No Filler Music Podcast - Reflection and Reckoning: Blood Orange's Freetown Sound

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Before you can truly appreciate Freetown Sound and the message it delivers, you need a little bit of context around the state of the country in the summers leading up to its release. But more importantly, how a very specific incident in Dev Hynes career was the tipping point for an artist at his wit's end confronting the realities of being a black man in America. We break it all down in our look at one of 2016's best records, Blood Orange's Freetown Sound. Tracklist: Blood Orange - Do You See My Skin Through The Flames? Blood Orange - With Him + EVP Blood Orange - Hands Up Blood Orange - Squash Squash Blood Orange - Better Than Me Tame Impala - Borderline (Blood Orange Remix) 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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And welcome to No 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. Got my brother Quentin with me, as always. As we promised last week, we are talking about the music of Devante Hines. He sometimes goes by Dev Hines, but he is known. musically as blood orange. And as we kind of talked about last week,

he is, in a lot of ways, the type of R&B and funk and electronic that he does is very much sort of an evolution on the Minneapolis sound that we talked about last week with Jesse Johnson

and The Time and Prince. Funk, but with a synth-pop new wave band to it. which I am all about it, dude. I will never get tired of that. Yeah. And he does it, he does it better than anybody these days, Dev. And, you know, as we talk about with Manette, it is hard to say cute.

I'm glad that, you know what? Dude, Texas is easy to say. You know what I mean? Texas. Sure. Washington. Yeah. That's where we live.

Dude, so I noticed when I listened back to last week's episode, both of us said Minneapolis a few times without even noticing. It's fine. You know what? People make mistakes, Q. I like Minneapolis, honestly. I think it rolls off the tongue a little better.

But as we talked about with the Minneapolis sound last week, they blended New Wave with R&B and Funk, right? Yeah. So with DeF Heinz, he's doing all that, but instead of New Wave, he's mixing in sort of indie rock stuff, because, you know, hey, it's 2020. You know what I mean? But anyway, speaking of indie rock, let's talk about his history a little bit.

So I didn't realize this, but he's been in the biz for a long time. His first project, he was a guitar player for a for a punk rock indie band called Test Icicles. Man, is that, talk about a band aggregator name. Obviously, it's a play on words cue. Wait, hang on. Testicles. Oh my God. Test icicles.

Silly me. Right. Silly me. And so that, you know, his, his background is, I shouldn't say his background. He got his start doing like indie punk rock kind of stuff. Shortly after that, that was in 2004. 2004 to 2006, he was in a band called test icicles. He then sort of broke off and did his own thing and it was more of an indie folk type thing.

And he called himself light speed champion. That was 2008 to 2010. He got some notoriety with that, but nothing really ever took off as much as Blood Orange did. And Blood Orange, he started back in 2009. And that's right when we had our music blog cue. That was right in the thick of it. Yeah. So we talked about his first record coastal grooves.

we talked about I think that the main single we probably played the single on our podcast on our blog we'll never get it straight they're the same thing in my mind for some reason

yeah yeah it's more of the same just different different media and I'm probably gonna pronounce this wrong Sutfin Boulevard Sutfin Boulevard soutfin Boulevard anyway I remember that song

we covered it we talked about it and to me, when I listened back to Coastal Groves, and even some of the stuff he did on Cupid Deluxe a couple of years later, it sounded like it was from the early 2010s. It had that indie, not chill wave, but it had that sound that a lot of people were doing back then. You're saying it fits in with the time that it came out. Yeah, right.

We were blown away recently when we found out that Dream Pop is synonymous with shoe gaze. But I feel like the 2010s was leaning heavy on the more indie rock like dreamy pop. Yeah, right. And that's what we, because that's I guess our first exposure to shoe gaze

was the stuff, the dream pop shoegazy stuff that was coming out in the 2010s. Not realizing that it went back to the 80s, right? Right. Anyway, the reason I'm talking about all that is because it wasn't really until Free Town Sound, which is the record we're talking about today, came out in 2016, that he really started to sort of come into his own as far as like his sound and stuff.

Like you can hear it in coastal grooves and you can definitely hear it start to build like no momentum and stuff on Cupid Deluxe. But Freetown Sound is when like Blood Orange becomes blood orange in my mind as far as like he's found himself. He knows his sound. He's confident and you can hear it. And this is two albums after Coastal Grooves? Right.

So it's Coastal Groves, Cupid Deluxe, Free Town Sound. So here's what happens in between coastal grooves and Cupid Deluxe. And this is part of what makes Dev Hines such a talented artist. He's also a songwriter and producer sort of in between all of this stuff. So he's produced and written songs for Solange Nulls, which is Beyonce's sister. Haim, Sky Fiera, Chemical Brothers, Kylie Minogue, Blondie, which that's how that connection was formed. Mariah Carey. Basically, he writes coastal grooves in between this and writing up to Cupid Deluxe.

He's producing for these huge pop stars, right? and that's sort of where he's sort of honing his craft and stuff like that, right? And so by the time you get to Freetown Sound, and something you may have noticed, he typically only collaborates and produces and writes for female singers. And that he sort of sings in that register too, and that's sort of his comfort zone and stuff like that. By the time we get to Freetown Sound, he features people like Carly Ray Jepson, Blondie, and some other artists on that record. So he's just as comfortable producing and writing even on his own albums for other people

as he is getting behind the mic himself and stuff like that. Anyway, so that's not what's important about Freetown Sound. There's actually a lot that we have to talk about as far as events happening in the world because it informs his writing and the way that he essentially viewed the world and himself in it when he was writing Freetown Sound. So should we play a song first? Yeah, let's play a song. So we're going to play this in the order that it happened because it tells the story.

So this is not really a song, but it is something that he put out on SoundCloud back in 2015. So let me just, sorry that I got to paint pictures here, Q, but we got to have the whole story here to know. No, I'm excited. I'm anxious to hear more about it. Okay, so in 2014, he performed at Lollapalooza with his then-girlfriend. I forgot her name. But anyway, he was on stage with his then-girlfriend. This was after the Trayvon Martin and the Eric Garner.

And the Black Lives Matter movement started to kind of kick into gear, right? And so on stage, he spoke out against police brutality while wearing a t-shirt with the names of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis, Oscar Grant. What happened after that is he was assaulted by security at the Lollapalooza stage. What? After speaking out against police brutality, basically one of the security guards, like roughed them up or something dumb like that. Jesus, man. Right. So that happens to him in 2015 in the summer of 2015.

Basically, he was talking about how after this was after the Eric Garner grand jury decision. He was like in this depression. I'm going to quote, I'm going to quote him real quick. He's talking to, he did like a radio interview with this guy. I think he's a producer named Kindness. Also goes by Adam Bridge. Adam Bainbridge. But anyway, kindness was asking him about this song that I'm going to play.

It's not really a song. They've actually, they referred to it as a collage style piece of music. Anyway, so this is Dev speaking. He says, I basically wrote a crazy thing, just stream of consciousness kind of thing on Blood Orange Facebook about how I was feeling about what was happening in America. And then I just started playing the piano. So anyway, so it's this like spoken word type thing with with some music that he's put behind it. But I wanted to play this one part.

This thing is 10 minutes, almost 11 minutes long. But anyway, I wanted to play jump to this one part where he starts talking about like the history of his name. So I was looking up what my last name means and what its origin is. My last name's Heinz, H-Y-N-E-S, gets spelled a number of different ways. H-I-N-E-S, the most common spelling. And I found that it originates from the name O'Haines, O-H-E-Y-E-N-S. And that origin is Irish.

It's an Irish name. I mean, I always knew my name would essentially be based of a slave name, but yes, it's an Irish name. meaning servant. So essentially not only is my last name, a name originated from slave trade, but it literally means a servant. So, I mean, it's a weird thing to have to carry around.

I'm proud of my name. I'm proud of my dad. I'm proud of my family. But it's very strange to have to carry that every day. We all carry it. Or every black person carries that. Now, the reason I faded to their cue is because that music in the background actually gets louder and it's hard to hear what he continues to say.

but somebody kind of transcribed the rest of it. So I'm going to read just one more part of it. He says, it's strange. I've been thinking about this a lot. Essentially almost what this album is, referring to Freetown Sound, is myself. I feel like I'm deconstructing myself, trying to work out who I am. So I'm not this painted image of who I was. I think in my past I was almost rejecting an image of myself that wasn't even mine.

What I mean by that is there's this James Baldwin interview where he is discussing when he was writing Native Son, how he was growing up rejecting this image that was painted of him. He never had eaten watermelon before. He never really listened to jazz before. You know, all these things that the white man has painted of the black person, the person's culture. Now, that's not to say those things don't have richness in them, that you can celebrate that we did create. So we're here to essentially go back, deconstruct all of that, and learn to speak for the first time. I feel like I'm learning to speak again in my late 20s. So there you go.

All of this stuff is going around in his head as he's writing Freetown Sound. And, you know, he just flipped on a microphone and recorded himself just thinking through these things out loud in July of 2015 and posted it on SoundCloud. Yeah, it's powerful stuff, man. It's crazy, right? Yeah. And I'm so happy that he released this out there and did this, right? He goes on to saying that interview that, like, I started realizing it's okay to make music that isn't for people to listen to if it's a sense of therapy. So he's forming his own identity separate from the, quote, painted image that was forced upon him.

Right. He's talking about, like, black identity, right? and how there are these certain images. You know, you think about the old, like, old timely cartoons and stuff like that, right? Oh, yeah. And Jamima, all that kind of stuff. Sure. That are just forced upon people and how they have to kind of rediscover themselves and, you know,

determine what their identity is in a way, right? Yeah, and not only that, but he, it's part of his last name, too. Right. Right. Yeah, man. That's, I mean, it goes without saying, but this isn't something that we really know anything about personally. No. We don't, no, that's right. We don't really deal with these kind of things. I think we should say on Mike here, you know, it's Black History Month. We should, you know, you and I stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. It's something that we support 100%. Absolutely. You know? Yeah. And I think it's great to get these stories told. And yeah, dude, I'm glad that he posted that even if it was just kind of a spur of the moment. And, you know, I think it's cool that he didn't really think too much about it. It just kind of came out.

And, I mean, that's one powerful thing about the Internet, right? Like, good or bad, sometimes we get these moments of like clarity and self-reflection. You know, I think it's awesome that he posted it. Right. Well, so this guy that was interviewing him on the radio, this pretty. producer, it goes by kindness, like I said earlier. He kind of summed it up nicely. He said, Coastal Groves was defining identity. Cupid Deluxe was interpersonal relationships and that identity. He says, I think Freetown Sound is your identity in society, maybe. And then

Devante says, this last album, Freetown Sound, this is me and the type of person I am amongst this certain corner of the world. It's me stepping back and saying, oh, I'm a black man living in America. So all this stuff, the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2015, prior to that too, you know, just made him really step back and reflect on himself and society, right, and his identity and whatnot.

So it kind of sounds like he reflected on that and then stepped forward and owned it. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what this album is all about. All right. Let's hear some music, man. Let's hear some music. Sorry that that took a long time.

But you really have to, you can't listen to this album and not know all of that context. Yeah, I'm glad you did it, man. I definitely appreciate that. Well, that's the thing. Like, when you listen to this record, there's so many things that he ties and throws into the record. scenes from from movies and stuff clips from

Black Lives Matter marching and protesting all this stuff and you can just listen to me like oh cool he kind of threw this stuff in there but when you when you step back and realize oh he was assaulted by security

at Lollapalooza you know after after taking a stand against this kind of stuff it helps you understand what this album is about all right let's play speaking of which we're going to play there's like like i was saying there's these little moments throughout the

record and this is one of them it's a track called with him it's track five it's a minute and 25 seconds long we're going to play the whole thing and let it play into evp which is kind of our first pick we're both familiar with evp yeah evp is features blondie i think i think that's on one of our playlists yeah it's on our best of the decade playlist but here we go this song is called with him And black is a ring And black is light And black will be It's just so catchy man

And like Yeah All the different layers and like textures And And genres that you're hearing You know I mean

That's the perfect example Of what we're talking about Where we say that he has taken the Minneapolis sound The torch And he's kind of carrying it And adapting it for You know

2016 when this came out Yeah He's evolved it and modernized it. But yeah, there's definitely that backpone still there. I think it goes along with that the synth lines that he has, just kind of like stabby synth lines. Yeah, definitely the synth. The synth sounds right out of the 80s, right?

Yeah. There's an NPR article that I got a lot of info from. They say Debbie Harry crashes the party as if a DJ, had dropped the needle on Blondie's rapture. I like the way that they described that. Like when her vocals come in for that chorus, it does kind of come out of nowhere. Yeah, they're right. It does kind of sound like it's coming from a different, like a different sound system or something.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. He's not just a musician. He's a producer, maybe first. I don't know, you know. I mean, he's a Kevin Parker. Sure, yeah. You know, I've thought about that.

Like he is up there with Kevin. I don't even want to say up there. with Kevin Parkner. I think he exceeds Kevin Parker in some ways. But he's the same kind of there's no reason to compare them. Sure. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's that same level of talent. Exactly. Music through and through it just runs through your veins. Yeah, exactly. So he produced a Blondie song. He wrote and produced a Blondie song called Long Time, which came out actually after this record. So he hadn't actually worked with Blondie or produced. for Blondie yet.

But yeah, it's worth noting that DeV Hines is like a multi-instrumentalist. I think that goes without saying. Does he play drums? Let me see if he plays drums on this particular. I was just curious because with that, that's kind of spoken word stuff that you played first, that was a really cool drumbeat, just wondering where it came from. Yeah.

So he is, yes, he is drums on this track. He is the bass on this track. he is the guitar on this track so yeah kind of like with kevin parker a lot of what you hear uh as far as the instruments go is is from this this one guy at dev hines man we sure bring up kevin parker a lot i know i did i know big fan boys yeah but anyway um but yeah so that clip that i played first the track with him um there was a kind of the it's like beat poetry at the end at the end but that was that was from actually taken from a documentary yeah i was wondering about that that was really cool It's from a documentary called Black Is that came out.

And that's kind of what you heard, that part from that. It came out in 1994, a documentary called Black Is, Black Ain't. It's somebody named Marlon Riggs, or at least that's the person who made the documentary. But that's where they sampled toward the end there. But in the beginning of with him, there's a lyric where he says, you chose to fade away with him. I chose to try and let you in. So what's interesting about that lyric, he throws it in to that song with him. But it actually first showed up on the end of a music video for another single that he released before this album came out.

So that first track that I played was called Do You See My Skin Through the Flames? That was that spoken word thing that he put up on SoundCloud. Okay. After that, he released a single called Sandra's Smile. And it came out in 2015, a couple months after, do you see my skin through the flames. Anyway, that song was about Sandra Bland, which was that black woman who was killed in prison in freaking, I think, McKinney or something like that. Oh, yeah.

Close to me. But anyway, that song was sort of an ode to her. And he was singing about, in particular, her, but also this song was written. for these women who are these mothers who have, you know, buried their children after police intervention, police brutality, right? And so the reason I'm bringing up, I don't want to play the song, but at the end of the music video, not the song itself, but the music video, he throws that that same lyric at the end of the video that you heard in with him. And it shows up later in another song. It's interesting. Yeah, this line he keeps coming back to,

You chose to fade away with him. I chose to try and let you in. It's a very vague. It could mean a lot of different things. Yeah. But it's interesting that he tied it to his song about that he wrote to as an ode to Sandra Bland. And the mothers that lost their sons. Exactly.

Anyway, so let's move on in the next tracker. So this next song is one of my favorites on the record. It's called Hands Up. and it is in some small way, at least, about Trayvon Martin. And you'll hear in the chorus a line that jumps out that should jump out at you if you're paying attention. So here we go. This song is called Hands Up. Records his voice and mixes it in, dude.

It sounds great with headphones, dude. Yeah. Yeah. And in EVP, he's singing more in his lower register, right? But in this song, he's very much singing in that higher register that I was talking about earlier. very much channeling like Prince, you know, with the way he sings. I'm all about it, dude. But anyway, the lyrics in the chorus,

Are You Sleeping with the Lights on Baby? And then there's this sort of these background vocals, I guess. Hands up, get out. Hands up, get out. Keep your hood off when you're walking because they, trying not to be obsessed with your hating. I don't even know what that means. Sure enough, they're going to take your body.

So anyway, keep your head off. hurt off when you're walking is obviously about Trayvon Martin, right? And anyone else who has to deal with that shit. Right. Which I don't have to deal with, man. Right. I just don't. Exactly.

I can walk around with a hoodie. I'm wearing a hoodie right now for fuck's sake. Now, I'm not outside walking around at night. But I'm just saying that's a reference to the fact that Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie when he got shot by George Zimmerman. Yeah. But yeah. This is what he's sort of refurb.

reflecting on as a black man in America in his in his 20s, you know, what does it mean to be to be black in this country? Like, you got to keep your hood off when you're walking, you know what I mean? Sleep with the lights on. That makes me think of Brianna. Brianna Taylor? That hadn't happened yet. That didn't happen. Oh, I know, but like it's, you know, she was shot in her sleep. Right. Anyway, let's play the end of it here because they do something at the end that's kind of interesting. So here we go. So, here's another part to hands up. So you heard of the end that was the chant that would often be recited at Black Lives Matter

protests. Hands up, don't shoot. Hands up, don't shoot. That little news segment or that person talking at the end, that was interesting what he was saying. I thought that was Van Jones, because I recognized that voice, I thought it was, you know, the CNN commentator Van Jones. I thought it was interesting where the point at which it cut off that, what he was. was saying. Right. And it's interesting that it was cut off there. It was caught off there for a reason.

Right. But let me try to figure out what the quote was because according to... He said if there's a replacement for something, they will always be and then it cut off, something like that, right? Okay. So it is a guy named Vince Staples and this was taken from a, I guess a Time magazine interview. Anyway, yeah, saying something never been done before, and there's no replacement for it. when there's a replacement for something, it will always, and I wish I knew what the rest of the quote was, and I couldn't find it. But yeah, again, like this is just, it runs through this record, and that's the thing.

It's one of those records you've got to play from start to finish. I know we say that a lot, but with this record, the whole thing is, there's a thread that goes through the whole thing. And I was talking about how there's a lyric that gets repeated a few times, going back to a song that's not even on this record. And we're actually going to play that song next, the song that actually takes that lyric and kind of does something with it finally. So anyway, here's our next track. But yeah, I wanted to also mention at the end of that song, hands up, the second clip that we played here at the little guitar ditty in the background.

You know, that's not to do like a, he's just like Jesse Johnson, just like we talked about last week. But, you know, he could throw it out on the guitar, too. It sounded very 80s. Yeah. So, anyway. All right. So this next song is called squash, squash. Yeah, the way that he blends so many different sounds and genres together in ways that, like,

these are things that, like, maybe don't seem like they shouldn't work together, but he makes them all work together really well, you know. Yeah, he definitely, he does borrow. from a lot of different genres and styles. But yeah, it's just, it just feels like blood orange. Right. And that's what I was saying. Like, it seems like his first two records were about, you know, he wasn't, he hadn't

really found that sound yet. But having worked on some like producing and writing for some pop stars and stuff, and maybe just the way that he, you know, the way that he's piecing together these clips for movies and interviews and recordings of chance and then like during protest and stuff. I will always be a fan of songs that have ambient noise in it. I like that, like the crowds in the background and people talking and stuff. I like that. When it's done right, it can be really effective.

And also, let me just say real quick, dude, this was our least favorite thing about running a music blog. We got to where we just could not stand trying to figure out. how to properly describe the sound of whatever band we were covering. It gets hard. Sometimes the words just don't come to mind. Yeah. I mean, you got to be a music, I don't know, scholar or something like that. I just don't have my the Thesaurus at the ready, you know? Right. But yeah, man, he's got, it's, it's part of that Minneapolis, funky R&B, New Wave. Well, that's the thing. Like, when you, when you hear R&B funk, New Wave,

and synth. Those are things that describe the Minneapolis sound. They don't seem like they should work together. But they sure do, man. Yeah, Prince and The Time and Jesse Johnson. They figured it out. He has really found the like echoey, reverby sweet spot, dude. He's got just the right amount on his voice.

It sounds like the 80s, that kind of 80s sound. Yeah. But anyway, I was trying to find who to credit that saxophone playing. That was another thing I wanted to say. man. Yeah, how cool is that saxophone? There needs to be more saxophone these days, man. I couldn't agree more. I don't care what genre. I couldn't agree more.

So there is a saxophone player named Jason Arse that is listed or credited with tracks 1, 3, 5 through 7, and 15 but not for track 12, which is what we just played. And I know DeF Heinz plays the sax, so I'm guessing it's DeF Heim's. Well, there you go, man. But he's not listed

on here as Dune. doing the D-Sax on track 12. He's a humble guy. All right, anyway, so I got one more track for us here. And, I mean, I know it's, it just seems like they just keep getting better and better. But this one, I think, might be, might be my new favorite on the record. EVP has long been one of my favorite tracks from that decade as seen on our playlist of top 100, non-singles from the last decade. if you want to check that out on Spotify.

But I confess I haven't really listened to this record as intimately as I have this last week, preparing for this episode. So this song is called Better Than Me, and I want to credit the vocalist, because there's another vocalist on here. I think it's a well-known. Yeah, okay. Carly Ray Jaspin. Carly Ray Jepson.

Everybody knows Call Me Maybe. Remember that song? Oh, dude. I love that song. There I said it. Okay, well, you're going to love the song anymore. So, Carly Way Jepson is featured in this track. So here we go.

This song is called Better Than Me. It's got such an intimate vibe to it. Like, it really pulls you in. Like, you feel like you're just right there with him. Yeah. Or least I did. And those drums. I love the drums, man.

It's almost like a drum and bass, like a drum and bass kind of thing almost. Yeah, it's a really cool beat. And then I love Carly Ray Jepson's voice in that, man. It's kind of like that whispered, you know, Like you said, intimate, that pre-chorus that her and Dev are singing together. Yeah. I love the way that they paste that. And what's interesting, like I noticed it on the second, I think it was a second pre-chorus.

Like it started with just her voice. And then he like joined in like mid-verse or something like that. His voice was added to it. Really good composition. Yeah. And that's the thing. He's a songwriter producer. He's classically trained.

I didn't mention that earlier. That probably goes without saying. Anyway, this song, it sounds like it's about, I guess, seeing himself is not enough. That's what I'm reading on Genius.com. That's somebody's interpretation of the lyrics here. Despite Dev knowing deep down what defines his worth, he is temporarily blinded by his jealousy when he sees himself as not enough. He knows his worth is not defined by his blackness or his queerness, but sometimes he thinks

it makes him lesser. So I didn't mention that earlier, but his, his, his, his sexuality is kind of fluid. He was on the cover of Out Magazine. I don't remember when, but he got some pushback on that because people were like, wait a minute, we didn't think you were gay and all this stuff. And he kind of doesn't define himself sexually, which is, is he asexual? Yeah, I was going to say that's a, that's a sexuality in its own category, right? I mean, asexual or there's a bunch of, you know, queer is kind of the umbrella term, queerness, right? Right, right.

Yeah. Anyway, and that's part of kind of his appeal, in my opinion, and what MPR actually, this NPR article that I referenced earlier actually put it perfectly in the way that they described him. And, you know, Q, we've talked about like, oh, you know, he's a torch carrier. He's carrying the torch for prints and stuff like that. I think NPR says it better here. They say, Heinz is the air to cross-disciplinary, nearly indefinable mavericks like Prince David Bowie and Michael Jackson, whose talent burned so brightly it consumed mundane notions of sex and race. Yeah, dude. That's perfect.

Yeah, man. It's fucking perfect. And David Bowie, that's, I don't know why I didn't think about that or I never really think about that. But David Bowie was kind of famous for that too, right? Yeah, absolutely. There was no, same with Prince, especially, where it's like... Kind of androgynous. Yeah.

And like, he played into that. Anyway, so, yeah, that's all I got for this record. Fantastic stuff, dude. It's an amazing record. There's 17 tracks on here. You have to pull it up, push play, track one, let it ride all the way through. It is so enjoyable to listen to. It was really hard for me to pick.

That's why there were so many tracks. I could have easily played two or three more because there's a bunch of really, really awesome tracks on here. Anyway, I'm going to say one more thing here to kind of wrap it up. He says here, I'm quoting the pitchfork review. And I want to start trying to get in the habit of citing the authors here when I quote them. But this was somebody named Marcus J. Moore, who wrote that Freetown Sound represents the innermost workings of a man waiting through his own insecurities, holding his flaws in

weaknesses up to the light for everyone to see. He's trying to make sense of himself, his race and sexuality, while taking a hard look at what this world has become. The future isn't so hopeless, but we won't make it if we don't forge the path together. That's awesome. There you go. So you got to have guts. You got to be bold to put all this stuff out there, man. nothing but respect for for dev yeah the funny thing is like this is a guy who who hasn't he's never been afraid to put it out there he he wore a shirt on stage with the names of of Trayvon martin and others who were killed by police brutality and spoke out against it on a stage and then you know he was you know assaulted because of it right but he didn't let that stop him right he went on and

made this record after that. So anyway, yeah, my respect for him shot through the roof just this past week, just sort of reading about him and figuring out kind of what this record was about. He's amazing. He's put out some more records since then. I haven't listened to them, but I probably will. But he, you know, one thing, speaking of, and this is probably what we'll close on, he did a remix of Borderline by Tame and Pala. How sweet. So we've been talking about Kevin Parker. That'll be our outro track.

So he remixed Borderline, which of course is a track off of the slow rush, which came out last year. Anyway, so yeah, that's that. All right, Q, so next week we are doing our second What You Heard episode, which we've teased a couple times. the last couple weeks. Man, I'm sitting on so much music, dude. I got some good stuff, too. I need to hone it a little bit. Are we doing five each again?

Yeah, we have to. Okay. That's probably what it's going to be every time, because why not? So we're going to be bringing songs that we've been listening to, songs that we heard on the radio, songs that we heard on a movie, whatever. Whatever we've been listening to. What's a radio? Songs that we heard on the internet.

Yeah. How about that? And we're going to bring five songs each and spend a good hour or so jamming to some tunage. We used to do our watcher heard's at the end of every episode. At the end of every episode, but for this year, we're doing them once a month instead, and we're doing it as in like a full episode format. Yeah, we used to do one track each every episode. and we decided it's just it's more fun to to spend an hour sharing music together.

And we do have, I should also say, we do have a what you heard Spotify playlist that you can find. I think if you just type in no filler, just scroll past the Sum 41 record, all killer no filler. Scroll past that and you'll find my profile, which is the no filler official profile for Spotify. and we've got quite a few playlists on there. One of them being in What You Heard playlist. It's every single What You Heard song we've ever played, all thrown into a playlist. We also mentioned earlier the top 100 non-singles

from the 2010s. You can find that playlist on Spotify. Oh, we also have our favorites, our top 20 favorites from 2020 that we just put up a couple weeks back. So, yeah, lots of good playlists on Spotify. All right. So that was that. Next week we'll come at you with a What You Heard episode.

And in the meantime, you can find us on our website, no filler podcast.com. And I'm a few weeks behind on that side queue, admittedly. But I forgive you. Yeah, it's okay. You can find all of our previous episodes on the website. Really, it's more about finding our show notes and track lists for each episode. because obviously you can listen to our podcast on wherever you're listening to us now. I would think that probably zero people listen to our podcast from the website.

It doesn't make any sense to do it that way. Yeah, why would you do it? It's called an iPhone or an Android device or a computer. Anyway, but we post all the articles that I referenced, all the videos and stuff like that that I talked about, we'll post them on our website. So if you want to dig deeper into the artists that we talk about, that's a good place. to go. If you want to know, hey, what were those tracks that they played on the Blood Orange episode? Go to the website because we have the track list from each episode. And, you know,

yeah, you can find all of our episodes going back to episode one. You can also find us on Twitter at No Filler Podcast where, you know, we encourage you to reach out to us. Tell us what you like and don't like. Tell us what you want to hear us talk about. And we'll probably give you a shout out if you do. And of course, you can find us if you want some additional music podcast content. You can find us on the Pantheon podcast network. That's pantheonpodcasts.com. And of course, thanks to Pantheon sponsor AKG for supporting this show. All right, Q, that's that. Thank you as always for listening. My name is Travis. My name's Quentin.

Talk to you all next week. It was the night before the gathering and all through the house. The host wrapped a cozy cashmere throw from Home Sense for their spouse. Kids toys for $6.99 under the tree. And crystal glasses for just $14.99 for their brother Lee. A baking dish made in Portugal for Tom and Sue. And a nice $5.99 candle. Perfectly priced just for you.

Happy holidays to all. And to all a good price. Home Sense. Endless presents perfectly priced.