Switched on Pop - Disclosure: Where Energy Flows

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Howard and Guy Lawrence, the brothers behind Disclosure, found global acclaim in 2012 with their song “Latch” ft. Sam Smith which blended house and dubstep in a doo-wop time signature. Since, they have collaborated with many of pop’s most sought after vocalists (The Weeknd, Lore and Khalid to name a few) in an ever evolving vision of dance music. On their latest album release, “Energy,” Disclosure channels sounds and samples from the global south. Listen to find out how they make the energy flow.  Survey We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: voxmedia.com/podsurvey.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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listening habits have changed in the past few months and hopefully how we can reach even more people. Go to voxmedia.com slash pod survey. That's voxmedia.com slash pod survey. And we'll throw a link in our show notes. Thanks so much. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I remember when my friend Preston first introduced me to Disclosure, the British musical duo made up of brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence. And I realized I was hearing a type of dance music. that was both familiar and yet somehow totally new and I was hooked. And of course, I was not alone. Their 2012 collaboration with Sam Smith on the song Latch garnered global attention

and a Billboard top 10 hit in the U.S. And they've since released collaborations with the likes of the biggest stars in music, The Weekend. Lord. and Khalid. But it's their full-length albums that I really love. They just have this kind of energy, which energy happens to also be the title of their new record. And so the other day, I'm browsing the live streaming platform Twitch, and I see this video of disclosure breaking down music off their newest record with such precision and passion that

I knew we had to speak with them. So the other week, Nate and I spoke with Howard and Guy over Zoom about how they keep finding ways to make new sounds and create energy and dance music. Here's that conversation. Hi everyone, we're Disclosure. I'm Guy and I'm Howard. And we're coming to you today from my studio in North London. Though you've never firmly settled into a single genre, you're often celebrated for your house music production. And your new album, Energy, moves really into a lot of new territory.

What kind of sounds were you wanting to explore on this record? Well, again, so we spent more time writing this album than we have with any. other records so far. Like this was, I mean, at least three years of actual writing for this one, whereas the other two were like less than one. So it was a very different process, you know, like for the first two records, we wrote like 15 songs and then scrapped three of them. Whereas for this one we wrote 200 and scrapped 189. So it's very different, you know. So like there wasn't really one particular direction we wanted to go in at the beginning because we knew we were going to write a lot of music. So we were just very free and like specifically we're just

to be experimental. We were just like, let's just try and make stuff that we haven't done. So we were just making stuff in three, four and like crazy time signatures and like different like types of chords that we wouldn't normally use and strange sounds and all that stuff. But we explored a lot more like different percussion sounds, mainly African and South American sounds for the drums especially. And I mean the chords that I write have generally throughout my life have just been getting more and more jazzy. So hopefully at some point I'm just going to reach like full jazz and have to leave the band. Full Coltrine.

Yeah. As a professor of jazz history over there, I'm sure Professor Sloan is very pleased about that. Yeah, right. So, yeah, no, there wasn't like a very conscious choice to go in any particular direction. But the one thing that we did settle up on when we were deciding which tracks were actually going to make the cut was like it was which songs came together the easiest. So like which songs we wrote the easiest that we had most fun writing and just we didn't have to like spend three months grafting.

you know yeah and i think that's where the house music comes into it like we seem to be able to write those quite like fluidly and enjoyably whereas when we try and get a bit too technical it's like the hard graft you know and there should be there should be a space for both you know and yeah even though we haven't put out a disclosure album in five years you know in that gap we have explored those areas you know um i did a tune on a minet's album yellow is the new black and i miss MacMillardtose MacMiller as well We're known for house because it's like I guess the biggest songs that we've done as disclosure

But yeah for sure you know the diehard fans the ones who are tuning into Twitch anyway they don't know what to expect every time we make something live because we don't know either you know we just we're just always true to ourselves in the studio you know We're also, like, I think, terrible identifiers of genres. You know, like, we never know what songs, what genre our songs are in. Like, latch, everyone calls it a house tune. It's so isn't. It's in 6-8. It's like not at all. Latch step.

Yeah, it's like a 6-8 soul plus dubstep with trap hats and house. And, yeah. But, like, it's called House on iTunes or whatever. So, yeah, I don't know. You mentioned incorporating African rhythm and African percussion into this album and one of our favorite songs off this album is the title track energy which is a really nice example of that influence. Now we're going to take it to another level. We're grooving in the studio.

Hell yeah. What's the story behind this song? So it's actually a more of a South American area rather than an African area this one. The original drum sample is from an old library record from the Bruton catalogs. So I became friends with one of the guys who owns like all of it. And he was very kindly just like, you know, whatever you want to use, we'll make it super easy for you guys to clear. And I trawled through hours and hours of this stuff, you know, for those who don't know, library music's like TV jingles from back in the early days.

So there's everything on there from utter cheese and like hilarious stuff to kind of Beach Boys' Acapella stuff to classical to like film music. It's all sorted by genres as well. So, you know, we were looking through the real more. it yeah, Africa and South American percussive sections. Now and again you get these really interesting moments like this track. So that's all the drums like, well, not the kick and all that stuff we've added over the top, but that's like the body of, you know, the immediate, big whistle and all that stuff that's going on in the background. And yeah, I think I pretty much made that

by myself, I think, just started. Yeah, yeah, you did all the drums and stuff. I did, I did, added this big kick. I knew there needs to be some chords and then, yeah, that's, you know, Howard's area, so we added the chords over the top. Then the idea to bring in Eric Thomas, Your energy flows. Are you hearing me? I think we were together and we had the idea of using his voice again just because, I mean, ever since we did when a fire starts to burn, I think we always felt like, you know, as catchy as that song is and everyone finds his voice very recognizable.

It wasn't like doing his message and his life's work much justice, you know? It's just a kind of repeating catchy phrase. When a fire starts to burn, right? And it starts to spread. She's going to bring that attitude home. We don't want to do nothing with their life When a fire starts to burn, right? And it starts to spread.

She's going to bring that attitude home. You don't want to do nothing with their life. When a fire starts to burn. Howard came around the other day and he was listening to him on the way here. I was like, oh, you're listening to Eric just for fun. We do that. He's an amazing motivational speaker. For those who aren't familiar with this kind of now iconic voice,

who is Eric Thomas and how did you hook up with him? Yeah, so Eric is from Chicago. cargo and is known like other than Eric Thomas, he's known as the hip-hop preacher, E.T. The hip-hop preacher. So that's kind of his deal. You know, he's like he's saying kind of very profound motivational stuff in like a way that hopefully like younger people can relate to. When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. The way that I stumbled across Eric's work years and years ago, like 10 years ago or something, was we wanted to work with rappers, like, you know, as we have finally done now of this album.

But we didn't know any rappers because there aren't anywhere we're from, you know? So like, we didn't know who to hit up. Like, we can't just like call Jay-Z and just like get Jay-Z. So we were like, well- Let's just be clear, we still can't do that. We still can't do it. And we're still climbing that ladder. And I wanted to find someone with a cool speaking voice to sample and like chop it up rhythmically

and make it sound like a rapper. And so I googled something. like, I don't know, like Detroit man speaking or like Chicago man rap. I don't know what it was now. And Eric was one of the first things that came up. And I just immediately loved everything that he was saying. He was just like, get your shit together. I don't do well in math.

You're right. You ain't never studied. I'm not good in writing because you have never written before. But I dare you to fail in writing for a whole year to see if you can get to the end. I dare you to fail. I dare you to take that same class over and over again. I dare you to stop dropping classes like you soft. And all this time, I was just like, yeah, I like this guy.

All right, cool. And so I downloaded, like, one of his YouTube videos. It was like an hour long and just, like, sifted through all the different bits. You know, as cool as his voice sounds and everything, it was nice to get in, you know, what he contributes in his work to the world, you know, because I think, especially in a time right now, it resonates quite well. Although we made this song, you know, long before 2020, It was definitely a reason why we chose it as the first single, because it was never going to be the first single off the album.

But once all the madness unfolded and we pushed the album back, it made perfect sense to use it based on its lyrics purely. What are some of the message that you're getting in this track? I mean, it's mainly just like the positivity that Eric brings is what we were trying to do. Because Eric speaks about a pretty wide variety of things. But the stuff that really coincides with our beliefs is the kind of self-responsibility involved in making your life. better. It's easy to blame it on other people and or like some sort of like the system or like a conspiracy theory. But in my opinion, in our opinion, like change starts from within, you know, and you can you can really bring that change to yourself actively rather than just kind of waiting

for good stuff to happen. Yeah, he speaks about that a lot. And I think that just that one line where your focus goes, the energy flows. And that's, you know, a famous line. I think Tony Robbins uses it a lot as well, you know. And they're all just these really amazing, uplifting motivational speakers. It goes well with house music. You know, I think a lot of people have sampled things like that before. Eric's just our guy. He's the one we go to. People like identify his voice with us now. Yeah, we've opened every show of his voice for like years. He's kind of in the band. Yeah. Love that. You're known a lot for your collaborations. Yeah. And I want to move into another track, one of your newer singles

Birthday, which has Kaylani and Sid as collaborators. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that to get it in our ear. Yeah, Birthday is one of, if not the oldest song on the record. So maybe the R&B influence is there because it's still sort of, you know,

closer to Carrikel than the end of finishing energy, maybe, but, you know, your second album yeah yeah and that's got a lot more rmb like vibes on there but none of that's planned we just kind of go in the room and jam like musicians and we just make something with the artist and that day we made made this i mean to me it's it's still got an element of dance music about it's just because it's half time is what makes it feel a little slow but like when i listen to it i don't do the dubstep nod i'm kind of like it's it's upbeat to my ear so i think you can kind of choose where you land on that one. And again, that's why we also did our own

VIP garage remix of it, which is 4-4. You can have it both ways. And we've had an equally good reaction to both versions, which is, you know, rare. That doesn't usually happen. People pick sides. But a lot of people saying, like, I'm so happy both of these exist. So, like, I think we wrote that at the, probably the end of 2017, start of 2018. So it took a long time to come out. But yeah, so initially the whole song was just Sid singing and she had her own second verse as well. And I think we took it away for a few days and we had the idea that it might be a really cool idea for a duet. You know, the whole song's about this ex and this person that you're thinking about. You know, maybe we should incorporate that person somehow and they could chime in.

And so, you know, we asked Sid, who would you like that to be? And she was like, I could ask Kalani. And we were like, yeah, that would be great if you could just do that. That would be fine. You know, people say stuff like that in the studio now and again, you know, oh, we should get this person, this person. and it always just goes into thin air or doesn't transpire. Sid is true to her word, clearly. And honestly, it was two weeks went by and then, boom, the files were in.

Like, I don't think we even spoke to Kalani. It was like, we knew she had the beat, we knew she liked it. Bam, here's the files. Like, wow, and a load of ad libs and a load of harmonies and stuff as well. So, yeah, we were super excited about that. And, yeah, it's not something we usually do. You know, we never really send beats out and collaborate over email and things like that. But the reason that we don't normally do that is because, like,

people send stuff back that we don't like, you know? Like, and then, oh, like, they send something back with notes that are out of the key or, like, really out of tune or something like that. And we just can't, I can't live with that. And so, like, we like to get in the studio and work with people, because that way you can just say, like, oh, can you push that note a bit or whatever. Yeah, because we're much more musicians than producers. I mean, I've moved into the producer role more, like, over the last five years.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, deep down, I'm a drummer and I like to jam. And so, you know, a lot of this record, the ideas, are kind of jam-based, you know. It is going in one part at a time to a degree, but, you know, I'm making the drums and Howard's thinking of the chords in his head. Like, there has to be that in the room moment where someone just starts singing a little melody and you go, oh, I like that. And someone says maybe a concept, like, oh, yeah, I've just been going through this really annoying thing where I don't know whether or I should call my ex, because her birthday's coming

off and it's annoying. And, you know, you don't get that over email or, I don't know, maybe Zoom is a way forward, especially since lockdown and all of that. But for us, like, you know, as musicians, it's like, yeah, we grew up playing instruments with our parents, like, and with each other and our friends. So, but yeah, Kalani just sent back this verse that was just completely polished and, like, lyrically perfect and fit exactly the sentiment of the song that we had originally, because she totally rewrote the second verse, you know, like, we had, we had one originally with Sid, and Kalani didn't sing that. She made her own one, and completely different melodies, completely different lyrical content. And I just loved all of it immediately,

you know, like, it didn't want to change one thing about it. Um, So yeah, it's an exception to our rule of normally never doing that. Yeah. Why is it important to have that in-person collaboration? Is there a moment from this process with Sid that stands out where there was some spark that you couldn't, you know, capture, sending files back and forth? Yeah, for sure. And I think the main one is that, like, we often work with artists from outside of our genre. For example, Fatimata.

She doesn't really know any house music and like she doesn't know much of our music at all. I don't think she even knew who we were when we hit her up. And like that means it's very unusual that she'll be able to match exactly the sort of vibe that we want. You know, and like the same thing with Blik Bassi. His knowledge of house music is pretty minimal because it's not his bag, you know, that's not what he normally listens to or makes. So to get in the room of someone like him is super important because it means that he can throw ideas at us and we can like tell him which ones we like immediately. You know, and if you didn't have that, you would spend like years in that process of like trying to work out what it is the other person wanted.

And, you know, the same thing that kind of applies to Fatimata is different because we essentially sampled her music. Mick Jenkins even. Oh shit, talking to all that jazz might get you palla, but I ain't gonna stop don't ask no SK, I'm telling him in a white drop top of my face in the hand in the air like JFK. He's from Chicago, so he knows a bit of house music, but like he definitely doesn't know any UK garage. Like we had to play him what guy referred to as a garage starter pack.

And it was like all of like the old school like UKG hits. It was awesome to work with him on it because he brought something new to the table. It's important to get in the room because it's quite hard to match vibes with someone who's not used to working in this genre. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic,

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So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security? period. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video Feats. The kind of breakdown of labor that I'm detecting here is like Guy on drums and bass, Howard on harmony and chords. Is that a rough approximation of the workflow? It's pretty good,

yeah. It's basically like guy on drums and production and like generally sonically crafting it to make it sound like a disclosure song. And then I'm just like a songwriter who joins in on the fun. Yeah, and just like critiquing as well. Yeah. I'm like the filter that all of Howard's ideas go through before it goes in the laptop. So, yeah, although I'm not playing, I just can't play the keys. I know, like, I know what I like in my head. And sometimes I wake up with melodic ideas and whatever, but I can't play them in. I have to draw them in. Whereas Howard's just super good at keys. So he could just jam these amazing ideas out very quick. Yeah, I like getting my head much more in the laptop and, like, crafting the overall space. Yeah, we weren't always like this, though.

Like when we started making tunes as disclosure, it was very mixed. You know, like, I would still make loads of the drums and Guy would still make loads of the chords and we would like decide. But it just, we slowly worked out that like we used more of my chords and we used more of his drums. So, you know, we just started playing to our strengths a bit more. And people always ask us like, you know, oh, your brothers and you work together, like you must fight all the time like the oasis or something.

And we're like, no, we don't because like we don't tread on each other's toes. You know, like I do my stuff. He does his stuff. And then we come together at the end. And it works well. meshes together. And I think that process of it meshing together is probably helped by the fact that we are brothers. I feel like you're making Nate really jealous right now who wishes that his parents also planned out having a brother who played the drum so that he could play the keys

and then you would just have a family band. It seems like it was very, very well planned out. Yeah, that was definitely partly true. It's luck as well that we both fill the other role, you know? Like you said, it wouldn't work as well if, well, that's Oasis right there, isn't it? They both wanted to be frontmen and it was a bit of a fight. I definitely have a distinct memory of like, because guy started playing drums when he was like three years old and I was born three years after him. So like, by the time I was like five, I remember a guy being really good at drums already and my dad handing me a bass guitar on my birthday and being like, you do this. Like, this is what you should do. And I was like, okay, cool.

And then I just became a bass player for like 10 years and slowly worked out that I prefer piano. Yeah. Yeah. Does birthday maybe. illustrate that process, that kind of workflow, could you take us through the collaborative process of building that track together? I came out of the chords first, just those four chords that go around for the majority of the song. And I was just jamming those out while Guy was picking a sound, because we have it on like a MIDI keyboard, and then Guy will be like scrolling through sounds, and he's like, oh, can you just play something while I choose the sound? So I wrote it while he was doing that, and we ended up with that sign wavy type thing.

And then Sid immediately liked those and was like, yes, let's use those. So we were like, cool. So I recorded that in and they just looped. You know, so then once they were looping, I could then sit with Sid and we'd start writing melodies and lyrics. And I think we wrote the chorus first. Can I call you on your birthday to make sure that you're okay? Would you prefer it if I go ghost and let you go your own way? And as soon as we started doing that guy had decided the song was going to be in half time.

And he'd started making this like really garaggy, skippy beat to it. And then we were like, okay, it's really cool. Like we were enjoying it. We were like, but it needs to go somewhere else now. So I wrote the chords to the middle eight, which are the really crazy ones. We didn't know what to write over that. Like we didn't really have like an idea. So we were like, let's just let Sid do ad libs over the whole track and see what she does in the middle eight.

and she just did these like super dope things. Yeah, and we did the ooze, like layered up the ooze. Did some ooze in there. If in doubt put ooze over it as well. Yeah. I filled it up. I think I played the bass in. I reckon you gave me a guide on the notes

because that rhythm syncopating with the triplet kick is very me. Yeah, that's often the case with bass lines is I'll play bass in kind of just with my left hand while I'm playing chords. And it's normally quite basic just following the chords or maybe doing fifth or something. And then Guy will come in and like stegosaurus it. make it really crazy and rhythmic. Decide how it moves, where it bends, where it modulates. Yeah, yeah.

I like all that stuff, but yeah, just as long as there's a basic. I think I just coined that term. They've just come and stegosaurus. I've never said that before, but it kind of worked. I've never heard that before. I get what you mean. TM. That's good, very evocative.

Good, good. It's really fun to hear about your collaborative process, and one of the things that we appreciate is seeing that you do do a lot to highlight your collaborators. I want to go to one more song on your record, which has some really interesting samples and collaborations. I want to talk about the track Tondo. Since your last album, Caracol, you've been really expanding into music from the African continent with your track Doa Mali Mali. And ultimatum. both with Fatimata Daiwara and your song Tondo sort of continues in this practice.

I barely did anything to this song, it was all guy. Yeah, which sometimes happens with us. Like, it's always kind of been the way that occasionally there'll just be a song that the other one doesn't really want to do anything too because it's already done. Yeah, and I'd also say it's not strictly on the album, you know, it was on the EP that preceded the album. Yeah. It's on the deluxe version on Spotify, but you won't find it on the vinyl or the CD or anything. anything like that. But, and there's a reason behind that, you know, it's, we had all the album done before we released this song. And there was definitely like talks of it going on, but

it's an extremely sample heavy tune. You know, there's not that process of me and Howard starting this together from scratch. You know, it's, it's taking like Echo's song and reworking it and making it into something totally different and new to what it was. And for us, like, that EP that we put out was a very sample heavy and us show in the world like, hey, look, we do sampling too because we've not really done much like in the past to be honest it's all you know the first two albums are all music from scratch i think settles got two samples on it and maybe three and then carackel's got like none maybe does definitely doesn't like hardly any so you know we've kind of gone in reverse like most people maybe start out sampling and then

get into it but we're you know just playing around the other way so yeah the EP's showing off you know us sampling and also i think kind of we thought it might prepare people's ears a little bit for where we were going with energy like with this new vibe you know with the much more percussive element from different parts of the world. You know, there are two songs on Energy that aren't even in English. So, you know, that's a bit of a jump from working with the weekend and Sam Smith, you know. So I think it's like a nice little stepping stone and bridge towards the album. On Tondo, you're sampling Cameroonian artist Echo Roosevelt.

What brought you to this sample and how did you decide it would be fitting for a treatment? I think I found it just browsing Spotify. Honestly, like, or YouTube, just going down a YouTube wormhole, you know. I mean, I spent most of 2017 listening to nothing but like music from different parts of Africa. It's how we found Fatumata. I mean, everyone has their fellacuti moment, you know, where you just become obsessed for like a year or whatever. We had that. And so, you know, that leads you down different paths to different people. And I'd also heard this song like sampled a couple of times in other house tunes, but much more in a loopy kind of, you know, way. It wasn't like they'd taken the whole song and revamped it. And I just

felt like it had so much potential to like absolutely take the roof off the club. And it was more of a mix thing than anything. It was a production thing. You know, I didn't really want to add too many original elements. It was just boosting everything that was there and like taking it into a place where DJs would play it. It needed like energy. It needed a little bit more of a boost to, uh, to bring it into like the now. And I think that's what we managed to do with the drums and the extra bass line. And it's a different structure to the original as well. But yeah, in terms of finding it, same way that I've kind of found all my sampled songs that I like, random YouTubers who just blog and, yeah, wormholes, man, hours of wormhulling, you know what it's like.

Something we've discussed on the show before is the way that the internet is this powerful tool for eroding certain geographical or cultural barriers and allowing you to access music from across the world at the click of a button. But maybe the dark side of that is the erasure of the artists and the communities that are responsible for generating this music. So I know Guy maybe crafted this one particularly, but I think this question would be applicable to both of you all. And it's how do you think about the, the ethics of credit and collaboration when you work with artists who might be outside of your community, outside of your culture? What does that look like for you? Well, you just make sure you do it. Make sure you credit the person. I mean,

that's the first step. I mean, it's never crossed our minds to ever like nick someone else's song and not credit them. I mean, look, we're lucky we've got an awesome team around us in our management, you know, who are on the same vibe as us that, you know, credit needs to be given. where credit's due and everyone needs to enter into a voluntary agreement. You know, if someone doesn't want us to use their sample, that's fine. No problem. You know, it doesn't matter. We're all artists doing our thing.

That will happen one day. It probably has happened in the past. But I would say we've been very fortunate with everyone we've approached with samples before. Everyone's been super willing to collaborate all the way back to Eric Thomas to now this. So I think it's, yeah, a lot of that problem, man, I think comes from, you know, back in the day when people weren't doing that as much and weren't giving credit. it was due. And, you know, we don't want to big ourselves up and say we're doing everything perfect or anything like that, but we do try our hardest. Like, we do follow every sample to

its route, like who owns it, if that's a label or a publisher or the artist. We do our best to find that person. And sometimes it takes a long time. The last track on our previous EP called Where You Come From, that song took us a hell of a long time to clear with Kamal, the singer of that one. you know, he's 84 or something now and, and there's a, it's been through label after label after label and, and he emailed us last year saying something along the lines of, thank you to the, you know, for the use of that sample. Because of the royalties that I've made off of that song, I've finally been able to fulfill my life dream of buying and owning an exotic collection of birds. So, you know, if we all said no one's allowed to make music that isn't from your

own culture, you're not going to get those beautiful moments like that. You're only going to be putting up walls. You're not going to be bringing up walls. You're not going to be bringing them down. You know, I think the collaborative aspect of music is one of the best things about it, but it should be done with respect and care. You've got to find those birds and sample them for your next record. Oh, God, yeah, that would be amazing. There's a video of him with them online. Is there really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when we first heard about that, I was really over the moon for him, but then the more I've thought about it, I'm not even sure I agree with owning birds. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. There's a lot of like moral blurred lines there.

Yeah, absolutely. This has been so much fun. Before we go, what else can people expect from this album? I think the best way to summarize it briefly and overall is that it's like our most diverse album that we've made in terms of like the palette of sound, the inspiration that we're letting in, you know, before we were kind of strictly house garage and then, you know, a bit of more songwriting R&B in the next one. And that's all stuff we grew up with and, you know, now we're exploring stuff that

we're listening to now, like as adults, like exploring the world of music, like exploring the music in the places that we've visited, you know, like South America and like Africa, like places we've been to and seen something and that's, you know, made us go home and think, yeah, I want to listen and more of that. And that is being put into the music, like, through our subconscious, you know, because like I said earlier, if you're in the studio jamming, you're only really jamming if you're, like, being true to, like, the music that's in your mind. And if you do what I do, and listened to Felakuti straight for a year, you try making music that doesn't sound a bit like that,

you know, it's going to happen. And that's great. That's like what inspiration is all about. You know, like us doing our Twitch thing has proven that to me. You know, we're doing a competition at the moment with the guys on Twitch

where we made a song live, and we sent the parts out to anyone who's bought the record. And then tomorrow we're listening through all of these amazing remixes that they've done. And, you know, some of them are pretty disclosury and a bit of a rip-off. And that's fine. They're all like thinking,

I'm going to try and do what I've learned on the stream and I've watched disclosure now for like hours making their thing. So again, like you try and not sound like disclosure if you've only been watching us teach for eight hours. So that's how I'd sum up is like it's us being very honest and true like about the music we love and doing our thing with it. And then yeah, all the stuff in the messages about positivity, you know, strength, happiness, courage. Like we made this album for nightclubs and for people to dance to en masse in a massive field. And, you know, that's not happening. But luckily, I think the message is still kind of relevant and works in this current situation. Or at least that's what people have been telling us on Twitter.

So that's nice. Well, I'll tell you what, I put it on this morning just before 7 o'clock in the morning. And my one-year-old immediately started dancing. So I think the energy is working. Excellent. Yeah, this one's for the yoga playlists and the dads out there. Thank you. Namaste. Switched on Pop is made by Nate Sloan and me Charlie Harding.

We're produced by Bridget Armstrong and Megan Lubin. Mixed edited and engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, and social media by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nshak Kerwa and Liz Kelly Nelson and were a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find more episodes of Switched On Pop at Switchedonpop.com and at Switchedon Pop on social media. Quick reminder, if you'd go and take our quick survey, that would mean the world to me. We really like to know who's listening, what's going on, what's important to you. go to voxmedia.com slash pod survey. It's in the show notes.

And come back next week because we're going to be talking with some of my favorite artists in country music, which is going through this major transition. We'll be chatting with Mickey Guyton, Randy Clark, and Keith Urban. It's going to be a really fun time, full of country music. So catch us next Tuesday, and until then, thanks for listening.