The Downbeat - Jon Deiley + Josh Smith (Northlane)

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

I catch up with Josh Smith and Jon Deiley of Australian prog-meets-industrial metal(core?) band Northlane. We talked about their latest album Obsidian and its writing process - as well as synthesizers, cats and of course their dream festival which takes place in an imagined post-war Neo-Bergen. Thumbnail photos by Kim Quint (he also loaned me the glorious camera lens as I broke one the day before. Lifesaver, thanks Kim!)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen and embies. How is everyone doing? What have I been doing? What have you been doing? You can't tell me, but think about it. What have I been doing? I'm spread thin, if I'm honest for you. Been practicing for the upcoming, straight from the path, motionless in white, bare-tooth tour.

Which starts March 8th, somewhere in Germany. Be lovely if you came. I would love it. We'd have a lovely little time. What else have I've been doing? Oh, this is what I've been doing. Absolutely shithloads of podcasting. I've got a trade offer for you. If you're not watching this on a wonderful YouTube video,

I'm doing the hands from the meme, the trade offer meme. Okay. Currently, as you can see or hear from this, I'm doing every other week podcast episodes. Now, the issue, which it shouldn't really be an issue because it's why we set this up in Glasgow is I'm recording a lot of podcasts two a week at the moment

I've got too much work so trade offer is we get the Patreon Patreon patreon patreon.com forward slash in the downbeat to 2,000 people it's at 1,500 people currently we get it to 2,000 people it's one pound right you don't get anything you might get an episode early you might get merch early

but it's basically just supporting but if we get it to 2000, I'm going to employ a producer to come, switch the cameras in real time. Possible Patreon perk may be that it goes live on Patreon. I'm not sure. Don't hold me to that. Someone will come and switch the cameras on the fly and then they will leave with the hard drive and then they will prepare it all nice with some little, maybe we'll cut out the festivals, do a clips channel, and we will.

do probably one a week because I can get a guest every single week. I just can't edit. It takes a long, long, long time. Two hours set up, two hour pod, three hour edit, back and forth. Chuck as a quid, patron dot com, four session downbeat. And let's see if we can get this a weekly thing. That's only 52 podcast. Easy. I've done eight in January alone. In case you don't want to give me one pound, you want to give me more than one pound. Well, you've already giving me one pound and you think, that's quite a nice sweatshirt, where can I get that from? www.

the downbby. net, nearly forgot it there. So it spells Downbeat. Pick up a shirt, pick up a hoodie, pick up a sweatshirt. If you live in the United States of America, I suggest holding off until late,

February, early March, going to have a US store. Exclusive US items. That's it for plugging. Got one. sponsor. In fact, let's just do a new, it was annoying me. I've got a sponsor, Displate, right? And I was just adding in the advert for Displate and it annoyed me because I got this new lens and the advert was with a different lens. It didn't look as good on YouTube. So, yeah, the sponsor

for the podcast currently is Displate. You can see him in the background if you're watching it on YouTube. They make metal posters that are mounted to the wall with a magnet. Don't have to drill. You don't have to do it. Lose your deposit because your landlord is a wanker, and they are. There's loads of different designs, licensed stuff from not only the downbeat, but Marvel stuff, computer games stuff, that's video games to people who are under 36 years of age. And with the code downbeat, you can get a massive 23% off, I believe it is, a single disc plate, And I think it's 30% off three or more. They come in a bunch of different sizes.

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My guest this week is John and Josh from North Lane. I first met these guys. I don't want to ruin the pod too much, but I first met these guys when I was drum-teching for architects, a long time ago, over 10 years ago now. I stayed in touch to varying degrees. I saw them play with Sleep Token down the road. They absolutely smashed it.

The new album, my latest album, Obsidian, is absolutely probably a career best, I think, from them. We had a lovely chat. Check them out. Check out their tour dates. Northlane.com. It's Northlane. on the Downbeat Podcast How's that?

Just to get that, I want people listening at home in HD Yeah, to be like Oh my God It's like I'm fucking right there I'm right there I'm in the room with North Lane

So bass heavy Would you like Come on It's the way we like it He's come in here Picked apart my 50 second extraction Sounds pretty shit Sounds pretty terrible

Coffee sucks How is the coffee is it shit That's good I like it The pause tells me everything I need to know. Scoffs. You burnt this one, mate.

Bye. Give me some of your coffee background quickly. Well, let's get this. Let's nip this in the bud. Are we on? Yeah, it's going. All right. So, when I was a university student,

I was fucking straight into promo. Okay, so I worked at, like, a coffee chain in Australia that was pretty big at the time. You want to shout them out? No, I have severe ethical disagreements with the company. But they put me through like all this training and shit because they thought maybe that I wanted to work in the industry for the rest of my life.

I actually hated every single day when I had to wake up at fucking fucked o'clock in the morning to go serve lattes to grumpy assholes. And yeah, I just, I guess I learned a lot. Then just pissed off as soon as I could. How long ago was this? Over 10 years. What North Lane album are we talking? Like pre-discovery.

Pre-discoverys, yeah. Oh, really? After discoveries came out, I was just like, see ya. All right, fair. Yeah. So you are qualified to tell me my coffee is shit. Yours was numbed with milk. How was that?

Yeah, I like it. The milk's okay. milk sucks. I prefer Oatley anyway. I'm a, I'll use minor fig as oat. Yeah, I don't mind that either. Mr. Barista, is that okay? Do you know that one?

What do you use? I use my favorite. I catch the Oaks myself. I actually don't like oat milk and coffee. Is it a point of contention. No milk at all in coffee or just real life hell milk. No, no, no, no. I was going to say it.

I've never, never drank milk. my whole life. Other than... Except when they get your coffee wrong. What about... What about Mama? What about Mama? I like...

There's this... No, I was a bitter. There's a brand in Australia called Milk Lab. I don't know if you can get it here. Their almond milk is amazing in coffee. Oh, this is dog shit. This one was terrible.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Craig. There was stress put upon thee. before we get into talking about music or whatever preface the situation I broke my fucking camera lens we weren't sure this was going to happen anyway because you had some crazy bus call or whatever

because you're on tour yeah we got that move just for you got it moved just for me I was very thankful thank you I'll make you a lovely coffee as a thank you and then broke my fucking lens I was going to cancel

Kim shout out Kim came with a lovely lens that you can see this lens is wonderful. It's schmick. Very nice. And then, yeah, now we're here. But that was already under pressure

from there being a real-life cameraman here. Then I've got a real-life coffee, man. Do you want to get the synths out? Yeah, we should probably judge the synths right about now. I don't have any. I've got a whole, I've got notes, and there's a whole section on sense. Look, because I'm fucking, I want to know.

I must say, Craig, if there's one thing I'm completely useless at. It's interior decorating and you've done a fantastic job of the place. Thank you ever so much. Very, very nice. It was, I told you this before, but it's probably worth saying,

we had some people around at Christmas. I'm super stoked on it. Everything looks nice. There was three drawers that were left. It was like, I guess in Australia you've still got, like fucking, just like mum decoration.

Yeah, live, laugh, love. Like, it was like a mum kitchen. So, like, there was a white drawer and it had like silver. sparkly handles on it and I was like nice left they were left there the last thing left for the kitchen company big fucking beef with the kitchen company by the way come around yesterday charge me 300 quib for plugs

thanks patron and then at the end of the night I said something like oh yeah the kitchen would be nice when it's finished because of those drawers and then everyone went oh we thought they were just an accent and I was like what do you think about the whole place if that's You think that I'm going around that

Oh, I'll get some sparkly drawers in the fucking middle of it Yeah, why not? That'd be nice. Why not? Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for making it work. Thanks to Kim.

It's all that. How's your tour? It's been great. Yeah. It's been awesome to be back. Press, press guy shit. I've got loads of questions about his house. I just got to get out of way because sometimes like press agents are like,

well, you didn't actually ask them anything. give the people what they want they don't the press agent wants that so they can send out and go oh da da great the tour was good architects are great was good

when was the last time you talked with architects because the first time I ever met you I think was with architects yeah 2014 or something 2014 was it euro or UK both yeah I can't remember any of that

no it was I remember being there. Really into Valium at the time. Do you remember the squishy, the bus? It was like at the squishy bunks? No, Dan Burke was drummer for Australia. No, but I was drum tech in for Arttech. Yeah, so I was there.

So you were there? Yeah, but it wasn't at all. You didn't do the whole tour, though, did you? No. You only did UK. Maybe the UK stuff. Or maybe just Europe? One of the two.

God, we're good at this. It's been a lot of time. I can't remember. I can't remember any of it. I was too pissed But so in It's been better than that It looks

Yeah it's been a lot better It looks slightly bigger Yeah just slightly So is it architect's North Lane It was Architects North Lane Yes In Europe Yes

And now it's Sleep token North Lane UK Nobody else Yeah no Oh can I come Tufus Yeah

Of course I thought you were I thought it was Two-band bill is the fucking dream. Oh, fuck yeah. Like, we're playing for 50 minutes, you know, like that's sick. Even on a two-bander. Yeah?

Even on fucking holidays. Plenty of dressing room space, you know. It's great. How big a fucking sleep token? Pretty big, it seems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've done like 3,000 tickets last night in Birmingham on a, fucking Tuesday.

This is like something I see from like both sides like you see people are beefing bands that get this big this quickly. I just think it's the sickest shit ever. Post-pandemic there's like do you remember that band Lawnessure?

Oh yeah the biggest band in the fucking boat. Yeah, to their credit though Lorna Shaw and Sleep Token and you know throw spirit box into this basket as well have all been around for quite a while. Like,

Sleep Token, I've had a couple of records out. I remember hearing about them a fucking while back. Yeah, I think it might be 2017, the first one or something? A while ago.

And then, you know, some of these other bands, like Lawn Shore have been around for fucking ages. I mean, Spirit Blocs have, but they were in bands

prior to that anyway. Yeah, they got training. Yeah, yeah. They learned what didn't work. None of this is like fluke overnight success. Which is what people say it is.

Yeah, people just weren't aware. Or just that's what it appears to be. Yeah. But the thing that I really like is like whether or not you're into Sleep Tokens music or not, I think what they're doing is really creative and it's different and we can really appreciate that. We'd rather tour with a band like that any day than one that just read the fucking. metalcore recipe book and went, all right, let's copy.

You know what I'm saying? I feel exactly the same. That's my thoughts on sleep token. Like, when I listen to it, I'm like, oh, that's cool. Like, it's not, on paper, it's not my shit. But then I see the fucking masks and everything, and I'm like, you're good for you.

They have, like, a choir on stage with them too. See, that's, when I saw them, they didn't have that. It was quite early on. whatever their first show thing was. I think it was a festival. But like they didn't have that. And it was after all the buildup of them being spooky

and all this stuff. And I was expecting like maybe like, spooky. Not in like a spooky derogatory. I mean like all of the shit. And I was like, the same thing when I saw ghost at Royal Albert Hall to put them in the same bracket. But like I was like, oh, I wonder what they're going to do.

Are they going to use the fucking organ? It was just a ghost show. And I was like, okay. And then when Sleep token did it, I was like, I just need a little bit more spooky. I need a spooky choir. And then boom. Spooky choir, in we go.

They're great. They're great, though. Yeah. I really like the way their music's put together as well, though, especially with the vocals. Like, that is not usual for the genre. Yeah, it's very, again, non-derogatory, pop. Yeah, it's cool. It's very cool.

If you... I almost said that. the guy's name just in conversation. Stop it, stop it. Where's the stop on this? There we, abhor. Don't you do that. We can just go.

It's difficult when you meet these people as friends and, and you call them by their names. And then you're like, oh, that's not their actual name. We're meant to call them vessel. Yeah. I mean, malevolence, like, quite went into detail about what every member of that band looks like on the last episode of the podcast. So you could probably line them up. and figure it out by then. Yep.

One last thing to say about sleep talking, it doesn't matter. You will not. Fucking, like, architects are huge. That one's going to go next. Fucking huge. Was it Hamburg? Whatever show was like... Hamburg was one of the first three.

They were all massive. Every single show was massive. Yeah. It was like all, pretty much all arenas. Yeah. They're like a fully fledged arena bands now. When we toured with them in Germany, like, I think we'd be lucky to do a thousand. They were doing about that, but it was like...

Most of the shows were like 500. Probably not more than, probably not more than 2,000. No, none of the shows were that big. And they all just, yeah, over 5, over 6,000 at least. You know how like sometimes you meet people in bands and you meet, them early in the career and you become mates and then they get really popular and they turn into fucking knobs. It's a fucking thing.

It happens. It is the thing. They're exactly the same people there used to be. And it's almost like they, I almost feel like after everything that's happened, they appreciate the friendships even more. Yeah. You know? Oh, there's definitely like a, from what they've been through, there's,

Like, all of them, they're the same people, but there's like a deep spiritual thing in them. Particularly Dan. Like, I feel like, not to fucking, I don't want to go on a grief tour. No, no, no. Like, like, obviously, because we all fucking knew Tom. But like, and this is, this is a weird question

that I probably wouldn't pose to those two. Do you feel like Dan is really like Tom? Yeah. Like, more so. For me. It fucking looks just like. No, but I mean Dude for me like

You know But when Tom was still alive I didn't actually have like a super close Friendship with Dan And since he passed He is just completely morphed into Tom For me He's absorbed it

Yeah He's completely filled that That spot It's crazy I was on to see photos Yeah Yeah Yeah

So what's the science now What's the science there that I can get it. I have no idea. And then, so you've got this, right, we'll get all this fucking press shit out of the way. So when you were writing, I'm not going to do that,

but I do have genuine questions. I told you before, people, people roast me on the Patreon for, for what? Being successful, number one. And then, number two,

like, how dare you? But you didn't answer, ask any questions. Oh, because I'm hanging out of my name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't really want that.

I want to talk about coffee and interior design and whatever. but I'm taking it on board for your £1 a month to ask questions that I think people give a shit about Oh, cool All right, let's go

Some of my fucking Some of my notes are so insane Okay, what I actually want to know Is the writing process For North Lane Okay What is it? Because we have like,

Stray does it like old school as fuck We sit in a room And we jam Like we're fucking 85 years old Look at the grimace That sounds awful. That sounds awful. It's kind of sick.

Yeah, if you can do it, fuck yeah. On Alien and on Obsidian, the Sins were getting on to the Sint conversation. That's real quick, wasn't it? I got so hard. The Sins are so prominent. Yeah. I want to know,

a song's written around Sints, or do the Sints come first, or is there a particular process of writing? In regards to the synth stuff, It's usually... I need you to come slightly close with your microphone. It's since... Oh, I can hear myself in HD.

It's the synths come first, usually, I think. At least for Alien and especially Obsidian, the synths were written. Because in lockdown, like, you know, everybody was, like, having a tough time, whatever. I didn't want to play guitar. It kind of felt stale. So I was just on the synths, like, all day, every day,

just, you know, getting high and noodling on the synths. And then... Sounds like sick. And then and then and then and then and then and then I look at what I what I had. I was like the cats need food. Are you at least high? Yeah. Yeah.

Come out. Come out and feed the cats. No. So then I was, I'd like look at what I had to to work with at the end of the day. And it was just synths and drums. And then I just had to like build riffs around that. But I feel like with Alien, it was maybe more of like a 50-50 split. And with the new stuff that we're doing at the moment, that's what I'm trying to do.

as well. I'm just trying to bring it slightly back towards the band and then using the sense to supplement the band as opposed to the other way around. Fuck, yeah. I love it. Like any, my,

there's rarely bands that I enjoy their whole, like, discography in progression with the band. Because when you're making music, you're like, this is our best album. No one really comes out and goes, this is nearly our best album.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. putting everything into it and there's only a few bands where I follow their trajectory and I like it as it goes on more and more and more and it's architects bring me North Flame who else there's one other one I can't remember should have a note I don't want to break but and do you know what the the common theme is for me to enjoy it more and more and more since I'm obsessed more synths and more goth and I'm just like yeah okay I'm fucking in The thing that I think about all the time is that back when we first started,

even though we were playing in metal and hardcore bands, everybody still had like this one electronic thing. It was either like an interlude on an iPod or like the intro was, you remember you would like, the band of the start, the lies that come on, they're all standing there all on in this and that the intros, the intros playing. And then the intro stops. the band comes in, it's like, oh. And I always thought to myself, like, fuck, it'd be cool to do that and just keep that

energy that people were feeling like the entire show. And somewhere along the way, like, we've done that. Now the sense are all through the thing. And all of those bands that you mentioned before all are doing that same thing. It's just like it's an edge in like what I think is like a pretty stale genre. Yeah. And with so many bass-heavy sense, it means that. we can get away

without having a fucking bass player. Are you playing bass or there's no bass? No, it's, yeah. It's based on track. Your favourite thing? A laptop. Yeah, but some bands, because I slag it off all the time,

but like, I know you do. Sound like, you fucking sound like. Betty makes a shit coffee. But like, some band, in my opinion, if you've got a bunch of electronic shit, really,

you can put, a lot on fucking track. Yeah. I draw the line really at a vocal line that a vocalist is not doing. Yeah. Yeah, that's different. We don't do that. And then a whole guitar.

I think I'm out on a whole guitar. A lot of it, John's like, he does a lot of synth stuff live. And some of it is supplemented in tracks too. Because he can't play guitar and synth. Yeah, guitar and synths. Yeah, so it's like, I mean, I think we found a good balance that works for us. No one's said anything about us not having a base player. Oh, there's been a couple comments every now and then.

We had like a couple angry Texans that were like, it's disrespectful to your old base player to not replace him. What should we do then just stop playing music or what? Yeah. In what way is it disrespectful? I don't know. They're both still alive. it's fine that's fucking weird

yeah is it mental gymnastics there but um yeah rare by music listener works for us do you so when you're at home I need to get all the simple questions out of the way because I've got so fucking many they're all like they're genuine

they're not like press it's just like what's he up to? Because like I see so there's the end of Zen? Yep. The end of that Mm-hmm. Bam-Ban-Ban-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B.

Are you talking about the sense of the end? Yeah. So that thing that you're hearing at the end is the original idea that I came up with that I built the entire song around. Which is why I had that question. Yeah. Does it sound like that?

I know my shit. Yeah, definitely does. Yeah. But also leads me to like, we get a little, no offense. A little John solo. Solo thing of like sound. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I have like heaps of stuff that I'm working on. But because in North Lane, I can write all the demos that I want. Eventually we need to book a time to record. And then we go in and we record it all again from scratch. Like there's a deadline. Because I don't have that for my solo stuff. And it's kind of just like at this point on me to make it sound good.

Like as a producer, it's just taking a lifetime to get it across the line. Because I also feel like, you know, stylistically, I do a lot in North Lane. but it all works in North Lane. With the solar stuff, it's kind of all over the place. And that's not really how that world works. You kind of need to pick a genre or a subgenre and stick to it. Yeah. So that's hard for me to do.

So I'm just to need to, like, give all my ideas to somebody within those genres and just be like, help me produce this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because I bet you write something cool when your immediate thought is like Northane song. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, I don't know what people, I don't know what people expect. I feel like people expect my solo stuff to be like, I don't know, still kind of heavy in an electronic way. I want to just be soundscape. Yeah, yeah. That's the fun stuff anyway. Is it like a big, fucking,

like I don't know how does a synth, well, fuck it, I still haven't pressed you for the actual question that I asked, but like how does a synth work? What do you mean, how does it work?

Like, what the fuck are all the cables? Oh, the modular stuff you mean? It's, the Lego synth. Yeah, it's just like, it's just,

they're just like 3.5 mil, like audio cables, mono, What do they do? They pass two things. Audio and CV, which is called control voltage. And control voltage is just between 0 and 10 volts or 0 and 5 volts. And the difference in volts changes parameters on particular modules.

In particular modules have different. They respond to those volts differently as well. That's fucking cool. Because I had no idea. I see it. I fucking hands in the studio and he's got all that fucking shit. Yeah. That's a that's a different.

type of modular that's um it's like earth i forget what it's called it's not what i have i have the ura rack format which is like the modules that are like that tiny and he's like the i think they're like 500 series or something they're big do you bring them on tour or do you vST it no i do have the vs t version the vcv rack but i don't know i'm struggling to get into it and the whole point is that it's just right there in front of you so you can just like do you add libit like that as in like you're just fucking fron fucking fruit. You ever have to just, you just freak out and everyone's like,

John's on one. He had an accident the other night. What did I do? I can't remember. But I can remember that you had an accident. No, not usually. Wait, what's the accident? Come on.

Yeah, I don't remember what it was. You hit something on the push and it was like horribly out, but then it came back in. Oh, oh. So I'm playing these, like, in the song 4D from Alien. I have the synth progression all cut up onto different pads. So it's like a chord of like five notes, but I'm playing it with three notes. I've like summed the audio into one pad.

So I'm playing a lot of that. And then my interface, which plugs into my computer that all the sounds coming out for the electronic stuff, disconnected. So it's stopped. And then I'm like trying to get it back going. I'm like opening up the laptop and I'm getting all back together.

And then I come in for the next part. and I go into the next fight and I'm playing that. And then it just decides to play all of the shit that was playing, that was meant to be playing before. Bremen. Yeah, and then I just have to go back and hit that. And then I didn't hit it once.

I hit it twice. So it's playing again. That's my worst night, man. My bum hole just went. That is my worst fucking night. It doesn't happen often, but. You can get away with it being like, yeah, I was just having a fucking Tom York moment.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Adding more fucking note. I was just jamming. Okay, so there's answer my actual. question that I had, which was, so what's the writing process? Are you, you go to synth, in fact, you just run me through it. Yeah, like, so, so it'll generally start with an idea, um, that'd be drums, bass, guitars, synth, maybe even like a vocal melody. And then I'll send it to the guys and get some thoughts. And then we generally go from there. It'll usually,

it'll usually be Marcus that'll do something first before we start like getting rid of sections. and it's just a very long, arduous process from there, just refining and refining and refining. So, like, it will go to Marcus with lyrics, without lyrics? Without. Then he does some shit. He got a little rig, he records demos. Yeah, yeah.

And then you tell him you don't like it. Do you have, like, fucking big, big arguments? Oh, yeah. We had a good one, actually. carbonized. We were writing that song. Oh, wow,

yeah. So Marcus had written a chorus, and then John had, like, chopped it up into what he thought sounded better. Oh, and it was, like, a verse or some shit,

and they were, like, fucking... That was echo chamber. It was echo chamber. Yeah. It was like... No, no, no. You had a fight about carbonized,

because you both had an idea that was equal, shit and then I was like, well, clearly we just haven't written the right part. No, incarbonized the chorus. When we left the studio was a completely different chorus. Really? Completely different. When you left the studio.

When we left the studio, yeah. And then when we came home, like a week, I took a week to just not listen to anything. And then I started listening to all the songs in order and I was like, I hate this chorus so much. What was it? Sing me the other chorus. I can't remember, which is a good thing. Like, I can't remember it, which I feel like is a good thing.

Imagine if you could remember it and then you'd be like, did I make the right decision? We could just release the stem. One stem. People get to just fucking add it in if they wanted. That's fucking interesting. So what did you? Go back to the studio?

No, no, no. We just did it at home. I'll be listening to that differently now. That's a different microphone. That coffee was shit. That's a different microphone. The studio we recorded Obsidian out was just like a big Airbnb. we just bought all the shit we needed and did it with Chris Blancato.

Including drums? No, drums was done it. At Chris's Studio in studio. But all the guitars and vocals, I mean, the guitars were all done in the box anyway. And the vocals, we just bought. Completely in the box? I guess you're that kind of man. Oh, I mean, it was like re-amped through.

Go on, shout out on your company. Go on. Get it in. You don't have any affiliation. That's why we're here. I don't have an end. I don't have an affiliation with diesel, but I've only got one amp left. I used to have quite a few.

And it's a diesel Herbert, and it was the amp of the last two albums. That's why they sound the way they do. So wait, okay, so you tracked it in the box and then you re-amped it through your diesel. If you're going to keep one, keep a diesel. Yeah, exactly. I got it for such a steal as well. I bought it off this lawyer, and he had... Classic, isn't it?

Too much money. Drive out to his house. It's like this fucking mansion. And he like takes me through the garage and behind the garage he's like built a studio in his house. Classic rich. Just so he can play guitar. And he's a fucking like so much nice shit in there.

And he sold me this diesel for like 1,900 bucks or something. It's worth like seven grand. Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Love a good steal. Yeah. I tried to give someone a steal recently. I'm to derail it, but I'm going to derail it. I tried to give someone a steal recently.

I sold a Tamer kit, which I got for free. It was an old, old Tamer kit where they just had like artist stock. And they were like, do you want this kit? Because I actually did the kit. Then I think at some point someone told me that I could sell it or whatever. And I was like, you know what? I got this for free. It was like a Tamababba Bambinga.

Nice. Yeah, exactly. Guitarists. Love Bambi Boll. I fucking hate Bambi Bambi. I don't like it with drums. Oh. Just not to get nerdy.

What do you like? What do you like? What do you like? Walnut. Yeah. You like walnut, don't you? Yeah. You did?

You did? You look like you had a fight with a fucking walnut tree. I never owned a walnut guitar, but I don't really talk anymore. I do like to eat walnuts. Oh, fuck. Quite nice.

I was like, look, I got this for free. It was like a fucking Tamas style classic massive kit. And I was like, I'm just had it for like, It's 700 quid on like a forum and I'll just

make sure whoever gets it is not from a shop or whatever. Yeah. Then vet all these people obviously a load of shops want to buy it

then vet this one kid who was like I really want it blah blah blah blah he was doing it for his boss and it was up for sale for twice the price the next day on eBay.

What a fuck with it. Everyone in the Facebook group I left Facebook shortly after this everyone in the Facebook group was like oh this has got scam written all over it

but because I'd sold it how do you think I've benefited from this. I sold the fucking kid. Yeah. It was clearly not stolen. Yeah, fuck you. Anyway, back on, back on subject.

Last two albums self-produced? Yeah. Or last three? Two. Mesma was... David Bendeth. And when you self-managed. Correct?

No. Self-management was like alien. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I thought it was Mesmer. No, no Maybe you were thinking about it

I don't think so Maybe we're just putting that out Yeah, that might be a problem All right So how did What the fuck was that? Kim, what have you done? Do me a favour

This is how you see how Janky my shit is Just nudge that fucking Lead Nudge the lead Hey Don't be afraid to die You can breathe in

Stop breathing Kim, Kim slowly pass away In the corner there please Thank you Sorry you would think this nice wooden brick I could afford a fucking good...

Do you know what it is? I bought another different light because I was like, oh, you know, I'm a professional now because that's a fucking eBay dog shit job and then I thought I'll get like one of the ones

that I've seen people use, you know, the bar lights or whatever? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And it... Can you tell me why this happened? Sorry, this is now a Kim podcast. Like, it just flooded everything and there was no like shadows on shit

and it just looked lame. So what light do I get that but better and bigger? Oh like side skirts Like on your car Like on your car Fucking tell the patron about the car as well You've got a patron How is it?

It's good It's good yeah Do you find What's the one thing I didn't actually do any research on The music shit's easy Because I know about the music shit Yeah Yeah

But what's your tears We've got like a top one that's quite expensive called Bloodline What do they get? That's what I want to know. So there's only 20 of them. They get free merch every quarter

every time we release vinyl they get it for free they get like a VIP thing if they come to a show and we don't do VIPs for the public anymore so the only way to watch a sound check

and meet the band is to be one of them. That's cool. But I also give them tickets to like if we play a festival and we get comp tickets we give them to them um and i pretty much just give them access to whatever gigs they want to come to so it says that it's limited to like x amount per year but we will you know give them whatever they want um they have like their own chat with us it's only them um then they get the other perks from the Patreon so we stream shows we do live streams on we're off tour um we send them birthday videos

and greetings oh that's cute what's what's the tech side of doing a patron only live stream how does that even fucking work because i want to fucking do that we just um restrict the listing on youtube oh so you still do on youtube but it's private and the link goes that's fucking smart I'm stealing that steal my camera mixer idea I'm still that idea and we'll share and share like

When did the Patreon? What's it called? It's got a cool world eaters When did it start? COVID because we needed some fucking money Did it did it like Did it do its job?

Yeah Yeah definitely Honestly like It is made Like it's not If you look at all the different Income streams of the band It's not

greatly significant, but it's like consistent income that we can rely on. But, you know, especially during COVID, it was much needed. So, you know, it's something we'll continue to do because, I mean, a lot of people want that experience and we like to, you know, service them and just kind of put our focus onto that when we want to do limited stuff rather than just, you know, opening it up to the public. We probably don't advertise it as much as we should. But, you know... It feels weird when you advertise. I feel like that all the time.

It's a good community. And, you know, I thought we were going to get blowback from it, but fans are really on board with it. And the top tier, like, sold out instantly. Yeah. That's fucking cool. A couple of people have chopped and changed, but, you know, it seems like a lot of money to me. But, you know, when you look at what they've gotten out of it on a dollar value, you would probably actually lose money from the top tier. With the tickets and everything.

Yeah. So, but we have four tiers and the lowest ones pretty cheap. What does the lowest one get? Access to the live streams? No, they don't get that. Oh, sorry,

that's the Discovery one. We've got like a store that they get access to. There's a couple other things. I can't remember it's on my head. I think it's cool because it's, there's always, I mean, when you said it's not,

like, of North Lane's income, it's not like the main one or whatever, but for the podcast, it literally is the main one. Yeah, it's fucking like... It's crazy. I wouldn't be able to do it. Like, this is...

Including the set up, including edit, including this. This is, you know, this is a whole workday at least, which I would not be able to do if we won't get the money from it. But with, in regards to music, it's like, so many times you get those messages where someone's like, how do I really support the band?

Because I was going to buy merch, but then someone tells me you get a merch, cart. I was going to buy a CD, but then whatever, no one has CDs anymore, but you know what I mean. And if you've got Patreon, it's just super easy to. Yeah, it's the best way to support the band, and it's like the best thing about it as well as it's like ongoing for us. Yeah. So for them, it's like a, you know, it could be a pretty small amount of money that comes out of their account every month that they're probably not even going to notice. But, you know, for us, it all out top. It's like one coffee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How is that coffee? The almond milk.

Even like the second highest tier is like 35 Australian dollars a month, so it's not that much, but they get most of the perks without a lot of the physical things that the top tier will get. How often did you live stream? Once a month. One person once a month at the moment. No, well.

We haven't been doing that lately. We were doing weekly streams, so everyone would go once a month. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah. It's going to shut up. On tour, we've tried to stream a show a week. but you're kind of at the mercy of the venue Wi-Fi. Yeah.

But it sounds fucking great. How are you running that? Sorry, this is, people probably don't care. I don't care. We're just taking the left and right from front of house, putting it into an interface. And then where's the camera? At front of house. Yeah.

And then that goes, what, laptop? Or is the camera automatic streamer? Laptop. Can my brain ticking? Laptop. Just laptop. So we did that on a stray tour, me and Tom. And then it, like you said, the mercy of the Wi-Fi.

But then also we didn't run like a front-of-house mix. We don't really travel. You just doing the camera audio or whatever. She's funny. He wants to watch that. We tour our own desk and like console and shit. That's what's easier. It's, yeah.

And our front-of-house guy slash tour managers, very, very savvy with tech. And so is Kim. So between the two of them, I just go, hey guys, can you fucking sort this I think that's where me and Tom were trying to do it and I'm trying to set up a fucking drum kit at the same time. Yeah. I just get so stressed out. Yeah.

I think like there comes a point in your career as well where you do have to look at, you know, getting the right help because you can only fucking do that shit. Try it in that as a Tom Williams. And you know, well. But you can do it. I can do it. Probably, but I'll quit.

I don't understand. Look, he works. He works, he works so hard. And, you know, like, John and I have a guitar tech now that takes care of our shit. And, you know, the primary reason for that is, like, not only occasionally you need help on stage, but, you know, if he's going to keep writing music and we're touring this much, and I'm going to keep managing the bands and the other bands that I manage, I can't, like, be restringing three. guitars every day, setting my shit up. Like, I literally just don't have time to do what I need to do to stay sane, which is like go running or like work out and then get my work done and then play a show, especially

if we're headlining, playing for like an hour or more. Yeah, that's stressing out of that stuff. It's just like, yeah. I think like, you know, a lot of people that I know that are in business will say that you do at some point and have to place a value on your time. Yeah. Yeah, I pay for my own drum tech

for those reasons because I just like try and keep on. Mainly, not even like, I try and work on tour. I'm a vlogger. But like, it's mainly going to the gym. If I don't go to the gym,

I'm the worst fucking person on earth. And even going to the gym's hard because you can't recover properly. Yeah. That's the biggest thing that I struggle with is just like getting the sleep, getting the nutrition. It's just,

impossible. Plus the hours of the day. Like finding the gym. Yeah. I've just been doing my workouts with like power bands and stuff. Got someone to write me a program. I keep getting this one. The one in the floor looks like a steper.

I keep getting it as like a sponsored ad. If that's not a piece of shit, that would be fucking mad. It's just like, yeah, a bar attached the cables on the floor. You seen that one, John? It's like, it looks like a steper and it's got like magnet. in it that give you resistance on cables. I have, I have. And you can do everything on it.

You can squat and stuff with it. Big fucking jack dudes with like the bar on your back. Yeah. Like failing. That yeah, that is crazy right. We've all got the same sponsored ads. Yeah.

If that's sick, someone send me one. I'll tell everyone. Yeah, send me one too. I'm talking about it. We went off a tangent now. Yeah, I know, I know. I'm trying.

I'm really, I hope everyone that's listening is realizing I'm really trying to be professional here. We're doing our best. Number one album. I didn't know that until I looked today. I've read a couple. Which ones? I think our number ones were Node.

Alien. Yeah. Alien was as well. I think I was Alien number three. No. There's no. So many, I can't remember my number one albums. I'm not sure it was Node and Obsidian for sure.

Yeah, yeah. We had a couple number threes. Like, we'd get beaten by some big pop star or something in the wrong week. Well, who fucking won the, what is it? How do I pronounce it? Aria. Aria. Who fucking won that?

Because it wasn't you for once. No, for once. The chats. Who's that? Those Bogan punk band. He's Bogan derogatory. They got like, soft. Songs like pub feed and...

Oh, Australian as fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fucking funny. Yeah, it's a funny band. I can't slag them off because our publicist works for them too, so she'll give me a stern phone call. If I knew who they were, I could slag him off by then. Well, yeah, you see, I think they actually took the piss out of the genre that their award was in

because it was like hard rock heavy metal, but they're not really... Or I don't think they're a hard rock band. Yeah. I just think they're a rock band. I don't know. They're pretty punky, I guess. Yeah, I guess. I mean, it's hard.

Yeah. Who fucking knows. Yeah. I would have thought like Ammon and the Sniffer's is punky. Yeah, they're about that punky. But that they weren't in, they were in, they weren't in your category. Yeah. I feel like our category, a lot of major labels will like push their rock bands into.

just so they can win. Better chance to win it, yeah. But yeah, I mean, I didn't think we were going to win anyway because there's a voting panel for Aria. This is Aria's dirty secret. Come on. There's a voting panel that decides who wins. It's like a college at electoral vote.

So they'll select people in the industry and say, you have a vote. for this category. I actually have one for ours. This is how I know. All right. Do you vote for yourself? Fuck yeah.

You're not allowed to. You are. You vote for yourself. My aunt told me you weren't allowed to do that. Cut that bit out. Not that it mattered. Yeah. Well, the other thing is that

You lost by two. A lot of record labels are like owned by a larger conglomerates. and they will say to this. It's the Grammy thing. Yeah, exactly the same. They'll be like, you need to vote for this, this and this, and everyone does it, and then they win.

And we're independent. And that's why if you look at, where it was Aenean independent as well? No. There you go. That's it. That's it. But if you look at like the fucking Grammys and if you just had a list,

if they listed them with the record label that the band is on and their, like, and the label that that label is a subsidiary, Jerry from be a very funny list yeah it's like oh okay I mean it's cool to get the recognition because I mean I want one yeah like I still feel like that the aria wins that we've had were like pretty cool um yeah and you know every every single time that we won we were up against some pretty big acts that had probably more label support than us so I think there is some merit in it but it's backtrack there just a tiny

Just a tiny bit. The times that we won, it was... Yeah, yeah. It was merit. Talk to me about these cats. I, uh... So, John has two, I have three. That fucking cat band.

There's two cats in here, but none of them have been to say hello, yeah. Oh, you have cats? Yeah. Oh, mad. Got noodle and pepper. Pepper. Pepper is an absolute beast of an animal. She looks like a puddle. What is she?

Like a hairy puddle. I don't know. Cat. Is there different types of cats? Is there different types of cats? He's got snobby cats where they, what brain is it? What's your breed? The Siberian.

And the other one is a rescue. It's, um, I feel like it's half. He's definitely part Mancun. Mancun, yeah, he's a big boy. Mancun's, fucking huge. Mancun's are those ones you see, yeah, they pop up in your explore feed and people are holding this giant thing and it like lops over the side like that. Who's the one that looked like a bath from a mortar?

Yeah, that's him. Oh, right. That's Sam, yeah. He has the personality of Abath, too. He's a little cunt. He's a big cunt. Yeah. Well, he's a little compared to me.

Right. And then you've got rescue. Yeah, so I've got, just before COVID happened, me and my fiancé, Angie, were like, why don't we go to a cat shelter and just take a look, you know? The house is empty. And we ended up coming back with two kittens. Nice. Called Henry and Ivy.

and they've been great. They're three years old now. They're adorable. And then, oh, it's probably six-ish months ago. There was a stray cat that just turned up at her parents' house. And he's a ginger cat. And they just called him orange. Nice.

He just wouldn't leave. So they just started feeding. him and he just started living with them. But yeah, he got hit by car about six or so months ago. You already had them by this point? No, no, he was living.

He was living with my fiancé's parents. And like, the car did a pretty significant amount of damage to one of his legs, like smashed it to pieces. But he was like really all right besides.

that we took him to the animal hospital and he was sitting on my lap in the car just still purring it was really fucked up yeah you could tell he was in a lot of pain they pretty much said like you're going to have to euthanize him or it's going to be like at least 10,000 bucks and we don't even know if like we can save him we don't know what the internal damage is it's going to be you know a few grand just to find out and um yeah my partner r Angie was like I don't care, like we'll pay it, whatever. And I was like, oh. Yes, we will.

Of course we will. How much can I get for an area on it anyway? So, yeah, it turned out the only damage was to one of his legs, but it was severe and he's an estimated about 12 years old, so he's not young. They wanted to just amputate the leg, but we convinced them to like try and put it back together and then we took him home and rehabilitated him for a couple months and it was hectic because the other cats didn't like him

being there and he had a like bullying him because he was like yeah we had to keep him in a separate room we live in a two-bedroom apartment like it's not easy um we had to keep him like in a little cage and then he started smashing it up and had to let him him out the cage and then he started banging on the door and eventually we had to introduce them and then they started fighting and like it was fucked. Are they cool now? Yeah, they're all friends now. But we would have to take him back to the hospital like every week to get his plaster

replaced to get x-rays done all this shit. It was really expensive. So I sold one of my custom shop guitars like straight away. Yeah. And then a lot of people were like, oh, you know, we really want to help. And I felt really fucking weird about that because I don't like, so with the Patreon stuff, it's different because we're actually giving something to the people. But for this instance, I was like, like, I'm not, you know, dirt poor,

but I don't have 15,000 spare dollars to look after this fucking, cat out of nowhere, you know. So we just put up a GoFundMe because so many people were asking for it and we felt really weird about it but we, you know, raised a lot of money and obviously went straight to that and like there was a lot more on top. But now he's doing really well. Like he's fully healed. He's really healthy.

Legs fully healed. Legs fully healed. No limp. He limps a bit when he runs upstairs but it's he's like. also quite fat. How fat? I really want to get pepper. He's fucking fat.

I want to get pepper here for a second. He's got the body shape of an avocado. Oh, avocado in a pub. Pepper. He's not going to come. He's stolen my fiancee, though. So he lives with ass, and he just, like, spoons her every night. I was never a cat guy.

Yeah. And then, you know. I think that's how all cat guys are. Like, yeah. thrust into cat life and I'm like you're fucking amazing

you gotta work for it but the payoff is large yeah that like dogs like not to slut shame but dogs are slats and cats are like

cats are yeah you gotta work for it and when you get it it's mad the pussy is good that works so well and that's why when people say to me

that they don't like cats I just don't fucking trust them at all. Yeah. I'm like, you know, you don't understand consent. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

But there's... You want instant gratification. And that's why you're an only dog person. I'm sure you're a dog ho. Exactly. And you're not a kind of cat guy. Circle back to this guitar thing. So, come on.

We're doing it. People plug things. are you got a sig guitar you got a signature guitar he's got a signature guitar he's got a production model you can go buy it yeah Jackson yep

and it's in the world's best color yes I noticed that you use the same color I noticed that you have an affinity for the what would you call it well I called it

aquamarine because the color from that guitar is military really it's like a a swatch that was taken from another one. So when I started working with Jackson, I was playing a model called the B7 and it was pretty close to what I wanted but it wasn't quite there. So I kind of ripped

them apart and modified these guitars heavily and had to like reroute the wood and fill it back in for certain things on the first one that I got that I absolutely thrashed to death. And the guy in Sydney re-sprayed it for me a colour that was like a seafone green. strat from the 50s but they um used to coat them with this type of paint that like yellows from UV light so as they age the color changes yeah and that's the color I really liked so um we took a swatch from that for the production model so it's kind of seafone green but kind of not um so we just called it aquamarine that's like my favorite color ever yeah like tamwa came out with the one that kind of similar i think very similar the uh the uh it's a very similar color yeah the uh

Tiffany blue, Tiffany green? Yeah. Is it Tiffany green or Tiffany Blue? I don't know which one it is. It's something like that. Something like that. Yeah, but yeah, that's my shit. Well, I didn't actually get a choice in the colour, believe it or not.

Why not? Well, they came to me and they said, we want you to do... I'm no way Sagan off Jackson, by the way, because these are all the right choices. I just said... I agreed with everything they said because I was like, oh, that's exactly what I wanted to do. They were like, yeah, we want to do a guitar for you. At first, they wanted it to be a... short like custom shop run and I just said no like I want it to be somewhat affordable you know

those guitars would have been just obscenely expensive and only available to like 20 people and I just didn't want that um and then they said yeah we want it to be that color but with the uh strat type headstock that you've had on your other signature like not signature like custom shop guitars they've built for me and I was just like yep yep done that's exactly what I want custom shop was the same colour-ish, was it? Am I making that up? Nah, so I've got other ones that are from the custom shop. Right.

Some, they're all different, but two of them had the Fender-style headstock. So they wanted that headstock on the colour from the one I'm modified. That was an off-the-shelf one. Got it. And without, you know, I'm to go into any details. You could, but, you know, I'm sorting one of these things out. You're on a percentage?

apparently yeah all right I'm saying no more I just because I'm like in the process of like talking about stuff like this and I don't know anyone else really when you release any signature product

and I'm actually double-dipping on these guitars because I have my signature pickups too which you can buy from bare knuckle you know thank God you didn't say fish man whatever the other one is we tried those I just when people say I just can't take it fucking seriously

I play fish man pickups I'm like okay bro I've been we've been playing ban-uncle stuff like since we started north line you introduced Tom yeah I did actually I actually got him one of my

pickups in one of his guitars they're from Falmouth and the guy that runs it's just a really nice human Tim he's yeah I think I met him before lovely boy yeah nice

yeah he's like an older bloke but he's absolutely shredded he's like one of the most people on the planet yeah fuck yeah love that shit because i remember talking to nolly once and like i'm sure nolly's dingwall i'm sure nolly makes a bit off that i don't know if he told me or someone else told me surely because everyone fucking plays them yeah like your laptop player yeah yeah couldn't resist i think it is with any signature product you you are actually supporting that artist if you're a big fan of them. It's a really good thing to go buy their shit because they will get some sort of a percentage from it.

And as well as that, the perception percentage as well because the company that sponsors you goes, oh shit, we sold this many. This goes cool, even whatever he wants. Yeah. And, you know, that goes for like, I don't know, like sample packs, like all that sort of stuff. It's really good for artists. And, like, you know, for musicians that want to have, have, like, a career in music as well,

like, one of the important things to have is multiple income streams. So many. And that's one that just ticks over and it's really good. So, you know, I've never expected to get that opportunity. I don't know why they picked me. Was it just out of the blue? Well, there have been people asking for it, for the longest time.

So. Yeah, so give yourself some fucking credit. My minor one was me just fucking pushing them. Yeah. You don't make this fucking symbol boys. Come on. Maybe.

And then one day they went, all right. I get imposter syndrome from this shit because the other artists that have signature jacks are like fucking Jeff Loomis and Chris Broderick. They play more than zeros and ones. Yeah. 24s. They're just like some of the best guitar players in the world.

and yeah, it's crazy to be held in that sort of esteem when I really see myself as a artist manager that plays guitar in a band. It's weird, isn't it? I'm the same, I don't... Because you've seen yourself at your worst, and everyone else has, for the most part, seen you at your best. Yeah.

You people are fucking dumb. I'm shit. I'm fucking terrible. You get synth-since-poster syndrome? Not really. I don't know. Not with the sense. Not with the sense. Are you into John Hopkins? Love John Hopkins. Right. I can hear it.

All of my favourite music comes out of the UK. I love Fortet, Floating Points, John Hopkins, Caribou. Barrier. Carabour is not UK. He's the one exception. Perial. I love burial. What? I don't know Barry. You don't know burial?

No. I like Barry. That face sounds like I want to know. I don't like John's music for the most part, but I really like Paril and Fortet. Listen to, I think it's called Untrue. It came out in like 2007. It's very dark. It's very, I mean, it doesn't matter where it sounds like.

I feel like they were calling it like, I feel like they were calling it dub or dubstep back then, but it was like before Scrilex was, before Scrilex made dubstep, that kind of dubstead. Is it one guy? One guy. And also he, no one knew who he was for a really long time. I think I have heard of. burial but not heard the music like it's real sad sad boy oh it's so in yeah yeah and like all of the you know the way he uses vocals vocal chops and you know pitches them up and down and uses them

not like vocals and but more like textures in all of the atmosphere it's like where i pull on my inspiration from for that sort of stuff and that record is like 2007 or something and it it still sounds very current. I reckon you can probably, if you listen to it, you'll probably hear a bit of bring me in it as well. Really? I reckon Jordan loves burial.

Oh, that's fucking cool. Yeah. Well, I'm going to check it out. Before we get on to full music mode, look at that, it's an hour on the dot. That's exactly what I'm supposed to do it. Boom.

What I was going to say? What happens now? Well, we're going to do the dream festival. Oh, cool. I need to get like the rest of the fucking pressy bullshit. Okay. You ready for this? Yeah, let's go.

Bash it out. It's not even, I'm going to bash it out. thing. The choices for singles on the latest one, or in general, who's making, who's calling the shots? Why isn't it's sorry for a single? I just remember what they even were.

Believe product manager. Oh yeah. Myer. I don't know, she put it to the team at Believe, and we kind of just agreed with everything anyway. The way that... You don't have one in your head at, like, this is definitely a single. I feel like at this point,

our career we kind of know. Also, my favourites are never, like, what are considered singles. And the way that it's been sort of, you know, relayed to me is that when you do a single, that's not an opportunity for you to show your existing fans, you know, are probably already going to like it anyway. That's not for them. It's for that new reach. Which is why I find it fucking mind-blowing when fans get annoyed about singles.

music's been around for fucking ages, guys. You know how this works. You know how this works. This is designed. The rest of the album is designed for you. Yeah. This is designed to just get maybe a bit for you, but also for more people to come and get into.

It's the same with fucking architects. Yeah. Like, here's a single. Those new songs, by the way, that they have. It sounds so good. I love live. Live, people were losing their shit. Yeah.

Live is not the same as... Suck that, haters. The internet. The internet is not reality. Yeah. I do actually like Reddit Metalcore, but like, yeah, the internet's not really. Yeah, we really found, like, especially that Obsidian had a lot of singles. We kind of forgot until we started touring again.

It's the new thing, no. And then we're like, oh my God, there's so many songs off this album that people are just frothing, you know, and that are like singles. They're not deep cuts that were playing. and they're like like probably our biggest songs are mostly off that album live now like that's cool though that's what you want to see like 40 in bloodline off alien big ones and then carbonised echo chamber plenty we've been opening with clarity and is that echo chamber about the internet uh well yeah kind of yeah I don't want to go into it.

I just want it to know for me. Go fucking read the lyrics and listen to the song. It's more about it how just, I'm paraphrasing Marcus, but my understanding is just he fucking hates people's shit opinions about shit. Yeah. And people just need to make their own minds up about stuff. Yeah, I got it. I get it.

I also think there's something to be said about you maybe having an idea about something and you're kind of like 50-50 on your own idea and then you see like 20 people say the same thing and like each other's stuff and you're like, actually no, I do believe. Yeah, that's the biggest fucking. We could do another two hours on fucking that shit. I got into a year.

Yesterday I actively tried to get cancelled on. Because I was like being, I was being like really sensible on purpose where normally I would be like slightly reserved or slightly more in one direction for a comedic effect. But yesterday I was like super, I'm not going to tell anyone what it was going to look at my Twitter. But like I was super like, I see if I can get cancelled. Because I had the walk back ready for it.

All I was doing was just like poking everyone. No one bit. It was so annoying. I think it's over. No one bit. I was really trying. That's weird. I've got nothing.

It's over, guys. You can do what you want. Cancer culture is over. It's done. It's not over. about that. What's your favorite song on your own album? Then we're going to do your favorite songs by other people.

We're not. We're going to do the Dream Festival. You go first. Like out of all the North Wayne's catalog? Or the new album? No, no, no, the new album. You're going to press here. Come on.

You go. I like clarity. That's a cool song. It's a fucking bang. You know what I like about that as well? Is classic Nolly. But like, you can hear the drums are real. Yeah.

that song because it's fast and it's like it's not the same rim shot sound as later on in the album or like a song when it's like a half time section and it's like i just love that nolly snare drum sound has like a just a fucking tone to it loved it i think um i have two favorites one is probably is this a test just because it's like that is that's the closest north lane song to what i actually listen to in real life. And the other songs will be while. Oh no, that's not. It's the real name. It's a demo. Dark Solitaire.

Why? And for me, that was just like something about the melodies and the guitars are like a tapy thing in there. And I just, every single time I listen to it, it just takes me back to this moment in lockdown where I just felt like just so helpless.

Yeah, we had savage lockdown. So you like the song? No, no, no, no. No, no. It's, I like it for a different reason. I don't like it for the song. I like it because it's like almost like this little totem in time. I can listen to it and it just takes me straight back to that feeling. I love that with music, yeah, yeah. No other song on the album does that.

It's just this one bit. It's like coming out of the chorus and the chorus only happens once as well. It's just coming out of the chorus, it goes into the verse again with this tapy thing that doesn't also, it doesn't happen again either. And just takes me straight back to that and just, yeah, I don't know. It just feels, feels for me. Nice. my favourite is cipher

cipher is yeah it's cool as well I think it's probably because I'm just I'm playing that tonight are you I was gonna ask fucking god anyway fund it cool

I mean that was all fun for me right so we've got a thing on here which is a dream festival basically I looked at other more successful podcasts not in the music realm what are they all have in common some sort of list based thing

with opinions and I invented the dream festival. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through it. You're not going to have to suddenly come up with a million bands or whatever. Cool. You want to try and draw from some experiences, which will naturally happen as touring musicians. There are no limits.

It is literally a dream. People can come back to life. It can be on the fucking moon. It can be wherever. As long as you have, like, a reason for saying that thing, not like, I want it to be on Mars. And I go, oh, why Mars? Oh, space.

that's literally what I was going to say I wanted to be on Mars oh my great grandfather was a fucking Mars I don't know where I'm going and we're going to do it essentially in in four play order

it's going to be very basic at the start maybe a little bit just a bit touching at the start if anyone's listening to the audio which will be edited and noise gated I rubbed myself like a cat on the microphone so where

and you can have separate answers. You don't have to have a dual dream. Oh, we're not doing a dual dream. Well, when we get to the actual line up, we'll try and connect it. That'll be insane. It's like black metal into like DJs. Yeah, we can make that work.

Okay, okay. Okay, so where in the world would your dream festival happen? Oh, the only stipulation with this, and it does change people's minds, is North Lane is playing. I'm going to say, oh, I mean, what do you think, John? Where would you like to have? Where?

Anywhere in the universe. In the universe, yeah, but don't give me some random planet without a fact about the said planet. People still need to be able to come. Oh, right. Well, that limits us to Earth thing. I mean, most people choose Earth. Earth. It doesn't have to be Earth.

No, it's going to be Earth. earth for sure. Where is it going to be? Berlin. Melbourne. You just said the same thing. Bergen. Bergen in Norway.

You know what? If you say Bergen in Norway, it will be the second episode in a row. Who fucking said Bergen in Norway? Shadow of intent. Most beautiful city I've ever seen. Plus, Fantof, Dave is there. Home of Black Metal.

This is really going to be super. blackmail. Yeah, but like North Lane's playing. Yeah, well, that's why I said Berlin, because it's like Melbourne, but in Germany. And there are sexy techno goffs there as well. We could cross collab here. But I feel like John's... What about the weather, though?

John's got other ideas. I feel like, I feel like somewhere... No, it has to be cold. Can it be like in the future? Absolutely. Okay, so like in the future, in Japan, think like, cyberpunk, all these, these things. They're everywhere. Neo Tokyo.

Yeah. Yeah. Fucking Mount Fuji in the background. Yeah, I back that. Okay. Okay, we're going to go with that. Okay. Maybe there's, maybe it's a traveling festival and one other times in Bergen, Norway.

Okay. When was the last time you went to Norway? Just aside. Long time. Yeah, same. I've been fucking ages. They stopped listening to music? I think so.

Okay. Last time I went there was a holiday, not even to play. Nice holiday place. I went to Inferno festival. Oh, shit. I saw Dimmu and O-Path and Simu No, the headlines

Didn't play They don't play This fucking whatever the second track On Puritanical is Progenies No Test in my memory Throne of fucking

Blessings upon the throne of tyranny Oh god They don't play it I was so drunk when they played That I don't even remember what they played They don't play it I almost fell off the fucking balcony In the venue in Oslo

that's fucking sick yeah they don't play it I grilled the drummer at some drum festival and I was like what the fuck don't you play that song and he was like because he was slagging my mate off

that did a drum thing that day and he was like oh his online videos are obviously edited blah blah blah and I was like I just watched that

it was fucking insane so this guy's like Billy Big Bulls d'amy ball gig and I was like why don't you play blessings upon the Tony Turing anymore

it wasn't matter you can't play it and then he was like oh it's the guitarist not me. Still love your band. Good move, good move. When was the last time he went to Japan?

Alien cycle, so 2019, I want to say? It's my favourite. Yeah, it's great. So good. Get to go back this year. I can't fucking wait. When are you going? Just with straight?

You can't say. Yeah, but it is with Australia. Yes. Pretty soon. Congrats. I can't fucking wait. Enjoy. Being your neck of the woods as well.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. Talk about that off this. I know about that actually in a good way or a bad way what's the bad way? Yeah I don't know I know about that actually

it's gonna be a weird one You're actually playing the spider venue You're playing the Viper room My brain immediately goes there Okay so we're in Neo Tokyo In the future We could fuck this up a bit And combine both things

We could have like Japan and Norway had a war, a war way, if you will. And what I ended up happening is Japan settled in Bergen. And so there's me getting super D&D now. I just told you it's D&D. Japan settled in Bergen and made it like Neo Bergen. That's sick.

Okay, okay. So we're in Neo Bergen. Bergen's got mountains around it. Yeah, I'm seeing this now. I'm into it. I'm into it. Yeah, we're doing the Fuji thing, but we're doing it.

there with the mounds and the structure. Yeah, great. Okay. Do you want to go? You want to have a shit coffee or what? We'll be quick. What's the accommodation? And again, North Lane is playing.

So the accommodation is like, do you need to leave? What's wrong with you? You've got a real... I do need to piss. Oh, my God. I can just edit it if you want to piss. Because it's really affecting the podcast.

Yeah, dude. Accommodation. Accommodation. All right, what's the accommodation? Seameless edit. my blood pressure's up, so I'll be slightly fucking red. What's your accommodation? You are playing, so.

Oh, so we need to use this accommodation? Yes, so you can't be like... Igloos. Yeah. Igloos? I mean, I'm saying not igloos. It'd be cold. Well, if it's in Norway and you had igloos, it'd be sick.

If you had like... Big, like the apartment-style igloos. Because then at night you can watch the fucking northern lights and shit. shit through the roof. Can you see the northern lights after the Neo-Tokio, Neo-Bergand war? We'll all the new neon lights. So maybe what we could do is they could have the accommodation off-site

and have a little bullet train to take you there after you play. And it's in the middle of nowhere and you can watch the Northern Lights. So Com is really quick to get to Because of the bullet train Yeah Okay Just five minutes Five minute

And then you can sit the Northern Lights as well That's perfect for me Okay I'm in Yeah it's away from the rabble Away from the noise as well Yeah And is it like That's set aside for bands only

Yes Yes And the top tier of the North Lane Cruise at a different place anyway They can come yeah. Cruising in a different place. Was the piss not good?

You still don't want to be in. You've got like fucking 20 minutes, if that. He's got deliveries to make. You can make it through. I'm the one annoyed by Amazon. I want to fucking kill that guy. I'm so fucking furious. Okay.

Calm. We got the accommodation. What's catering? Ooh. See? It's got your brain ticket. isn't it? Well, not just sushi.

No, but they've settled there. So they've sort of made their mark. No, now you're... This is your dream festival. You're not thinking... You're thinking too much about the war. All right. Which was my thing.

There's going to be Red Sparrow pizza from Melbourne doing pizzas. Do you know Red Sparrow? I don't. Best vegan pizza in the world. Really? Yeah. Yep. There's going to be...

What's your favorite place? Nobu. Sushi, isn't it? Nobu, running aliquat, dining. And then every band will have a private chef that will make for you. Now he's in. Whatever you want if it falls outside of that. Nice.

Including cocktails. How are they, how's this set up? What's this kitchen? Well, you're going to have. have a dressing room on site just for you. None of this shit where the festival's like, oh, you got the room for two hours and then you need to piss off. You're going to have that and an intercom for the kitchen

where you just tell the chef what you want made. But they're stoked on it because this sounds a bit fucking... Yeah. Make me a... You're my slave. You're my personal slave. Make me a fucking sandwich. All right.

I'm into that. Are you agreeing with that? That's cool. Sure. That sounds pretty good. The cocktails. Just get me into the brain. What are you having?

What's your pre-show? During show, post-show. I don't drink during-during or before gigs anymore. I'm boring. Bro, fucking professional. Yeah, I hardly drink on tour at all. Too much health, running. I've got to run, hop, skip and jump next week.

Honestly, it's more about the other stuff because if I get pissed I can't do my job but anyway if I'm drinking cocktails definitely going to be some Nogronis on the menu I'm being a groney fan

but besides that I'd just be probably not drinking cocktails and looking for a nice selection of reds including some Super Tuscans maybe some fruity organic shit definitely some Edenflow from South Australia

he's a great producer The wine, the wine place. He's not happy about this, John. What are you having? And the bar. Tequila, margaritas, spicy. Yeah. Spicy mugs.

Bars run by who? Crow bar. Nice. Shout out, crow bar. Yeah. Spicy mugs. Love the spicy mags. What's your rim?

Taheen or salt? I'll do salt. I'll do salt. But if you want to put a bit of spice on it, I'm not going to be upset about it. Just like a jalapino mug. Yeah. Yeah.

Big fan. Hugh. I'm kind of hanging. out of him. I can't be wine. I love wine, right, but it fucks with my sinuses. I don't know if I'm allergic to it or something. We're going to put architects on the bill then so I can drink with Ali. Okay, we're going to get to that right now.

Okay, oh, Ali loves a fucking wine. Okay, so we've got the cocktails. We're in Neo Bergen after a war. No one died during the war, actually. It was like a Cold War situation, but for some reason they gave up some of Bergen to do. to Japan and it now looks like Neo-Burgan. What was the accommodation again?

Offsite igloos. Offsite igloos. Bullitt train. Yep. Yeah. We have... There's going to be facilities on site too. What kind of facilities?

What kind of facilities? There has to be a sauna. Oh, okay, okay. Ice bath? For you. Thank you. You know, not an icer. Nah.

No. I would have thought after triathlon. This is like a whole other hour of shit. But yeah, sauna, yes. Hot tubs, yes. Hot tubs, I'm still in this from malevolence. Hot tubs. You can watch the band from.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. So like up in the stands, but just for the band. Also drop in, he's listened to the pot. It's nice. Glass saunas. You look out of the sauna, watch the bands. That is fucking a dream.

That's a fucking dream. But it's a fucking gruel. But it's a fucking grine. It's a fucking gruel. so you step out or you're going to jump in the fjord and there's your eyes. Yeah.

And also like have to have massage therapists on site. Love it. We all need a massage after the gig. That sounds great. It sounds like the sort of thing if Japan and Norway put the heads together, they would come up.

Exactly this. Do you just make this perfect? Yeah, go on then. Yeah, I'm imagining like a stadium, half stadium arrangement it with the top tier just for the bands. I'm seeing this. Yeah.

And that's where the fucking hot tubs and the saunas and all that, it's all up there. So you can look down and watch your friends kill it. And then, you know, have a nice view. I fucking love it. Okay. I'm here. I'm in there.

You're there. Who are, you got to pick one each headliner. North Lane's playing. And it needs to be a band of headlining size, I guess. but how big is the headliner sizes up to you it could be Northlain some people have picked their own band and then to be malevolence was malevolence supported by Drake you can do whatever you like

bearing in mind you will have to play quite late if you're if you're yeah I don't want a headline no I want a headline you don't get fucked up very soon I want to play like early evening slot like two before headliner nice that is the best time of day to play because everyone's as rowdy as they're going to get but then you can still enjoy yourself

after it's perfect yeah so who is playing after uh that's tough does it have to be a band no okay so what we can do here at this point we can split the festival because we've done quite well to be on the same grounds yeah yep yep we can split the festival and have two we're hellfest style two main stages like that all right perfect who you're picking you go first john Um, it's going to have to be Fortet. Sorry, all the bands out there. No, it's all right. No, it's pretty, I can imagine it happening in Neo-Tokio.

Neo-Burgan. Yeah. And then I just want to know so we can really get the contrast. The scope, the scope, yeah. Tool. Oh, sick, sick. What a fucking day. Yeah.

I would love it. Yeah. You ever played with Tool? No. No. It feels like that's a good fit. Obviously, I think it's a who you know situation. Yeah, it has to be.

Have to be. They pick some weird supports. Yeah. Yeah, who did that last album with them? I can't remember. I was at the bar. I just don't know when it's all played. No, even on the poster, I feel like I...

I feel like it's always like... I saw them once. And they asked Musugur to do it and my sugar were busy. So all they did, this was like... It's got to be 20. Fuck, who know, 20, whenever 10,000 days was. Yeah. And they just, they, they asked for Mishrugur,

and Mishuga were busy, so they just played catch 33 over the PA. Because it was on the catch 33 touring cycle, and that was the support act. No kidding. They've had like comedians and shit as well, right. It's so fucking weird. Oh, that's, yeah, that's what they did. That's right. It was a comedian.

But, yeah, like, thinking of headline-sized bands that I would love to watch. Yeah. Like, Tull of one of the best bands to watch, so. Light show. discography fucking performance is just unreal I can't give you this

with photo I'm really sorry I can't connect I appreciate it that it's there favorite tool album question to both or one

probably 10,000 days is it yeah interesting how close is it to number two which I assume is lateralis

uh I think the reason I like 10,000 days more is because I think it has more good songs, but also better production. The production is better. That highlights it a bit more. Agreed. But yeah. It's a bit punchier.

Yeah. But it's all fantastic. Their whole catalog is fantastic. Even Fironoculum, like, grown me. It took me so long. Yeah. I got it eventually. I think it was just because of how long it took to come out

that it was just always going to be, quote-unquote, a disappointment to, like, hardcore fans. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're, you make up in your head what it's going to be and there's no way you could even fucking fathom what it is. And a part of your enjoyment of the other records is like the place and time where you discovered it,

how old you were, and then also like just replaying. it again and again. Because there wasn't that much around at the time either. Yeah. So it was like fucking tall sounded like tool. And now there's like other bands that have in the 13 years filled your brain a bit. Sure.

Yeah. Scratch the itch a little bit. Carnival. That fucking man. That can be your next band. I honestly don't think that. I need a smaller. Yeah.

I don't think there's been another band that has sort of given me such an enormous source of inspiration as that band has. like when we got the option to tour with them back in like 2013 or something or whatever it was I'd actually never even listen to them I'd heard the name but I'd never listen to them and so we're like we're gonna do the tour

of course like I'll familiarize myself with all this stuff and so I had like two albums three no I had three albums to go through it was I don't it's the Marta and Sound Awake Tomat Samaic and then asymmetry

and then asymmetry was the one that we were doing Yeah. And all three albums, fucking great. They're so good, man. They're so good. And, yeah, just every song just, like, just took me to a place and just the guitar work and the,

the vocals. The vocals are fucking awesome as well. Incredible. I feel like in prog bands, like the vocals is like the last thing that I really give a shit about. And it's like, it's right up there. It's like another lead instrument for me. I didn't check, I spoke about it before in the podcast.

I didn't check them out for the longest time. the name. Yeah. I was literally just like, you should check out this band and I was like, Carnival. No, it's Carnival.

And I said, well, double no. And then I saw him a download and they just opened a stage and someone was like, come on watch his band. I was like,

okay, and I just went, this is the best thing I've seen in forever. This is my new favorite band. Yeah. It was like that for us too. We were playing a festival

that they were one of the headliners on. And we knew there front of house guy and we just got pulled over to the stage to watch and I barely listened to him Nick had. Nick, Nick used to have pictures of the drama in his school book and on the last night of the tour I got pissed and I told him and he's never been able to live it down. It's so fucking funny. Steve's coming on the podcast. Oh, sick. You remind him about it. Oh, you can say here. Yeah, yeah. Here in a couple of weeks. Um, yeah, Nick will never let me live that down. But yeah, I remember just seeing him and being like, this is my new favorite band.

And also in the second, in the same thought, you're just like, wow, I know absolutely nothing about the instrument that I play. Yeah, the fucking, like, the rhythms. It's disgusting. And they're, but they're so musical. Yeah. Like, what's your choice of rhythm? Oh, it's a died of a note forever. And then another rhythm incorporated as if that's the pulse.

But there's fucking, it's like poppy. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the vocals that make it poppy. Shout out Carnival. Okay. One of you picking Carnival then? That's me.

Okay. So we've got Carnival. You've got to pick another like slightly smaller band for whatever. Are we working our way down now? Yeah. Yeah. I just, I want one massive band, one Carnivali-sized band that you would see on a headline the second stage or maybe be main support. Then an up-and-comer, which Mr. Man, Jaman can give me that.

One of these, little plug. I'm gonna struggle with this next band because it kind of just depends what mood I'm in. What mood you in right now? We're at the festival right now. O-Peth. Fuck, yeah, I mean an O-Peth mood as well. It's the season. I don't know what the fuck it is.

Yeah, it has to be. If it was in summer, I'd be like, oh, it has to be Slayer. Yeah. But O-Peth. Oh, yeah, Europe in this time of year is O-Peth music. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Favorite Opef album? That with the Toadays of Orange

to enter in the ganas to buy a friorefico you know, comprater of this frigorifico with a Parenthood, that is new. Although this is a new new Samsung Galaxy

S-26 Ultra with a Pantialial with Pantyce the Orange. But all of really, a plazos and without,

and without an actual music podcast for once. Man, it's tough because their catalogue is fucking good. Yeah.

I love damnation, I love deliverance, I love black Water Park. I love Ghost Reveries. I'm going to say probably Blackwater I reckon is their Magnum Opus. It was so far ahead of its time. And it still sounds fucking great.

And it's just phenomenal. Yeah. And the title track is the fucking best. It is the craziest shit. It's like 10 minutes long. It just takes you on a journey. And they still play it like, musically they make albums that, I are quite far removed from that now, but they still play all that shit live.

It's fucking cool. Yeah, apparently they did another, like, death metal prog album, and they fucking deleted it. Oh, they, they said, yeah, they said that they threw it out. It was like a recent thing.

So annoying. I know. Because even, like, because he's, it's not his voice, because he did a bunch of bloodbath stuff. He can do it. He still riffs.

They just don't want to, I guess. Good for them. Yeah. And the other stuff, still exists. Yeah. That's true.

You got an up and coming you want to plug anyone? You don't have to. For the festival. Yeah. I mean, it's not real, but yeah.

It is. I mean, it is. I could pick one of my artists, but it wouldn't be fair. Of course it is. Aria Award. I'm going to say speed.

Fuck yeah. That's fucking awesome. Nice. I really, really want to see them live. Yeah. I wonder if I'll do any shit. I haven't even seen,

I haven't seen what they're up to the summer. They're doing some festivals over here in the summer. Fuck, yeah, good for them. Band's crazy. Check out speed. Okay. Then all we need to do is the after party and then we're good.

We're done. You dream. And again, back in the zone, you've just played the festival in the place that we are. You want to have your best night possible. It might just be an early night, but you've just, you've played, you've watched Fortet. It's not an early night. Tour. Carnival. That's huge night.

Huge night. So what is happening after? John's going to do a DJ set. Yeah, I'll do a DJ set. You want to work? Six in the morning. It's not work really if you're fucked up. What, you fucked up on?

Because they decriminalized everything in Neo Bergen. Okay, well then I'm doing everything. Doing everything. Fuck yeah. The John DJ set. So what, you were just fucking around? you just I'll have a couple of wines

and fucking fall asleep no you want to go see the northern lights later so you're staying up for a little bit I don't you force me to stay up there's an app for staying up right there's a bit around

it's a drug for staying up as well yeah you can stay up you watch John stay up you'll fucking stay up nice then you're going to watch so John how long is you set

before the normal light oh shit an hour an hour I'm not trying to do that shit it's an hour but it feels like 10 minutes exactly do you actually do DJ sets um I've been playing in Melbourne a little bit but not as myself I'd usually go back to back with a friend cool yeah nice yeah I've done probably like five shows is it under your own name it's it's at the moment it's just john that's that's the name

as in just john just john just john just because everyone goes what's the name I go just john oh that's cool that's a thing yeah that's a good little name okay Josh John's doing your off the party fucking Josh is absolutely chinged out of his brain brains trying to stay up. He didn't say this, but I said this. I've spiked him. His fucking teeth are all red, the wine. And he's up all night.

Yeah, that's good. You're on tour to check the fucking thing. You got a US tour? Fit for a King. You can mean, not even haven't to check my notes. I can't wait to complain about this fucking driver. I'm going to go full car in a minute. We got that, and then we got not first in Australia.

Do you know what? I got asked to do some sort of, this shit. Oh yeah? But I'm already on tour. Yeah. Where are you? Where are you?

I would do that. Go to Australia for free. What do you? Where are you when you're not serving? Because it's soon, isn't it? It's the end of the bear tooth tour, I think. Hmm. Yeah.

You're about to do a bunch of the same rooms we've just done. Yeah. With bear two. It's going to be crazy. Fucking, because of that horrible shit that happened at Brixton. Oh, yeah. Move to Wembley. Fucking.

Go. Not bad. Four people. I can't wait to play four people. I can be on it. fucking seven, seven o'clock. It's so hard to get into Remedy. Can't wait.

That'd be sick. Yeah, that'd be a man. Happy birthday. Good thing. It's my birthday, yeah. I'll be getting, it's actually his birthday. What?

Not now. I won't. Oh. Happy birthday for that. We always tell people it's Nick's birthday when it's not. Especially in restaurants. That's so fucking me. When's your birthday?

Let's just get that out of there. 27th of August. 29th of May. What star sign does that make you? Virgo. Gemini. A bunch of cunts. He's a Gemini man.

A bunch of cunts in it. I'm a bicey, so between us really the most toxic trio possible. That's it. Thanks for coming. I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. Thanks for having fun. It's a good run.

Yeah, thanks very much. Thank you. Go see North Lane on tour. Please. Listen to Obsidian. Goodbye.