Song Exploder - 100 gecs - Money Machine

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

100 gecs is a duo, made up of Laura Les and Dylan Brady. In 2016, they put out an EP called 100 gecs, and three years later, they released their first album, called 1000 gecs. It was named the Best Album of 2019 in Vice and in The New York Times. It was also on year-end lists in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Stereogum and more. Dylan lives in Los Angeles, and Laura in Chicago—they work remotely, sending files back and forth to each other. In this episode, the two of them break down how they made the song "Money Machine." songexploder.net/100-gecs

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. 100 Gecks is a duo made up of Laura Less and Dylan Brady. In 2016, they put out an EP called 100 Gecks, and three years later, they released their first album called 1,000 Gex. It was named the best album of 2019 in Vice and in the New York Times. It was also on year-end lists in Rolling Stone, pitch-for-year-East. Stereo gum, and more.

Dylan lives in Los Angeles and Laura in Chicago. They work remotely and send files back and forth to each other. In this episode, the two of them break down how they made the song, Money Machine. My name is Dylan Brady. My name is Laura Less of the band 100 Gecks. We both produce, both write the songs. Dylan lives out in L.A., and I was just recording out of my bedroom in Chicago, so we email the files back and forth.

We know each other really well and we're super close. Me and Dylan first met at a party in St. Louis when we were in high school. A few years after that, we were like, let's work on a project. We would send songs or ideas and kind of just like talk music occasionally. Probably took five or six years to do the first EP from meeting each other. We really liked what we had done for the EP, but we had both been doing our own things for a few years. We had been planning on coming back to 100 gecks for a while, and then we started doing these Minecraft festivals. Minecraft festivals, it's like a big server that multiple

people, like thousands of people, can go into this designed online world as their avatar. It's like a real festival layout. There's stages, there's booths, there's huge sculptures. They're that you could walk around and interact with, but it's all online. There's stages set up so the artists can perform virtually. One of the people who runs that, he had asked me to do a set,

and I thought that was the perfect opportunity to give Dylan and myself an excuse to start up the project again. And that's when we made money machine. Dylan started the project. That sound. I just found it in logic. It's called a Doberra.

If you press it at the highest velocity, you get that crazy twang thing that's in some of the knots. I thought the contrast of that to like screaming bass would be a sick kind of thing. We both like really heavy shit and we both like cute fun melodies, so try and bring them together. Just like fun, ear candy, catchy moments in like the context of more heavy shit. So I just made this beat, saved it as money machine. I usually look around at like objects, try and find some sort of hint at a file name. Must have been some money on the ground. I thought the instrumental was a little bit not mocking.

It was sarcastic. It was like wearing a $6,000 fur coat into the most disgusting bar that you can walk into. The way the bass feels when you're... listening to it, it's like honking at you and laughing at you. I was working sort of a shitty job. And after work, I would just come home at night and work on music deep into the night. I just kind of sat down with instrumental and put some headphones on and started mumbling into the microphone. But I had a fight at work. I had had a fight with another man later on. I was just fed up in general. I just wanted to take it out in some way.

I had been watching a lot of King of the Hill, and I constructed in my head a sort of Hank Hill asshole character to just absolutely break down. Bobby, I didn't think I'd ever need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't. Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking. Right then, I was needing to just absolutely decimate this man in my head.

So I recorded the intro of the song, just thinking of this emotion of, fuck you, I'm flexing. Hey, you little piss, baby, you think you're so fucking cool, huh? You think you're so fucking tough. You talk a lot of big game for someone who's such a small truck. I was just kind of getting in that sort of mindset of these people that I had grown up with, these people in St. Louis, talking about their big trucks and riding around in their huge, whatever, F750s. I just thought, your truck isn't that big, all right? Calm down. You have a tiny little truck. People have tried to assign very crude meaning to that line. I swear I was talking about.

about a truck. I was just thinking the most, you know, how could I destroy this person? I would make you fall in love with me and then I would break your heart. Oh, look at those arms. Your arms look so fucking cute. They look like little cigarettes. I bet I could smoke you. I could roast you.

And then you'd love it. You text me, I love you, and then I'd fucking ghost you. And then I actually wrote an entirely different hook. hook for the song. That was a little more direct. But it wasn't very good. I just thought that it didn't have a lot of personality. It wasn't super catchy.

So I did my stay up all night and try to think of a hook. Routine. Dylan labeled the track Money Machine. So I think that just the phrase was in my head and it was a really good phrase. Beat titles matter. Don't just call it a number. I guess it kind of like morphed into the idea of the chorus. We both love autotune. A lot of people still do have a close mind about using autotune on vocals

or especially the kind of auto tune that we use that's very in your face and very fast. And, you know, I think that's sad. You know, you should open your mind to it. It lets me do things with my voice that I can't do regularly. So when I'm doing vocal delivery, a lot of times, you know, I don't care about getting right on pitch the first time. It's much more important to me about letting the emotion of the vocal out. So first, I recorded my vocal just completely dry.

With the big boys coming with the big stuff, I feel so clean like I'm a money machine. There's lots of little pitch slurs, you know, so that when the auto tune is on it, it has this cool effect to me of staircases. With the big boys coming with the big stuff, I feel so clean like I'm on my shit, oh yeah. Which, ugh, sends shivers down my spine. We threw some distortion on a lot of the vocals. We just wanted it sound like huge and big and just flex. as hard as we possibly could.

And if you're pitching the vocal up, I can sing way higher. That just lets me do some more intense melodies than I would regularly be able to sing. I understand that I'm not the best singer, but I sort of bionic woman myself into becoming a good singer. You know, I'll use every trick in the book to get the vocals sounding how I want it and get the idea out. She sent back the intro and the hook, and I was like, this is fucking crazy. And then I just added my verse. It definitely wouldn't be complete without don't spin on it. Tell me what's a deal.

I've been trying to go to bed. I've been up for days. I'm trying to get it at. Said it all before. I'll set it once again. I'm bad. He was like, tell me what to do because I'm trying to go to bed. For a second, I was thinking, I was like keeping him awake because we had been working on

the set for so long. And he was like, get the fucking chorus over with and get it done. No, it's definitely not like finish your verse. I'm trying to go to bed. It's like, fuck, I'm tired as hell. We were just working like really hard on the shit. And her part is so fucking good. I just wanted to not fuck it up.

Dylan inspires me a lot to not get lazy with writing. I think it's like sort of healthy rivalry to me because I will come up with some line and then he'll work off of it and he'll do something great. And then I'm like, wow, well, mine sounds lazy now. So I have to go back and make it even better. And I think that's just sort of like an ethos that we have when we're working is that, you know,

we're just always building off of each other and just another reason that he's so great to work with. After the Minecraft Festival, we went back and tweaked a bunch of shit. There was like the little snare part right before the chorus kicks in. It's like, do-do-do-do-do-do-do. It's just one snare.

I just drew in a little MIDI pattern with it, just automated the pitch bend on my sampler. that I was playing the snare off of. I had a couple tracks of just like noises that I have made. One, I think, is a SpongeBob clip, but it's just overly processed to the point where it just sounds like a screech. I think it's plankton. And then Dylan and I have this specific noise

that we recorded in my apartment when we were recording the album. We had a really distorted vocal track. Feeding back from the other room speakers, and then we just threw a fucking 808 at the end of it. I guess it kind of like is the one final flex. All right, we just did a great song. Now we're just gonna absolutely bury it at the end with this noise. Because fuck you.

It's pop music. I wanted people to like it, but I wasn't very sure just because of a lot of the choices that we make when we're making, We're making our music. I mean, I thought it was a fucking banger. Music has always sort of been a way that I can say what I need to say. And Money Machine brought out a feeling in me where I just wanted to let out some sort of aggression in the most fun, possible way.

And now here's Money Machine by 100 Gecks in its entirety. Hey, you love piss, baby. fucking cool, huh? You think you're so fucking tough. You talk a lot of big game for someone in such a small truck. Oh, look at those arms. Your arms look so fucking cute. They look like little cigarettes. I bet I could smoke you. I could roast you. And then you'd love it. You text me. I love you. And then I'd fucking ghost you. Big place. Coming with a big start. Tell me what to deal. I'm trying to go to bed. I didn't have to try to get it out. Chat it all before. I'll start it once again.

more about 100 gecks. You'll also find the music video for Money Machine and a link to buy or stream the song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it may be me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some

folks that you may have heard on this podcast like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings,

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishikash.com.

or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me and producer Christian Coons with production help from Olivia Wood and illustrations by Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts.

You can learn more about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at SongExploder.net slash shirt. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway.

Thanks for listening.