No Filler Music Podcast - Thomas Bangalter - Irreversible Soundtrack

Episode Date: March 8, 2020

What do the boys of Daft Punk do when they're not dawning helmets and winning Grammys? For Thomas Bangalter, he likes to create unsettling movie scores and dark dance beats for psychological horror dramas. At least that's what he was doing in 2002 when he scored Gaspar Noé's controversial film Irréversible. We listen to a couple of the more synth-heavy tracks from the film as we wrap up our batch of episodes devoted to electronic music. Tracklist Thomas Bangalter - Irreversible Thomas Bangalter - Night Beats Thomas Bangalter - Stress Dauwd - Idris Los Wálters - Calma Thomas Bangalter - Extra Dry This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Got my brother Travis with me as always. And we got some news to share. Yeah, sure, it's news. So we realized something. You know what new does is all about. Diving into the non-singles, you know, of albums from artists that we all know in love. The problem is, for the last couple of years, Travis and I have just kind of been using this platform.

to just share some of our favorite artists and albums. I mean, you think about it, that's what the intro does say. We do say some of our favorite records. Very true. But let's think about it. Let's focus on the first part of our intro. So, you know, part of our mantra here is that we talk about the songs that weren't singles, the hidden gems.

but when we talk about bands that nobody's heard of A or B don't have any singles on the album to begin with it kind of strays away from the spirit of the show right and so and I I feel like that's just hardwired into to us as music lovers you know back when we had New Dust our music blog that was the entire point of that blog was to share music from from underground you know or unsigned bands you know and that's what we live for dude so naturally we over time for the most part on this podcast we've been kind of sharing hidden jims you know hidden albums or yeah you can say that we've been well yeah we've been we've been sharing artists and albums that we love but we're going to change gears and start covering

some super popular artists. Some of the... Super popular albums. The heavy hitters, you know. And here's the thing. We're going to try to stay true at least to, you know, these have to be albums that we enjoy. Right. But we're also going to try to challenge ourselves in listening to albums that, you know,

we may know the singles that everybody else knows and we may actually not listen to the band on the regular. but we're going to challenge ourselves to listen to an album and try to find songs that are badass that we literally have never heard because we only know the singles, which is exactly the point of the show, right? Yeah. Is, hey, let's listen to these great albums and, you know, hey, maybe there's a song that you've overlooked or that I've overlooked for, you know, years because I only know the band because of the singles.

But we're only going to do an episode on it if we think it's. it warrants an episode, right? Right. Like to give an example real quick, I just, I think it'd be fun to cover a band like Def Leopard or something. There's got to be at least one Def Leopard album that has some badass songs, you know, hidden gyms that no one's ever heard before. Right.

And if you're listening to this episode and you're a Def Leopard fan, you're probably screaming at your iPod or you're into your car radio wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, you got to listen to this album and this and that. So anyway. Yeah. But we are going to keep the format in that every other episode is going to be a sidetrack. And that's where we're still going to continue to really dig deep. You know what I mean?

And find some stuff that is maybe unheard of or, you know, dive into like a member of a certain band's side projects or something. Yeah. In some of our earlier episodes, that is what we tried to do. Like, for example, our very first episode was Allison Chain's Dirt, which, is obviously one of those records that would fall under this category of hugely popular record. And our sidetrack for that was Green River, I think the band was. Yeah. Which is kind of credited as being one of the first bands to get the Grunge label attributed to them.

So that's a perfect example of like what the sidetrack was intended to be about. And you know, over the years, you know, we've, it's not as easy or or as, you know, consistent, finding side tracks for some of this more obscure stuff that we've covered. A lot of times the sidetracks have almost just turned into another episode entirely that's really not even related to the band that we talked about previously. So we're going to stray away from that and get back on track, if you will, and try to stick to the spirit of what we say at the beginning of every episode, you know. And I'm excited, dude.

I'm pumped about this. So next week, we're going to get the ball rolling. spend some time in the 90s, and we're going to cover Smashing Pumpkins and their album Gish from 1991. So that's going to be fun, dude. And yeah, we'll hang out in the 90s for a little bit, but we'll pick some of the more well-known artists and albums from that decade. And, yeah, dude, I'm excited.

So anyways, let's move on. Yes, let's move on. It's a little sidetrack today. So this is going to be our last episode in this batch of electronic. music that we've done the last few weeks. And we figured a good sidetrack for last week's episode on Daft Punk would be the soundtrack to a movie called Irreversible, which is a 2002 French experimental psychological thriller drama film.

Every single genre. Yeah. All crammed into one there. Yes. According to Wikipedia, it's a experimental psychological thriller drama. film. Psychological thrill of drum com.

Not a comedy cute, not a comedy. No. It was done by Mr. Tomas Bang Altar, which is one half of Dadaft Punk, the masked duo. And man,

so I don't know how this album got on my radar because I remember finding it back in the day of the day of the day of Napster and Limewire and Kazah, right? Damn, that long ago?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So before Spotify. So I don't know, because I mean... Hang on now. Is this even on Spotify? No. The soundtrack is not on Spotify.

So I don't know how I came to or how I stumbled upon this album. But either way, we've referenced this before. We actually referenced it in the very first episode, the Allison Chains episode. Oh, yeah. So we were talking about the track on... dirt called rain when I die and how the intro and like Lane Staley's voice had sort of this like droning kind of like uneasy feeling to it. Yeah.

And there's a gut wrenching. Yeah. Like just kind of, yeah, makes you feel off. Like something's off. Right. So there's a track on this soundtrack called rectum. And I haven't seen the movie because I've heard that it's. it's got some pretty graphic, brutal scenes in it, one of which is a rape scene.

And this song is played during that scene. And here's a little known fact cue. People were left feeling nauseous and having feelings of vertigo in the theater. Probably didn't help that there was a rape scene going out at the same time. But if you listen to this track independently of watching the film, like it does give you this sense of, of uneasiness. Apparently, the reason that this is is because he used a noise frequency of 28 hertz, which apparently is a frequency known to, you know, produce those, those feelings,

like nauseous feelings like that. So obviously, he, you know, from like a composer, like, perspective, like, he's doing a scene, a rape scene, nausea and vertigo. Like, that's, you know, he did that on purpose, right? I mean, that's, that's smart on his part, right, in a way, because it's like, I'm going to try to make you feel the way that this victim is feeling, right? Anyway, we're not going to play that song for you. If you want to check it out, though, if you're curious, if you're like, hey, we'll see about that. We'll see if I get nauseous.

Then, yeah, go play it. Go look it up on YouTube. It's called rectum. But again, it's not a pleasant song to listen to. We're going to play a little bit more of the more electronic-centric songs that are a little bit more deft punky. All right, so yeah, Q, this is sidetrack, so we're going to keep it nice and sweet, short and sweet. There's another way to say that. And, yeah, let's just play the first track that we're going to talk about here.

So this one is called, and it has a very appropriate title. It's called Night Beats. It's got some nice outrun vibes. Yes, definitely. Very synth wavy. I love it, dude. Yeah, it's great, man. And, like, you know, it's called night beats.

Like, that's the exact imagery that you get in your, in your mind, or at least I do. Just driving around in the city at night. Yep. We've talked about that before, how certain songs give you that, that, that vibe, you know. Yeah. We especially talked about that on our Aymint Tobin episode. But, yeah. So he released some of the stuff from Irreversible on some singles.

He basically, basically, there's some stuff on the soundtrack that is from his earlier work. So he, you know, wasn't written for the movie. But some of the stuff, like I said, wrecked him. And then that song we just played appeared on the film. and then he released them as a single the following year on a 12-inch called Outrage. It looks like this is his first soundtrack work. It is. He did another movie called Climax, and that came out in 2018, so relatively new.

I've listened to that, too. I think it's got similar, you know, it's in the same pocket of atmosphere and whatnot. Not that I've seen it, but I'm saying the soundtrack matches the same vibes as irreversible. So anyway, yeah, let's play the next one here, Q. So this is the very next track on the record. And it's called Stress. You know, that kind of reminds me of the stranger thing score. a little bit.

Yeah, well, so I mean, here, I mean, yes, you're right. And I think that's because it's to bring this full circle back to our, our Com True's episode, which I think was our first episode in this series of electronic music that we've talked about. It's, yeah, it's the outrun synth wave 80s sound, right? That could be a song off of a John Carpenter film. Yeah. Especially with that that that that sign wave kind of God, is that the right word cue. That's what a sign wave sounds like, right?

That thing. The one that's just ever present? No, not that one. Oh, I got you. But what's funny is like the one that's, that's ever present as you said, kind of reminding me of, I mean, again, it's John Carpenter, of the Halloween theme. same melody kind of you know composition of the you know it obviously wasn't a piano like the Halloween theme but I mean this is you know like we said this is a this is an experimental psychological thriller drama film so like there's probably elements and there's there's

rape scenes there's there's a really violent and I've actually watched this scene on YouTube there's this is a really violent beating scene where this guy beats a homeless person to death with a fire extinguisher to the face. Oh, good. Yeah, the reason I looked it up is because, and this is Reddit for you, people were like, I heard that the film crew literally found a homeless person and gave him some beer and brought him into the set and he actually killed a homeless person in that film. But the reason...

That would be a snuff film, right? Yeah. But the reason they see that is because it looks really, you know, pretty realistic. That's because they used CGI, apparently. But anyway. You got to the bottom of it? No, no one was killed. I can't confirm that cute.

But according to Wikipedia to CGI, okay? I'm going to choose to believe that. Okay. That's good. So, anyway, that song could definitely be in a horror film, right? Yeah. As that sense of that, you know, it's called stress. The name of the song is called stress.

It gives you that feeling of suspense. And like we were saying earlier, it's got that 80s, that 80s movie. It's those minor, minor chords, minor tones. Sure. There you go. Yeah. Why not, cute? Anyway, watch the film at your own risk.

But at the very least, you need. you can find it on YouTube. You can find the whole soundtrack on YouTube. It's not on Spotify. I'm sure there's other places you can listen to it. But look up the irreversible soundtrack. There's a playlist that has all the songs. You can just play and listen to it. Listen to the song, Rectum, at your own risk as well, because like we said, it really does make you feel uneasy when he listened to it. Yeah, it really does. Yeah. So anyway, Roger Ebert, Q, we all remember him. Rest in peace. he said, Q, that this is a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable. So there you go.

Anyway. So, yeah, not a lot of the daft punk stuff sounds like this. There is a track on the Tron soundtrack that has a similar vibe to the first song that we played. But, you know, much like a lot of musicians, to me at least, of the ones that I've listened to who have branched off and done their own soundtrack work, like Johnny Greenwood. They tend to use the soundtrack as a way to experiment, right? And like do things that they normally don't get to do with their main project, right?

So that seems to be the case with Thomas. Obviously, he's doing electronic music and dance music in some instances. But it is, you know, sort of a step aside from the deaf punk stuff, which is, which is cool. And that also proves that daf punk, you know, is a truly collaborative effort, you know. It's, they're definitely both contributing to the, to what you hear when you hear a daft punk song. It's not, you know, it's not one-sided or anything. Yeah, there's, there seems to be a lot of, um, electronic duos, which is interesting because that, you know, like Tyco, right, not Tyco, uh, Tosca when we didn't have a episode on them.

that's two guys Theeuvree Thevery Corporation Underworld is another band So yeah Q That's that A nice quick sidetrack

And it's time For our beloved segment What You heard But before we do that Q Let's take a quick break And we're back All right Q I'm gonna go first

Because My pick is an electronic song from a U.S. born U.K. based producer. So I've been a fan of this guy. The funny thing is the very first song of this guy,

he goes by Dowd, D-A-U-W-D. The very first time I heard one of his tracks was actually on a playlist that Mr. Scott Hanson himself a.k.a. Tyco put out on his graphic design blog that he runs

called ISO50 years ago. He had like a year-end playlist and there's a song off the album Heat Division and it was actually called Heat Division was the name of the track. And like I've been listening to the guy ever since.

Anyway, he just released a new single called psh That's good It's called Yeah, it's going to suck Pshashi

It's called P S-S-S-H or 0-0-1 So here's a thing Here's the thing He released a new Okay I shouldn't say he released Hold on, let me type this out

Pesha He started a new label called that PSSS-S-H It's fucking dumb I hate this shit Why are you gonna make me say this out loud Pish

Pish That's like this spoon album Yeah I got a guy got got right Anyway they released a new a new label And then to sort of kick it off He came out with this this three-track EP called Pish Pish

P-S-S-S-H Pish 0-0-1, so obviously, because it's the first, first release on the label. So we're going to listen to a song, Track 2, called Idris. And what's interesting about this record... I think it's Idris. Or Idris, like Edgis Elbe? Yeah, that's about the same, but whatever. Or is it?

That is a... Yeah, okay, okay. So what's cool about this, it has his typical sound, which is ambient, house techno kind of stuff. But this record in particular, which I haven't heard him do before, it's got these like Afro

I'm gonna quote them here, Afrodiosporic rhythms. And you'll hear like a sample, like a vocal sample, which is really cool. Anyway, so here it is. This song is called Idris.

That's a really good example of like a sample, heavy electronic song. I really liked all the different percussive samples that he threw in there. Yeah, and what's great about, you know, incorporating the, the, you know, Afro rhythms and stuff, that's kind of a, you know, a callback to early, early, like, dub music, you know. Right.

That's kind of the origins of, of, that's where it all started. That's where it all started. Yeah. Anyway, so a little bit more about this guy. Just, I thought that this was worth mentioning. He has released records on Ghostly International, Compact, which is another really well-known electronic label. And he had an album that came out and was actually featured on our top 100 of the last decade playlist called Theory of Colors that was released on Ninja Tune, which is another huge electronic label. So this guy, I mean, that's like the who's who of electronic record labels and he's been on all three of them.

So anyway, again, the guy's name is Dowd, or he goes by Dowd. That's D-A-U-W-D. And yeah, he just put out this track that we just played a couple days ago. So, or about a week ago. So anyway, that was, the song was called Idris. It was by Dowd. So Q, what you got for us? So it's a song I heard at a coffee shop a few days ago.

I was working on, I was piecing together one of our episodes. If you heard of a indie pop duo that goes by Los Walters. Nope. So they're apparently pretty well known in Puerto Rico. That's where they're from. It's kind of in the, it kind of reminds me like cut copy or, what was that band? Like Caribou, that kind of stuff, kind of, you know, a bit, electronic, you know, I think it's an actual band, you know, with instruments. And I believe they

tour with a drummer and a few other people. But anyways, I heard the song off of their latest EP. It came out in 2018. It's called Caramello. And this is the first track on the album. It's called Calma. Yeah, man, I really liked the, like the music, the instruments in that. The singing kind of reminded me of MGMT a little bit. Yeah, I thought that too. They're like the Puerto Rican MGMT. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, good stuff. Maybe I'll check out more of what they got. What's funny is like, you know, sometimes I look at your screen. And I saw like a small thumbnail of the album. Yeah. I thought that you were bringing like an 80s, an 80s hip hop group to the table just from like a squint that I was doing and looking at the wreck. Because it looks like they're wearing jumpsuits, which made me think of like like track suits, you know. Yeah, no, that's not down. I don't know who that is too. I don't think that's artists. I don't think that's them. Oh, interesting. I don't know who that is. So they, yeah, so they have a few, a few full-length albums.

and this was their latest like handful of albums or handful of songs that's been released. They've released a few singles after this one. But anyways, yeah, that's a band called Los Walters and their Puerto Rican indie pop band. That song was called Kalma or Kalma. I don't know how to say it. Anyway, that's going to do it for us today, man. So wrap this up. Yeah, so I'm excited to change our format up a little bit here.

I shouldn't say change format. Format's going to be the same. Change our focus on what kind of records we're going to talk about. Because in the past, I mean, it's not like we haven't talked about hugely, you know, popular records in the past. Like we've done an episode on Metallica. We've done an episode on some of Sabbaths, really. We did cold play. We've done back.

And looking back on those episodes, I feel like, you know, those are really fun. and more interesting conversations typically ensue from talking about records like that because there's just so much there to talk about. There's so much history with these bands. There's so much. Yeah. And one thing I want to do more of, which we were doing a lot of when we first started this up, I want to find really good interview clips and maybe even concert clips to play more of.

And, you know, when we dive into some of these more, you know, Uber successful popular bands, those would be a little bit easier to find. Oh my God, yeah, dude. Yeah, there's probably, there's probably no interview clips out there of, you know, what, kiln? Apparently those guys never, never show their faces. They try to stay anonymous. Anyway, that's not to say that we're not going to, that we're not going to do obscure

records ever again. That's what I was going to say. That's not, that's the case. But, you know, just to keep things, keep things, um, interesting. interesting for the listeners. We're going to talk about more popular records that you may have listened to, bands that you probably know and love, and hopefully introduce you to some songs from them from records you love that maybe you don't pay that much attention to or you skip over to get to the singles. That's kind of the spirit of the show. And I feel like we've kind of gone off

track a little bit just with our inquisible thirst cue for sharing unheard music. with people. It's kind of what I like to do. It's one of my passions. Yeah, it's what we live and breathe, man. It's to be the music snob at the office who's like, hey, have you ever heard of these guys before? I know you've heard electronic music, but have you heard IDM? Yeah, exactly. I remember telling that before. Or somebody thought I made that up. Right. And thought I was like being a complete snob about it. Yeah, I only listened to intelligent dance music. Did you push up your, your glasses, from the bridge of your nose as you said IDM.

After pushing my glasses up on my nose, I only listen to intelligent dance music. And I can, you know, hey, that does sound kind of made up. But it's not. I didn't make that shit up. Anyway, IDM is probably one of my favorite electronic. Subgenreous, but whatever. Anyway, so yeah, that's that.

Yep. So yeah, next week, we're going to talk about Smashing Pumpkin's first studio release, first studio album, full-length album, Gish, came out in 1991. 90s music is probably, 90s rock in particular is probably my favorite, my favorite decade of music. I think so too. Specifically rock.

Yes. I mean, obviously, we've talked about this a billion times, like our wheelhouse, like the music that we really came into music with was the stuff that was happening when we were in high school, which is like the 2000s, right? Right. But there's just something about grunge in particular, man, and the 90s rock sound that I keep going back to over and over and over again. So I'm excited to spend some time with some beloved 90s records.

I think we talk about, we want to do an episode on No Doubt at some point. And one of their popular records, we could probably do a, well, we've already done an R&M episode. We can do another REM episode, man. could. Yeah, we could. I did one of the more obscure ones anyway, I think so. Anyway, that's that. Possibilities are endless. Inless, man. Yeah, we were joking that like we could almost go through and just talk about the Rolling Stones' 500 best albums of all time and just go through those. But we want to be a little bit more, I don't want to say picky, but we want to, you know,

let's not let Rolling Stone do all the work for us. Right, right, exactly. But that's, that's the idea. We're going to talk about iconic records, iconic bands, and I'm looking forward to it. So we'll start that off next week again with the pumpkins, and it's going to be good times, man. Yeah, dude. So as always, you can find us on the Pantheon podcast network, along with a lot of other really great music-heavy podcasts. That's pantheonpodcast.com. We also have our own website, no-filler podcast.com. There you can dive into our show notes, check out the track lists from each show, all that fun stuff. We are also on Twitter now at No Filler Podcasts.

And you can also send us an email directly at No Filler Podcast at gmail.com. So we'll be shouting at you again next week with a listen to Smashing Pumpkin's debut album, Gish. And that ought to do it. Thanks as always so much for listening. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Y'all take care.