Song Exploder - Breakmaster Cylinder - Reply All

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

Four years ago, on November 24, 2014, the first episode of the podcast Reply All came out. It’s a podcast about the internet hosted by Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt. And since then, they’ve put out 131 episodes. The show has gotten over 100 million downloads so far. Robert Downey Jr. is going to star in a movie based on one of their episodes. And from the debut, it’s been one of my favorite podcasts. A while back, in 2015, I did a special edition of Song Exploder for Reply All, about their theme song by Breakmaster Cylinder. I’d hear the guys talk about the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder in the show’s credits, but I didn’t really know who or what that was. And I wanted to find out more. So in honor of the four year anniversary of Reply All’s launch, I’m putting out this special crossover episode for the first time here on Song Exploder. songexploder.net/reply-all

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. Four years ago, on November 24, 2014, the first episode of the podcast, Reply All, came out. It's a podcast about the internet, hosted by Alex Goldman and PJ Vote. And since then, they've put out 131 episodes. The show's gotten over 100 million downloads so far. Robert Downey Jr. is going to star in a movie based on one of their episodes.

And from the debut, it's been one of my favorite podcasts. A while back in 2015, I did a special edition of Song Exploder for Reply All about their theme song by Breakmaster Cylinder. I'd heard the guys talk about the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder in the show's credits, but I didn't really know who or what that was, and I wanted to find out more. So in honor of the four-year anniversary of Reply All's launch, I'm putting out this special crossover edition for the first time here on Song Exploder. I hope you enjoy it. It starts with Reply All theme song, which goes like this.

By the way, I'm not sure how many of you know this, but before Reply All, Alex and PJ had another podcast about the internet called TLDR, and a lot of aspects of Reply All first manifest in that show, including having a theme song by Breakmaster Cylinder. So they've all been working together since September 2013. When I wanted to find out how the Reply All theme was put together, I discovered a few surprising things, like the fact that PJ and Alex have never actually spoken to Breakmaster Cylinder, who prefers to remain anonymous. They've only ever emailed. So when the guys say, the mysterious brakemaster cylinder in the credits, they really mean it. They don't even know if breakmaster's a he or a she. I interviewed Breakmaster Cylinder, but out of respect for his or her privacy and mystery, I had an actor replaced Breakmaster Cylinder's voice.

Or did I? I'm sworn to secrecy. I also discovered that before there was a theme for a ply-all, before there was even a theme for TLDR, PJ and Alex first had to agree on whether or not their podcast should have a theme at all. Here's PJ. Alex wanted one and I didn't want one. I think I remember feeling like it was not a good idea because you would end up having episodes that didn't totally fit the theme song. Do you remember that argument?

Yes. I don't think that I had a particularly strong counter argument. So why did you win that? It's a weird question. I never win any arguments. I wanted something kind of anthemic and breakbeaty and just like really heavy. Isn't it anthemic? Like an anthem?

an anthem. So many years ago, probably 2008 or 2009, I somehow stumbled upon a video that Breakmaster Cylinder made, which was a remix of Mr. Sandman by the Cordettes. It was this video that was just the most gruesome moments from every horror movie strung together to the tune of this sort of creepy, distorted remix of Mr. Sandman. And I was like, well, this This is someone I want to keep an eye on. So I started looking through Breakmaster Cylinder's other videos, and I started following their music. And then when it came time to do a theme song, I was like, who is just weird enough to work with us and make this thing?

My name is Breakmaster Cylinder. And I first wrote a theme song for PJ and Alex for TLDR. The first theme was received relatively well and was sort of the sound of the show. In retrospect, it feels more childish, I guess. It's sort of goofier. I think that initially we were enamored of the idea of doing a show about the Internet that was very internet-y. And our first theme song was all synthesizers and it was all synthesized.

One of the things that we really realized making TLDR is, yes, it's a show about the Internet, but it's mostly a show about just your environment and where you are and who you're talking to and how you're talking to them. So they wanted to do something a little more refined, maybe. the tone of the new show was going to distance themselves from what that theme sounded like, which was too, you know, little kid-like. I am reading an old email from Alex Goldman to myself in November of 2014, and he says, if I had to describe what I wanted in terms of emotion,

I try to describe our show, which at its best moments is both irreverent and earnest. I had some weird thing where I was obsessed with Bach. Prelude in C is basically what the reply-all theme is. Yeah, it follows the same chord structure. It's the first four measures, but instead of playing each individual 16th note, you bring it all into one chord. So what you can do is you can take one measure, and you can block it into one chord, so it's this. And the second measure is this, and third, and fourth, and then it goes the first four measures,

and then it goes measures 12 through 15. So, and you land back on the tonic and it's nice. You can't possibly do it better than Bach would have done it. It's got to those nice diminished sevens. It's really good. This piano in this room is not really good enough to record most of the time. That is a faky piano sound though, which is a little unfortunate, but I kind of tried to dirty it up in the EQs.

I totally cannot play drums, so I just recorded every drum hit individually. I bought some brushes because they're awesome. That is layered with a trap kit. This theme song is just like layering all my favorite shit ever, I guess. It's a coin being spun on a table, but it's pitched up like exponentially along a curved line. So it starts slow and it gets higher quickly. So hopefully it sounds like it warps into whatever sound comes next. next. Those are two different sounds. That is a mason jar being rolled across a table.

And then the other sound is a small glass being shattered with a hammer. In addition to these organic elements, Brakemaster Cylinder also made parts of the music digitally, programming notes with MIDI software on a laptop. This baseline, I wrote a MIDI line and then exported it to five different bass noises. And then throughout the track I have them all layered at the same time and then I'd mute all of them except for one and just switch between them when it sounded right. It switches between them quickly so you get some sort of B-boops and some rumblier dubstep basses and some sort of warm mid-range out of all the same bass melody. After a few rounds of drafts and revisions went back and forth between Breakmaster

and PJ and Alex, the theme settled into its final form. I asked PJ and Alex if the theme song had a title. It doesn't really, but... It's called Reply All intro four, FrankenFuck 1 and 3, beep boops lower down. Dotwave. It's called FrankenFucked because we combined

the beginning of one and the end of another and then it says beep boops lower down because... I said I wanted lower down beep boops. Because we turned down

the beefs and the boobs in the mix. TLDR is a great show but Reply All has a lot more depth than TLDR did. They'll be talking about one just general branch of the internet, and then they suddenly zoom in on one human story.

And I don't know if the theme does that exactly, but I think it does balance the organic with the electronic, you know, Bach and machine base, like the human component on the internet, which their show does really well. I think our show feels a lot like both of our personalities, which is like cheerful with like a depressed streak and like a little bit manic,

but I think that mostly it's a pretty optimistic show, and I think the theme song is an optimistic theme song, and I like the feeling it starts us out with every week. Normally in Reply All episodes, what we hear is a condensed version of the theme song, but it's actually a longer piece of music. So here's the fully assembled, full-length version of the Reply All theme by Breakmaster Cylinder.

To learn more about Reply All and the mysterious Breakmaster cylinder, visit SongExploder.net. Reply All's website is Reply All. all.limo. Thanks to everyone who made this episode possible. PJ Vote, Alex Goldman, Fia Bannon, Tim Howard, and Farrellith Young. 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, Rishi Kesh 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 made 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 Rope. 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 Manzukas, Josh Malina,

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, Rishi-kash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Next time on Song Exploder for the 150th episode, Fleetwood Mac.

Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Carlos Lerma does original illustrations for the show. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.

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