Shaun Newman Podcast - #525 - Akira The Don

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Akira is a British musician, DJ, producer, and Youtuber. He created a new genre of music Meaningwave which has featured different people like Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willink and Elon Musk. During Covid he was not allowed to re-enter the United States due to restrictions and moved his family to Mexico. Since 2018 he has released 100 albums which he equates to being in the zone and ridiculous hyper-productivity. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Graham Wardle. Mark Friesian. This is Marty up north. This is Alex Kraner. I'm Rupa Subramania. This is Tom Lomago, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

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It's in the show notes, okay? Now, let's get on on the tail of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum. For the past 80 years, they've been an industry leader in bulkfields, lubricants, and chemicals delivering to your farm commercial oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpatroleum.com.ca. He's a British musician, DJ, producer, and YouTuber. I'm talking about Akira the Don. So buckle up, here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Akira the Dawn. How's it going, sir? It is a beautiful day to be alive. How about you? I can't complain. I'm actually, it's, you know, I don't know. Actually, it's been really good.

I got no complaints here. Yeah. How about that? Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. I was chuckling. Somebody's like, well, who are you talking to today? I'm like, talking to this guy Akira the Dawn.

They're like, well, who's that? I'm like, I just threw on, you know, the way I get to you, I don't know how I get to you. A listener of mine is a follower of yours or vice versa. It doesn't matter. But I'm a huge Jordan Peterson fan. The podcast starts because I read this book, Jordan Peterson 12 Rules to Life, and it's led me on this wild journey. And I was like, man, I'm going to sit in studio. I was watching your interview with him earlier this morning.

And I'm like, this is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. So, Akira, you got to tell me. how on earth you get to where you are. Can we just go back to a little bit of before you're doing meaning wave and all this and try and give people who you are and how you get to where you are? Well, I mean, that's a good big question. Here's the thing, right? I don't know. What's your earliest memory?

My earliest memory? Yeah. When my parents were building their current house, I was three years old. but I, you know, truthfully, probably the hockey rink at about five or six. Wow. How about that? You play hockey? All the time, yeah.

Ice hockey? Ice hockey, yes. That's a dangerous profession from what I've been seeing. Well, I mean, in the history of hockey, Adam Johnson, rest in peace for that, man. I can't believe the skate to the neck. That is, I played a lot of hockey. I've never seen anything like that. So that's not a thing.

They warn you about. That's like, no one's worrying about someone like ninja kicking someone in the throat. No, that's like the guy went and watched the WWF and thought, this will be a good idea. Nothing with a blade on my foot going to a guy's neck is going to cause a big issue. And the amount of, like, it's just, oh, terrific. I've watched that, I don't know, way too much. And, you know, I had to throw in a little family guy after to just bring myself down and allow myself to have a little bit of laughter. But no, hockey's, yeah, sure is it a dangerous sport.

Yeah, but I mean, football's a dangerous sport. basketball, maybe not as much. But, yeah, hockey's an amazing sport. Great human beings, great culture. Love it. But that specific instance, no, I've never seen anything like that. Now, you've got me sidetracked. What?

I think you're sidetracked. What is your first memory? The point I was asking, here's the point I was asking is I don't remember anything before, before like seven years old. Okay. But I remember being seven. and I remember being essentially fully formed in the I knew what I loved

and what interested me and what I wanted to do with my life and that's what I was mostly concerned with despite the situation I was in which was living in North Wales in a valley surrounded by people who thought I was insane and didn't like or understand me that I was fighting. with every day. So I was in school having like fights every day with pretty much the whole school

who all thought I was an insane weirdo. But I knew that what I loved was music and sort of comics, anime type artwork. And I wanted to sort of meld those two things and do that with my life. And that's what I've been doing ever since. When you say you were, you were an insane kid, you know. Well, I wasn't insane. They thought I was insane because I like music. But what were you doing that was so, you know, like, I don't know, when you say about love of music, I love music. What were you doing that was so different? And I don't know North Wales either.

I should preface that. What was living in a valley in North Wales like? It's very beautiful. It looks like Lord of the Rings. You know, it looks like Lord of the Rings. When it's a nice day, it looks like where the hobbits hang out and the Shire. And when it's a less nice day, it looks like Mordor. You know, you've got like slate mountains around you and stuff of that nature.

So depending on what the weather's doing, it takes on a completely different psychological profile. You know what I mean? But I know it is with kids. You know, if kids always look for something to, in the other kids to sort of consider to be odd so they can, you know, disagree with them or what have you. But I was literally the only kid who liked music for whatever reason.

It was very small. There was like two years in my school and there was only like 30 kids in those two years. So they would teach two years in one class. You know, it was really, it was like living in a bygone era. like an outside toilet, you know. Anyway, but I was like the only person who liked music and comics, and you couldn't buy comics.

You had to, like, drive for like five hours to find somewhere you could buy comics. So the only place you could find them would be like a car boot sale, which you guys would call, you know, where people gather on a Sunday and they sell their old stuff. Oh, like, why am I forgetting? Yeah, like a thrift. Yeah. Like a garage sale, but not in a garage. What do you call those things?

What do you call? Why am I spacing on this, folks? Yeah. I mean, that was almost like a farmer's market. But not, but people just selling their old stuff. They do this in the UK. People basically get in a field in their cars and they open the trunk in the car with their stuff in it and sell their old stuff out the trunk of the car.

I got to go to one of these. Those places I used to love, that was my favorite thing as a little kid because I would get records and comics. You know, I would buy old vinyl and old comics and I would take those home. listen to them and draw with them and read them and copy them and all that sort of thing. So anyway, at that point, I always had like a sort of a template of what it was that I loved and what it was I wanted to do. I was convinced that's what I formed a band. I was doing performances in school from seven onwards. I used to make mixtapes and sell them to kids in the school. I used to draw

comic books and sell those to kids in the school. Eventually I was able to access a photocopier and I would photocopy these comics and sell them and I would uh sell them like internationally I would like write letters and put little adverts in the back of magazines and things and sell these things you know so I was always doing that it's it's crazy I um we I used to go door to door right I used to photocopy my comics I remember this and I used to like carry them around and go to news agents and I would get on buses or I would hitch like thumb out hitch at the side of the road of my little pile of comics to go to every newsagent I could find to get them to stock my comics in their newsagent, right? Little did I know that like, you know,

five years or something in the future, the internet was going to suddenly appear. And I was going to be able to reach, you know, I was literally like walking around all day, trekking around carrying piles of stapled together paper to try and reach, you know, a dozen people or something. And just in five years in the future, something was going to appear that was going to enable me and you and all of us to reach thousands and millions of people. It's really insane. If you were told Little Me that that was about to happen, he would have exploded with joy, you know.

What year were you born? What's your year? 80. You're an 80 baby. Okay. I'm just curious. 86 on this side. I was just, when the internet starts to pop a boat,

I was thinking like at seven years old, I don't know what the heck. You know, you can't, you go, my earliest memory is seven, but I remember I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I still don't know what I want to be some days, you know? And, but I'm fascinated with the level of creativity at the age of seven you had,

with, you know, the drive to go five hours away to buy comic books and records. And in fairness, I guess that makes complete sense to me, making your own and having the drive to try and get them, you know, like viewed or bought or I don't know the word, you could probably explain that better than me,

by all these people. I'm like, what kid is doing that? Like, I just don't, I don't, but I assume that's pretty rare. I don't, yeah, I don't know. I mean, whenever you read about people, I used to read a lot of old books and stuff. We didn't have a TV when I was little,

so I'll be reading old books. And the kids in those old books were always, you know, doing, they were always going off on adventures or like running off and just William and all these sorts of people, as well as and Amazon's and this, that and the others. the kids in these books I used to read that were all old books were always doing things without their parents and they were always they always had jobs so they were always earning money

they're always industrious and it's kind of a throwback to a bygone era in which you know kids were industrious my grandmother she left school at like 12 or something like that and started around window cleaning operation and she was getting her little sisters she was the oldest of 13 and she was getting her little sisters and their friends to work for her essentially and they would go around they got a ladder and a bucket and some mops and they would go around cleaning people's windows and stuff like that. And she was helping support and run her family from very, very early. And that was quite normal in the part of the world that she came from and the class that she was in and what have you.

Like you worked hard. As soon as you were able, you worked. You got money. You got after it. And so I was always of that mindset. So I always did. I was very, very eager to get on with life. And it's something I try and teach my son

because I kind of, I was so desperate to not be a kid and to just go and be an adult, I kind of squandered a lot of, you know, the kid time. You know. And you don't get to do that again. Yeah, well, you certainly don't. I got three kids. And it's fun to watch the oldest

because he's just a kid, you know? He's seven and he's just a kid. And it's interesting to me when you say I was eager to get on with life. I've met a few of those folks. And it's, have you ever put much thought into, like,

why that was in you instead of, you know, like the rest, you know, like there's just so many kids. There's some people that are still a kid at 15. Heck,

there's some people that are still a kid of 30, you know, uh, and this guy like Seth Rodden Godin or something, that actor guy. Yeah. He's like,

hefty. Yeah. He just, like, rolls around in bed, smoking weed and watching cartoons and thinks that's really cool. God bless him.

You know what I mean? That's like, it's a, it's a pandemic. We have a pandemic, epidemic, all kinds of demic, of like grown babies, just like giant children rolling around the place

causing problems. And that is a hard thing. But yeah, I was the inverse. I don't know why me and none of my brothers and I don't know why me and not lots of other people, but that's how it was. You mentioned you started in a band.

Do you, and you're, man. I always had bands. I always was trying to form bands. But the first. first band I had, there was no, like I said, there was no one else in my school who liked music. So I managed to convince two girls to like be backing singers, but they just mimed. So we were called Ken and the Barbies, and that was my band.

I basically just did everything and they mimed. And it was, you know, it was cool. And it was a great way for me to hang out with girls and feel like cool in a context where I was normally, you know, getting in fights with people and getting the shit kicked out of me. You know, music has always been very powerful in that way. When did you, like, did you, all through school, you're doing all these different bands, everything else? Like, how did you stumble into, like, the thing I've heard of you, Akira, has been Meaning Wave. Like, every time I go a little deeper into some of your music, I keep stumbling on to people that I, like, really, really enjoy, right?

Like, obviously, you got Jordan Peterson who, you know, every time I got to, I just, I got the one song I play all the time. and I just, you know, it gets everybody, you know, everybody's bob in their head, right? Everybody's, what is this again? I'm like, I don't know. It's this thing called Meaning Wave. I have no idea. And I'm wondering, how on earth did you, like, stumble into this? Or is this something you've always been interested in?

Yeah, it's kind of both. In that, maybe nine or whatever, you used to have music lessons in schools. I don't know if they still do them. Um, and uh, what I did was I was really interested in the cassette players, because I had cassettes at home and I used to record a lot of stuff off the radio and make mixdates like I was saying. And, uh, I found that I could record from one cassette to another cassette and then back again. And I could take the tape out and I could cut it and stick it back together again with tape on the underside. And I could kind of create loops and things in that fashion.

Wait a second. You're telling me, I don't know if I've ever heard that before, that you cut up the tape, taped it back together, and created an actual mixtape. Yeah, I used to do that. And then we had these tape recorders in this music lesson where you could record ambient sound onto the cassette. So I was recording the television that they had,

I think it was in the history class or something like that. They had this big TV on a stand, and I would go and record that, and it would have news broadcasts playing. And there was something about like war breaking out in Eastern Europe or something like that that I recorded and like looped. So I had like some drums and some kind of sound and war is breaking out in Eastern Europe type thing. So I was always like doing that. Like that was one of the earliest things I did.

And then when we got a computer you could in the house, you could sample three seconds in a little thing called sound recorder or something like that. So I remember sampling like the beginning of a drum break from a Beastie Boys song and a bit of guitar from a suede song and putting those together and making songs with that. And then a little later I worked out that if I was to read my revision notes and record those and put those over ambient music and play those when I was going to sleep, then I didn't need to do any more revision. So basically I worked out that that's what I left school when I was just before I was 16. but the last exams I did, which I did very well in, that was the only revision I did. I just read my notes over ambient music

and played it when I went to sleep. So I figured out from early that combining speech and music, you were able to imbue ideas and essentially brainwash yourself into knowing things, using music. And then when I started making rap music and what have you, I would make these mixtapes like, almost, you know, when that became what I was doing. I was always fascinated with the skits, you know, on Ice Cube and Ice Tea and like,

even like Morrissey used to have skits. Like people would have like bits of chopped up old movies and they would have, you know, people talking or what have you. And there would be the beginning of a song, right? The intro of a song would be a skit. And I was like, what if the whole song was like that? So I would, in the context of my mixtapes, I'd have a rap song and then I'd have a song where I'd be cutting up an interview with, say, Jack Kirby, who invented,

most of the Marvel and DC universe. So I'd have a whole track that was like him explaining his process. And I'd slightly cut it so that, you know, a bit of vocal would start on the beat or something. And that would be a whole song. So like I've always done that. I've always experimented with that as part of what I was doing. But it was 2017 when I sort of invented Meaning Wave kind of accidentally at 4 in the morning after DJing. I was DJing in Hollywood at the time and I would come back.

And I had a projector and I would just put on YouTube and I would kind of decompress from the insanity of the club and being around all these fucking coked up lunatics with like putting on a lecture or something, right? So Jordan Peterson comes up on the screen on the projector talking about the utility of being a really good plumber. I know it was such a magical moment. I was like, that's so true. It's so important to be a really good plumber. Not just be like an average plumber, be a really good one. That's amazing. I need to cut that up and turn that into a song.

So I did, you know, and that was like the first meaning wave song. And I'd listen to James Altoucher, a podcast that week, and he said quadruple down on what's working. And that song I did did like 10 times as well as the other songs I released that week. I released like three songs at the same time. And that one did the best. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do more of this. Let me just do more of this and see what happens. And it was also the case that I'd been reading Scott Adams, his book about how to fail.

everything that still win big, and he was talking about affirmations. And you're supposed to write down on a paper repeatedly, like, I am, you know, the president of Mars, if you want to be the president of Mars. I was like, well, this is fucking tedious. What if I just put into the music the messages of what I wanted to be and what I wanted to learn? I used to do that when I was little. Maybe let me just do more of that. So, anyway, was essentially combining, was essentially me brainwashing myself and me discovering

that other people like that. Or that other people needed to be brainwashed. Well, yeah, everyone needs... Well, it's this case of, you know, the world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, it will tell you, right? If you're not brainwashing yourself, someone else's. If you don't know what you are, and if you are not consciously and deliberately directing your actions,

some other force will, you know, and I think people realize that, and people are increasingly starting to realize that. I think people are realizing that, but I don't think enough realize that. Not yet, but a lot more than when I was little. I don't know about you. I think a lot of people, more people now are conscious of concepts like that.

When I was little, I had no idea, for example, what self-talk was, the idea of the way you speak within your mind and how that influences you and what you do. I used to talk to myself like such a nasty person. You know what I mean? I would talk to myself like I wouldn't talk to my worst enemy. And I didn't even realize that as a concept until I read, I think it was Mike Cernovich's guerrilla mindset book in like 2013. and he's like, speak out loud what you say in your mind and do that for a week and then you'll see what yourself talk is really like. But my point on that little deviation being is like now I think people are aware of concepts like that way more than they used to be. Thanks to the glory of the internet, which some say was designed to enslave us into a digital gulag,

but has also had the effect of enlightening us to all manner of concepts. Well, put it this way. You know, when you talk about the internet being a digital, gulag, you know, it had the Streisand effect of, you know, for us two, obviously, this guy named Jordan Peterson, because at 4 in the morning, you find a guy and Meaning Wave is kind of born out of a plumber, which is funny, you know, and for me, you know, the ability to be able to chat with different people, such as yourself from all over the world, is a pretty wild thing, you know? Here in Canada, certainly the government has its thoughts on that. That's an interesting side story.

being able to sit and talk and hear different stories on how different people from across the world are doing things, is it incredible? And it all stemmed from both of us stumbling on this guy named Jordan Peterson, which is rather comical, I think. I mean, other than how important the work he has been doing has been. They started their arc, the anti-W-EF, how his conference started this week. So there's something to be said there. But it's pretty wild that one person could just start talking on the internet and have such a giant effect. Or I might even throw it to you, Akir, and say, you know, a guy starts taking what those people have been saying and putting a little bit of music to it and have a giant effect. Because I used to, when I was walking the dog every morning while I was working full time trying to get a podcast going, I was working a podcast going.

I was working a full-time job and I was podcasting in either five in the morning or basically seven or eight at night. So I was going as hard as I could. And then Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan had this long, two, three-minute thing and I put part of it on my wall and it says whatever time you have attack

like you're trying to save the world. That was just the very end of what he was talking about. And so I took that and I probably did a poor job of it, but I made it work. And I did exactly what you were talking about. I overlaid it with, it was an inception. It was interstellar, I think.

And just something about the music from Hans Zimmer just blew me away. And I put Joe Rogan talking above that. And every morning while I would walk, I had this 13-minute thing of Joe Rogan mixed with a couple others. And I've never thought about it like brainwashing, but it was self-firmant. And it got me motivated, because I was tired some days. and you listen to that

and all of a sudden you'd be ready to run I mean you have David Goggins on a couple of your songs and I'm like David Goggins you listen to that man talk you're ready to run through a brick wall

so telling yourself or doing that every day or every night as you pointed out actually makes a lot of sense I just don't know if I ever thought about it like that you know like I was saying when I was little right I was the only kid who liked music

where I lived and I was the only kid who was interested in the things I was and I had no way of knowing that there was anyone else in the whole world you thought like I did. Other than the fact that I was aware that there was bands, so the people who joined these bands or the people who made these comics must exist and have come from somewhere, right?

Which is why I was so eager to leave and go adventuring to go and find my people. Whereas now, you know, you just switch on your little supercomputer device thing and you go into a portal and your people are all there. There's loads of them and they all like the things that you like. And whatever weird thing you like, there's people who like the thing that you like. here's the other thing is what you were just talking about. So they say you're the sum of the people around you or whatever, right? So if you're bored, you're in a little shithole surrounded by asshole drunks or whatever it is.

And you're like, well, that's what you're doomed to be because those are the people around you, that you've got no way of escaping that. But now you can just get your little supercomputer device and David Goggins will coach you. for free. Joko Willink will coach you for free. The greatest minds of history are there, now and past, and they can all be the people that are the closest to you, right? You can choose your peer group, essentially, and you can listen to those people all day long.

It's insane. I had this concept at the very early point of meaning wave of sort of shoulder angels, like you've seen those old cartoons. You're going to make a decision like an angel will pop up, and the devil will pop up, right? And they'll be like, do this, do this. So I had this whole like, what if I just like decide who my shoulder angels are and I'm going to have Jocko and I'd be like, what would Jocco do?

Like what would Goggins do? What would Peterson do? What would Marcus Aurelius do? You know, that type of thing. And I will have them there and I will, you know, listen to, I will go through enough stuff so that I've heard their answers to all sorts of questions. I will kind of create a framework of what are the, issues that faces as individuals in this sphere and then I will go and research all

these people and what they said about that specific thing and that's what Meaning Wave ended up being kind of went in phases and I would have essentially a topic and I would then go Alan was Guggins Jordan Peters and all these different people on that topic essentially it wasn't obvious to people who were listening at the time that that's what I was doing but if you look back in it that's what it was the idea being that from the all these different perspectives the individual will be able to find what works for them in order to navigate this crazed veil of tears that we find ourselves.

You know, I should have known that, well, I knew this from listening to a couple of your interviews, but it, I don't, I mean this in the best possible way. I don't know, I'm just, I'm going to blurt it out and I apologize, but like, it's like, you know, when you see the, the cover of the book, you're like, this should be interesting, but there's so much depth to what you just said, it kind of blows me away, you know, what you just literally, rattled off. I'm like, I'm probably going to have to go back and listen to that again. You know, like, I think that's really, really interesting. You know, I think of Giaco in particular, right? His good. How many times now have people in the world face really

shitty circumstances? And the first thing that come out of one of their friends is good. Good. You know? Yeah, exactly. Do the voice. It always comes as the voice. The crazy thing is, is like, most people now, if they've never heard it, they'll go, what? And then you show it, and they're like, well, that is good. But if they know it, they go, thank you. And then they go about their day.

And you're like, the world, you know, I think with your interview with Peterson, I think Peterson said it best, like you're very positive on the outlook of society with all these different things starting to happen, where a lot of people are the complete opposite. Why are you so positive of where the world could be heading? Well, it seems to need to not be, because having a positive outlook on things will bring positive results.

So, like, you just kind of have to think of these things as operating systems for navigating this realm, right? And which one brings you the best results? So we had great operating systems. Christianity is an operating system. you know, stoicism is an operating system. We have these operating systems that were built up over thousands of years. And in relatively recent history, in our incredible wisdom, we've decided to throw these things away without having really thought about what the consequences of that would be

and without having new ones that will replace them, you know. And that's what Nietzsche talked about and predicted with the whole idea of the death of God, right? And the horror that that would usher in. So you think of these things as operating systems. systems and having a positive outlook and an optimistic outlook on life as an operating system brings better results. So therefore, it's true. I've found it in my life.

I've faced great adversity. I'd had lots of horrible things happen and should have been dead a thousand times over. And I was always very sort of positive and I always kept moving. And here I am. I did not die. I could have a billion times. You know, the fact that any of us are here is an incident. insane miracle. And it's ridiculous that we aren't all incredibly optimistic and positive,

given that we're all here, despite all the things that have happened. In my short lifetime, and you will have the same, how much apocalyptic fearmongering has been distributed and bled out of televisions your whole life? Every single day. When I was seven, you're going to die of AIDS. There's a hole in the ozone layer. There's a war here. The IRA are going to blow up your nan, the Middle East, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I put this in a song, every generation fancies that it's going to be the one to face the apocalypse. And that has always been the case. And if you look at any point in history, they all thought Jesus was about to come back or the end days were just around the corner.

Jesus was about to come back when they were writing revelations. That wasn't like thousands of years in the future. They were predicting it was like, you know, next month or something. It has always been the way. And yet here we are still talking to each other across space and time. through this miracle that neither of us fully understand. How could you not be optimistic? The lights are on.

Well, it's funny. It's a fucking miracle. Lots of people are, well, no. I mean, it's not hard to say. There's a lot of people that are pretty desperate, like extremely desperate. And I just think it's great to hear some optimism. Because they're, you know, like here in Canada, we've had some strange days. COVID was a strange freaking mess.

man. And, yeah, I mean, I lost, I lost a lot. I got, you know, I was living in the USA. I got locked out of my home. My wife and son and I lost our home, lost my studio, ended up getting stuck in Mexico. Why? Which we now made up, because we'd not been vaccinated. And you're not allowed to enter the US. If you're not vaccinated, they suddenly decided when we just popped out to get a new visa stamped. So we just popped out to go to the nearest embassy, thinking we were going out for a couple of weeks or something, and then could not get back in the country. After paying, you know, after a year of being stuck out of the country, we had to give up

our home, had to have it packed up remotely, which cost like $8,000 or something insane. You know, the studio I'd built, lost all that, all my equipment, everything. you know, COVID was a very ridiculous thing. But, you know, regardless, on the optimistic side of things, I was still fully functional. I had my health. I had a laptop. I was able to keep moving and working, you know. What I did not know. That's, that's wild man. So that's why you're in, that's why you're in Mexico then? Because you're, is Mexico home base? Yeah, that's why we're in Mexico. We decided to stay here. It ended up being wonderful. We ended up falling in love with the place and the people and I got into CrossFit and accidentally wandering into a local gym,

not knowing what the fuck it was. And I'm now in the best shape I've ever been in in my life. And lots of wonderful things happen. You randomly walked into a CrossFit gym and like, yeah, shit, all right. Does this happen to you often? I honestly had no idea what CrossFit was. I was just going to a cafe. And I was going to this cafe because they had internet and a plug that I could plug my laptop in. So I was like in there making records and doing my work, right? And it was next to this gym and I was watching all these people jumping up and down on boxes and picking up barbells and all this stuff. And there's only so long you can see that without being like, well, I should probably give that a go, whatever that is.

So I wonder in. And I talked to this guy and he speaks Spanish and I speak English and we somehow work it out. So I come back and do this class. I still didn't know it was CrossFit until afterwards. And like, whatever the fuck it was, it was insane. And halfway through, I had to go outside and heave in the middle of the road. And I thought, you know, the Goggins thing of, you know, push through, the other side is greatness, the Peterson thing of, you know,

the Dragons Horde gold, because where you least want to go is where you've got to go, right? Where you've got to, because, so I was like, okay, I need to keep doing this. So I did. So I've been going five days, five, six days a week ever since. It's now been two years. And I'm now completely physically transformed. It's funny looking at old live stream video. I'm like, get that skinny fuck.

That guy needs to fucking do some fucking lift something. What a pathetic creature. It's wonderful. I can do hands down push-ups now. I used to look at people who could do handsand push-ups and think they were like crazed miracle beings. I couldn't even imagine how you could do that. I could do that shit now.

Or because the Joe Biden administration decided I needed to be vaccinated to enter the USA. Who knows what would have happened otherwise? I mean, you never would have found, well, I mean, to say never would have. have found CrossFit. Who knows? I probably would. I mean, there's a CrossFit gym where I was living. It turns out in Driffing Springs in Texas, where I was, that Jocco goes to sometimes, that Leaf Babbing goes to, and they're all fans of my music. And when I left, when I was in Mexico, they were DM me on Instagram being like, oh, hey, you should come hang out. So it was obviously in

whichever multiversal version, there was some CrossFit in my destiny. It's interesting that I had to come to Mexico to find it in this one. Well, I mean, that's the adventure of life, isn't it? That's, you know. One of the things you, I've heard you say in a different interview was, and I don't know, do you drink or no drinking? No, not anymore. I used to drink a lot.

I was, like I was saying, I was DJing on Hollywood Boulevard five nights a week, and everyone who does that is a functional alcoholic of some kinds. All the bar staff are all drinking. Every time you do anything that people like, they pour a shot down your neck, Miley Cyrus, whoever, they want to come along, they want to pull booze down your neck, weekend wants to give you a spliff, whatever the fuck it is. So, you know, that's how it is. But when I was making that Genesis album, and it had Jordan Peterson's drinking song,

that track on it that I did. There's always a song and, like I said, I'm always essentially brainwashing myself. And there's always a song on the album that I'm kind of resisting and kind of like, yeah, yeah, that's kind of true, but I don't need that. And the message on that one was alcohol, is great, right? It's super fun. But the problem is it's a substitute. It's a shortcut and a substitute to adventure. And if you have your own adventure, you don't need that. And I realized that was very much true that I loved alcohol or abused alcohol because it always led to an adventure, but I loved

adventure. I would wake up in a skip in a random village or something. It was like, how did I get here? Wow, amazing. You know, I had adventure. And I realized I had my own adventure that was the adventure of my choosing. And that any time I spent deviating from that was, you know, that was a middle finger in the eye of God or something. And I didn't have time to be hung over and messing around. I had a specific adventure that I'd chosen, which was this meaning wave thing that I needed to go all in on for the sake of my family, myself, and humanity by Jove. So after completing that song, I was like, okay, I guess I don't drink now. And it's not like I will never drink again. And But right now, I ain't got time for that shit.

It's, I think that's really important for people to hear, you know, because I'm like, there's just a bone in my body that loves adventure. Yeah. And maybe that's every human being, maybe that's not. But for me, it's like I love adventure. And one of the ways I get it is I do this five days a week. I literally get to sit across from somebody like Akira or whoever that comes on, and we get to have a conversation.

And I'm like, I don't know, like, don't know, like, don't get me wrong. I wish I was sitting in Mexico doing this. And at some point, maybe that day will come where I get to come sit in Mexico and we can do it face to face and have a conversation that way. And who knows? I have no idea where the future leads. And part of me doesn't really want to know, right? Like I want to. That's the adventure.

Yeah. And so. Well, the thing is, is sitting here. I get to like, you know, pop in, sit down, do this, walk out the door. And I've got to, if nothing else, I've had a conversation that was completely obvious. the beaten path of where, you know, sitting in Lloyd would take me. I would never get a cure of the dawn. Oh, maybe, maybe someday we'll have you here.

I have no idea. But the adventure, I think people get stuck in, like in order to have a venture, it's got to be, you got to pay money and you got to go somewhere. I'm dead serious. I think that's, they get, you know, they work their nine to five. And then, you know, they plan out, okay, the adventure this year is this week. and we're going to go to Mexico. We're going to go to Costa Rica.

We're going to go to Europe. It doesn't matter. That's going to be our adventure for the year. And the one thing with the podcast is I never thought I played hockey until I was 26 and got to play all over the place. And that was an adventure. Like that was an adventure. And I never thought I'd get that feeling again. And then I sat down here, started talking to people.

I was like, oh, my God. I found, like, how did I stumble back into this? I never thought I'd find this again. Yeah. That's beautiful. It's the difference when you choose an adventure, say you choose a sport. You go, okay, I'm going to do the sport.

That's the bit you choose. And you choose to be great, right? You choose that you're going to work hard, and you're going to develop yourself and you're going to make yourself brilliant. What that will then bring, you have no idea. You don't know where you're going to play. You don't know what country you're going to be taken to. You don't know where you're going to meet what's going to happen.

So all that adventure comes in from just making that one decision and sticking to that thing. similarly with the podcast you now don't know who you're going to meet what kind of conversations you can have what what what's what that's going to spark within you what that's going to turn you into is this whole new adventure that you've chose so you've chosen a specific thing and then it's going to keep bringing you ever compounding ever increasing levels of glorious fantastic adventure like storybook adventure i live in me who would have you know all these crazy things that have happened to me because i chose this adventure though i was going to do this do this music thing. No matter what happened, no matter what obstacles, pushbacks, failures, whatever, I was

going to keep doing it. And the deeper you go and the harder you work and the more the adventure unfolds and the more glorious and magnificent and improbable. You know, you could probably write out, God knows, like a novel of the synchronicity is an improbable, amazing things that have happened to you as a direct result of the adventure, the course of adventure you've chosen, right? Oh, certainly. I mean, like the last five years, well it'll be five years in April of podcasting and it'll be two years full time in April. So it's been, it has been a ride. And that's what you get. That's, and you do not get that. If you allow the adventure to be sort of prescribed to you or dictated to you, right? If you go, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to drink like everybody else does. I'm going to go on a Friday night

and get drunk and I'm going to do this thing that I don't like doing, but at least I'll be able to pays to go to Costa Rica or whatever the fuck it is. It stymies your adventure and it limits your adventure potential, which is, you know, I suppose it depends what you want in life. But I think the soul of man yearns for adventure, truly. And I think it's the lack of that and the quashing of that, which creates a lot of the unnecessary suffering that comes from sort of depression and anxiety and things of that nature. I think there's a crushing of the truth of what you are.

That's an inevitable consequence of that. It's a dark place to go. How much, how much, you mentioned doing CrossFit for two years. You mentioned not drinking now. How much has that changed your ability to create things in the meaning wave genre or area or I don't know what, how you define that? Yeah, everything. Like they're not drinking instantly opened up an extra 60-something percent, I think.

Maybe more. Like there's this clarity that comes. And then all the time that you're not hung over. I mean, just the time that you get. But there's this crazy clarity. And I remember thinking, like, how the fuck do people DJ sober? And when I was first doing it initially, it was awkward. And I was so aware of everything that was going on.

And it was really aware of other people's disqual. sent into drunkenness as the night goes on. You're like, holy shit, and you're not with them and it's weird. But after just a couple of shows, I suddenly realized that I developed sort of matrix skills. And I was able to act and execute in sort of slow motion. And I was able to see what, how a person was feeling. I was able to go, okay, this plus this plus this within three songs, we'll make that happen.

And they'll be that way and this will do, da, da, da, da, da. And it was like that slow-mo matrix bullet time thing within the context of DJing, which I used to have in a kind of instinctual sort of drunk and messy fashion when I was a drunken mess, but now I was able to surgically execute at a ridiculous level. So I became so much better and so much more able to just act with a complete deliberateness of purpose in creating the transcendent experiences I was creating as a DJ. So that was just a DJing. And then music, everything became clearer, very, very, very.

quickly and then the physicality thing as I got stronger so to my mind seemed became sharper so my singing got better my capacity to like hold notes and stuff of that nature everything improved everything and massively to the point that I should probably sit down and try and work it out because I haven't fully quantified it's it's ridiculous how much better I have got at doing what it is I love to do as a result of stopping drinking, which is essentially, you know, like strapping on a backpack full of rocks and trying to swim, you realize, wow, the fact that I was like, oh my God, I've been, you know, so good whilst having this deliberate crippling affliction, whilst deliberately weighing myself down with rocks and boulders unnecessarily and sort of

like, trying to drag myself through the swamp type thing, just stopping doing that. And then the same with not being physically optimal. I wouldn't say I'm fully optimal. I have a long way to go. But I'm so much further than I was, and everything is so much easier. You know, so by not doing that for so long, I was really getting in the way of myself.

You know, I was really crippling myself unnecessarily. It's a very strange thing. I can't believe, obviously you need to go back and, like, quantify, sure. But what your initial reaction was is 60, I don't know, 60% better. 60% better. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a what? You know, that's a, no, uh, no, bud, no, uh, Anheiser Bush, no, nothing like that wants to hear that. They're going, uh, keep a cure from saying that out loud, you know, because you're like, you want to get out of the shit. You really want to get out of the shit. Okay, here, you do this. Just, yeah, you go look at my catalog. It's one way of looking at it.

I've made some, I think it's like a hundred albums since 2018. 2018 is when I stopped drinking. 2018 is when I started going on all in on these ideas of hyperproductivity and zone inhabitation. So what I've been able to create and do within the world in that time compared to previous, while simultaneously going through things like getting locked out of a country and losing all of my gear and studio and home and capacity to operate and still being able to function on a much higher level than previously. Yeah. A hundred albums.

How many, how many, I don't know, you know, I love music, but I don't, I don't pretend to understand bands or how to create it or albums or anything. How many albums does, like, one of the greatest bands of all time have? Four. Four? Yeah, I don't know. Something like that. If that. If that.

Yeah. And you have a hundred since 2018. Yeah. So you basically, if, you know, I'm trying to put this into my podcast brain. So where I sit, when I first started in 2018, 2019 was the first year, I did one podcast a week. Then the next year it was two, then it was three, and it was four, and now it is five. I do Monday, well, Monday to Friday every week. I do five a week, like nonstop.

And I always thought the 10,000 hours. rule, you know, like, like, if I'm going to get good at this, what am I waiting for? I might as well just push all chips all in and let's go. And Casey Nystad, Nystad, Nystad, was a guy that had done the YouTube videos, 365 and 365 days, and his thought process had just been pretty simple. Like, I get a good video once a month and I do four of them. What if I did 30 of them? Would I get that many more good videos and on and on it went? It was fascinating. I was like, that, that is fascinating and I can't sit here and say that I have no idea I'll wait for the listeners to tell me what they think but certainly I think I've improved and certainly the guest list has gotten better because there's just more

opportunities to have different people on and lead to different people coming on when you talk about 100 albums I just my head goes that's got to be a ton of work like a ton of work what was the thought process on a hundred albums well probably wasn't that you you were targeting 100 albums, more that are you just going to start doing music every single day and releasing something new every day? Or where did you get to when you're like, I'm just hyper productivity? Let's go. Yeah, so I'd noticed early on in life, a couple of things. One thing I noticed was that bands would often come out with an amazing debut album and the associated B sides of the singles would be amazing. Oasis are a great example of that. But,

lots of, loads of bands would be like that. And then when it came time to do their second album, there'd be a big drop off. And the B-Sides would suddenly be circle, they'd be cover versions or something. Sometimes a band would sort of get back to being super good again or maybe a third or fourth album, sometimes not. What I realized what happened was that basically these big creators were in the zone, right? The zone. And if you, when they're in, you know, rehearsing in the basement every day and hungry and

young and they're just hanging out together, they have these certain. habits and things locked in that enable them to be in the zone without even thinking about it. And then they get signed and then the record label puts them on tour and all of those things get disrupted. And they stop as they were creating and rehearsing every day. They're just out sort of playing the old songs every day. They get into cocaine or whatever the fuck it is. They're going to have to party. They fall out of that zone. And then they don't know how to get back. And most of them don't even have the, I'm even aware that that's what happened. I can't even articulate that.

The darkness. I had some friends. They're in this band The Darkness, just like that. They were scrappy playing together every day for years and years, and they suddenly blew up and went off on tour and started like, all their dreams started coming true. But what they did was that it fractured all of these sort of habit loops they'd created that allowed them to be in this magical place where they made these amazing songs.

And when they came back together to try and make another album, they couldn't. They couldn't relate to each other anymore. They couldn't do that anymore. Anyway, after thinking about this, I thought, well, I've been in the zone and it's great and I've not been in the zone and that's annoying. What if I just got in the zone and then stayed there? What if I just refused to leave?

Right. And the simplest way of doing that is just to keep moving and keep creating. Right. No matter what. Non-negotiable. You're just doing it every day. Something to do with it every day. So you're in that place.

You do not leave that place. That glittering magical place. And then the deeper you go into that, well, the deeper you go into that, well, the deeper you go into that and the more magical it becomes and the more powerful it is, right? I would use techniques and do use techniques like using synchronicities as signposts that I'm on the right track rather than sort of second-guessing and over-analyzing what it is that I'm doing. And I find that works very well. Momentum is constant, right? But it only goes in one direction. It's forward or back. So in the context of that, this hyperproductive zone in habitation space, if you just keep moving

like a shark, you will keep moving and you'll keep moving forward and you'll build momentum, like a snowball falling down a mountain or like Sonic in those racing games or he gets the turns gold and you don't even really have to steer him properly anymore. He's just smashing through everything, right? And every time you create something, you learn something. This is, goes back to what you were talking about, right? So if I'm making a song or multiple songs a day and finishing them and moving on. If I'm saying, okay, I'm going to do this project, I've got two weeks to do it or weeks to do it, and then I'm just moving on to the next one. Because people will keep laboring over art forever, right? No art is ever finished. It's just abandoned, somebody said. And someone,

you could keep working on one song for a, for years, for years. But the problem is with that kind of idea of perfection, I could finish a song today, it's perfect today, and I listen to it tomorrow. It's not perfect anymore. Because I'm different. So what was perfect to me yesterday is not what's perfect to me today because I'm different today. So you just have to stop. You have to have these cutoff points and keep moving. So I make hundreds and hundreds of songs and every song I make, I learn something, then apply that to the next one so they get better and better and better.

I keep moving so I do not lose my momentum. I keep actively in this place, so I do not exit this place. I don't have to find my way back because I'm there already. And that's what I've been doing since 2018. and it's been working great. And it's been working great. Well, we got seven minutes to go before I let you out of here. I want to make sure I get you out of here on time,

which means I'm going to end this portion and push everybody to Substack if they want to see the final five minutes, okay? So I just want to say thanks to Kare for hopping on. And if you're listening to this and you want to follow us over to a substact, We're going to have a bonus like six and a half minutes so I make sure that Akira gets out of here on time. All right. And that would be the best bit. That would be the most powerful, epic, useful bit.