No Filler Music Podcast - Lush Heaviness: The Immersive Sound Textures of KILN

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

Next up on our batch of episodes devoted to the wide world of electronic music, we take a left turn and listen to a couple of tracks from the ambient-electronic trio KILN. By manipulating live instrum...entation (treated guitars, sampled drums) with field recordings and other found sounds, KILN create lush and immersive soundscapes that borderline on hallucinogenic, and masterfully walk the line between organic, acoustic and electronic music. Grab a nice set of headphones for this episode! Tracklist Kiln - Lux (RPF Rebuild) Fibreforms - Untitled Bright Format Kiln - Hong Kiln - Season Akira Yamaoka - The Reverse Will Moses Sumney - Virile People Press Play - That Walk This podcast is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:10 Explore the new Peloton Cross-Training Treadplus at OnePeloton.ca. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis, got my brother Quentin here, as always. And Q, I almost hung it up, dude, over the weekend. I was so pumped. I was like, you know what, I could quit right now while I'm ahead.
Starting point is 00:02:25 You almost threw in the towel. Yeah, because I was like, you know, I've peaked. Like, there's nothing else for me to do here. If you follow us on Twitter, it's Ad No Filler podcast. You may have noticed that one of my tweets, Q was retweeted by the artist himself. Who are you talking about? Like I don't already know. Comtrus retweeted my post about him.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Beal, beel, beel, bea, bea, be on. So if you're listening to our last couple episodes, we covered Comtrus, the synth wave artist, and his debut EP, cyanide sisters. There, I said it correctly. Because I, here's the only, this is where I said, you know what, I can't, I have to keep doing this because I fucked up so poorly.
Starting point is 00:03:16 I still can't believe you did this, dude. I don't understand how this could have happened. So my moment when I realized that he retweeted me, the joy that I had was immediately dashed. When somebody else, you know, because I started getting a bunch of notifications on my phone, somebody commented and said cyanide in happiness, lull. And that's because that's what I had a typo in my tweet. Yeah. So cyanide in happiness is a web comic that I'm a fan of.
Starting point is 00:03:47 I think everyone's familiar with cyanide and happiness. Yeah, yeah. And the guys are actually based out of Richardson. I know I'm friends with somebody who's friends with them. I'll just say that. Anyway, so I guess when I was typing out cyanide, like typically that word is paired with and happiness in my brain. So like instead of typing out cyanide's sisters, I typed out cyanide in happiness
Starting point is 00:04:08 and tweeted it and didn't even think about it. And you can't edit a tweet, unfortunately. Anyway, I'm not going to let that get me down, Q. It was obviously a mistake. And I, you know, the guy called it out. I laughed about it with him. I, you know, mentioned Explosum, which is the company that they make the, the, the, the Sinai and Happiness comic.
Starting point is 00:04:32 So I did the best I could with it. But still, pretty embarrassing, you know, we get a tweet that's retweeted by the artist, which means he read that. clearly he saw the mistake, but he didn't do anything. He probably thought it was hilarious, dude. Probably. You know, at least he's got a sense of humor about it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:48 Either way, you know what? Here's a good thing, dude. Here's what got me excited. If Comtrews retweeted the tweet, there's a chance that he listened to our episode, and that got me super stoked, man. Right. He's listening to our dumbasses.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Yeah, so he can probably listen and see all the things we screwed up. Shit chatting it up. All the things we got wrong. about his album. But either way, it proves that, you know, there is a purpose for Twitter. You know, we resist it as long as we could. Yeah. Anyone who's been listening to this for at least a good three or four months
Starting point is 00:05:26 knows that we've been dragging our feet on the social meets just because it's just not something I want to do. Right, right. I still don't want to do it. But I think in the last two weeks, we've been somewhat active on it. it's proven how useful it is like over and over again. We had some like a really cool interaction. And this guy actually filled out our comment form on the website,
Starting point is 00:05:50 no filler podcast.com. But he reached out to us and said, hey guys, I sent you a long email. And, you know, we read the email. It was one of the coolest things we've ever read.
Starting point is 00:06:01 We then posted that on Twitter. His story that he told about the undoing of David Wright, which is a really obscure band from Denton that we did, bonus Halloween episode on last year. Yeah, the last band we thought that we would ever hear from someone, you know, who, especially someone who knows, who had an experience with the band. Well, and somebody who was not from Denton. That was making, well, it made it so cool.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Like, where was he from again? Greenville, Kentucky. At the time, that's where he was living. So they were doing some probably tiny ass tour. They were going on tour. They paid them to come, right? Yep. Yeah, the whole story is on Twitter, you know?
Starting point is 00:06:38 Yeah, that's right. our Twitter handles No Filler podcast. Hop on there and give it a read. It's pretty great. That's what we've always wanted out of this podcast was to open up some sort of a like a channel of communication between people who listen and us.
Starting point is 00:06:57 Tell us what we get wrong. Tell us what you love. Yeah. We've had somebody tweet me a few times and enlightened us on some things that we got wrong on our kid A and our amnesiac episodes on Radiohead. And hey, that's great. I love it.
Starting point is 00:07:15 Tell me when I'm wrong, please. Because, you know, that's what it's all about. It's all about, you know, learning more about these bands and albums and, you know, geeking out together with our listeners. So there's what this is all about. Anyway, so now let's get around to business here to continue our electronic batch of episodes here, we're going to talk about an artist that one could
Starting point is 00:07:42 make the argument cue that they're not an electronic band. Well, I'm going to stop you there, son. But it opens up an interesting conversation about what is electronic music, right? Yes, and that's where, yeah, we're going to dive right into that here. So, now last week we covered architect for our sidetrack on Comptures and what made him different about just the typical, you know, outrun synthwave kind of artist is that he integrates samples and loops from actual instruments.
Starting point is 00:08:17 That actually brings up a good point queue. It's time for a segment that we should probably do more of called Set the Record Street. We were discussing all the samples and stuff that he pulled in and like wondering whether it was him who was laying down the drums and like the, the wind instruments and whatnot. All of that information, Q, was available to me, just a click away on the record label website. So, oops, sometimes I rely too much on like discogs.com or Wikipedia to tell me what's what.
Starting point is 00:08:53 But anyway, yeah. So our assumption was right. It was an actual drummer. The guy's name is Jerome Churni, Churnian, I can't, there's no way I can't, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a silent T in that in that name. So churn, churnian, he lays the drums down on just about every track on the record, um, including one of the tracks that we talked about, not both of them. And then there is a, an actual saxophone player that shows up. He did the clarinet on Odyssey, which is one of the
Starting point is 00:09:25 tracks we talked about. And, um, and then it's got the, it's got the, it's got the two vocalists mentioned here as well. But yeah, actual strings were arranged by somebody. So like, yeah, this guy had, I mean, there was an actual violinist, an actual cello on this record. So yeah. So, but here's the deal. Here's what makes, and I'm going to assume again here, but here's what makes it
Starting point is 00:09:51 still an electronic artist. Yes, you've got an actual drummer and a saxophone player. But my guess is that architect is, you know, he might have them lay down the drum beats in studio. But my guess is he will take those recordings and either loop the drumbeat, you know, or splice up and play around with the saxophone recordings and then put that into his music. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I mean, we even talked about that how like, you know, he would, he manipulated that bass line and stuff. Right. And that's what makes it an electronic, an electronic artist to me is because
Starting point is 00:10:35 architect could take this music on the road with him and he doesn't need a drummer and he doesn't need a saxophone player. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. So, I mean, that's what that's what I want to talk about with Kiln. So yeah, today. Yeah. We're finally going to mention the name of the artist that we're actually covering, which is good because I think it kind of spills into this, to this band and we can talk about it. Yeah. Based, you know, spinning off of this conversation about live instruments and stuff. They're called kiln. K-I-L-N, sort of like the thing that you put your third-grade ceramics project into the
Starting point is 00:11:09 oven, you know, and let it bake or whatever. And these guys are a trio. It's three guys. Kevin Hayes, who plays drums, and he's also, he also does sampling. Kirk Marison, who plays guitar, effect of loops and keyboard. and Clark Viberg, who also plays guitar, and he messes around with loop pedals and stuff like that. So they've been making music as far back as mid-90s.
Starting point is 00:11:41 Before they were kiln, they went by fiber forms. And they were mostly an acoustic instrumental band at the time, but they did still kind of mess around with like looped percussion. percussion instruments and, you know, affect pedals and stuff like that. But it's not the kind of music that they would later go on to do as kiln. So you can actually find their music. It was kind of like a huge compilation album that this record label put together of their old stuff that they used to do before they became kiln.
Starting point is 00:12:22 So this is their fiber forms music. This is more an actual acoustic, you know, instrumental band. They've got this album called Tree Drums that was released back in 96. So this is kind of like unearthed material kind of stuff that they were doing way back in the day. So here's my favorite from this album. This is track four. It is called Untitled Bright Format. Yeah, I mean, that's like, that's jazzy, you know.
Starting point is 00:16:04 Yeah, this kind of reminds me. I also got a hint of 311. I'm just going to put that out there. But it's probably the drums, too, with the, you know, you had the snare a little bit pulled away from that. It's almost like a piccolo. Yeah. Super high-pitched snared.
Starting point is 00:16:17 Yeah, yeah. This, to me, is very similar to kind of that math rock, instrumental stuff like the Mercury program, that band that we covered. You know, this is just an instrumental band, you know? Sure. Yeah. Um, this is not Kieln. And I'm excited to, to, to jump ahead to, to, to, to jump ahead to, to, to what they later do as Kieln.
Starting point is 00:16:42 Well, it's not Kieln, but, but there is just like, you can, you can, you can, you can hear the, like, the, like, the, it makes sense that this is the origin of Kiel. Yeah. You know what I mean. And it's the same three guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. These guys are truly unique, in my opinion.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Like, they, there's just something about their music. that makes it, there's a, there's a, and we've used this word before, like there's a warmth to it, you know? And that's probably because, you know, these are, these are real instruments that you're hearing.
Starting point is 00:17:15 So there's that acoustic, organic, like element to it, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, the funny thing is it's,
Starting point is 00:17:24 they're doing so much to it, like the manipulation and stuff, but, but it doesn't sound like overly processed or anything like that. You know what I mean? It sounds very organic. Yeah, it sounds very organic.
Starting point is 00:17:33 organic, but it is, it's, it's very much, you know, not like, like you're saying, you listed off you listed off Kevin Hayes as sampling and Kirk Morrison as effect loops. And Clark, Clark Reeberger is also listed, but treated guitar. I think that's interesting that they listed as treated guitar. Yeah. That, you know, that means like, you know, they're using various objects and stuff, like, between the instrument strings to get a different sound. You know, I mean, so, like, they're very much experimenting. They're doing a bunch of stuff to that guitar to make it sound a certain way, which is interesting, you know.
Starting point is 00:18:13 Yeah. But again, it's like, it's kind of like, you know, how we've talked about, like, like, this, the guitar, they're choosing to make, to get these sounds out of a guitar versus just getting it from a keyboard or something like that, you know what I mean? They're like, let's use the guitar as the main instrument. Like, all the sounds you're hearing are coming out of guitar. But we're going to get the sound out of it in, you know, unconventional ways or whatever, which is really cool. So do we know anything about what made them decide to change the name?
Starting point is 00:18:50 Like, is it because they were going in that different direction with it? And that's why? Like, I wonder what made them think, hey, you know what? Let's add some, let's start to treat and sample this stuff and go down a more like electronic path with this music, you know? I only found one interview with these guys. So this was an interview that was done back in 2008. So this is a few years into them being, you know, I mean, this is actually 10 years into
Starting point is 00:19:19 them being kiln. But the interviewer asks why they don't ever perform live. So that's something about these guys. They don't perform live as a three-piece. They've never performed live. And basically, the interviewer was trying to get, you know, why is this? What's, is there a reason why you guys don't perform live? Basically, he's saying, you know, that's kind of a necessity.
Starting point is 00:19:42 It's just kind of how it is now for us. We just don't have the time to perform live for one. You know, it's just kind of, we all have real jobs, you know, we have careers. basically we just have enough time nowadays to just kind of work on new tracks and send each other ideas remotely, you know? But I said actually back in the mid-90s, the three of us actually set up several studio houses where we lived and breathed music, playing, listening, and recording. We all had shitty jobs and were trying to put everything towards making something solid. during that period we performed a handful of live gigs in different settings to various sized audiences
Starting point is 00:20:26 in late 1997 we reconvened after a year and a half break and we're so focused on getting things done that we never mustered the energy to put together another show ultimately the recorded works are what will last and that is what we put everything towards so is that still how they do it to this day it's all it's all remotely yeah yeah from that's interesting well not remotely i don't know about that for sure. But like that's the thing. I've heard of bands that do that. Like the, the, the singer, like the main songwriter will have like his, his or her
Starting point is 00:21:01 demo tape, tape of, of ideas, you know, that they record. And they send it out to their band members, like before they get into the studio so that everybody can kind of start to, you know, brainstorm and think about these songs. You know what I mean? But it sounds like that's how they, that's how they do it. And possibly that's how they piece together the record, too. Yeah. Hey, you can do it that way. That's the thing. You can totally do it that way, especially with the way that they do it. Yeah. So it sounds to me like basically saying,
Starting point is 00:21:30 you know, by the late 90s, you know, into the 2000s, they got to the point that they realized, okay, what we have recorded is what will last forever. Sure. And that's all that matters. Let's put all of our energy into that moving forward. Another thing, too, I'm reading, here, yes, they do have careers outside of Kieln. They do all live in the same state, but they live hours apart from each other. So they're not all in the same city or town. So yeah, they are kind of doing it remotely. My guess is that's probably how it progressed for them going from a more like actual instrumental three-piece band to evolving into this, you know, organic, electronic, kind of music that they do now.
Starting point is 00:22:23 You know, with them living hours apart and focusing just on the music, you know, they started to incorporate field recordings, you know, a lot of like stuff that they pick up, you know, like when you listen to a kiln song, it almost sounds like you're walking through like a rainforest, you know, or like walking. Yeah, you know, there's something about, and that's, that to me, like, some of my favorite, electronic quote unquote artists incorporate field recordings
Starting point is 00:22:56 into their music and they create these like soundscapes with their techniques in how they record and and mix things you know in their in their like
Starting point is 00:23:09 in their recordings yeah well we talked about Lossel Lossel did that too yeah and we've covered Aiman Tobin although the album that we covered, he didn't do that, but he did an entire album where he took field recordings,
Starting point is 00:23:26 like he would record sounds from like around the city and stuff. He would sample it in. Yeah. And like, you know, when you're when you're doing it electronically, or if you're more on the producing end of things where you're not worrying about how to, how to pull it off live, you know, you can start to kind of tweak and manipulate the recordings that you have. you know, especially with field recordings and maybe like add an effect to it or loop it in a way and throw it in the background and, you know, mix it down in a certain way that like it's almost, I'm going to quote someone here before we actually get into the meat of what makes Kieln so amazing. There's a slightly hallucinogenic quality to Kilns sound. Sometimes it's as if they're
Starting point is 00:24:17 heard through ears situated just under the surface of water. Yeah, man. Totally. Totally. Listen to this. This person goes, is that the flittering of a dragonfly that I hear? You know, stuff like that. Like it almost sounds like you're hearing like insects chirping and wings flapping and stuff.
Starting point is 00:24:37 Right. I don't think anyone does it as well as Kelm does. Yes. That's what we were talking about earlier. They are super unique in that regard. Yeah. The sounds that they get are. just like they sounds so organic and like natural sounding. Yeah and I think what they started to do
Starting point is 00:24:55 here moving forward out, you know, a few years into them making music together as a three piece. I think what they did and again, it's it's really hard to tell because of how well they do this, but it seems like they started to take these little guitar lines, you know, and they would loop them and then layer on top of it. And, you know, we talk about this all the time with electronic music and what we love about it is how, if it's done correctly, there's all these really pretty and subtle layers that are built on top of each other and taken away. And then like, you know, it's just, it just evolves throughout the song. That's what these guys do amazingly. Yeah. Okay. So you heard them as an instrumental band.
Starting point is 00:25:43 I'm going to jump ahead to 2004. My favorite album of theirs, or EP. This is called Sunbox. It came out in 2004. There's five tracks on this album. There's two songs I want to play from this. First one's track four on the record. We're going to do two clips from this.
Starting point is 00:26:02 This might be my favorite kiln song. So this track is called Hong. I just love it. It gives me chills, man. Such a good song. Yeah, I love the bass. the bass sound that they're getting. It's got to be an actual bass player, obviously.
Starting point is 00:28:36 That's not obvious, dude. I mean... Yeah, that could be a keyboard. But I saw that they listed a session bass player on their Wikipedia player. So, yeah, that could be him laying down that track. But yeah, such a stark difference from what they were doing before. But what I like about this is like, I think it's clear that this is electronic, right? Like now, like, we were saying, like, you know, they're kind of unique in that, you know, they're not, they don't fall under like the stereotypical electronic sound where it's like you hear it and it's clear and obvious that it's electronic music, you know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:29:18 But that song is definitely electronic music. All right, Q, so I'm glad that you're going to split this into two clips and I'm glad that you stopped it. when you did. Because I would say that, like, there's a part in this next clip you're going to play that's like, one of my favorite kiln moments. There's something about, and they've done this, they do this a few times, like, they're really good at this, at, like, giving you this, like, I don't know, this, like, moment, this release almost, you know, it's kind of going back to the layering that we talked about earlier, but like, they're really effective at it. And so you'll, you'll hear what we're talking about when we play the clip here. But yeah, let's listen to that second
Starting point is 00:30:07 clip cue. And again, this song is called Hong. And we should have said this at the beginning, dude, if you have a chance to grab some earphones, or if you're sitting in your car listening to this and you've got a really nice sound system at home, you should probably wait and listen to this music properly, you know? Yeah, I agree. Listening to this stuff in headphones is just, it's just something else. All right, here's clip two from Hong. So I'm just going to read some things that other people have said, you know, that,
Starting point is 00:32:32 that are able to put words together a little bit more, a little bit more eloquently than we do. Kieln construct radiantly textured sound fields that envelope and immerse the listener in a panoramic smudge of chromatic rhythms and syncopated tones. I like the word texture. Oh, you're still gone. A ravishing and stimulating feast for the ears. Like sunshine during a rain shower. I mean.
Starting point is 00:33:08 Yeah. I mean, I like, I like his, the, the use of the word, uh, textures. Because we were talking about like earlier. Yeah. And sound fields. Yeah. It sounds like tangible, you know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:24 Oh, you know what, dude? I'm going to read the rest of the quote from earlier. I was talking about that guy that said there's like a hallucinogenic quality to kiln sound. Yeah. At other times, it's like when you're somewhere so bakingly hot that it has an effect on acoustics, similar to the visual wavering of the middle distance. Like if you're looking off in the horizon And it's like, you know
Starting point is 00:33:47 It looks like it's a wave, you know Because it's so goddamn hot You're looking off at the horizon And it's like warbly, you know? Yes. It's a good way to describe it. Yeah. It is hard to...
Starting point is 00:33:59 Yeah, no, that's good because it's like... It's almost like an oasis kind of... Yeah, yeah, you don't really think of music doing that. But yeah, that's kind of what it's like. It's like you're putting it through a filter in, you know, it comes out the other end, like, you know, altered in some way. But yeah, that moment, like we talk about, so it's not really silence, but there's that, like, that quietness that happens for a really good stretch.
Starting point is 00:34:25 They hold it out for a while. It's more just ambient, like, background noise. Yeah, but they're holding that moment. And then the guitar comes back in. And it's a whole different, it's very different than the beginning of the song. Yeah, and it's a, it's very much just a, just an untreated guitar. sound that sounds more like that first clip that you played where it's just almost like a jazzy kind of guitar tone, you know? Yeah. But that's what's great about this band is that
Starting point is 00:34:56 this is a, this is a group of musicians that were making more traditional sounding jazz, almost, post-rock kind of sound. And then they, and then they're taking that, you know, and moving it into the electronic realm. So it's not like, you know, somebody like Com Trues, nothing against him. But like if you don't approach music like a traditional band, then you might not, you're not going to approach your electronic music
Starting point is 00:35:30 the same way that they would, right? Does that make sense? No, yeah, no. That's what makes them unique. So thinking back to bands that are more ambient, but electronic that we've covered before. Tyco, Lawsel.
Starting point is 00:35:46 Well, shit, man. Let's talk about Radiohead. You think about how they went from, you know, the bins and stuff into OK computer and then especially into amnesiac. They went from a traditional rock, alt rock band to,
Starting point is 00:36:03 hey, we're getting bored of the standard approach to a rock song, at least Tom York was getting bored with it. And then they started doing electronic stuff, right? So they were a rock band that shifted and started doing electronic type music. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's what made it so unique is that.
Starting point is 00:36:20 Well, and to your point, like, it's a group of musicians versus one person that is producing electronic music. Like Tyco or Lawsel or Com Trues or Architect, sure, they might pull in other musicians from time to time to help them. make the music that they want, but it's basically, you know, it's just one person making and producing music versus Radiohead or Kiln, where it's a group of people making music. Yeah, it's totally different. And it's, yeah, it definitely shows in this, in this music. I think with Kiln, it's like they approach their songwriting, just like they would write a more traditional rock song, if you will.
Starting point is 00:37:10 Well, so going back to that, going back to the interview from 2008, another question is asked, do all three of you work together, or do you come together with individually created sections and then work on assembling them into holes? So the next album in line is called Dusker. Very similar to what we're hearing here on Sunbox, but they say, you know, we wanted to focus on Kevin's growing archive of MPC beats. MPC is that it stands for Music Production Center, kind of like those, you know, beat pads that you can buy,
Starting point is 00:37:45 you know, and sample through a program and all that stuff. So we wanted to focus more on these beats that he's created as a basis for this new material. So he says most of the discs or the tracks began their lives as a layered groove on Kevin's MPC. We spend a great deal. of time on rhythms, getting them to that mystic point of balance between clean density and lush heaviness.
Starting point is 00:38:16 Later, we typically record, quote, live instances of shakers or other percussive elements to take the groove even further. Yeah. Another quick question, then we'll go to the next track here. They ask, do you have a digital vault where you're constantly stockpiling bits and pieces that you constantly return to for inspiration? they say individually as a unit we've done a lot of recording and the majority of it is unreleased. Most of it predates our work as killing and much of it still strikes me as fuel for modern translation.
Starting point is 00:38:51 So they potentially have like albums and albums worth of different pieces here and there that could come together. It makes you wonder why they don't put out more albums but obviously like they put a lot of thought into it. Yeah, he says we consider those cassettes, kind of like recording sketchbooks, full of drafts and experiments, and we call from them when the mood hits. Yeah, that's cool. So, yeah, really cool. All right, I wanted to play another song from Sunbox. This is the last song on the record, and this song begs for headphones.
Starting point is 00:39:27 It just tickles your eardrums, dude. It's hard to describe, but the way they pull this sound off, it's just something else, man. All right, so this song is called Season. It's like the song, it's like it's whispering in your ear, you know. Yes, dude, that's that little tickle. Yeah, I mean, what's that word of people? There's a thing, there's a whole thing with that. Oh, ASPR.
Starting point is 00:43:21 ASMR, right? ASMR, yeah, it's got that same effect, yeah. That same effect that people enjoy listening to those ASMR videos for, it gives you goosebumps in the way that, that music sometimes does, but, but, but in a way that's like, like through the ASMR type thing where it's like, I don't know, there's just something. And like you said, it's like that, that really like high pitched percussive sound that's, that's going on throughout the whole thing, that kind of clicking thing that they do a lot of.
Starting point is 00:43:55 Yeah. And then there's that really subtle, ghostly kind of sound, I guess, I don't know, to name drop the, the record label, ghostly, unintentionally. Man, we've covered a lot of Ghostly International the last couple weeks because Com Trues was also on Ghostly International. Tyco and Losswell, dude, they're all on Ghostly. Lossel's on Ghostly? Yeah. Anyway.
Starting point is 00:44:20 Yeah, man, that's a fucking magical song, man. Yeah. There's something about that. Yeah, dude. And like you said, if you're not listening to that with headphones, give it another listen. It's otherworldly, dude. It's the only way to describe Kilns music. Yeah, that's a great way of work to take.
Starting point is 00:44:37 One more quote here from another publication. Kielns Music is a high-fi tapestry of granular synthesis and rich computer-enhanced bursts of chords, blurring the lines between sound design and composition through the use of refracted electronics and bits of live instrumentation. So you really don't know what's live and what's, you know, computer enhanced. They're just masters at it. Right. Yeah. No, yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:12 There really is no other group like him. Yeah. If you like this record, I mean, if you like what you heard from this episode at least, I would encourage you to go back and listen to our Lossel episode. That was early on. But it's a similar kind of thing. Worthy of headphones. Yeah. A little bit more ambient, but...
Starting point is 00:45:30 Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's it, man. That's our coverage of Kills. We're really only focused on Sunbox, but they got a few other really good, longer playing records. Dusker's probably the best one, I think. I mean, Sunbox is my favorite, but Dusker is just an unbelievable record as well,
Starting point is 00:45:51 which came out a few years later in 2007. Yeah, so that's Killen. Next week, I want to cover an artist that goes by hiatus. And like I've mentioned before, my absolute favorite electronic music is heavily sampled recordings that are pieced together to make new music. And hiatus, I want to say, it's kind of similar in that, you know, a lot of what you're hearing is probably recorded for those sessions, you know, but everything's heavily looped
Starting point is 00:46:27 samples. And his music is just, just so beautiful. Yeah, and he's got a really great vocalist. On this album, at least, yeah. Yeah. I'm going to have to find out what her name is. But yeah, that's going to be our side track for next week as an artist that goes by hiatus. And it's what you heard, time, brother. Yeah, man.
Starting point is 00:46:50 Okay. I'll go first. So it's no secret at this point. I think I've mentioned this several times throughout the podcast, but. I'm a sucker for video game soundtracks. More often than not, it's a video game that I've never even played. I just like video game scores. And I stumbled upon this website.
Starting point is 00:47:15 It's kind of like a database, if you will, of, you know, it's not even that. It's a, it's a, it's a MP3. I mean, when you see it, it's so old school the way the site looks. But people have gone on and, uploaded the soundtrack from a game that they literally ripped it out of the game, right? They went into the files on the computer and grabbed these scores and put it online. I mean, you can find a lot of these on Spotify, but there's a lot of games on this website that you can't find on Spotify.
Starting point is 00:47:49 And I was happy to see that they had the Silent Hill franchise on there. Because Spotify used to have almost all of their scores, and they took them off. and they only have a few now. And I used to love listening to the Silent Hill soundtrack because more so than anything, kind of like Eamon Tobin did the Splinter Cell soundtrack. This music is electronic in like a down tempo sense a lot of times. But the composer, and his name is Akira Yamaoka,
Starting point is 00:48:23 he would incorporate guitars and drums like into the music. And like stand alone, if you didn't know that it was, a score to like a survival horror game, like this stuff is really, really good. And that's what I like about video game scores is that a lot of times, it's not like you're listening to fucking the Mario Brothers. You know what I mean? Like this is like some of the best composers now do stuff for video games, you know, like video games have become such a mega industry that video game scores sound like movie scores nowadays, right? But anyway, so I'm going to play a track off of Silent Hill 2 came out in 2001 and I'm just curious to get your opinion cute when we
Starting point is 00:49:10 come back so Q I'm going to send you a link here so this song is called the reverse will I love that kind of stuff man fucking great yeah dude I love that kind of like heavily you know sample jazz music like the piano and stuff yeah yeah that's great well I mean to me I thought the The reason I chose this song, I mean, it is a horror game. So a lot of it is dark, ambient, you know, scary sounding music. But that track in particular, like, I've never played the game, so I don't know what is happening. Like, what scene is happening. I would imagine that's doing a cutscene probably.
Starting point is 00:51:37 But anyway, I thought the guitar almost had a shoegaze sound to it, like a shoegaze sound to it. Like a shoegaze guitar sound to it. A little bit, yeah. And, you know, this was 2001. And so you heard that kind of like the DJ kind of scratching kind of effect that he put on there. I mean, you think about what was happening in rock and roll in the early 2000s. It was the new, the new rap stuff. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:52:01 New metal stuff. Right. Yeah. And like Fat Boy Slim and. Yeah. Yeah. And like, well, you know, and just like, you know, incubus and stuff like that was. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:10 Yeah. And Lincoln Park, man. Let's know if you're right. Right. Exactly. So like, it's no surprise that he was incorporating that kind of thing into it because that's what was happening with rock music at the time. But anyway, that's what I'm a sucker for. It's like if you if you are somebody who doesn't play video games, you may never hear this song ever, right? Right. You know, for me, I might not play that video game, but I've listened to enough video game scores to know that some really, really great music is on video game scores. And you never. going to hear it unless you either dig into it like I do. We play the actual game, right? So anyway, um, like my favorite Eam and Tobin record is his score for Splinter Cell, uh, chaos theory. Anyway, uh, so yeah, that's that man. Um, I've been, I've been geeking out on this website the last few days. There's a bunch of scores I haven't heard in a long time. There's also Shinobi 3aQ,
Starting point is 00:53:06 which we've covered last week as our outro song. I thought that you could only find it on YouTube. I was wrong. You could find out on this website too. So anyway, it's downloads.k.h.insider.com. And like I said, if you go to it, like whoever set this up, they haven't updated it since they created it. Like that's... Well, maybe it's on some obscure server, you know, overseas. Maybe. Maybe. Because I, you know, some of it, some of it, you'll go to a record and it'll be like, removed for copyright and so like that. So, yeah, it is kind of sketchy. But you can, if you own the video game, you can, you can, like, on the computer. You can go into the, like the older games. You can go into the files,
Starting point is 00:53:48 like browse your folders and stuff and then find the actual MP3s back in the day. Maybe we'll post this in the show notes. So if you're, if you're somebody who likes to listen to old video game scores, check out this website. They've got a pretty good selection. Anyway, all right, Q, what do you got for us? What have you been heard in lately? Have you heard of a guy named Moses Sumney? I don't think so. He's under the electro soul folk category. It's kind of hard to describe his music. I heard one of his songs on the radio the other day. I don't know how to describe his music, dude. He kind of reminds me of, kind of like how I imagine Prince, you know, if Prince was making, was making music today
Starting point is 00:54:33 or, you know, someone of that level of skill. I mean, this guy, let's just say I'm excited to hear more from this guy. He's only your... him, would you kind of compare him to, um, like maybe blood orange or yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really, really unique stuff. I, I've never heard anything like this before. So he's only got a handful of songs that are out right now, and he is about to release a full-length
Starting point is 00:55:00 album, I believe. So this is one of the singles that he's released. This song is called Viral. All that wants to base is the bit. I like that. Yeah, like you said, very soulful. Yeah, different. Yeah, I like that, man.
Starting point is 00:57:21 You know, I want more music like this to be made. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, dude. It's a throwback sound, but definitely modern at the same time. I'm really excited to hear what else he's got for us, man. Yeah. So, yeah, that's Moses Sumney.
Starting point is 00:57:40 That's a song called, it's either viral or viral, virile, like virility. It's not viral, V-I-R-A-L. It's, anyways, dude, that's what we do right here. We mispronounce things left and right. We mispronounce things. We misspell, we have Freudian slips in our tweets that get picked up by the artist. It's just, you know, it's part of the brand, too. It's part of the brand, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:58:06 A couple of fuck-ups. All right, so that's going to do it for us to do. day. As always, hop on to our website, no-filler podcast.com. There you can read our show notes and check out the track lists for each episode. You can stream our episodes on pretty much anywhere you find your podcasts. We are part of the Pantheon podcast network. We are lucky enough to be alongside a lot of really, really great music-centered podcasts. A lot of music-centered podcasts that would never mispronounce a name like we do. We don't know that.
Starting point is 00:58:47 That's true. I'm just trying to, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Okay, yeah, yeah. So you can find us there on pantheonpodcasts.com. And again, we're going to be shouting at you again next week with a band, or not a band, really, with an artist that goes by hiatus. And that may or may not be wrapping up our electronic stint. I'm guessing that.
Starting point is 00:59:11 We'll probably cover a few more electronic artists into the month of March. Yeah, I think we need to, man. We need to cover more ground here. Okay. And hey, if you've got an artist in mind or, you know, a style of electronic music that you think we need to cover, tweet us or send us an email. You can find, we've got a contact form on our website. You know, you can contact us through there.
Starting point is 00:59:37 You can actually send us an email. directly, uh, no further podcast at gmail.com. Let us know if, if there's an artist you'd like us to cover, you know, under the electronic van.
Starting point is 00:59:50 Uh, and so for our outro today, uh, Trabb, have you heard of a band called people press play? Oh, fuck yeah, dude.
Starting point is 00:59:58 Yeah, dude. I love. They, they were on a, um, documentary that I watched. Really? I think called press play.
Starting point is 01:00:08 I might be thinking of something. else, dude. I might actually be thinking of the name of a document. Well, so this is a band that I found. Oh, oh, I do remember this record. Yeah, dude. This is back in our know. I got to cue this up, bro. Hang on now. Back in our New Dust days. Yeah. I don't remember how I came across these guys.
Starting point is 01:00:27 But, um, yeah. Yeah, so the reason I'm playing them today is because, you know, this is just one of those happy musical moments. I was, you know, scrolling down to the end of that interview. of Kiln and you know a lot of people like to wrap up interviews with any you know what's it was a current favorite artist or whatever uh and sure enough the guys from kiln are huge fans of this group um so this is a three piece band and i'm going to read just a little bit about him here from from one of the the kiln guys says these these are all quality musicians you know either together or as a solo. And I would also say that they are totally underappreciated for how great they are.
Starting point is 01:01:11 The self-titled People Press Play Record that came out last year, and this came out in 2007, should have been a huge international hit in the electronic fringe pop category, a masterpiece in its own right with very clean structures and lovely vocals. I love this album, and it's one that I haven't really gone back to in a while. so yeah i i haven't heard this since probably we covered it on on no filler on a new dust friend shit on new dust yeah yeah man i remember this cover um it's a big time yeah yeah it's it's a really great blend of of you know electronic instrumental tracks with with really pretty um you know more uh you know song like uh verse chorus actual songs with pretty lyrics and
Starting point is 01:02:03 vocals as well. You know, there's equal parts of that throughout the record. So again, this is an album, this is a self-titled record from People Press Play, came out in 2007. And the song we're going to outro us out with is a song called That Walk. And that's going to do it for us today. Thank you, as always for listening. My name is Quentin. And my name is Travis. You all take care.

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