Song Exploder - Tobacco - Gods in Heat

Episode Date: August 25, 2016

Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, has released four albums since 2008. He's also the frontman of the band Black Moth Super Rainbow, and he created the theme music for the HBO show Silicon Valley. In this episode, Tom breaks down his song "Gods in Heat" from his newest album, Sweatbox Dynasty, recorded entirely on cassette. More at songexploder.net/tobacco.

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 K. Hirwe. Tom Feck has released four albums under the name Tobacco since 2008. He's also the frontman of the band Black Moth Super Rainbow, and he created the theme music for the HBO show Silicon Valley. In this episode, Tom breaks down his song, Gods in Heat, from his newest album, Sweat Box Dynasty, recorded entirely on cassette tape. I'm Tom Feck from Tobacco. I don't know any instruments. Like, I never learned, but my parents got me a four track when I was in high school,

and I just played around with it so much until things started making sense. I borrowed a mini-brutes synthesizer, and I came up with that bass line. I think I was just trying to hear how dense it could be. So I was trying to find, like, the best, like the coolest bass sound I could get out of it, and that was it and that was like hitting record right away because I didn't want to lose it. The drums are MPC straight into tape. I have this TASCum cassette recorder and I play the MPC straight into the cassette without quantizing, sequencing, anything like that because I like the sound as real as possible.

And because I'm not a drummer, it usually does sound pretty human for better or worse. The drums have that crunch mainly from the tape machine because I just run everything really hot. But they also get some of that too when you're on an MPC and you lower the pitch. That's what I like about MPC so much. It gives you that nasty, it puts like digital dust on it. The past few years I've been listening to a lot of this weird lo-fi, I guess it's like black metal. There's this guy, Iljarn. He's like one of the innovators of whatever this style is.

is. To me, it sounds like it's almost recorded on a boombox and the tape is like another member of the band almost. It's like so important. I probably listen to a little more texture these days than I used to. I'm getting old, I guess. I pretty much always am recording on cassette deck. I think in electronic music, you're dealing in stuff that's usually clean and clinical. Anything you can do to make it breathe. It's an old Oberheim. Chord, synth, it just sounds really powerful. But the wobble in the chords is the tape machine.

I didn't want there to be any guitar on this album at all at first. Because that guitar was supposed to be just like a placeholder. I wanted the album to be slimy, kind of like synth funk, but that changed pretty drastically. The fuzz bass, just because I didn't want it in there, doesn't mean it wasn't perfect for the song. So the vocals, that's always one of my sticking points. Lyrics are pretty ambiguous.

It doesn't really have to mean anything. When I was a kid, I always appreciated it when I didn't know the lyrics. It's the worst, like when you find out what the lyrics are and they end up being, like, embarrassing. I want the vocals to read like vocals, but I want the melody of the vocals to be as good as a synth part. I think the problem with a lot of singers is they think in like

where they're comfortable, you know, their vocal range, I guess, where like with a synth in a vocoder, you don't have a vocal range. It's whatever you want it to be. Vogueoder is just a keyboard and you sing or talk into a microphone. You're playing along as you're singing or talking. For me, it's just an extension of my own voice because I can't sing. I don't really want to sing. Like on this song, I kind of went back to an older, more nasty kind of sounding vocoder that doesn't really sound like a real voice.

I just, I don't think of the vocoder. think of the vocoder as a novelty and I don't think of it as like I am a robot because it's not what it is at all it's it's it's the easiest way for me to get my ideas across I knew it needed like one more little thing and I didn't know what to do and normally when I like don't know what to do like that I'll ask myself what would the butthole surfers do it gets me going and that doesn't sound like buttle surfers at all but for some reason that question always works on me This was like the album where like I really learned to just kind of go with your gut. And like the first thing you do is usually the best.

And it's usually the first thing you do for a reason. And I stopped second guessing. First take Tommy. Like everything I did. Just keep it. Where normally like if I think something is coming off as listenable or good, then I spend a lot of time. trying to break it down. This one I just kind of let happen and let it be what it is.

And now here's Gods in Heat by Tobacco in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about tobacco and for links to buy this 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 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 Weinrobe. 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 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, rishikash.cash.c.o. Or just go to songexploader.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live.

Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of songexploder at songexploder.net, or wherever you download podcasts. And you should follow Song Exploder on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for news, updates, and giveaways. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. This episode was edited by Christian Coons and me.

My name's Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.