No Filler Music Podcast - Ep 05: Tosca - Suzuki

Episode Date: February 18, 2018

No Filler discuss what goes into making a great downtempo track, and ultimately conclude that it doesn't get much better than the music of Tosca, specifically the Austrian duo's 2000 release Suzuki. For more info, check out the shown notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/tosca-suzuki-review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and their 2000 album Suzuki. With me, as always, today is my brother Quentin. Q, how are you doing up there in Seattle? I'm doing great, dude. Doing great. Weather's starting to turn in our favor. It's about to get into the beautiful summer months up here. Summer.

So you're just going to skip over spring? We're going to skip it. No, spring and summer, it all feels great up here. I see. Perfect weather. Isn't it funny that we, isn't it funny that we always, for some reason, default to talking about the weather? As if there's nothing else to talk about.

Well, I mean, we could get into deeds about our everyday life, but no one gives us shit about that. But, hey, I guess no one cares about the weather. do they? Exactly, dude. Oh, God. How about this? Have you been to any shows lately?

Any concerts? What was the last concert you went to? Last concert I went to was a, I mean, I guess you could call it a concert. Travis, I've told you about this jazz, it's a bar slash restaurant called the Royal Room. Okay. Every night they have jazz, live jazz. And me and Sarah went and checked out. They had, so pretty much all the shows are, you know, tip out the band members.

You just, they have envelopes at the table. And you just give like two or three dollars to each musician that's playing, you know, whatever you can afford. And they had, it was Django Reinhardt's 108th birthday that night. So the whole night was nothing but Gypsy Jazz. Oh, that's great. So cool, dude. That's awesome. So cool.

Yeah. Yeah, next time you're up here, you and Kara, we're definitely going to take you guys there. It's a really cool place. I love jazz, man. Jazz is great. Oh, man. It's such a cool. Nothing better.

The ambiance. Everything about it's just perfect, man. Yeah, we'll take you guys there for sure. I feel like when it comes to live music, jazz is the best to hear live. For live music? I agree. Absolutely. Because there's just so much.

going on. Yeah. It's great. It's great. What about you, dude? Oh, well, I started a new, started a new job, as you know. That's right. So, you know, my way to connect with people, obviously, is through music, right? So I'm kind of getting my, getting the lay of the land as far as what people like.

You know what I mean? And, um, yeah, we've got this, uh, Bluetooth speaker in the office that, that, uh, people take turns DJing on. Oh, that's cool. They just, you know, you just grab it. Basically, if it's free and nobody's using it, you just grab it, sync it up to your laptop or whatever, and then you can play. And then we actually have a programmer who coded an app that ties into Slack,

which is our messaging app where you can actually type in like hashtag DJ skip, and it'll skip the song. If you're logged into, if you logged into our companies, Spotify account. You can be like DJ song, he'll tell you what's playing. So if you're like sitting at your desk, you'd be like, man, this is sweet. I want to see where it is.

You can just ask the old DJ. That's cool. But anyway. All right, so I could not be more excited about the album and the band that we are talking about today. As we teased in the Tyco episode at the very end, we discovered down tempo together. Maybe.

I don't know So it had to be A decade ago Maybe a little over a decade ago Hang on Just about a decade ago Yeah Yeah about a decade ago

And this was this was the group That we had kind of both Discovered together Or one of us Recommended it to the other one probably But this was like Our intro to down tempo Was Tosca

Yeah Dude you know This was really my intro To electronic music Yeah really as far as appreciating it and like the first this is the first electronic group that you enjoyed or that you like that you said I like this yeah that I paid attention to that's a good way to put it yeah um when we were growing up electronic music wasn't something that we listened to

I don't know you know like yeah I okay we'll say okay when we were growing up I only appreciated music that had band members in it playing actual instruments, you know? Like, I didn't understand electronic music when I was growing up. And I don't know if that was because we grew up in the 90s. And actually, I don't know. Well, I mean, it's supposed to be because... Electronic music was pretty big in the 90s. Yeah, but it was mostly like club stuff, man.

Yeah. As far as what was popular, like on the radio, if there was, if there was ever, a hit on the radio that was an electronic artist. I'm trying to think of what, what, I guess Daft Punk was, I mean, that would be Moby, probably. Moby was the only one that got actual

radio play. I mean, Daft Punk was doing its thing by then, right? Yeah, I guess so I don't know if they were hitting the radio waves in America. I'm sure they were. But either way, we were too young for that. Yeah. You know? Well, it was just, it was mostly rock. We were into rock because that's what our older brother

listened to. That's what our dad mostly listened to. So yeah It was I think Like we You know I kind of look back And laugh now

The way that we Probably felt so Cultured and refined When we listened to Tosca The way that we did it But yeah So

You Yeah Well let's backtrack it just a little bit I want to tell the story All right let's Yeah You paint the picture So

My senior year in high school I started dating This girl I won't go into details. Moved out to Austin with her and a few of her friends. Had a good time. I lived there for a couple of years right out of high school.

Let's just say that their relationship went south. Shit hit the fan. And I realized that I needed to move the fuck away from this girl. And you and our dad helped me do that. I also didn't have a car that was working at the time because I was an early 20-some. something, you know, that just didn't have my priorities straight. So our dad drove down to get me because I was like, I think I want to move back to Dallas. You know, I think I'm going to break up with this girl.

He came and picked me up, drove me back, and then you let me crash on your floor, basically. We had a blow-up mattress. You let me crash with you in your little tiny studio apartment, you know, while I got back on my feet. and during that time, we were listening to a lot of music together. You had a nice turntable setup and some good speakers. You had a nice balcony that we would sit out on. And all thanks to our dad, we would smoke a lot of pipe tobacco and cigars. Right.

And that's what I'm talking about when I say, you know, cultured and, like, sophisticated with our pipes and our down. I think the words you're looking for. as hipster. Yeah, I guess it was hipster, but... I mean, really. Yeah. But yeah, we, you know, you know, there's a window facing the balcony. So we would open, crack the window up and put the speaker kind of on the lead so we could hear it on the balcony.

And then we would listen to Tosca. But yeah, those are good times, man. Really good times. Like you said, we listened to a lot of music together. Yeah, dude. But yeah, so anyway, I'm pretty sure that Tosca came up on a Pandora. shuffled or station or something. We listened to a lot of Pandora.

Yeah. You know, I wish I knew which artist, like, Tosca was tied to as far as, like, what station was I listening to, you know? Because if you remember Pandora, you'd type in an artist and then it would play similar artists. That was basically all it was. Yeah. So I wish I could, like, retrace it and go back to, like, who was the artist that I put

into Pandora that, that, you know, I might have even picked, you know, because they had genre stations too. I'm going to pick like, you know, chill or something like that or down tempo. Radio stations to listen to while you smoke pipes with your twin brother. Yeah. I think that was one of them. I'm pretty sure they didn't get that granular cue, but they may have. But either way. Yeah, those are good times, man. I look back fondly on that year or so that I crashed on your floor. Yeah. Okay. So, um, we have to, uh, we have to, uh, we have to, uh, we have to, uh, We have to take a little break here and talk about what we've been listening to lately, Q.

Because sometimes we like to dive right in, and sometimes we forget to take care of some housework. You know what I mean? All right. So my pick for the week is an original song from the British Dark Comedy, The End of the Fucking World, which is streaming on Netflix right now. I highly recommend it. It's fantastic. So anyway, for those of you who aren't familiar with the show, it's based on a graphic. novel by Charles S.

Forcman. It's essentially about a teenage psychopath and his free-spirited girlfriend who he plans on killing like he wants her to be his first victim right? Because he's like a psychopath right?

Jesus. It's a dark comedy dude. Don't worry about it. And then they run off together and you know, shenanigans happen. But aside from it being a fantastic show. The soundtrack is amazing. Not just the original stuff, which the song,

this is one of the original songs written for the show. But it's basically, there's something going on as far as like, there is a motif or a theme or something tied to America. Like I said, it's a British comedy. But every time they go to like a diner or something on the side of the road, It's like one of those gimmicky, like American diners, you know? Like it's 50s, 60s, American diner. All they do is eat American foods or they're eating cheeseburgers, you know, French fries. But the music is like 50s and 60s like bebop and stuff like that, you know. And some UK stuff, but it's all from the 50s and 60s.

So like there's that kind of like... Is it legitimately for? from the 50s and 60s or is it just written to sound like that? No, no, no, it's legitimately from the 50s and 60s. Okay, cool. So the original songs that were written for the show are by Graham Coxon. And if the name sounds familiar to you, that's because... Not at all.

Well, for those listening, who's... That name might sound familiar to. I'm sorry. That's because he was the guitar player for the rock band Blur. You've heard of them, right you? I've heard of blur, yeah. Yeah, everybody remembers the song number two, I believe it was what the, their big hit. Was that the name of the song?

Yeah. I really hope so, bro. Yeah, song two. That's what it was called. Everybody remembers that shit. But anyway. Sure. I'm sure I do.

Yeah. So let's just play the song. and let's just say that the songs paired very well with the scenes and what was happening in the show at the time. So anyway, just play the damn thing.

Outside the window they're singing. Inside the doorway there's me endlessly thinking and working. So key your thoughts. Yeah, I like that.

a lot. So it's really simple, really simple song. You know, when you, when you watch the show, like I said, it's a, it's a bunch of songs from the 50s and 60s. So when I first heard this, I was like, who is this? You know, I thought it was somebody from the 50s that I just had no clue about, you know what I mean? But then I found out it was, it was Graham Coxon. But other way, you know, all the music in the, yeah, all the music in the show has that kind of organic vibe, dark vibe. You know, it's a dark song. The lyrics are dark. But again, when you watch the show and you hear the music, you experience it in a whole different way. It's paired perfectly with the show.

So let's hear your pick for the week, Q. What you heard? Well, as per usual, I end up listing to a lot of music in the same vein as whatever musician or band that we're talking about in the week leading up to us recording this. and I got back into this artist. He goes by the recording name, Aim. His name's Andrew Turner. He's a British musician, DJ and producer. He's been active since 1995.

Most of his stuff is instrumental. Lots of sampled music, lots of jazz and hip-hop sampled kind of music. And one of my favorite songs of his is off of an album that came out in 2006 called Flight 602. I remember. Yeah, I remember this. Yeah, it's a great album. So it ties into Tosca in the sense that,

and we're going to dive a little bit more into down-tempo music. I want to say that most of what you're hearing in this song is going to be sampled instruments, you know, sampled recordings. I don't know for sure how much of it is stuff that that he recorded himself and looped, you know, but it's all loops that kind of build on each other. It's all layered, which is kind of what makes down tempo, down tempo, you know. So this is track two on the album. It's called Walking Home Through the Park.

Yeah. It's all about the drums, dude. For sure. That drum change. Right. And then what's interesting about that, it seems like he relied more on like organic instrument samples. You know what I mean? Yeah. As I was listening back, you know, I regret saying that a lot of that the tracks on this album are nothing but sampled. Because when you say that a song is mostly sampled music, it's music that wasn't made by the artist that created it.

and I can't find enough information on Andrew Turner. I don't know if he actually does play these instruments, but the bottom line is it's music that's made up of looped recordings. Right. Which is, I guess, a good segue into Toska's music as well. Because I know that they actually play and record a lot of the instrumentations that you hear in their music. Or they sample, they sample musicians. They go and get musicians to...

Or they sample musicians, but the whole thing with electronic music, especially down tempo and chill, you know, the chill genre, everything is looped and everything is layered. It always starts very simple and layers are added with each, you know, however many measures. Sometimes it'll be a good five or six measures before anything changes. or, you know, something that will be so subtle that you almost don't even notice it. And it's definitely something that...

So actually, I have a quote real quick that I really liked. There is a Washington Post article that came out in 2002 all about down tempo. And I liked what this guy Martin Johnson had to say about down tempo. He says, unlike most popular music, down tempo could withstand close listening or it can retreat into the background with equal ease. Yeah, definitely. So down tempo is music that demands your attention while at the same time it's something that you could easily have playing at a low volume, you know, during a cocktail party or something. Yeah, yeah.

No, that's great because, you know, it's not. So there's actually, I'm not going to give the direct quote, but. there was an interview that I read where they were asking are there Richard or Rupert. Is his name Rupert? What was his name? Yeah, so we're talking about Toska, Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber.

Yeah, so I'm not sure which one answered with this response, but the question was along the lines of like, what do you guys think about the down-tempo label? You know what I mean? Something along those lines. They said they didn't, you know, that's been attached to them, but they don't really like labels.

And they went on to say that as far as down tempo is concerned, you know, they said that, and rightly so, a lot of quote unquote, down tempo music is essentially just muzac. You know what I mean? What?

Muszac. They're saying that the term now can almost apply to, you never heard that term, Musac? Like what you hear the elevator? I have, but I don't really know what it means. It means like just the generic, like, instrumental music that you hear at a department store or in an elevator or something like that.

Like an elevator music. The term elevator music, yeah. Yeah, okay. I see that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I forgot the point that you just made that made me think of that. Oh, well, the down tempo music is something that that... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Demands your attention. If you pay attention to it, it's worth it. To me, the difference between good downtemper music and downtempo music that would just be classified as music. elevator music is good downtown music is worth actually stopping and paying attention to what the artist is doing. You know what I mean? And that's what it all comes down to the layers.

Yeah, it's, it's, um, I don't know if that's something that doesn't make sense to people that don't listen to downtim of music. And we're trying to not to sound all highbrow and stuff, you know, but yeah, it is. It is what it is, man. Yeah. So, Travis, and I'm sure I have the same answer, but like, what is it about down tempo that you love so much? Number one, there's so many, so you're going to hear a lot of, with down tempo, it's, it seems to borrow a lot from jazz. Yes. It can, at least, in some instances. It, it borrows from, it borrows from like reggae almost sometimes, especially Tosca, like dub, right? the term dub.

Yep. Not dub step, but like reggae like dub stuff. You're going to hear, you know, you could hear vocal work. Like think about bonobo, and I don't know if bonobo would be classified as down tempo anymore, but he certainly was. And he brings in these great vocalists on their, both the actual recordings and at his live performances. I didn't really appreciate really pretty female vocals in a track until I got into down. tempo really right um and the way that the way that taska particularly uses vocals yeah they almost they they use it as a another instrument you know what i mean as another instrument yeah and yeah

which we'll you'll hear hear what we're talking about yeah let's backtrack a little bit more i'll just something i read that that i thought was really cool um origins of down tempo music or chill you know or lounge music whatever you want to call it right um some people think that this music kind of started in, well, I guess specifically, Manchester, United Kingdom. At the end of 1992, there was a code of conduct introduced for dance clubs that specified that clubs should provide seating in a choir area along with free drinking water or risk losing their license. Did you read that, draft? No.

Yeah, no. So think about that. So early 90s, I guess, you know, the safety inspections or whatever, they were saying, okay, we need to have an area, a designated area in these clubs. They need a place to hydrate and chill out for a little bit if they're out, you know, getting too drunk or whatever, getting too rowdy on the dance floor. We need designated areas that they can go have a drink of water, sit down, you know, that provide couches, lounge areas where they can rehydrate and, you know, do what they got to do to sober up or whatever.

And along with that, they, you know, they started putting DJs in these rooms and they would play more loungey, you know, more chill kind of tracks in these designated areas of these dance clubs. I thought that was cool. Interesting. Yeah. So down tempo, for the most part, is instrumental, like we were saying. but they also, there are a lot of great downtempo tracks with vocals in it. Let's go ahead and play our first clip and just kind of, let's kind of introduce Tosca, besides the little intro that you heard, which was the title track off the album.

That was Suzuki that we played our intro. Our clips are going to be a little bit longer for this episode because of the nature of down tempo. You really got to listen to a good, at least two minutes. of a song in a down tempo, you know, on a down tempo song before anything really changes. But we should, let's preface this by saying that, I guess for people who perhaps have never really ventured into down tempo, yes, it's repetitive, but that's sort of the point, I guess. It goes back to that quote that I had from that Washington Post article. Yeah.

Unlike most popular music, down tempo could withstand close listening or retreat into the background with equal ease. Yeah, the key is to listen for minor changes as far as instruments being added, samples being added, layers being added and taken away. That's the whole key here. Yeah, so here is clip one from track number four

on Tosca's 2000 release Suzuki. Echo Frangue. Yeah, we stopped doing that after a while because we're like, hey, wait a minute, it's probably isn't good for the health. No, it sure isn't. For the old lungs. But yeah,

I do associate the smell of pipe tobacco with downtown my music now. Yeah. Dude, now, this is funny. You remember, so you remember what else we used to do? We used to go to that, like I said, it was a very high-end outdoor shopping area.

Yes. And we would be the assholes that lit up a fucking pipe. Yes, and walked around. But do you remember the time that we were, were walking around with our pipe tobacco. Yes. And we actually heard Tosca on one of the outdoor speakers. And we're like, this is, I remember that.

This is, you know, this is a sign right here. Yeah, dude. I remember that. We got, like, way too excited about that. Because what are the odds, man? Anyway. So, for me, my favorite part about this song is the female vocals on it. Yeah.

and apparently she pops up in a lot of their songs. Oh, Anna Clemente. Yep, that's her. That's her. Anna Clementi. And she's not even singing. She's just, really just humming. Well, she obviously was, she went into the studio, laid down a bunch of vocal stuff,

and then they took it and sampled it and did a bunch of stuff with it, right? Yeah. I don't know why this always pops into my head, but I'm going to share it. For some reason, this song, makes me think of, like, I just imagine a woman laying in, you know, those like, I don't know, I don't know if it's Victorian style or whatever, those big bathtubs with, like, it's got four legs, it's a big ass tub, you know what I mean, you lay in it. Yeah.

And she's, she's, she's, it's, it's a bubble bath. That's weird, man. And she's just laying, just listen, dude. She's just laying back cleaning herself and just humming, just humming these, howman this, what, man? That's the last thing I would think of, dude. Like, just kind of like humming to herself with like a rubber ducky or some shit. What?

What, man? What the hell? What? Dude, you know, whatever you want to think about when you listen to this song, it's fine. I'm just saying, it's funny that you bring that up because a lot of times with down tempo or electronic music without words, especially down tempo and more kind of like, I think of like, how am I going to phrase this? I'll save it for two more picks in because the track that we cover called The Key I think the imagery that pops up in my head

we'll see if it aligns with the imagery that pops up in your head when you hear it because now I'm really curious Okay But I just think that down to tempo I tend to associate it with like noir stuff Like film noir Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah for sure All right This episode is going to be two hours long if we don't speed it up. Well, hey, let me just say one, let me bring in one more quote here because we were talking about how down tempo

brings in a lot of jazz and whatnot. This was an interview back in March of 2015 in this magazine called Future Music. It's essentially a electronic music magazine. So this was an interview.

But they asked, where did Tosca derive from? So specifically, like what influences could you point to? And Richard Dorfmeister said they soaked up all kinds of musical styles back when they were growing up and whatnot. From talking heads to Ken and Miles Davis's at Garter period. He said that his father's friend had a huge jazz collection that he went through when he was younger. They gone to list experimental music like Stockhausen, blues artists like. John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, 70s jazz funk like Herbie Hancock, dub reggae, particularly

Lee Perry, and of course the new way of cutting beats that came along around the late 80s. He mentions Grand Master Flash and so on and so forth. So anyway, point being, these guys were influenced by a ton of stuff, and you can certainly hear that when you listen to their discography as a whole, you know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. Particularly the jazz and the funk and the dub reggae, I think, makes up a lot of the Tosca sound. You know what I mean? So let's go to the next pick because this is Boss on the boat, right?

Yes. Okay. This is an interesting change of pace. Yeah, so Boss on a boat. Let's just play it and we'll talk about it. Okay. I might be regretting this, but let's play it all the way. My clip is two minutes and 53 seconds long.

That's a bit on the long side. But it's kind of a long track. And I feel like it's worth it to listen to a good chunk of the song to really get to feel for. I feel like with Don Tippa, you have to listen to longer segments of the song to really get to feel for it. Yeah, that's kind of what we were saying. Okay, so here is track number five, boss on a boat. Wait, track number seven. Here is track number seven, boss on a boat.

boss on the boat somebody's on a boat that's all you need to know yeah okay so here's here's the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear this track Oceans 11

Ocean's 11 or some sort of heist movie there's a heist going down do you agree? Yeah I get it yeah for sure even the name of the song boss on the boat it just makes you think of some shenan's going down you know

Some shenan. Some shenanes. Sure. Okay. Well, here's what it makes me think of, Travis. And Mitchell, I hope you're listening because I know you're going to remember this. Mitchell. Our only listener.

Our only listener, Mitchell. Travis, you remember that goofy walk that you used to do? Oh, my God. It goes perfectly. I picture you doing that walk along to this song. every time. See, obviously our brains go to two very different things when we listen to this music because, number one, I never in a million think of a woman in a bathtub when I listen to

a Roscoe. Oh, now you will. No, actually, I won't. Oh, no, you will. Because I can't associate those two things. I can't even see how you got to that, especially the bubbles and stuff. Like, you know. It's the, it just sounds like, it just sounds like, it just sounds like,

something that you would do if you were in a bathtub, you know, with a bubble bath, you just kind of hummed to yourself. Yeah, but what do you think of when you think of, so you only think, when you hear music, you only think of what might I be doing while I'm listening to this music. No, man, I don't know. I can't tell you how, where it came from. Hey, like I said, whatever you want to think of is fine. But I tend to associate it with what scene, what would be happening in a movie that this would be a good song to play during that scene. especially when it's instrumental music because that's just, you know, how my brain works. Yeah, so I've got one other quote from, and maybe this was the same interview that you read because it doesn't specify who's talking. So this could have been Richard or this could have been the other guy.

What's his name? Rupert. They asked them, so this is on a website called Colorizing. It was an interview back in 2014. and they were asking him about the early years back when they were making music together as teenagers. And I guess the question doesn't matter because this part of the answer doesn't really even apply to the question. But they said that already at that time, the overall sound and gesture was more important than a single instrument or solo or showing off technical skills. So that's another thing about downtempo.

Nothing that you hear is really that complicated, but that's not the point. This is music that you can make yourself with a laptop and a microphone. And Ableton or something like that. And Ableton, yeah, right, in one of those programs. If you can loop a guitar line that you make, it doesn't matter how simple it is. If you can loop it and just kind of tweak the sounds and, and loop it in a way that's creative and then add a drumbeat to it, you can make some really creative and unique music.

And really, you don't have to have any high technical skills to pull this kind of music off effectively, which is what I really like about Don Tipo. And that goes back to that quote from earlier that we were saying, you know, this is the kind of music that you can really focus on and appreciate, or you can play it in the background at a cocktail party or whatever. And it works perfectly either way. Yeah. And, you know, again, like what we were saying,

there is obviously a huge difference between exceptional down tempo and down tempo that you can make on your laptop. Obviously, you know, when you listen to Toska, like these guys, you know, and of course it helps that they actually bring in real musicians to lay down guitar tracks and vocal tracks. but as you were saying there's really nothing stopping anybody I mean we talked about when we talked about

Tyco Scott Hanson I mean he was just the guy with his laptop when he first started out and he made yeah he made great great music you know and then he added live instrumentation later you know so anyway yeah good point it's it is simple

and there's something about the simplicity that probably goes back to the quote that we said earlier where it's either it's good for background or it's good for a little bit more closer examination. Yeah. Okay. So the last track is called The Key and it's track number 10. Except it's not the last track on the...

Our last pick, track number 10, The Key. And this is... We do have two parts for this. Yeah, this one is going to require a couple of clips. Holy shit, dude. Your first, your first clip is three minutes, over three minutes. tiny man but it's worth it and this song

is probably exemplifies better than anything else from Toska how well they do the building of like the layers adding on different layers

and this song first off first off how long is this song I think it's like seven minutes okay yeah so you're hearing a good chunk of the whole song by the time you listen to both clips here but the first clip is from the the beginning of the song and you're going to hear you know you're going to hear

just a little bit of some light percussion there's some sort of percussion going on and then you're going to hear an actual drumbeat get added you're going to hear some sort of a synth thing happening in the background but it all builds up to this really awesome part you'll know exactly what it is because that's when you're going to start paying attention. I'll just say that. And then we'll get to the next clip later. But we'll let's just listen to this first one. And then I think you'll also see that this clip is a little bit darker, I guess. It's certainly not as upbeat as boss on the boat. So I'll just leave it at that. So let's hear the first clip here. This is called the Key, Track 10, Suzuki, Tuska, Down tempo. Words.

All right, so there's a lot to unpack here. You know what I mean? Yeah. But once that baseline kicks in and the drums kind of kick in, like I said, that's when it becomes a song to start paying attention to. You know what I mean? Yeah, because from that point on, a lot of stuff gets added. Really subtle.

Yeah. But the underlying synth is still going on the entire time, you know, that keyboard. but yeah and then he starts adding that vocal sample you know that kind of that's very prominent like throughout and then he adds an actual more traditional sounding piano that kind of starts to play and then it almost sounds like a not a siren but there's something that toward the very end of the clip that we just played toward the very end of the clip yeah yeah but then those things start getting

start being taken away taking away throughout the song it goes back you know, all of those layers get stripped away, and then you're back with what we started with, and then they bring it all back again. So play track two, clip number two, and then you'll kind of hear a moment in the song where it kind of goes back to what it started as, and then it all comes back in.

From that interview that they did with future music, the electronic music magazine, they were asked, is there a lot of live instrumentation integrated into the mix? And Richard Dorfmeister said, live recording is where the human element comes in. No plug-in in the world can replace a live recording.

And he goes on to say, the most effective instrument is the voice. It cuts perfectly through the frequencies and can't be replaced by any software. So there you go. Richard Dorfmeister himself talking about how, how and why they use the human voice so often in their music, because you can't replicate it through any other means.

You know what I mean? And when you hear, it's kind of like with the giggle, when you hear it, like you immediately start paying attention. Because if the whole track is nothing but these different electronic music samples, once you hear a voice get introduced, like you immediately pay attention to that. You know what I mean? And when it's something like a giggle,

you know, it makes it that much more interesting, you know? Absolutely. So there you go. I feel like they go around the streets and find some random homeless dude to record a lot of this stuff because there's some weird-ass vocals going on

and a lot of their music. And I can just picture them like holding up a little microphone with a portable recorder and just looping a crazy homeless guy. Does that just where my brain differs from yours, dude? No, I mean, I can hear that. But they've always done that. Especially in a lot of the tracks on opera.

Well, their first studio album. There's a lot of weird vocals. But they continue doing that. Like, you remember No Hassel? Yeah. There's that one track where, like, it seems like this, there's this female vocal.

sample that's like she's definitely not singing something in it and maybe we'll put it on the show notes I guess I'll I'll try to find it but yeah but to me like I said earlier they're using the they're using vocal

tracks as other instruments like the the woman giggling in that clip yeah yeah it's weird stuff but there's something that I like about it you know it's it's interesting it does demand

your attention if you're... Yeah, because if you're listening to... If you're listening to this in your earbuds and suddenly some some female starts giggling, it's like, what's going on here? You know? Yeah. But then at the same time, if you just have

this music playing in the background at a party or something like that, you won't notice those kind of things. Probably not. You're going to be like, who's laughing right now? That's what I would say. So anyway, dude, do you remember

when no household came out and you and I we were losing our goddamn minds because we were so excited about it and this is when I was still in that apartment Look man I'll tell you why I did I think partly

it was because we listened to it on the way back we we drove up to Denton we met up with our buddy Josh at a bar somewhere and he was with a bunch of friends and I got a little a little drunk my friend I mean

I guess that might have been part of it. So I was even more excited and hyped up about it, listening to it on the way back home. So my excitement, aka my drunkness, probably made you even more excited about it because you had like a contact high.

Well, yeah, because we, for my drunk stupor. Because we know that I wasn't drunk, obviously. Right. They don't even know why you weren't. That's for another day.

Another time. That's for another day. But yeah, I think there's a lot of really interesting things that happen on those no hassle tracks that kind of play into this the idea that they just throw on a giggle

here and there, you know? Yeah, they've been doing it since the beginning really. But on no hassle, I feel like they took it to the next level. Which is what? Their fourth or fifth studio album? Yeah, it came out in 2009. So this is right about the time that we were.

You may not have been on my floor, but you were you were... No, I was... You were on the second floor and I moved to Right. The first floor. I moved into my own space, my own studio in the same complex. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we didn't have New Dust yet.

We didn't have the music blog yet. So I remember posting this on my Facebook wall and nobody gave two shits about it. You remember that? Because people, I mean, really, unless you. We both did. Yeah, unless you, I don't know, I get, you know, this is where we might start to sound a little bit like music snaps here. But, but it takes a certain type of. of music fan to to enjoy listening to this kind of stuff.

I mean, that's just, I don't know how else to say it, but I think it's true. Yeah. This is just, it's not, it's not for everybody. And we're not going to go down any rabbit hole as far as like, you know, what's on, what's on the radio or whatever. We did plenty of that when we talked about Kings of Leon. Yeah, so if you want to know how we feel about the radio hits,

Check out our third episode on Kings of Leon. Yeah, I guess just check out our assessment of what happened to Kings of Leon. Yeah, and if you want to hear some more music that is under this down-tempo umbrella, check out our second episode on Tyco, Scott Hanson, and the kind of music that he makes. Yeah, that's a whole different flavor of down tempo. All right, so that should do it for us this week. our take on Tosca's 2000 release Suzuki. And before we get into our outro track for this week,

I just wanted to remind everyone where they can check us out on the webs. We are at no filler podcast.com. There you can find all of our show notes for each episode. We've got our SoundCloud player tied to each episode on the web. website. You can also listen to us on iTunes and any other podcast app that you have. We should be up on there. And also, be sure to check out our playlists as well that we've started on Spotify. We've got our January playlist up, which features our first two episodes on it, our Allison Chains and Tycho episodes. We've got all the songs that are featured on those episodes in the

playlist for you. So Travis, you've got our outro this week, don't you? I hope you do because I don't. Yeah, so I listed off that long list of influences, early influences that Richard mentioned in an interview that they did with feature music back in March of 2015. And he mentioned talking heads, which I thought was interesting. And any excuse to play talking heads. And I'm going to take it up. So I decided that a good talking heads track to play on a Tosca episode would probably be off of their 1980 album, Remain in Light. And this song is called Seen and Not Seen.

And it's got a very, I don't want to say down tempo by any stretch, but it's got a sort of like what these Tosco tracks are we played. It relies a lot on layering and sampling, I guess. And then David Byrne, he's done this a couple times in some of the records where he's not really singing. It's more of like a spoken word thing.

And he does it on this track as well. But anyway, let's just play it out. It'll be it for us this week. here is a song from Talking Heads. It's called Seen and Not Seen. And next week we are going to talk about Crosby Stills, Nash, and Young, and their self-titled album that came out, I believe, in 1969.

So that's going to be a great sort of 180 from Tosca. And it's going to be nice to go that far back. I think the farthest we've gone back is 90. so far, right, with our first episode. So, yeah, we're going to take you back to the late 60s. Look forward for that and it'll be Saturday or Sunday. I'm excited. I'm excited to get into that with you.

I haven't really gotten into them yet. Yeah. So this is Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Wait, no, sorry. Did I say that earlier? You did, man. Okay, no, sorry. This is just Crosby Stills, Nash.

Okay. They didn't start collaborating with Neil Young until later. So, my bad. This is Scrised We Steels and Nash and their self-titled album came out in 1969. That's going to be fun. So anyway, that'll do it. And we're just going to play out with this outro song.

My name is Travis, with me as always. My brother Quentin. That's me. Y'all take care. We'll see you next week. See you later. We're not going to see you at all, though. That's true.

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