No Filler Music Podcast - Quantic: The 5th Exotic - Jazzy, Soulful, Funk-Infused Trip-Hop

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

On this episode we explore the album that solidified Quentin's love for downtempo music: Quantic's The 5th Exotic. From start to finish, Will Holland (aka Quantic) skillfully fuses elements of jazz, soul, funk, dub, and hip-hop all into one seamless trip-hop journey. And the record came out just as the producer turned 21, signaling the start of a very prolific career for one of the busiest artists in the industry. We also explore two of his side projects, The Quantic Soul Orchestra and Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro, where he ditches the computer and sequencer for a live band, making music that sounds just like the records he himself samples. Grab a good pair of headphones for this one! Tracklist: Introduction + The Fifth Exotic Life In The Rain Time Is The Enemy The Quantic Soul Orchestra - West Pier Getdown Quantic and his Combo Bárbaro - Más Pan Slim - Water (courtesy of Soma FM's Groove Salad) This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I mean, will you turn the right now, I mean, we're on the air? Do you say we're getting there? Oh, good. Any minute now. And welcome to Noah Filler. the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gems that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. I got my brother Quentin with me today. As always, this is our second episode in our deep dive into our love affair with down tempo and chill out music and trip hop and all those terms you may hear to describe this type of music. It's a love affair queue that goes back, I don't know, a decade plus, at least a decade.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, it has to have been... 2007-ish, maybe? 2008? Yeah. We discovered it together. I think we've told the story before, but I think the origins are kind of, you know, around college age. And this is when Pandora was kind of the thing that everybody, you know, it was kind of the gimmicky thing that music nerds,

liked to use to find new tunes because like the whole concept of a radio station, right, an internet radio station, you push play on Quantic Radio or something like that or, you know, radiohead radio. And they would just play forever and just bring in songs from similar artists and whatnot, right? And different too because like it wasn't just like satellite radio, which I believe was pretty. accessible on the internet back then, you know, like satellite radio stations that you could just stream online. It was truly like, you picked the artist and we're just going to lay on some jams indefinitely that's in the same vein, you know? And we discovered so many great artists through Pandora.

I don't think we give them enough credit, man. Yeah, it's funny because it is kind of a shame, right? because once Spotify came out, or even like some of the Spotify predecessors, do you remember Mogg, M-O-G? It was basically, it was just another audio player like Spotify, right? Okay. But like once those types of players came out, like I've only been focused on those. Because I've always, you know, we've talked about this before.

I got to hear the whole album from start to finish, right? Right. I like to spend time with an artist or an album. And with Pandora, that's not the point of it, right? So anyway, yeah, you're right. Pandora was fucking amazing, man. When it came out, it's still around, obviously. It's in your cars and shit, right?

Brand new cars have Pandora alongside, God, what is the name of the giant? X-M, you know, you got your X-N. Or serious. And serious. Anyway, but yeah, that's, I think, where we first got into it because maybe it was Thevery Corporation or maybe it was Tosca. You know, we would spin up Tosca radio. and just discover a bunch of new artists that way.

And I don't know, maybe Quantic was one of those. We may have also discovered Quantic. Now, hang on, Jeff. Who are we covering today? Because I don't think you mentioned it earlier. Okay. I've said the name now a couple of times. But yeah, we're talking about an English musician, DJ, record producer that goes by Quantic.

His name is William Holland. That's his birth name. But he goes by Quantic. And he has a really interesting journey. that he's gone on. And we'll get into that a little bit later. But we're going to focus primarily on his first record, the fifth exotic, which came out in 2001. The origin, I guess, not that anybody cares Q. But I like to think back to like, how did we? Because we, how did we stumble upon this kind of music? Because we were raised. Our dad listened to classic rock primarily. He listened to bands like

Steely Dan, you know, Boston, guitar heavy players like Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Peter Frampton, he would do. Definitely not this stuff. Stuff like Shadeh, Gino Vanelli. If you want to hear us talk about those bands, we have a batch of episodes called Dad Tunes where we kind of dig into some of the stuff that we listened to

that we were exposed to by her dad basically when we were growing up. But he certainly never played anything like this, right? So it must have been something like Pandora. And I was wondering, is it possible that we got into Theory Corporation because of Garden State? I'm trying to trace the origins here, Q. What song was on Garden State? There was a couple of songs. I think Air Batakuta was on there and a couple of other ones, I think.

But it was a lot of Theory Corporation and a lot of the shins. Like, Zach Braff basically just, like, grabbed his iPod, you know, and that was like the soundtrack to Garden State, right? It was a lot of his, like he picked the tunes for the movie. Right. And there was a lot of Thevery Corporation and a lot of the shins. So it's possible that we got into Thevery Corporation by just being interested in the Garden State soundtrack. And then it just kind of goes from there. Because like we were saying earlier, with Pandora, all you need is one artist.

You know what I mean? Pull up that radio station. And then now you're exposed to the whole catalog, right? Or at least whatever was on Pandora. And from Thevery Corporation, you get band. like Tosca. You get man's like Quantic Bonobo. Maybe scalpel as well. Scalpel. Yeah. Or it was because of elemental chill, which we kind of reminded of today. We're kind of digging into kind of our history, getting prepared for these batch, this batch of episodes because, like we said, it goes back quite

quite a bit. And Q, you were digging around on your one of your old hard drives, right? And you were looking through stuff from our new dust days, which was the music blog that we We used to run that we've talked about a few times on this podcast, but I saved my entire old music folder from an old desktop computer that I had. It's a treasure trove. Dude, yeah. So my music collection, and then on top of that, my new dust folder, which was all the bands that we discovered while running that blog and, you know, all the artists that reached

out to us, I have like a bunch of old, like press kits and stuff from bands. Yeah, that's cool. but my old music folder is, I mean, a good two-thirds of it is this down-tempo stuff. And that was, you know, a music folder I was building in the early 2000s, you know, around the 2010s. And yeah, dude, there's this four-volume compilation record, or I'm sorry, compilation set that I have that I don't know, how I stumbled upon it. But it's from a label called Crystal Entertainment. And these volumes, I guess we're all released around the same time, around 2002.

And this is your straight up like Bossa Nova tinged like posh down tempo stuff, very heavy on the jazz sampled kind of music. Honestly, a lot of it is not too interesting. This really is that music type of put this on in the background during a cocktail party kind of music. There's a lot of compilation albums like that out there. There's so many of them. Chill this, chill out that. There's a ton of them.

Hundreds of thousands of them. But what I thought was interesting, I got to volume three today. And so it's kind of cool. Each one is a different element, elemental chill. fire, water, earth, and air. And they all have a slightly different mood to them. And on volume three, right next to each other, dude, is Quantic Time is the Enemy, which is the first song of his that we got into.

Which is off of this record. Which is off of this record. And right below that, dude, is Rorgesop so easy, which was the track that we introed in for our Rourkeesop episode just last week. Yeah, I mean, the fact that both of those artists are on that one compilation is a pretty safe, safe bet to say that that's how we discovered them. Well, and again, I don't think anyone cares, but here's what I'm thinking, dude. I've got another theory too, cute. But no, this is interesting because if you lived, if you were around, you know, if you're a music fan, like we were back then, you probably remember this kind of stuff too.

Like your Soma FM. Do you remember Soma FM? Yeah. And then what I was going to say is, dude, remember like soul, what was it, soul secret? Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. Did we have that same theory? Yeah. Because a lot of times you would try to find a song and it would come from a compilation album

that it existed on. I'm almost positive now that I'm thinking about a dude, that has to be where. Right. Because my question is, how the hell did we find out about elemental chill? And here's a here. Here it is, dude. I got it now, right? We heard a song on Pandora.

Yeah. I tried to find more music from that artist by. typing in it the name of the artist and the track name into soul seek or lime wire or whatever and I found this elemental chill release because especially with soul seek you could download discography at you know at a time you could download an entire discography from an artist in one go so anyway dude that was like you know when you think of like the golden age of different eras yeah that's like the time that you look back on it fondly I feel like early 2000s I'm talking like early 2000s, dude, like middle school age for us and on.

Yeah. That was the golden age of just feeling like you had every single song at your fingertips at any given time. And of course, now we're decades into it. So that's just the norm. Yeah. But, you know, that was the Wild Wild West, dude. I mean, it took a lot more work back then to illegally download something. We were breaking the law.

Yeah. remember those commercials. Lars was knocking on our door and shit. Yeah. We didn't even mention Napster yet, but hell on. Right. It's all under the same umbrella. So, you know, thank you for sticking with us while we tried to figure out how we first heard this record.

That's the thing. Like, if you didn't hear it on the radio, then you probably discovered it in a similar way, either through a friend or through Pandora or through Soma FM. If you remember that, that was an old internet radio. station is still around. Their website looks exactly the same. There is a station that I used to listen to called Groove Salad. I remember that, dude. It's still a thing, dude. Hang on, I got to look up some of my FM, man. I haven't even thought about that. The website looks the exact same. If it looks exactly the same, I'm hoping for a good nostalgia boost. You're about to get one, dude. They have not changed their website in a decade. So on my FM.com.

Holy shit, dude. Yeah. I used to go to... Oh my God. I used to go to Groove Salad. It's the same image that it was back in the day. Where is it? Where is it? Look at that. They actually have one called Groove Salad Classic, the classic early 2000s version of a nicely chilled plate

of Ambien, down-tempo beats and grooves. I'm so glad that you remembered about this all these years because I totally forgot about it. This is amazing, man. Amazing. So now that we figure that out, let's talk about this artist here. So his name, like I said earlier,

he goes by Quantic. It's kind of a, this is one of those records that had a lot of, a lot of buzz around it when it came out in these circles. A lot of people were impressed because he was early 20s when he put this out, like 21. And it was very polished and well produced. And the way that he blended and continues to do that because this is kind of his whole thing is, you know,

his music features bits of soul, funk, jazz, Basanova. Well, and hip-hop beats, dude. Hip-hop beats, which is, you know, kind of a down-tempo, a piece of down-tempo, right, and trip-hop. And further into his career, as we'll get into, he brings in elements of, like, salsa and Columbia music and stuff like that. Which is another really popular choice for down-tempo artists, especially in that elemental chill compilation, dude, there's a lot of that stuff, man. Yeah, there's that, there's that long, long-standing. compilation series. I think it's called like Cafe Del Mar or something like that. Yep.

What is it? It's something like that, right? You're in the right ballpark for sure. It's called, it's something, it's some sort of cafe. But anyway, I'm going to read a quote here from this, there's a magazine out there called Exposed Magazine. It's a UK print magazine, right? But anyway, I stumbled upon this, this article that this guy wrote called the album that changed my life. Quantic, the Fifth Exotic. And I like the way that he described this particular person. He's like an editor, senior editor for this magazine. Talking about he was raised on a lot of classical music, but his parents had like Sergeant Peppers and Dark Side of the Moon. So there's a

couple of pieces of rock in there, but this guy was mostly exposed to, you know, classical music. But his two sisters who were a little bit older than him got him into Blur, red hot chili peppers, the Bee Gees. And then the other sister got him into Radiohead, Bob Dylan, and Quantic, which is really cool, right? So anyway, his sister got him into this record. And it was the first time he had heard something like this, right? So this is probably a similar experience that we had when we first started hearing

down tempo because we were raised, if you will, on similar types of music. Like our dad used to listen to classical music too. Of course, we got a much wider range of exposure to rock, right? Yeah, electronic music wasn't even something that I was interested in listening to at all. No. Before down tempo. I didn't understand it. Like, there's no real instruments here.

What the hell? Yeah. But as he says here, and I think the way he says it is that he lit up a joint. Naturally. Before he pushed play for the first time. and he says here, Q, that it was then that I genuinely started seeing colors. The depth of the reverb, the swirling delays, the dramatic use of panning, and the extraordinary variety and textures. We've talked about textures before.

We talked about that with Roiksock last week. Yep. He says it was a seamless journey into a whole new universe. Dude, that sums up how I felt about downtown. but like discovering it for the first time. Like this is, wow, this is something that's been going on for quite a long time now. I, you know, it just was totally under my radar.

Yeah. Anyway, so that's, we'll just put that out there for now, right? That's a pretty nice picture that was just painted, right? So yeah, let's dive into the first track. I got a lot to cover, unfortunately. I'm getting hyped, dude. Getting hyped. So we're going to, like I said, we're going to play two or three songs off of this record.

But I'm going to play some of his other. music that he has done under the quantum umbrella. So stay tuned for that. But let's just jump here into the first song. This is actually the title track. So that intro that played us in bleeds right into this song. So I'm actually going to have the intro fade into this one because this is one of those records that kind of fades from track to track. And sometimes you got to hear that right to appreciate it. So I'm going to let the introduction fade into the first track here that we're going to play. And this is again the title track. So this is the fifth exotic. If you'll turn the machine on, we're getting through. Is anything happening? Will you turn the

right now time you're on the air? You say we're getting there. This kind of music to me always just feels like a score to a movie soundtrack. And I mean that in a good way. Like a heist movie? Yeah. Well, yeah. This is the, this is what you'll hear on the Ocean's 11th. soundtrack or something like that, right? And I want to go back to what I said before about how previously electronic music quote unquote was just not something I was interested in. Because like you said, growing up, it was pretty much only rock and roll, right? So a four piece band, each one playing an instrument, a singer. Yeah. Actual, you know, I didn't appreciate an artist, like a solo one person band that created everything on their computer and created loops and samples

to make music. I didn't appreciate that. But you know what's interesting is like watching MTV when we did, which was before we got into down tempo, we heard stuff like, you know, Fat Boy Slim and Moby. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of other really well-known mainstream, probably DaVunk. I'm sure we heard some da punk so it's not that we weren't it's not like we weren't exposed to it but down tempo feels like it's in a whole another a whole it's under a whole another umbrella right like down tempo is mostly like we were saying jazz and soul and like funk based well i think you mentioned this last week you're not necessarily going to hear this stuff you know it's not they're not club bangers right yeah and this kind of stuff never made it to mtv that's why we probably in our head

electronic music was, you know, I like to, dude, who doesn't like Fat Boysland? You know what I mean? Right. Those songs that you heard when, you know, if you turned into TRL on the right week or whatever. I always think back to that music video with Christopher Walken dancing. Right. Exactly. But, you know, so it's not like we had never heard electronic music and this was a whole new thing to us.

But this style of it, I think, was. And that's why I think made us so interested in it. because it was just so different, you know? Yeah, and it's like breathing new life into old jazz records and old, you know, like the Basso Nova stuff, like I was saying. Right. Which can be super cheesy if it's not done right. Quantic does it really well. And, you know, that's another genre that you and I were exposed to at a young age, jazz.

Yeah, that's true. So this gave us a new reason to really appreciate jazz music. It was like listening to jazz music, but like somehow it felt like cooler, you know? Yeah, dude. Not that jazz isn't fucking cool. And that was back when we were walking around that outdoor shopping mall with our freaking pipes and our cigars. We used to smoke pipe tobacco, like a couple of losers.

Early 20s, dude, we thought we were hot shit. How dumb we must have looked. I felt sophisticated, dude. You know, we're listening to down tempo. Remember the perfect thing happened, dude? one of the times that we were walking around this, you know, high class shopping area outside. For those that live in the Dallas area, it was the shops at Legacy. Shops at Legacy, okay.

Very posh. For the one person who knows what we're talking about. There's a lot of people that live in Dallas, dude. True. Anyway, we used to go there and we just walk around and smoke pipe to Beko. But some of the shops had outdoor speakers, and one of them was playing Tosca. as we were walking by with our pipes, dude, we were like, this is the universe trying to tell us something. Yeah, that was the most important thing that had happened to us in the last 10 years, dude.

Yeah, because Toska was one of those down-timbabans that we were into at the time. Anyway, so if you have pipe tobacco, and we're not recommending that you do that. I am 100% against it nowadays. We're not here to tell you how to live your life. We wouldn't do it, but what I'm saying is like, hey, if you want to light up a pipe, right now, I think this is good music to listen to with a pipe tobacco. Dude, it is great music for this, man. Exactly.

We're not saying you should do that. We're not saying that at all. Don't do that. No. But if you wanted to hear, this is maybe the time to do it. So let's talk about the man behind Quantic here. So like I said, his name is Will Holland. He is from the UK.

What's interesting about him is that he's a guitar player, or at least he learned how to play a guitar. He comes from kind of a musical background, and that plays a key role into how he makes music now versus how he did it with this first record. With the first record, it was made in his bedroom by himself, sampling old records like a lot of down-tipo artists do, right? He wanted to incorporate more live music as he went out throughout the rest of his career. So, like, I'm going to play actually a couple of tracks later in the episode that demonstrate some of the really cool, great. amazing stuff that he does. That happened with Bonobo too, right? And also Tyco.

They start to incorporate live instruments into the music. Yes. And you know what? The funny thing is it makes total sense that a downtempo artist's first record is going to be made in the bedroom, perhaps. You don't have the money to pay live musicians to come to the studio. But it makes sense that like the more you evolve, it's like you want to make it feel more real. You know what I mean? You're probably tired of sampling. Like, you know what you hear in your head as far as the music you want to hear on your record. Yeah, it gives you more control. Yeah, exactly. All right. So here, this is from an interview here that he did with the at Florida music blog, talking about sort of his influence and stuff when he was younger. He says, in my early teens, I developed my own tastes and whisked through an extended period of heavy metal to heavy rock, to grunge, to punk, to trip hop, jungle, hip, hip,

pop and sampled beats. So that was kind of his trajectory, I guess. At 16, my mother helped me enroll in a local course for sound engineering at a nearby college, and from there, I began producing beats. My father was a lecturer there of mechanical engineering, and also was a computer programmer on the side. He taught me to use simple programs to loop and sample, make synth sounds, and generally experiment. This was a new time for digital music and sampling was something that really attracted me. That's really cool, man. So he had like the perfect, you know, the perfect environment, it sounds like. Well, yeah, it sounds like both of his parents were supportive of it. His mom was the one who enrolled him in that sound engineering class. He was just 16 years old.

That's really cool. Yeah. And, you know, five years later, he puts this record out. So anyway, it sounds also from like, some other interviews I read. He talks about how his dad used to play, like, the banjo and, like, would play, like, these folk guitar. type things and taught him out of play guitar and stuff like that. So it's interesting that like he is very much, you know, a trained musician as well. And in the sense that he actually plays a bunch of different instruments. He plays guitar, bass, double bass, piano, organ, saxophone, accordion, percussion. So he is a bona fide musician, right?

So it's interesting that when he first got into it, probably because like he was saying, this was kind of a novel thing at the time, like sampling and digital music production and stuff like that. that he went that direction in the beginning, but then, like, eventually, like, just, like, the desire to make, make all of the music, right? All of the instruments that you hear and something like that is what he eventually went toward, right?

But anyway, that's his background is more, you know, like I said, classically trained. His dad used to play the banjo. He taught him when I play guitar, yada, yada. All right, Q, let's play another tune here. Let's do it.

So I'm trying to paint the picture. That's what I like to do. You're really good in it. You got to know who this guy. is you can truly appreciate this music and then the music he later makes. But we're going to play the next track here. This song is called Life in the Rain. Sometimes I wonder if I know where I'm going. I go for a walk like this. It seems I have been walking for years and years and years. and I don't know where I'm going.

I hear the sound leading me on. It is taking me. Just the perfect marriage of old school jazz and hip hop, dude, with those beats and that bass, man. Yeah, and speaking of old school jazz, that is Take Time by Dave Rubeck sampled in for the drums and stuff when it comes in. Amazing. And the bass that's like standing. bass line. So right. Yeah, that upright bass, so cool. Perfect, dude. Because that's, one of the most iconic jazz records of all time. Yeah, dude. And he uses it so perfectly.

Like, it's, it's perfect, right? But anyway, that moment right there when it all kind of comes together, that's, that is why, those moments are why you listen to down tempo. We mentioned that last week, too, with Rourke's up. Yeah. I mean, that's why you listen, because, like, I know that part's coming up. Like when I hit play on this track, I'm like, I can't wait to this part. I mean, that happens with all, it's not just down tempo. Like, if you're a fan of heavy metal and you're like, I can't wait till the fucking guitar solo, you know what I mean? There's moments like that in every type of music, but I'm saying, that's that moment in down tempo is when all the layer building and stuff that happens and then it just kind of pays off right there. And I've actually, I've got another

clip from the song because this is actually the longest track on the record. But I wanted to play this little thing that happens right after that part. So I'm going to fade it back in. So here you go. This is the second clip from Life in the Rain. Yes, I am getting closer. Yeah, so I really like that guitar, a little guitar seller, right? Yeah, so was that him? Yeah, that was him. That's a point I wanted to make was that, like, that wasn't a sample. He did sample Dave Bruback take time in this song, but the guitar, because that's part of his background, that's actually him. And he actually has a a few musicians that did appear, which is really cool.

One of his sisters actually provides a saxophone on one of the tracks. Cool. And he has, yeah, there's somebody that contributes a Rhodes track on Life in the Rain, which is this song, actually. So there's a Rhodes and the guitar solo were actual live instruments. Really well executed, dude. Like he really knows what he's doing. And like you said, he was what, 21 when this came?

out. Right. Really well produced. Yeah. And that's kind of what made it stand out. And, you know, the funny thing is everybody pointed to like, wow, he was only 21. Like, it sounds so great. Well, that's because he went to, he took a course on audio engineering. You know what I mean? Like, he was trained in it at that, you know, before, that's part of his trade, right? Like, right? Right. He could have gone on to, to produce records as, as his living for his living, right? Yeah. Anyway. Man, I was thinking while we were listening to that, that song just begs to, to, to have a rapper, like, spit some rhymes over it, dude.

Yeah, because there's a lot of, they really, he lets it build up quite a bit. And it's very heavy on the, the drumbeat, you know, it just kind of, you know, and that's another thing with Down Tipo. It can't, it has a lot of repetition, but it's just a blast to listen to, man. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And that's the thing, like, you heard the, you heard the, like the vocal sample, right?

He does that quite a bit. and you'll hear it in the next track that I play. But I tend to not like that anymore when I, if I'm in a phase where I'm looking for new down tempo or new chill kind of music, I shy away from songs that sample in old clips from movies or something like that. You know what I mean? It's been overdone. It's been overdone.

Yeah. Over the last few decades, yeah, it's. Yeah. I'm with you, dude. Like if they, if I hear another like space exploration. kind of like a voiceover or like a nature documentary. David Attenborough or something. You know, in every, any bedroom artist who's making electronic music right now, that's what you do.

But the funny thing is, that's exactly who Quantic was in 2001. He was in his bedroom putting this record together. But he does it like sparingly. And it was also in 2001. I don't know how prevalent it was back then. But if people, if you're still doing it now, like, I'm, for some reason, like, I got my fill back, you know, 20 years ago, dude. I think it can be done right.

Yeah. I like when an artist will use those vocals and not chop it up to where you can't understand what they're saying, but repurpose them in a way. Like we mentioned last week with WorkSop, that song, a higher place. Yeah. I really appreciate that kind of stuff. Let's take a quick break. All right, Q, I got one more track from this record, and I got a couple more tracks to play from him after this one. Like you were saying, Q, time is the enemy, is the song that got you into down tempo.

Without a doubt. Okay. And this is also the song. Ain't no doubt, my mind. That was on. Elemental Chill. Volume 3. So this might have been the one that he lint out to all of these.

Diamond dozen record labels. Compilation records out there. Yeah. Who knows. But it does, it does, I mean, shit, dude, this probably proves it right here. It has 35 million plays on Spotify compared to 4 million is the next highest one on this record. So yeah, if you push play on any compilation album that features Time is the Enemy, you know, it adds to the play count on this record, right? It's such an amazing song, dude.

Everything about it is flawless. And it's a perfect example. It's a quintessential Down to both songs, right? Absolutely. Not that Life in the Rain or the Fifth Exotic, the other two songs that we played aren't, but I think this one, for some reason,

hits all the right notes and stuff, right? All right, so here we go. This song is called Time is the Enemy. Like you said, it's got it all. And I would say of the other tracks that we played, this is the closest to Rorick Sop as far as like a softer. Good call.

With the piano, you know, the nice echo and stuff. Yeah, the reverb. Yeah, the reverb. the delay on the piano and the guitar thing. And right before you faded out, it had that moment where pretty much all the instruments and the drumbeat all gets taken away. Yeah.

And it all comes back in. It all comes back, yeah. And we've talked about that before. With the Toska episode, it was really the first episode. And that was early, early. Forever ago, dude. Yeah.

And I think we talked about that exact thing where, like, one of the things that we like about down tempo is the layer building. We've talked about it, I think, on this episode too, but like, it's always about like taking away an instrument and then bringing it back later. And changing it up slightly when you bring it back. And it's very, very repetitive. You know what I mean? Most of these songs are very repetitive. But for some reason, it works, you know, because it's all about taking away layers and doing things differently to it or stopping

everything and bringing it all back and stuff like that. It's always very subtle. Yeah. So this song in particular, he sampled three tracks, or at least on WhoSample.com, three tracks have been, I guess, you know, because Who's Sample.com is purely user-driven. So this is what people have at least submitted for what they hear as samples from the song. There's a rare earth song called Get Ready, a Tony Newman song called Soul Thing, and a Lena Horn song called And I Love Him. So that's sampling from jazz rock and funk. disco. So there you go. And that's another thing. I think in order to be a successful down to a musician, you have to be in love with crate digging at record stores. Yeah, you've got to be

really well-rounded with the kind of music you listen to. And that's one of the things that that this guy, Will Holland, like, makes a point to do when he goes to different cities when he's talking something like that, he'll jump into record stores. Now, he's a world traveler, right? And look for records from that area. So like when he's in, for example, when he was in Columbia, he had a reason to be in Columbia, probably on tour, or I think he was maybe hanging out with a friend or something like that. But I'm telling this story for a very good reason here.

But let me actually pull up a clip from an interview where he is talking about how he fell in love with these records from Columbia. Yeah. Art of recording I think is such a beautiful form because it's transporting, it can allow you a window into a world which maybe is not even there anymore. What happened in Columbia is that the jukeboxes were 78 based jukeboxes instead of 45. So this was like the principal medium for listening to music in clubs and social kind of environments.

So they pressed like up until the late 70s, a lot of records and this is a heavy thing. This is Rufu Garido, who's a... Costeño musician. He recorded for Cora Fuentes a lot, but this is called Inspiracion Saranera. I don't have a 78 record, so I'll do it with my finger. You consider that, like that time. You consider that, like, at that time, like, vinyl real estate was quite kind of hard to come by. And they, the fact they devoted, like, a whole side just a band just getting, just doing their thing. Just like, yeah, just very expressive, like, clarinet.

And, yeah, it's, like, hard to find records that are that. That's cool, dude. So, yeah, he spent some time in Columbia, basically, and fell in love with this particular record label called Disco Frontez. that was like, like he was kind of saying there, like, pressing a lot of records for these jukeboxes that would show up everywhere. And it would have these like full on jazz ensembles that would do this like. And what did you say like vinyl realistic? Sound realistic or something?

Which was something hard to come by back then as far as like the quality of the recording. Yeah. And that's something that he latched onto was the quality of the production and the recording. stuff like that. Yeah, so he could pull from those and use them as samples. Well, that's the thing, though, Q. He says here, for a while, I was always looking for these old Cumbia records, and I really idolized these musicians that I found on the back of the jackets. The standard and quality musicianship of record production in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I guess it was the peak for the microphones, the disc cutting, or even the piano tuners. And then in Columbia,

I got to meet a lot of those musicians. We were hanging out, recording together, and became friends. Through that experience, I ended up thinking, actually, that they were a lot like us. They were young, hanging out, cutting some records, just like we are doing. It was this moment that I realized we all just have to be creative and do our best and make as much music as we can and collaborate and be creative. I love that, dude. What an aha moment.

You don't think about that stuff when you listen to music from way back then. And what it reminded me of the way that he talks about this is that he kind of like we talked about with Kings of Convenience, their reason for wanting to make that kind of music is that he just wanted to hear it again because nobody makes it. So anyway, long story short, he's formed an ensemble called Quantic and his combo Barbaro. But before that, he produced records under this other name called Quantic Soul Orchestra. So this has been like a long thing that he's been doing. doing. So basically remember how I told you that he had, his sister would play saxophone on some of these tracks? Right. When he first started Quantic Soul Orchestra, he would just pull in, you know, again, like friends, family members that knew how to play instruments. But the point was none of it was

sampled, right? So I'm going to play one track from their second record from Quantic Soul Orchestra. And this song, this is interesting, right? This is what makes Quantic stand out is that he is kind of like I was saying earlier, like a full, full blown musician. And he steps away from his like, quantic name, even though it's typically part of the names of his other side projects. But like, he steps away from the down tempo type stuff and just makes real music with real musicians that a lot of times have a down tempo, like backbone to them. You know what I mean? Like they sound like they could be a song that would be sampled by a down tempo artist or the backbone of a down tempo song. Anyway, let's play a song here.

This is off of the Quantic Soul Orchestra, which is again one of his side projects. This record is called Pushing On, and this song is called West Pier Get Down. What I like about Quantix, like his approach to music, you know, a lot of down-to-bar artists would, if they had that song on their head, they would maybe try to go find samples where they could samples from an old jazz records or something like that, where they could take it and make it. it kind of sound like that, right? He just said, fuck it. I just want to make music like this. And he went and did it, right? Well, and genius move on his part, dude, because anytime he wants to go back and just make some sample-based music, he has all of these dope recordings of instruments that are isolated that he recorded in his studio with these badass musicians, he could just use all of this recordings to make music from now on. Yeah, or if he wants a saxophone player,

he just calls up the guy that appeared on this record, right? So for this song in particular, he credits the saxophone and trumpet. Saxophone was somebody named Tracy Wanamay, and the trumpet was Todd Simon. Todd Simon is actually credited for writing the song as well, so there you go. Nice. Because it's a very trumpet-heavy song, right? Anyway, so like I was saying earlier, I wanted to play that first because that kind of shows that he was already doing this kind of thing, but then when he went to Columbia and fell in love

with those old records and met and talked with a bunch of these records, these musicians that showed up on those old records, he decided to form another band, like I was saying earlier, the Quantic and his combo Barbaro, and they put out a record that is amazing. And it's called Tradition in Transition. This will be our last track today. I think it should be noted here, dude. This came out in 2009. That's a while ago.

2009. Yeah. One thing about him, he's just so prolific. He is one of the, like, they kind of call him like the busiest, most hardworking musician in that particular genre of musicians, right? If you look at his discography, like he just collaborates with a bunch of people. He works with this female vocalist named Alice Russell, who apparently has lent her vocals to a bunch of down-tempo artists.

Nice. Anyway, and then if you look at his singles and EP's, like, it just, just, it scrolls for days. He's put out six tracks already this year, six singles, right? So he's just always making music. Anyway, so let's play one last track here. And again, so the story here is that he went to Columbia, fell in love with these old jazz records and wanted to make music like this again. And so he did. So this song is called Moss Pahn.

More bread. More bread. Is that what that is? Pond is bread? Yeah, dude. Come on now. Okay. All right.

I thought you were from Texas, brother. I am. Wow. My absolute favorite flavor of funk and soul. Yeah. Love it. I'm definitely going to dive into that album. I haven't listened to that.

Of course, the whole album is great, right? But yeah, basically, I'm going to read the write up here from the record labels website. It says, basically, this record sees Will Quantic Holland. That's what they call him? Mining the Lesser Teton. tapped musical sources from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa, and fusing those rediscovered psychedelic, experimental, and rhythmically rich sounds of the past with deep funk and soul elements and folkloric vocal styles.

Awesome. So what's cool about that to me is that, like, as a, like I was saying, as a downtempo musician, like, you're always fusing these types of sounds together, right? I think it's just really cool that Will just said fucking them. let me just get some people together and start making this music again. There's no reason why this kind of music can't still exist and still sound amazing. You know what I mean? And that's what makes him kind of stand out.

Yeah, and that shows too just how great of a musician he is. Yeah. Dude, let me just circle back, bring it all back home, dude. I just don't think I was mature enough to appreciate the musicianship that goes into, to being an electronic artist that heavily samples music. And these artists, like we mentioned as well, Tycho has done this as well over the years. Bonobo bringing in live musicians. And, you know, with William Holland, it just proves just how much talent is coursing through their veins, dude.

Like, it's just something I didn't think about and appreciate when I was younger. And that's why I didn't gravitate towards this music until I was a little bit older. Yeah, I mean, you have to be, you're kind of a composer, a producer. You're constantly digging for the sound that you're looking for when you're digging through old records and stuff. He's hearing old jazz, old blues, old, you know, old Columbia records and stuff like that. Like you're getting exposed, at least if you approach it the way that he did, you're getting exposed to all this rich, like, history of music. Like, you're going to be well-versed in music in order to be a successful down-tempo musician

because you're always looking for all these, how do all these pieces fit together? You know what I mean? And, like, Quantic is an example of somebody who really, really excels at that. And, like, so much so that he can put together and write music with a full band. Well, awesome, dude. What a great, great way to dive into this down-tempo stint. I mean, I feel like we, you know, Rokesop was just a little taste, like, just to kind of ease you in. Now we're like full-blown, jazzy down tempo.

We're in it now, dude. What are we doing next week? Next week is going to be Thieber Corporation. You're going to be steering that ship, too, man. I had never really got into them totally down to steer because this, this album is great. And I will say, if, like I mentioned earlier, if you're familiar with the Garden State soundtrack, you will be familiar. you're with some of these songs. But yeah, this is another one of those just like classic, iconic down-tempo records

that I think got a lot of attention and exposure from that movie. I think, you know, he kind of introduced Garden Steed was the first time I heard this music. But anyway, that soundtrack introduced some good music to a lot of people. That was a really popular soundtrack. Yeah. I mean, same goes for the shins, dude. A lot of people, that was their first. That was like their introduction to new sling was Garden State.

And you want to talk about the perfect scene, dude. I know, dude. For a band to be introduced to the world with, right? Yeah, she puts her headphones on and just says, listen to the song is going to change your life. Exactly. This manic pixie dream girl. That's like the trope that that character was.

Yeah, dude. He's like, let me take you into this whole new world here, Zach Graff. What a perfect song, man, for that scene. Yeah, man. Anyway, The Theory Corporation songs were used in more of the artistic scenes, like when he's standing in front of the wallpaper and his shirt matches the wallpaper. Oh, yeah. The The Theory Corporation song is playing in the background during that scene, I believe, when he's at the restaurant, serving tables, contemplating how he screwed up his life, basically, or whatever. Anyway, so yeah, that's next week.

We're going to talk about the Mirror Conspiracy by Theory Corporation. That is another example of, I think The Vrie Corporation has always collaborated with musicians. I think it's a duo. A lot of times electronic artists come in pairs like Rorik-Sop, like Daft Punk, Tosca. The Vecorporate, Tosca, exactly. Underworld, which we'll be talking about at some point. But yeah, that's kind of interesting to me. There's a lot of, there must be a reason for that, a really obvious reason that we don't know.

But it probably just makes it easier. Yeah, dude. You've got to have two minds at least. Just like us, dude. Too nice. Yeah. But that's next week. Hopefully you enjoy this as much as we do.

I hope that some of you are out there, like this guy that I talked about earlier in the beginning of the episode, who had never been exposed to this kind of stuff before. And it changed his life. I'm hoping there's at least one listener out there who has never really given downtempo a fair shake. and we can bring you on board of us. Yeah, I hope we can do for you what Zach Braff did for so many people with the Garden State soundtrack. Well, there you go. I feel like we walked down memory lane quite a bit today, man.

SomaFm.com. Man, that brought me back, dude. I just love that they didn't change it, man. I love it when websites do that. I totally forgot about this, man. I'm going to pull up Groove Salad tomorrow. Dude, let's do an outro. song and just click on Groo Sala.

It's going to be whatever it is that's playing when I piece this episode together. That's what I'm going to do, dude. Okay. I'm going to pull the audio from my sound card on my computer, and we're just going to outro out with whatever is playing on Groove Salad, the internet radio station from Soma FM. That's going to be our outro, dude. It's going to be perfect.

All right, Q. So that's next week. We'll do Thevery Corporation as we continue our journey through some of the down tempo that you and I fell in love with, oh, so many years ago. And then, dude, we're going to wrap it all up. I think we already talked about this, but after our What You Heard, which will be in a few weeks, we're going to do a down-tempo What You Heard. It's not really what-you-heard.

It's more of a down-tempo mixtape that's going to be a similar format to What You Heard. But basically, there's too many tracks in artists that we love to, we can spend the next year doing down-tempo stuff. So we thought it would be fun to do We each bring five other down-to-bo tracks Just from our wide Collection and experience

Listening to this type of music over the last decade That's gonna be a dope episode, man Yeah, we'll spare you all an entire year's worth of Yeah, of this kind of music and just play a bunch of good music A good down-tim of music all in one episode Just to wrap it up in a few weeks Yeah, so we got three or four more episodes devoted this kind of stuff and then we'll be right back to rock and roll some 80s rock

alternative is what we have in mind so don't worry sit tight if you hate this kind of stuff we'll be back to our regular genres and wheelhouse very very soon all right cue um where can they find us all you passing it on to me today and dude i'm always sitting here just hoping that you go through and and and say the outro you know dude sometimes you got you got to you got to you got You know, you got to be uncomfortable. I guess I'll do it. You know. I guess I'll do it.

Well, you can find us on Twitter, Travis, at No Failure Podcast. Reach out to us on Twitter. Send us a message on there. Give us some music suggestions. We are always looking for more tunes, new tunes, new bands to listen to. If we like what we hear from your suggestion, we are, that's how we are planning on, hopefully, finishing up all of our What You Heard episodes with an outro handpicked by a listener. And that goes for our downtempo mixtape episode that's coming up.

If you've got a down tempo artist that you absolutely love or a song in particular, send us a suggestion and maybe we'll outro that episode with your song. So yeah, reach out to us on Twitter. always looking to start musical conversations with our listeners. So you can find us there at No Filler Podcasts. We are also part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. That is the podcast for music lovers. Got maybe even hundreds by now, dude.

I don't know how many shows we've got, but we're nearing 100 shows. Dozens. In the network. Dozens. Quite a few dozens. Lots of great music-centered shows in the network. Proud to be a part of the family.

you can find us at pantheonpodcasts.com. And as always, we would like to thank AKG for supporting the show. And yeah, next week we'll be coming at you with some thievery corporation. And we're going to fade us out. I'm just going to fade us into some groove salad on Soma FM, some internet radio for you. That's going to outro us out. I hope it's good.

I'm, dude, I'm not even going to, like, I'm not going to just pretend like it's spontaneous. I'm for real going to just press record and just whatever's playing. That's going to be our outro. So make sure you hit Groove Salad classic because that is from that that is what you and I would have listened to. I wonder if it's my guess is that's the same playlist from back then, which is hilarious and amazing at the same time. So yeah, mystery down tempo track from Groove Salad on Soma FM's going to play us out. And yeah, we will we will be shouting at you next week. Thank you, as always for listening. My name's Quentin.

My name is Travis. Y'all take care.