when i've encountered at least two people in real life described organ tapes music

as like blade clone which is just such a like if that's if that's how your mind operates if that's the conclusion if that's the conclusion you draw to then just by definition you are like entirely worthless like there's nothing about you there's nothing you could possibly say to walk that back or redeem that statement it's just like such like abject foolishness have you come across this discourse i have not good man then you're um Your inputs are pure. I need to reevaluate the types of people that enter my life, if this is the standard. Truly depressing. Do you fuck with drain gang stuff? Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been listening to drain gang for quite some time. I mean, I remember when Young Lean came out, like Baron Machat and Hippos and Tanks. R.I.P. yeah i mean i i knew travis who did who did the label with him i pretty well and um yeah so i remember the the whole thing i've i've always really liked that stuff i always thought it was really good i've always been a blade blade fan uh you know like i i think that shit is great i think it's you know i think enough people have copied it to where it may not seem as you know and also it's i think it still sort of carries the weight of i don't know like internet music because it was sort of being it was it was getting really popular especially right before covid and like during covid and so uh yeah no I actually went to a Drain Gang show. I saw them in Austin. Yeah, it was cool. What was that like? I've never seen any of them live. It was good. It was great. Austin has so many drainers. Texas is really... It's like Zoomer, Drainer, Central, kind of. Really? Yeah, it's like just...

full of drainers that's like that's what people are into there so it was it was kind of interesting to see all these kids come out and they were just losing their fucking minds it was wild where do you stand on the blade being 30 um discourse should that be allowed is can he walk it back who cares he's painting now he's doing he's like i don't understand he's not allowed to be 30 as i understand it yeah i i actually tweeted that and like i because somebody was like he just looks like a regular ass guy was like what you're gonna like what did he kill himself because he turned 30 now like what you know it's just also it's quite a clear message in some of his lyrics as well like what that he's got this specific song off his off of spider where the lyrics are something to the extent of like i'm just a regular person like you can do it too like you don't need to copy us like we're all you know we're all living exactly the same life and look kind of like experience it we can all experience the world in the same way there's like specific exact lyrics from that from like his last record which is good it's quite funny that People would try and put him on that pedestal. ...by the truck, told him load it up. Very special numbers on the crest, I have to hold it up. I tried to tell him we're no special, but still they idolize us. You might catch me in the bushes, so we're riding on the bus. I'll start to blush. Profession is just an illusion and the punishment of love. I'm standing solid every season, but it's not solid enough. But you can kill me with a touch. Flying two gloves to the sun. ...

No, totally. I thought that album was great. Oh, it's a brilliant album, yeah. Really, really good. I thought that was his best since his kind of classic shit, too. What's classic Blade to you? I mean... It's hard to say because I even like The Fool, which a lot of people don't. It has some bangers. I think The Fool is... Red Light is obviously his most banging album or whatever. Yeah. With Obedient... Wait, were people kind of shitting on the floor? I mean, it has... Look at the track list. It has, I think, which goes hard. It has Hotel Breakfast. It has Inspiration Comes. All those songs are fucking... Also like Ice Dancer. Ice Dancer was sick. Also, just like, it's such a sick move of him to put on... Fuck, who was it that he put on again? Fuck, fuck, fuck. There's like this sort of like interlude. Where is it? So he has Cartier got on that for sure. Fuck, who is it again? Damn, this sucks that I don't remember this. Is it that Nepalese rapper? I don't think so. Fuck what they called. Wait, nice dancer. Wait, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I mean, it has a song called LinkedIn, which in and of itself is swag. Damn it, why can't I remember this? This is going to gnaw at me, probably in the same way that you not getting that Fairport album entirely correct. would have as well fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck this is like terrible podcasting i'm gonna have to like set this aside so but it's gonna just eat it it's gonna eat me alive fuck but um i mean people so people are saying the fool was shit or something because like the the whole like drain universe is so like deep and kind of like rich and has its own sort of like

sort of like signifiers and and milestones sort of like culturally historically but i feel like quite almost like mercifully detached from it because i just really cannot be fucked to sort of like give the time of day i just want to like engage the music or listen to the music and leave it at that um are you like deep on the the just the heritage not really i mean my engagement with it is basically just like this is music that was sort of you know popular within a kind of internet lexicon at a certain moment uh you know i sort of it was kind of getting popular alongside like peppy the frog and you know and then all these kind of like emerging internet subcultures started like using it as like a soundtrack to whatever their thing was whether it was like you know incels were really into draining you know like so it just seemed to be this thing that people because also there was a kind of a cryptic openness to it at a time when everything was so like discourse heavy i think it was really amenable to people reading into what they wanted to to see in in the music and so i think i think that was part of what made it at least appealing to me or interesting to me is it didn't have like the didactic elements that were just so pervasive in culture at that time. Do you think, I know this kind of as like secondhand knowledge, but do you think in this way that like people saying kind of on the West coast of America, And in South America, certain English goth artists or certain British indie bands like The Cure and Morrissey are really, really popular there for a certain reason. Do you think there's a parallel between that idea and there being a lot of drainers in a place like Texas? Or do you think that doesn't attract you at all? I think it makes sense. I also think...

You know, when you look at a place like Texas, there are a lot of families there. There are a lot of young people there because it's a lot of colleges and students. And it's also like there's a lot of space. So there's a lot of kids to grow up there is where if you go to New York, there's not that many children. It's a place of like transplants and people like moving there later because it's also like prohibitively really expensive. And also, I just think. a lot of kids you know it's like a way for them i think part of it is like the religious iconography helps or like you know like the kind of mysticism growing up in a kind of i don't know what you would call it like christian conservative place it's like they can abandon like i guess you could say the more repressive trappings of that while also feeling like i don't know like a like a divinit like a divination or some sort also that comes from the spirit of the music that's that's familial which is also the whole thing with like the trad cath you know internet larpy kind of stuff but they never did that they weren't as prescriptive uh it was a lot less psyoppy but i think that has a lot to do with it interesting I have, and this is like not even remotely related, but I wanted to ask you about something because it just, it came to mind due to recent events in my life. I was talking to, I had a cousin of mine visiting. He's maybe like 20, 25 years old, older than I am. And he's like a really kind of well-to-do self-made like architect guy. Like everything in his life is like this on paper. has gone the way it needs to but he has this sort of like melancholy streak which i suppose he kind of wanted to purge or address or like exercise through just like psychedelics and like contemporary kind of like hippie adjacent culture um and he was talking about like burning man and how he'd gone to some of the early like 90s ones and and had a great and like life-affirming time and i had to kind of like

bite my liver bite my lip a little bit just you're like instinctively because it's just everything about that that world particularly as it as it's uh as it comes alive that burning man just has no intrinsic appeal to me whatsoever um but i have a lot of time for this for my cousin and i give him like a lot of credit and he's like an incredibly smart and like sensitive dude um and i made some remark about how i'm sure he did have a great time um i was just sorry how he had he had to be exposed to like psytrance and shit and he was just like crestfallen um i'm just wondering like because to me like it maybe got me thinking about like psytrance specifically and just in general kind of music i find completely irredeemable like i'm i'm pretty open-minded and i'm able to find a lot of value even if it's like even if i'm zeroing in on like a particular element or like just stylistic kind of trapping of a given like style of music um but like psytrance to me it just has so little that i can vibe with um and there's maybe like a couple of other like styles or like forms of music that are kind of comparable so i was wondering like what is affected mushroom or something yeah yeah like that that kind of um like what is is there like what to you is like the least redeemable style or kind of music i don't even think You see, I don't even really think in that way just because I don't even know what the criteria for redeemability within music would... I don't even see there necessarily as being a criteria that we can even necessarily invoke or talk about. To me, it's just the kind of music... Just very simply put, redeemability is maybe a little bit lofty, but is there a particular kind of music that you have... historically always struggle to find to derive any kind from that's tough uh no not really i mostly just kind of you know i've liked a lot of different kinds of things and i just try to you know there are a lot of things i've ignored that i haven't paid attention to

But I wouldn't say I could like outright hate music because I think music is such a, I don't know. It's hard to say. It's like, I just, I just think music is a good force in the world. So I don't, yeah, it's, I don't really see it that way. Yeah. That's just, that's just me though. I feel you. I feel you. Do you fuck with new jeans? I haven't listened to much new jeans. they're they're quite like interesting to me as like i've never really given k-pop much of the time of day like there's been a couple of instances like like the occasional like tune that will just like materialize in front of me for whatever reason that i that i sort of enjoy but i've never really spent too much time like going deep just because whatever just on a purely like superficial level all this stuff just hasn't really clicked for me um but it's just like weird phenomenal interesting like phenomenal people like there's like 50 billion kind of like plug like plug and be like type remixes of a couple of their songs that i find like really like appealing and just in general the way they've kind of like just them as a pack obviously like k-pop just like in general especially the stuff that gets exported super super clinical like super super like strategically kind of like executed from like every element of how it's presented to how it's performed to how it's recorded but something about them like they're just they just have this kind of like competitive i don't i don't know what it is like the people behind them whatever they're like team are just like that much more sophisticated in a way that i found myself like sort of actively kind of appreciating like k-pop in a way that i never have before i should just send you a plug and be there's one particular plug and be like new gene song that's really been like sucking my ass for the past week yes send it to me hell yeah i've never really gone down the k-pop hole seems really dark but also like really like morbidly fascinating i'm sure there's a lot of like gems to be mined yeah i'm sure man i'm like i'm kind of getting tired right now because i'm like kind of sick i think i don't know yeah yeah yeah i feel you i feel you that's all good man we can uh i think there was i just have one more thing i wanted to ask you about if that's okay and then we can

call it a wrap yeah yeah for sure cool um yeah i just wanted to ask you about the uh like the s candle live at the antique store set that you did recently because that feels like it was like a real departure from the rest of your solo work and i just kind of wanted to know a bit more about it what your approach was and how you actually did the performance yeah so i actually played at this it was it was a old antique store that turned into an art fabrication studio and my friend from nashville was in town and his wife uh who's a painter had a had an opening at night gallery and so we just wanted to put on a show we couldn't find a space and my friend found this like antique store and it looked really cool and i'd been in la i'd come into la i was like planning on being there anyway so it was like oh why don't we all meet there and play this show um that was a mixture of a lot of the sort of like uh inner tuning fork samples that i've been accruing uh certain like psychoacoustic frequencies mixed in with uh i did like a world as soft as lace cover um a lot of different samples, a lot of field recordings. And yeah, I just kind of was, some of it was actually field recordings. I took outside of frat houses in Texas of people partying. And that was a really cool thing for me to do. And it was one of my favorite things and also a mixture of some of like the, the music that I've made for the show. uh especially like the ambient stuff so it was kind of like all done in ableton live and it was all sort of mixed together with uh with a controller and i was playing keyboards on top of everything too just like a mini sort of midi keyboard and some plugins and stuff just to give it more of i don't know like a dungeon-y kind of sound and you know like i love all of like chief keef's like turbo production all the

magellan's castle dark transylvania like pad sounds and lead sounds it's super like i love that sound so much so i was thinking like oh maybe i can combine all these things into into something that also you know is invoked by my love of antiques too like what what is the soundtrack to an antique store that like is being repurposed for something else i guess sick yeah i really really love that man and i was just so struck so i've been listening to the leaving record before and then jumped forward to that and i was just really struck by the marked difference between the the music you would you would two different sounds of music you were doing under the under the same moniker um well you have you heard have you heard the early sadistic candle stuff that came out on sun arc in 2011 no i wasn't i i thought it was only s candle i didn't realize there was a longer name for it it used to be it was shortened from sadistic candle right okay and it started off as kind of an ambient elect like dark electronic project so if anything it sounds a lot more like the early the earliest shit sick okay i'll go back and check that out then yeah i'll send it to you yeah please do man i'd love that yeah so when that was all done on like a four track tape recorder and um yeah so that's kind of the direction i want to take just my solo my solo stuff from now on it's just kind of no beats i mean I think we're sort of moving towards like a beatless world. You look at just like the, the total deconstruction of like bylay funk and like funk Brasiliero with like DJ Ocania and stuff like that. It's like, I mean, that shit is so good. And it's just like vocal chops, just like repetitive with like all this crazy reverb and, and it's unbelievable. It's so, but it's also so popular for how strange it is sonically. Yeah.

I think, I think stuff like that, like where I was talking about early, like peso pluma and just the, the rise of Kratos and like, which I feel like beats are, which is honestly why like slow dance by chief Keefe was such like a huge song for me, uh, off of thought breaker. It's a classic like that track where it's like young chop doesn't bring in the, the, yeah, yeah, yeah. 15 seconds. It's unbelievable. the like self-control the like discipline and then when it when it actually does break into it it's just like it's bust worthy unbelievable unbelievable tune so i i think that kind of tension is going to get really popular and and so it's like the whole sonic warfare model of like code nine you know with like drill and base and footwork and juke and all of this like theorizing like that's almost become too so commonplace like scaling that back i think is really interesting a lot of juke has has does a lot of what you're or did a lot of what you're describing like far before the kind of like general phenomenon you're describing like now where it's just it's almost like it's just sort of like tuned air and there's just no kicks or like and the base is just like used really really kind of like tactically rp boo is yeah skeletal in so many ways. You're just sculpting air, skeletally, indeed. I love that. Have you seen the I'm Trying to Tell You documentary, Barrett? No. Are you familiar with Tim and Barry at all? They were these UK music filmmakers? No. Oh, okay. Dude, I'll send you that. They did pretty much, I think, the first proper footwork documentary with Richard before he died. It's all on YouTube. the different in the studio moments they do there where they're just filming like richard spin and mani in the studio for like 15 minutes it's exactly that thing where it's like oh yeah yeah i've seen that you have seen it yeah yeah it's amazing it's just been so long shall we uh conclude proceedings yeah i think we're there man barrett man do you have any like closing words any like just something to

get me through the the time ahead i just you know just keep doing it uh write good songs make make good stuff i mean that's really the antidote we we sort of talked about this in the in the second part which we recorded earlier about people thinking words and discourses are a form of like uh tangible cultural production and like constitute what it means to to have like cultural objecthood and it's just not true i think it's obvious that that's jumped the shark and you know we kind of just write good songs that from the heart you know do things that you think are meaningful and people got to live their lives that's it you know live your life and write a damn hook write a damn classic ass hook so yeah i mean it's it's great i love seeing all these little kids like on youtube and in mexico playing like 12 string guitars uh you know doing like lady gaga by peso like those peso pluma covers it's just awesome you know it's like that's people who are not like craft is gonna have to make a big it's gonna have to factor again in what people do and i'm glad it is That leaves me optimistic, man. I'm going to like master shredding. I was super optimistic after this conversation in a way I didn't before. I mean, AI did the exact opposite in art of what people thought it would. It was a sort of, it was kind of like a way to awaken humans backed towards their need for universal recognition. amongst amongst each other which is like oh shit we really have to step our game up now like what can i do to affirm my humanity in light of all of this and so all the superfluous shit is just going to be flushed down the toilet and what will last will be stuff that that actually matters and i think that's i think that's a good thing the bar's been set way too low for way too long so

um thank you brother that was uh it was it was it was honestly like long time coming fits i'm really glad we got to like chat and uh it'll be sick if hopefully we see your ass in london soon we'll show you a good ass time we'll like make something i want to come out there i want to play like i want to do stuff let's fucking do it yeah we should 100 make it happen i'm really down so i think i think it'll be good cool man so you said you're not really going to be living anywhere for a while yeah Like I'm, I'm just, I'm sort of based here, but I'm going to, you're sort of based wherever you are. I didn't think so. I was trying to, I think I know what you're getting at. I see particularly in the...