The Questlove Show - QLS Classic: The Avalanches

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

According to our Questlove, Australian powerhouse The Avalanches—Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi—single-handedly changed his perspective on how music could be made and delivered. Their acclaimed album, Since I Left You, not only “cracked our skulls open,” it remains one of Quest’s “top 10 albums of ALL time.” For two decades, the duo has left no stone unturned in mastering the art of building an entire sonic landscape from the ground up. So how do they do it? And, perhaps more importantly, why? Listen as The Avalanches break it all down on this week’s episode. They weigh in on how many samples were used, how Prince Paul was an inspiration, and why sometimes archaic technology is more preferred than the cutting edge. Listen back to this classic QLS episode recorded in 2021, during the height of the pandemic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, what's up, y'all? Back in 2021, Fonte, Sugar, Steve, and I sat down with the Aval. And as I say in the intro, this Australian duo lit a fuse for me as a producer with their visionary approach to sampling and making music. Since this classic QLS interview, Robbie and Tony have put out some recent singles, including collaborations with Jamie XX. This conversation was a lot of fun for me and you'll hear why.

Questlove Supreme Classic with the Avalanche's. All right. Enjoy. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme. I'm your host, Questlove. With us, we have fragmented supremers. We got Fontyl over in the house. What's up, brother?

I'm still here, man. What up? What up? We're here. Sugar Steve. Yep, I'm not fragmented. I've never missed a show, except the ones you told me not to attend. Wait, when did I ban you, Steve?

That purple roundtable joint. Oh, you're holding that against me? Yes. But let's move on. Shots fired in the intro. Ladies and gentlemen, I will say that probably our guests have single-handedly at least changed, and I'm making this introduction person. I'm making it about me, not about you or the audience.

I'll say that our guests today have single-handedly probably changed my trajectory or changed my perspective on how to deliver music. And that's pretty much all I can say. I heard their debut album and it just cracked my skull, it cracked all of our skulls open in a way that really hasn't really hasn't done that probably since the days of a prime bomb squad productions of like Public Enemy and Ice Cube or even the Three Fehind Rising and De La Sol's Dead albums of the early 90s.

I'll say that Rick Rubin has talked about. us on the show that editing is is necessary for smart pop music making and you know the ability to leave the basic necessities for you know for the most part of that theory that you know with self-editing has worked miracles for pop music in the last 70 years but our guests have done the opposite of that and they've left no stone unturned as far as a sonic landscape their forever classic debut album, now 20 years old called Since I Left You, is probably personally one of my top 10 favorite albums of all times with over 1,000 mind-staggering samples and sound bites.

We all got to investigate how this was made when he found out that they wanted to come on the show. It was an instant yes on my part. Same here, yeah. Yeah, I'm just honored they're here to share their story with us because I don't even know if I can properly explain to you how important their art is. But ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Questlove Supreme, the avalanches. We have Robbie and Tony.

Robbie, what's your last name? Tata. Robbie Tata. Chata. Chita. Welcome to Robbie Chita and Tony de Blasey to Questlove Supreme. Thank you. We're you right now.

We're in Melbourne. How is it over there right now? Yeah, it's pretty good. We had, we had like a really hard lockdown last year, but we're coming out of it now. It's really good. We just played our first live show in, you know, three years on Friday. Wow. What was that like, man?

Yeah. Oh, it was incredible. It was, it was so amazing, you know, just to be with the people again and, you know, I don't know, it just felt like at the start, it felt really strange, like, you know, it was a little bit rusty, but then you kind of get into it for 20 minutes and you're like, I remember what it's like. And instead of being scared, it's like this joyous experience. And yeah, I mean, we've just missed it so much.

So it was so good. So it's hard like working your muscle memory for what the show was. When you, well, with this particular show, was it, was it crafted from scratch or was it the show that you were developing around the time when COVID first hit us? No, it was from scratch. So it was a lot. It was like our hometown, first show back, brand new show. All the equipment, too, has been like in storage and all covered in dust.

And, you know, it was like, family and friends. Yeah. Yeah, we had a few technical issues that we were. It seems like whenever there's a first show, there's always a few things that go down or go wrong. But in the end, it was really incredible. And we've got so much love from the audience. I would imagine that the amount of research that you have to put into your product as far as your creativity is concerned, that, I mean, was this time off with COVID? Was it a total 100% time off for you guys?

Or was it just like, okay, let's go back to Woodshed and create new product? Or did you just stop, period, and just, you know, kind of see what happens? until the world opens. It was tough. I mean, we went, we were finishing an album as, as COVID hit. And we kind of got that done and got that, got that ready to go. But like Melbourne's lockdown, we're in it for like 200 days. It was one of the hardest lockdowns in the world.

And you couldn't, you could only leave your house for an hour a day. There was a curfew in the evenings. 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. You couldn't go outside your house. Well, you guys get it right. you actually did it right and you know the world would have actually caught up to you guys and yeah because after some point once we saw your numbers go down and then like a whole bunch of movie productions and a lot of my friends in the industry were going to melt you know going over

over there to Australia to New Zealand to New Zealand because you guys were just doing it right so but yeah you had to be strict with it we had to be strict I mean the payoff was like we got to do show, you know, like now, you know, and things are opening up. But at the time, it was hard. And like, we thought, well, we've got all this free time will be creative. But it was pretty intense. And the city was, you know, a ghost town. And really, it made me learn how much that we rely on the collective energy and other people to feed our creativity. So even though we had this spare time, like, we didn't write a lot last year because it was just kind of getting through day by day, you know, the lockdown was hard. I'm very uninsight. I'm very uninsight.

aspiring. Yeah. Well, both of you were DJs, for starters. Like, what got you interested in DJ culture? Like, how did it hit you over there? We actually, well, we grew up in different suburbs of Melbourne and then both ended up in the same country town during high school. And that's where we met and became friends. And we weren't DJs. Initially, we were like bad punk musicians. Punk musicians. We started together. And we said punk because we were so bad. It was noise, noise. It's kind of like the Beastie Boy story. How about to say it's Beastie Boys, yeah.

Yeah, they start off punk and then, you know. That's right. And we, so we were just, I mean, I had no money or whatever. So we were buying old guitars and broken guitars and organs in junk stores, and then we started to find all these old records. And it just sort of grew from there. I was doing a film school course at university, and they had a big studio for all the film scores.

And of course, everybody doing that course wanted to be like a famous director. So nobody wanted to do the soundtrack. So I just had the studio to myself for like three years. And there was an old Ensonic sampler in there that I learned how to use. And started sampling all these junk store records. And it just grew from there, really. So how old were you when you made the transition to DJ-oriented music, like away from punk and more into?

what we now know is DJ culture. I guess it was like a gradual process between the ages of like 16 and 20. Okay. Was there a particular record that just spoke to you that said like, okay, this is the direction I want to go personally? For both of you, was there like one particular album that was? For me, I reckon it was like some of Prince Paul's productions, the bomb squad, the things you mentioned.

Yeah. Yeah, I saw Prince Paul. he just remixed since I left you. I was listening to it earlier. Yeah. Yeah. And because, you know, like, the records we were finding in junk stores were just strange,

weird records. They weren't like sort of cool, like a lot of the beautiful funk and soul records from the States never made it out here, you know. So we were, they were junk store records. A lot of lounge music. Exotic era and strange stuff like that.

And Prince Paul, I think, showed us that, you know, you can use anything and you can make music. music with humor from all these different bits and pieces. And we were like, we can do that, you know. And also we love like the Beach Boys and 70s rock and stuff. So we thought, imagine if we like take his sort of approach, but like try and make like pop songs with it. And that's how the whole idea began.

So how did you two meet each other? At high school. We met in high school. I was from Melbourne and at 18 went and moved to this country town. where I met Robbie and it was it was a very very for the for the early 90s very backward kind of place like country Victoria and so it was just like a lot of football players and they were all the cool people and stuff like that and like so the music people who are into music kind of gravitated to each other so so um we kind of started hanging out and then the first thing I remember out about

Robbie was like I was into all types of music, but he played me My Bloody Valentine. And that just kind of broke my brain of like, what the hell is this? And I was like, all right, this is really cool. I think I like this guy. I think I like his tasty music. And so from then on, we kind of, you know, just had a few other little small bands that we're in. And then we both moved back down to Melbourne and started, you know, doing the punk thing just in our lounge room. really badly and it just kind of grew from there.

Were you all any of y'all folks involved in music in any way or what did your parents do? No, I mean, my father was a printer. My mom was a teacher, but I did, I do remember being fascinated with my father's record collection when I was a little kid. And when he would let me, like, you know, handle the records. I, you know, obsessed with the line and notes. And, you know, he was like into like the band and Bob Dylan and Neil Young and Joe Mitchell and all that stuff. Single songwriter stuff. That's right.

I know that because you guys developed early, I guess what, 93, 94 is when you guys first started. So without sort of like culture, colonialism. Well, not culture of colonialism, but just the idea of like, you know, now with the internet, someone could release something and the entire world get it at the same time where you know really before in 1997 like just

it was regionalism like certain parts of the world had certain types of music or whatnot now I know for Australia kind of the inside joke and again this is before like the really the age of the the internet spreading becoming law like a lot of groups

that were wildly popular from America that were wildly popular in Australia really weren't that big in America and I always wanted to know I never got to talk to anyone like specifically from Australia or New Zealand to find out why like I'll say that there was a point where like the Jurassic 5

pre-Fergy black IPs Ben Harper those acts could damn near sell out stadiums and we'd hear it about the United States like yo man do you know the black-eyed piece could sell out of a stadium in australia you like get the fuck out of you like and this is again back when they were just like a club act like a bar you know that's what but what what what is it i noticed with australia especially for their their embracing of like soul music like you guys have that big giant soul festival down there where

you know you guys have this this this festival for soul music that's sort of like cocella but it's just like all Neil's soul artist. And even now, everybody from Kimbrough, like, and again, I've, my friends have told me that, you know, New Zealand and in Australia, like, we tend to lump just that entire area one thing, but, you know, I see this New Jersey. Right. And you guys are like, no, we're not the same. But, but there's so many like-minded, cool artists from down there that were, like,

influenced by a certain type of soul music that's very niche to us here. Like, what was the, what's the radio like there? Like, what is it that turned people on to that particular type of soul music? Whereas now, years later, like, a lot of these acts are coming out that are, like, really incredible, like hiatus coyote and, and, it's like a name a billion. But what is it about, what was the music atmosphere like? It's a rock culture, I would say, like, when we were starting out. So it's like there's the pub venues, you know, there's a very heavy drinking

culture in Australia, there's the pub venues and all the bands that we grew up with came through this pub scene. It's like hard rock and roll, like, ACDC in this kind of thing. I guess there's the bad seeds. You came in the bad seeds as well, or the birthday party came out of that sort of dark pub scene as well in Melbourne. But then something started to change in the 90s exactly like you're talking about. And I think it was just, it was pre-internet,

but people, there's just this passion for music that wasn't like that. And something just started beautiful, just started to grow. I don't know how it happened. But it was very, very, like when we started playing, you know, every band we played with was just two guitars, bass player drums. And so we'd rock up with a sampler and the sound people were like,

what's this? What do we do? And no one knew what it was. So I was like, in that way, We're kind of breaking ground in this country as far as like every little festival we do. It was like every band is the same guitar, drums, everything like that. And then we just have, you know, S-900 sampler and some shitty organs that work sometimes. And didn't.

And so, yeah, to your question, it was a very rock and roll culture back then in Australia. So the S-0, the Akai S-900? Was that your weapon of the time? Yeah. That was the jam, yeah. 900? Yeah. Oh, shit.

Then they came with the 950, the 950. I think that was the one that premium shoes the 950, but I remember the 900. Oh, we were loading, we were loading off the songs off floppy disc when we played live. Every song was on a different floppy music. So we'd stop a song and then have to load for 45 seconds and just sit there in silence. Or just try and make up some stupid banter in between. How's that we're doing? Yeah, again.

Again. Go coast to the house. You guys in DeAngelo. Okay, that's good to me. To this day, DeAngelo still uses floppy disk. I didn't even know that that can, that still,

I didn't know they still made them, yeah. Do you know how hard they are to find? We had to search the internet to find floppy disks. You can't get down to the- We just did, yeah. Wait, so to this day you still use it? That's your weapon of choice? We wanted to pull out the old samplers for this show that we just did.

So we wanted to bring back and really show how we made the music, but we couldn't find floppy disks anyway. Tiny had to order them online, and they arrived like two days before the show just in time. Wow. Really? We're not using that. We're kind of using computers and now as our main backing track.

So we're not relying on the 45-second loads anymore, but we'll use the sample as just a triple samples. during the show. Because that's the way we used to do it. I mean, it's such a fun, you know. Right. It's a fun way to do it. What was the period of which you guys discovered, like, breakbeat culture and as far as, like,

at least, I would like to think that you guys, you know, had to put a lot of time in researching, like, all the sounds and for, you know, for your arsenal of sounds, your drums, your samples and whatnot. So at what point did you guys discover, or at least. do away with kind of your rock backdrop and get to what we know is like break beat culture.

I think it was like a gradual process and all of a sudden we realized like I think we had you know all these big sounds and big dreams in our heads but you know no money and then you start sampling an old orchestral record because a lot of the records that we were finding junk stores were like

smaltzy kind of like junk like 5th, Andre got Scalanaet strings and, you know, James last, all that stuff. But we could find beautiful little bits and then realize we can create these, you know, big sounds with, you know, for, for two, for a $2 record. And we gradually realized, look, we're not great musicians at guitar and we can't sing, but maybe we can invent our own little world if we just use samples. And it sort of grew from there. And then, you know, a whole bunch of records were coming out.

like the Dust Brothers would produce the Dust Brothers record and you know there was early Chemical Brothers records and all these records had break beats there was DJ Shadow he was DJ Shadow yeah yeah uh Dayla Sol and even like the far side records and all these kind of early hip-hop records and we kind of in our head you know it's because we're so geographically removed from um the rest of the world you know we would just get strange little influences coming through before the internet. So in some way, weird way, like a bit of Prince Paul, a bit of the Bombs squad, a bit of the Beach Boys, a bit of My

Bloody Valentine, all kind of made sense to us. And we just kind of started developing our own sound from there. When you formed the group, was it instantaneous that you called yourself the avalanches? Or were you just like, you know, DJ Robbie, DJ Tony? 49 FM, on down under. We had a few, we had a few name incarnations before we came up with the avalanches.

The avalanches name was actually on a, was the surf rock group from the 50s, one of these bands we sampled. And we used to change our name every time we played. And that one just stuck. Oh, it just stuck. Yeah. Oh, just randomly you just decided to.

Maybe we had a good, a good gig the day that we called ourselves the avalanches and we went, oh, maybe this is an oven, we'll stick with this name. Because I think we had a few gigs where we were different names. What was the first product that you guys worked on when you decided to form the avalanches? It was like,

I think it was a mixtape we made in the studio. I was talking about it, the film school studio that was made to send around, of various promoters to try and get a gig, try and get shows. And then I think they pulled a couple of tracks off that, and our friend put it out as our first 7-inch. It was called Rock City. Yeah, I think that was the first release.

We have a 7-inch record. Yeah, even then, like, was your theory, what was the theory based on how to create the music? I know a lot of times, especially with where we are today. with hip-hop culture in America. You know, and I won't say that flipping samples, of course, you know, flipping is a way of survival to at least avoid, you know, lawsuits

are getting caught out there. But, I mean, there's definitely a slew of producers that flip just for the sport of it, you know, especially like these post-J. Dillettimes where he could take something, make it so unrecognizable that you don't know it. So, but for you guys, like, were you guys even aware of kind of sample culture, uh, almost being endangered species in, in the mid to late 90s to the point where,

you know, now a lot of the backdrop from America is, is far from that. But were you guys aware of it then? Or was it just, you know, we don't care? Well, I think we were aware that, that records that were made in that way that, that were rare and, you know, to find them, they would like sort of these gems that would stick out. Like if a well-made sample-based record is just like such a beautiful thing and they don't come along all the time, you know.

But we were, we kind of thought, no, like we're a million miles from anywhere. No one's ever going to hear this. So we can just sample anything and it's never going to matter. We were just doing it for ourselves. Famous last words. for us. Wait, Fonte, I was going to say, it's funny

that he said that all the way in Australia because that's also where I was when I decided to play really love because I quite, I didn't understand. I didn't realize. This is going everywhere.

Yeah, I thought I was on something like local underground radio station that the world wouldn't hear of. And then that shit happened. Yeah. We've kind of got the same attitude to samples of just like, we'll just use it and see what I can't.

Nobody will know. It's quite soft in the mixer, right? You can't tell. Okay, so let's, we're 25 minutes and let's cut to the goddamn chase. How? How? That's my first question. How?

Can you tell us the story of since I left you? And it's hard to explain. It's really hard. You know, that album's so perfect to me. that even when I explain to people who are, you know, just casual music listeners, like, they're still not getting the genius that every last thing you hear had to be manipulated and edited in a way so that it fits melodically, structurally. So tell us the beginning of how you guys even thought to make this, this classic album.

I think we, I mean, I'll let me. Tony jump in, but we were kind of doing gigs in these rock venues. We're using samplers and our friend Darren would MC over the top and we had some live drums. And as we got into the studio more, we realized it sounds so much cooler if we just remove ourselves from it, remove our voices, remove any live drums and we'll do it just with samples. And it was almost like, like there was a bad beastie boys or something to start off with,

with this kind of rapping that was a little bit. Dr. Octagon kind of lyrics and a big kind of beast. And it was, you know, some cool stuff. But then we did, you know, it was like, let's just make all the melody samples and use no voice. How long was that, uh, a process of working on that record? How long did it take y'all to make it? Probably like 18 intense months.

But there was like maybe three or four years of like collecting samples before then and finding your way. And then it's almost like there's this. I mean, there's two sides to it. There's the technical side of how you actually make it with the samplers or whatever that we can talk about. But the other side of like how you think, how you conceive it or the feeling behind it is harder to talk about it because it's like we just hit this period of a beautiful flow. And it was really just a love for music and discovery. And when I listen to it now, that's what I can hear.

I can hear like a 21 year old me just so in love with music, sampling. and discovering strange old records, that I think that joy is just still what people can, it's infectious. It definitely came through. Yeah, it definitely came through for me. I think, you know, at the time when I discovered you guys, this was when my band Little Brother,

we had put out our first record, the listening. And Amir, actually, had listed his, I guess the top albums he was listening to at the time in Rolling Stone. And so he listed like 50 Cent, Little brother and then you know the avalanche sits out since I left you and I was like alright if he if they're on the same list with us I know I shit banging so these motherfuckers got a hassle so I'm like so I'm like I that's how you discovered it straight up yeah

I mean I heard of them that was how I actually listened to them like I had always seen but like you said you know y'all kind of the rock culture and enjoy so I just thought they were like a rock band I thought they all was kind of like the strokes or like right because that was around that time you know what I thought it was just that kind of you know that that that rock rock revival shit that was popping at the time. So I was like, all right, this is just another rock band. But then I heard the album, and I hadn't heard anything. I just went into it blind.

I was like, all right, well, let me check it out. And man, that shit blew me the fuck away. And the thing about it, like up until that point, you know, introducing by DJ Shadow, I mean, we grew up on Bomb Squad and, like, Prince Paul and all these guys, Dust Brothers, all those guys doing that kind of collage and paste stuff. But when I heard introducing, I was like, oh, wow, like, this is amazing. And it was something that kind of took it, for me, made it, it felt like y'all really, it made it more emotional.

Like that was, I think, maybe the first time, sample-based music, instrumental in that way, I was like, man, this is really emotional. But then that was when I heard introduce it, but then when I heard y'all shit, and that damn two hearts and three four times, bro, I played that shit, man, I played the MP3 tags off that motherfucker, brother.

Listen, I ran that record in the ground, man. And the thing, you know, when Tony, you were talking about just kind of that spirit of just, you know, that discovery, the thing that I always liked about all you guys' records is that it, the way you use the samples, it doesn't feel like in kind of just a bastardized way. It really makes you want to search what you guys use. It makes you more, for me, just as a love of music, it just made me more curious to know more about the stuff you guys use. And like even like with since I left you, you know, the way it starts is, you know, since I left you. But then at the end, when you bring back the just can't get you ever since the day of edge, that's like a story. Yo, that's like, yo, that shit is so fucking dope. Yeah.

So like how do y'all plot all that shit out? And like I know the sample you say you use the ones like the S-9-100, were you tracking it on tape? Was it like, was it pro tools at that time? Like how were y'all storing all these? ideas. It was like S-900 and then we got a S-2000 which had more memory, Akhin S-2000. We were like, oh, this is insane. We're going to be able to do anything with this. No stopping this now. Yeah. So, and by that, I think by the time we're making since I left you, we had a zip drive for the two Akai S-200. Yeah, I-O-Mega. Yes, sir. Yeah. I, yeah. Get the fuck out of you.

Yo, this is. I know. It was literally just that and, and at a shitty old turn-t and $2 junk store records and... Motherfucker, what? But you know what? The limitation is what is beautiful because that's what drives the ingenuity. Yeah. And then we had a... There's an op-code program called Studio Vision. It was a sequencer. I didn't have any audio,

but that ran MIDI into the samplers. And so that's how we could sequence the samples. And it was all done like that. And if I came to work again in the morning, like, there was nothing on tape, no pro tool. So I would have to load it all up again and to hear what the song sounded like and to remember, you know, or if I wanted to burn a demo, make a demo, I'd have to like bounce it, burn it under CD, put it in my CD Walkman and go for a walk or something to have a listen to it. Like that's where we're at.

Yeah. I was going to ask, do you have all the discs saved from that album? Or was it just like once you track it and once it's on tape or once it's recorded, then you just unplugged your machine and that's it. You don't save the samples. You don't any of those things. Like is there a, like, if I were to ask you, like, could you get the either diners only?

The stems from whatever. Yeah, Pablo Cruz. Like, could you actually get the floppy disk? Some of them I've got. I've got some and I've got, I've kept most of the records when I, I sold my record collection, but I kept all this since I left you once. And we just found the stems recently from, because we eventually tracked it to an early version of ProTools. When we went to like a proper studio, we were like, wow, this is like.

And they had like about four different engineers helping us to like get it from the, from out the back of our samplers onto recording into Pro Tools. And then we mixed it from there. So we've got those stems and some of the floppy gifts. An I Heart Radio experience with Cameron Wickham. Live at the Rhyman. You and a pal with flights and two nights in Nashville. To see Cameron Wickham at the legendary Rhyman Auditorium.

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Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie is kind of.

kind of changed anyway, too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Mouthing. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great.

I call him Terro Reed. It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. Oh, gotcha. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachy Sobiesky. Yeah. I don't think she was an American Pie.

but I still liked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game?

I just really. I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuttle. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Least Black Clans But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza.

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To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming. up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, delivering happiness. Mariano Rivera. Oh my God. And many, many more.

Open your free high, hard radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Totoro. And listen now. Okay, so what is the accurate number? I know that, you know, sometimes these stories can be exaggerated. How many samples do you believe are on that album? I've got no idea. I reckon there would be, like, I think I figured it out once

by working out how much the S-5,000 could store and how many samples in a program. Because it was every zip, every song was, you know, the sample of memory was full. So it was probably like around 3,000 because all the little drum hits and little bird noises all the sample. Money.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yo, I won't say, man, when y'all use the part they got me, because, like, I mean, I listed a record, I was like, okay, that's dope.

The part where I realized them, I was like, okay, they know what's up. When y'all use the Rayquine, the avalanche rock, and I was like, oh, shit, I was like, yes, yes. Yeah. That shit was so dope. Yeah, so your guess, like, I've read 900 samples. I've read 4,000 samples. I mean, of course, for the legend of it, 4,000 samples.

is a way better thing. And I believe, you know, I believe anything. But baseball guess, baseball estimate. I think two to three thousand, like when you consider every little drum hit and everything. Because it was a lot. So, okay, when you're, when you guys are at least at the, let's say the 90% mark, let's say that you have 15 songs down already. as you're creating this album

in your mind are you like there's no way in hell we can ever clear this or sell this to the outside world like I mean at this rate is it just a passion project to you? Yeah I think we were just thinking

not even of the legality of the whole thing we were just like trying to put together this amazing thing and they ever was just kind of record company, you do your thing and just get it out. So it was good for us because we didn't have that limitation.

Whereas now we have to be more aware of samples we use and, you know, clearing and all that kind of stuff. But back then it was still a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a more of a free-for-all, I guess. We'd just say, Robbie. Yeah, but also nobody knew who we were. Yeah, that was good. We didn't think anyone would ever, you know,

it would get a wide audience. So in that way, we were free to do whatever, to sample whatever we wanted, you know, like we kind of just didn't really. Like I think as it was growing, we knew we were very passionate and we knew it was this beautiful thing, but we certainly didn't expect it to become what it was. So we weren't restrained by thinking that, you know,

we have a high profile and people are going to, a lot of people going to hear this record. We've done an EP before that as well and didn't clear, one sample from it. So it just kind of like didn't care. Must be nice. Man, listen. All right.

So we can't, can't do that anymore. Yeah, when I was going to ask, so when people came to you, about, you know, samples and stuff,

what was it like, were they, like, honored? Were they like, like, fuck you pay me? Like, what was the,

what was the feeling like? Back then, it was, it was pretty nice. I mean, some people didn't even know what sampling was, or,

you know, we would track down someone who they'd inherited like their grandfather's catalog, you know, in a Willis, they didn't even know they had it. And we would find them and say, hey, you know, you own this music. And so, and some people just were like a flat out no, like Rogers and Hammerstein and people like that. Oh, so there's songs that did not make it? Samples, samples that didn't make it.

Yeah. And then other people like John Kale, like he was super cool. because like that song, two hearts and three, four time, it was going to work out that like there was five main samples and they all wanted 20% each. So we were going to get nothing. And John Cowell was like, no, no, the sample owners should all take a little bit less so the dudes that made the song can get a little bit too.

What the hell? That's a song. Wait a minute, no, wait, that never happens. Never. It's probably never happened again. It's never happened again. Can you all represent us, please? Wait a minute.

This never, ever happens in real life, yo. This is being unknown in Australia. I mean, I got people that, like, come after me for, like, a snare drum. Yeah, yeah, yes. Let alone, and, like, 70% of it, that's a snare drum. Yeah. Okay, so when you're, this was on Excel recordings. So, when you played the final product,

to your company, how long did it take for them to even start the process to clear this? Because again, like I... Yeah, man. Yeah. Usually, okay, so the obstacles that I run into are, okay, say I create a song and, okay, I have the situation once where I used Hey Bulldog by the Beatles. Yeah. and they want it like 100% of the publishing, which then left no space for like the other things I sampled.

And I've learned, I've learned at least in the last 10 years that relationships are key to making these things happen. And oftentimes lawyers and red tape, lawyers and administrative people are kind of the demons of the situation. And half the time, if you can get to the actual artist themselves, then you can, you know, sort of iron out and make it smooth.

So again, how? We had this amazing lady called Pat Shanahan, who, I mean, she would have been in her 60s or 70s. She just passed away recently. So she would clear our samples for us. And she'd done like Beastie Boys Records and iced tea and all stuff like that. So she used to work at Ireland records for many years and had a lot of contacts just through the whole industry. So when we were clearly on a sample, she would be like, hey, I know him. I used to work with him at here.

So she had a lot of personal relationships with all these people. Yeah. So that helped us so much. And she would just be able to get things over the line for us that, you know, if it was a lawyer or anything on anyone else like that, it just wouldn't have happened. So we were, I mean, we were so lucky to have her. Yeah, she was a wonderful lady. And yeah, she became a dear friend, actually, Pat.

She was just the most, most lovely lady. And I think she worked with, who did she work at before Ireland? I can't remember. But she sort of knew everybody in the industry since like the 60s. Yeah. And had seen that there was a niche for someone who just specifically cleared samples. And so I think she left the record label and then, the first record she cleared was like the tone loke record or something like that and then she

did ice tea and then she did Beck and the Beastie boys and um yeah so she helped us a lot and then there were other personal relationships like Richard Russell at XL um helped us clear the Madonna sample uh yeah yeah that that was to be when even when I heard it in the car now my my story of hearing it I heard that album on my birthday I was doing a deep DJ gig in Indiana. And I was born in January, so it was like cold. And the guy that picked me up from the airport played it. And, you know, because the album runs sort of as a continuous flow, like it doesn't go from song to song.

I just thought he was, you know, normally when the guy picks me up from the airport, they're always like sneaking their job. Trying to play they beats. Right, exactly. So Can't blame them Yeah, no, no, no, but for real, like From the airport

To my hotel room I was under the impression He was playing me his shit And that just That had me wide open And then like finally He gave me the bad news 20 minutes into it like

Oh no, no, no There's some cats from Australia Called the Avalanches I was like, oh man I thought it was your shit All right, no mind I'm just about to sign you, man Right, right

What wound up happened? I asked him, can I borrow the CD so I can hear it? And like, actually, the same story with Little Brother when I heard Fonte's thing. Like, I rarely have dedicated so many, like a lot of hours just to listen to product over and over and over again. And I just, I just couldn't believe it. Well, because you guys worked on and what you said earlier about how limitation, studio limitations makes you more creative

that makes sense because a lot of my favorite guys like use you know with Fontes group what did you guys do everything on fruity loops everything was fruity loops

and a compact we had a compact computer yeah and that was the album you know I know Cooled Pro that was what we recorded the vocals in Cool Lettip

or Sony acid like something real printed so what I want to know is how do you how do you bend sample to your will melodically, especially back then,

without, you know, the aid of a MacBook Pro to instantly, you know, you could do that... Time stretching and... Yeah, it's like 30 seconds. But how are you able to bend these samples to your will so that they melodically

fit the song and with that primitive equipment, how? I think it comes back to what you're saying. about just how limitations can be really powerful because it was just like, I just remember going, this, this, Acclis Sampler, I'm just going to get really fucking good at this one thing, and that's all I'm going to do, you know?

And so once it just becomes almost invisible, so you're not even thinking about how to use it, you know it so well. And so it was just literally tuning samples in the sampler. So, you know, you might have to start with a drumbeat in kind of a beginning sample, and the beginning sample just kind of gets you going. It might not even be there at the end. But then it's just literally getting samples in tune and a whole bunch of samples just

on the MIDI keyboard that are living in the sampler's memory and playing around and then going, oh, that might be a verse, that might be a chorus, I'm kind of stuck, save it, put it away, maybe give it to Tony. He'll see if he can find a sample for it and slowly and slowly the layers build up. So it's just using your ear, tuning samples by ear. So that is not easy to do people that is that is that is that is not easy to do Which leads to my next question so when I asked the bomb squad How they created nation of millions

I guess Keith Shockley explained to me that basically the process that they were doing They would have jam sessions So the way that the engineer was set up was Eric Sattler had his sampler on his side of the room Keith Shockley was probably on turntable doing his stuff and then Hank would have his bits and they would start with a drum beat and when they were satisfied their theory was that if you took everything away like are the drums banging enough like the drums have to be perfect once the drums are there then each chef would add their particular ingredient into the musical stew until it felt complete and felt right.

So how do you guys source or like what's the back and forth or the work process to adding things? Like, you know, whose idea was it like, oh, I got this horse noise over here? Even with the first song on Wildflower where the kid is talking, I don't know if that's a sound bite and you guys manipulated his voice to go right in key. with that intro. But, you know, even with the wildflower intro, like, how do you guys, how do you guys communicate back and forth, like, what gets inside the, the, the meal?

And, and also subsequently, how do you tell each other that doesn't work? Like, okay, I don't know that fits or whatever. Or is it just like, whatever works thrown in? I think, I mean, definitely Robbie is. the great producer of the records. And it's almost like where, you know, we used to have all the other members in the band, and we, you know, have a little sample,

you know, loops, a couple of things that would go together or something like that, but then kind of give him over to him where he's putting it all together and, you know, chopping up everything. And, I mean, he's just, what he's amazing at is just doing all the layers and the incredible production work

and, you know, the horse noise. and all that kind of thing comes from me. Yeah, that horse noise then. I was just like, the hell. That was because, no, no, I heard. I was like, it was like DJ Mugs and Cypress Hill, and you know, that squeal noise he had. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to try and make a noise like that. And then I was watching an old Western movie and there was this horse house. I was like, that might work. So how'd you get the horse to clear the sample? exactly that first man the horse to this day still doesn't know

that he's on the record no how did you guys even know because movie sound bites are also a big part of the kind of the structure here

how did you guys even source or even figure out clearing all of the non-musical elements of the song that had to be clear. Like, I'm certain that with movie dialogue, or was it just like the Wild West? Like, if they come to you, then you admit it or... Never mind. Please don't incriminate yourself.

Never mind. I got my answer. This is... This is Quest Love Supreme, not DJ's last. Oh, my God. Never compare me to him. Would you like our answer or the record label's answer? Never mind.

I just said, never mind. Forget it. One thing I was I was curious to know for two things. One, just the making of a wildflower, because, you know, we've read a lot and if you guys have talked a lot about the making of sense I left you, wildflower was like, other than DeAngelo's Black Messiah, that was, those were neck and neck. Those were like my two most anticipated records of that decade. And it took just as long.

Yeah, just as long. And I remember, you know, we've been hearing about it for a while and I was like, it dropped. And I was like, holy shit, this is really here. And, you know, it was really inspiring to me because it sounded like you guys picked up, like, right where you left off. It didn't even, you could listen to since I left you a wildflower back to back. And aside from the cameos, you know, you would sound like they were done at the same time. So I was curious to know just, you know, working on that record and, you know, what took so long, A, what took so long from since I left you to Wildflower and two, the, you guys picking your emcees because you really pick, you know, guys that weren't, you know, like, Danny Brown and Camp Low and, you know what I mean?

Like, you guys worked with some kind of unorthodox people. So how do y'all go about choosing that? That, I mean, Camp Lo, that first Camp Lo, uptown Saturday night was like our all-time favorite. We'll just play that nonstop and some great sampling in that record too. So we actually sampled Camp Loew on since I left you. So it was really nice to kind of go full circle and then work with Dan. Whenever we played live, we'd always have a bit where Lucini would come in after a song. So we're massive Canplo fans.

Before you answer Fonte's question, how did you guys deliver the album live? Like, how does that even happen? Or what's the... Like, I only saw you guys when you guys finally came to the Tonight Show for the Wildflower album. That's the first time I got to see you, like, actually perform. But when you're, when you made since I left you,

then how do you decide how to deliver this in concert? We still, when we were touring since I left you, we were still like in live band mode, because we still had that element from, you know, when we were starting out. So we would sort of do like kind of like, it was like a big party with live drums and kind of like, I don't know, bass guitar, some keys. But most of everything was just like on a MIDI keyboard and we'd have the samples that would just be that key, chorus, break, horse. Yes.

So it was just triggering live and then the drummer playing along to it. So there's no like, you know, time code or anything into a computer or anything like that when we did to us since I left you. So it was still pretty organic in that way. One of the guys in your band, man, homie, I'm a big fan of, Jonti. How did y'all hook up and what's his role in you guys' band? Oh, yeah, he was part of our touring group for around the Wildflower era.

We came and did Concella and we, I think we heard his first EP and it was really cool. And then he did some vocals on Wildflower. And then we're like, come on the road. Yeah. And he also did a, it was a, since I left you, he put a band together of about 15 musicians and played since I left you front to back. Really? And did it live around Australia. We were like, oh, let's go check this out.

It was kind of like really weird to just be, you know, we hadn't played. Yeah. And we hadn't played for so long. And we're just like, hey, we should get back on the road and like, do this ourselves. But it was really cool to see. And from now, I mean, you know, we developed the relationship. No, he's really dope. I'm a big fan of his, man.

Yeah. But what? So the gap between the first album and Wildflower, you know, that 18 years, 16 years, whatever. What happened? I got to admit, I thought they threw you guys under the jail. I really admit, I was like, oh. They got thrown under the jail.

Oh, you won't got our money. Fuck it. You got to jail. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's many ways to answer that question, but the short answer is like, was like, you know, you make since I left you with no money, no equipment, you have a success. You get an advance to make yourself. second record, you buy all this equipment and then, but it doesn't flow and it doesn't happen.

The magic is lost. Sitting around with compressors all day and like outboard gear and we had none of that before. And it took a long time to get back to that point of realizing it's not about that. It's just about your imagination, a turntable and a sampler. And you can add all that shit later in the studio. But it was like, you've got to write the songs, the beautiful songs first, you know, and all the gear in the world to help you. But, you know, we were young and we had to learn that ourselves.

And now we're back to like, I don't have the studio in my house anymore. Like, I just back to the same simple. Basic. I started with it. So you purposely wanted to go back to square one. Yeah. It took us 16 years to realize that. But eventually.

And the thing is, like, in all honesty, as the time went on, kind of since I left, you started to grow in stature. So we were a lot of pressure started to build. And then that pressure, you know, came a little bit from the record company, just from fans in general and everything. When's it going to happen? And that got to us a lot as well, I think, as it went along. And, you know, and then like Robbie said, we kind of just got back to the essence of what it was all about. And almost just in our own personal journeys kind of decluttered our minds and stopped with all the pressure within our cells.

and just let go of all that, that go of all the equipment. And from that point, like, it didn't take that long at all to finish. I'm just curious, so what equipment did you use for Wildflower and the new one specifically? Same, the same. No, we used Pro Tools for this one. We were using Vision for, for Sincalephti, which that program actually, they stopped making it in 1997. So and Robbie was still using that up to 2006. Hey,

if it ain't broke. How long did it take you to learn how to master updated equipment? Or were you just stubborn? Like, I'll never, if it's this or nothing. I was stubborn for a long time. I didn't want to say that. But now I'm just like, it's Pro Tools, and I just edit in Pro Tools, and it's just like second nature to me again.

So it's just like a tape recorder, and it reminds me of like when I was like 15 and learning how to make tape loops and stuff. You know, it's like, as long as I keep it simple, you know, it's cool. What's the, what are the pros and cons to, you know, in Pro Tools, you're now able to see your music and your samples. and back in the day you couldn't. So what are the advantages and disadvantages to that, if any? That's an amazing question because you're so right. I mean, you can't see the waveforms in a sampler. You know, you're just listening and you're kind of like looking at the window almost, you know.

So it's just a feeling thing. And it has been a big change because, you know, Pro Tools can grid everything so easily and everything can get tight and like. you can make so many different versions of the one song. And it's almost like you can again get too out of control with the limitlessness of things like Pro Tools and even just going back to Wildflower, the way, you know, we used to sample just pick up a record, put it on, find a sample from a, you know, pretty be simple like that.

But during Wildflower, we just for some reason would go, okay, let's just collect samples. So we just collect samples without like thousands and categorize them without even really making songs. We're just like, we'll do that later. So it almost became like this. Storing. Administration process of making music. So that just the limitlessness of that is.

16 years later, we're like, that doesn't work. Yeah, it's not working. Yeah, I was going to ask just in the 16 years, you know, between those records, were your, what were you guys? makes a source of income like how was y'all able to stay gone for that long it was a struggle you know and it's not it's certainly not what people think it's like you know being in a band and like for example the songs since i like talking about sample clearance like the song since i left you is like i don't own any of it you know it's all owned by samples so we don't get really royalties to live off so it was tough and we would get offers to do some big shows in that time but we kind of thought

you know if it gets to like 2010 and we haven't put a new record out we can't we don't really want to go and do a show because it just seems like we're in all these rehashing yeah i mean you know maxing credit credit cards were you guys did you ever opera consider like just going back to your roots and DJing like just doing DJ sets as a duo but without the pressure of here's our new album that sort of thing. We did that a few times and that was able to earn us some income. Okay. We did like a couple of songs for a musical, King Kong musical that was here in Melbourne. So that kind of helps. And we did have a lot of help from the record company.

Right. Who had just signed to, so it was like an independent record company who would just like being modular. Yeah, half bought out by Universal. which has a lot of money. So, so, you know, our man there's Steve Pab, as Steve Pab would really help us out by constantly asking them if we can have a little bit more and say it's just around the corner,

you know, six months away. Six months later, it'd be the same thing. Finesse. He was wonderful. Yeah, he was really good people of that. Video experience with Cameron Wickham, live. The Riemann. Ask me how I'm being.

You and a pal with flights and two nights in Nashville. To see Cameron Wickham at the legendary Rhyman Auditorium. Plus a thousand dollar spending cash. Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day on the free IHard radio app and you're in to win. Cameron Wickham. Stream the new single Kingdom of Fear. Available now. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Land. Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia

from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guestrars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that.

Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller.

The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of, uh, Technology. Danny McBride. He loves Mouthing. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own.

That's great. I call him Terro Reed. It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobiesky. Yeah, I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up.

She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game? I just really, I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here.

Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. If you come over here to play games, I'm a check you. Okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'm gonna play you. Join Yomeneika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast.

You're the problem with Yamanika. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? New episodes weekly every Wednesday is part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less, so I don't have to do so much. So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? I'm Yamanika and I'm out.

Listen to you're the problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I always wanted to know. Okay, so I'm not, I'm probably closer to Robbie's theory on kind of staying intentionally ignorant to technology so that it doesn't destroy me you know like I don't I don't that's my excuse like I don't want to learn all this technology because then I'll lose what I had in my magic period that sort of thing

but I have to know so when I first saw the demonstration of I hope I'm saying this right and I prefaced all that to say like I really don't know the technical terms but with the program Melodyme that in

enables you to sort of like erase the DNA of a song. Like if I could take a Stevie Wonder song and erase his vocals out of it and make it just an instrumental, that sort of thing. When I first saw that, I saw it at Jazzy Jeff's house and the first thing I said to him was, yo, like, I can't wait to see what happens when the avalanches get a hold of this machine

where they can now really manipulate and bend sounds to the, you know. Or like Y'all on, or like Ableton, like the Avalanches were Ableton. It's like, that's fucking scary. Exactly. So, like, have you guys even created songs to that level? Like, it's weird.

I don't know if someone has fully taken advantage of, like, to me it seems so grandiose and so intimidating that I haven't even, I think maybe once last year, I decided like, All right, let me take the Fender Roads from this particular song that I don't have the stems to and see if I could build a song from that. But besides that one moment, like I kind of thought it was going to be just a flood of kind of a return or at least a part two of the sample, Wow, Wild West that was, you know, 86 to 92, that sort of thing.

But what this sort of sampling, have you guys ever been, have you guys even decided or considered that level of sampling where you start erasing the DNA of samples that exist to create new material? I hope I asked that question right. Yeah, totally. Okay. Totally did. It feels like it's a strange kind of concept. I also feel like it's a concept. A crime. So. A little bit. I feel every time I use it, I asked someone last week to like, you know, extract some vocals from a song and even then I felt guilty so my heart wasn't into making it because you know no it's it's it's it's it'll because it'll start off innocent now with just music but then who knows like what they'll use it for 30 years from now with identity theft so I think I'm kind of scared of jumping in that pool

because I feel like this is the beginning of the danger period but what is your relationship with that level of of technology and sampling? I don't think we've thought about it too much. I know we bought Maladine maybe three years ago, and I personally haven't used it once. We were like, yeah, it's going to be great. I kind of looked at it right now, not now. But I don't know.

I feel like that's kind of, in a way, dishonoring the sample and the people who played on it. And I don't know, maybe that's if that's just kind of an old-fashioned attitude. And then the future is just going to be like, taking out, you know, Stevie Stevie. There was that one song, you were like, man, if I could just give her the vocals on that.

I guess, yeah, we try and do that with filters. But, you know, who knows what the future holds are. I don't know how Robbie thinks about that. But I don't know. Like, I think there's some cool stuff like, you mentioned Ableton and stuff, like been out of stretch a sample,

like a really, really, really far, way further than we have could. Like, we've done some of that kind of stuff. But I also love, you know, the art form of like, like, say the vocal sample for since I left you, has got music underneath. We just had to filter it and then I had to chop it very finely, but you can still hear all these little bells and stuff. And it all adds to the sort of magic, even though it's a tune and stuff. It's like, it's kind of beautiful that way too. You know, I think things would get quite clean and really like pristine sounding if you can like forensically remove elements.

But I don't know if it would still have the. magic. Yeah, and it take away like the layers that you don't necessarily hear, but you feel. And then if you do take them away, you're like, hang on something's missing here, but I can't tell what it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing with like sample based music. It's just so like even when like trying to replace stuff or, you know, and it's just like, dude, when you sample something, you're not just sampling that song. You're sampling that day. You're sampling the engineer. You're sampling the outboard gear. You know, there's so many things that made it what it was. And when you're You start manipulating that.

A lot of times you can't kind of get too far away from home to where you lose the magic. Yeah. And that's like a spirit, a spirit in the music. Absolutely. Yeah. Engineers should get paid for samples. Shut up, Steve. Yeah, that's real rap.

I'm going to start a petition. On the sugar network. Hey, oh, another question that I have. I have a theory, but I want to see if I'm correct. what was the inspiration for the Wildflower album cover? It was

that Slystone cover. I knew it. Yeah. When I first saw it, when I first saw it, I was like, wow. When, literally when I first saw it, I was like, wow, like in an alternative world

where Sly was, was happy with his life and everything was going swimmingly, this would have been the album cover to their, a ride going on. Yeah. And I always, wow.

Okay. That's amazing. Yeah. And we actually got it. I found a world quilting champion who she lives in Nebraska. And she quilted that cover for us and we just took a photo of it. So we wanted it to look real like the sly cover. Wow.

So that's an actual quilt. Yeah. That's a quilt. What? Oh, shit. No, I thought it was animated. You see it? Oh, my God.

You're right. I'm looking at it right now. Wow. You want to y'all own it? I'm about to say, yeah, who got it? Yeah. He still sleeps with it on his bed. You do?

Congratulations, Robbie. I will be coming there for it. Yep, man. I wanted to ask y'all on the new record, man. Bro. Where did y'all find Terrence Trent Dr. Yo. Like, for real.

I mean, Sananda, Sananda, Montreya. That's, you know, what he goes on. by, it's been going by for the past few years. But yeah, I was so happy. I can't remember how we got in touch, but we had this song and Tony and myself and our collaborate on this record. Andy, it was like this beautiful piece of music. We had this Vashti Bunyan vocal.

And it was honestly not going to make the record because it was like, there's just no voice that can fit. And I can't remember one day as Tony and myself, we just had this idea. and we were like, we wonder if we could ever get in touch with him or if he would know who we are. And somebody got in touch with Sanander. And it's been honestly the most incredible, one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. He's the warmness. I was afraid of the answer.

I didn't know. He is incredible. Incredible. It's been so open-hearted and just so generous with his time. That's probably the most beautiful thing that, like, people just don't dial in a vocal. and here you go. It's like so generous with their time to go back and forth and really get something that feels like it was meant to be there, you know.

Y'all tracked that together or was, would he track it on his side? Yeah, he tracked it on his side. But there were a lot of back and forth with emails and stuff. And his emails are an absolute joy to read. He's so eccentric but smart and expressive in his emails. And he's just like Robbie would go, we got a new email from Sanandran and I go, send it, I want to read it.

It's like a highlight. It was so amazing to read. And then... Poetry, really beautiful. Real poetry. And just listening to his voice, it's like, it is one of the great voices, in my opinion, of all time.

It is still incredible. Like, I listen to that song and I still just go, what a vocal performance. It's incredible, incredible. So on the other side, I guess maybe to the polar opposite of that. Tricky. What was that like? Working with him.

I love him, man. I love him. Actually, we should have mentioned when we're talking about 90s sample music too, like his first record. Massive attack. Oh, yeah, Max and Cayenne. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that was stuff that was filtering through to us from England at the time, too. So it was like, he was one of our heroes, you know, and that massive attack record.

and he was in Berlin making a record. He just put that record out last year. It's a really great record. And he was just like, I happen to be in the studio right now. What have you got? And we would just send him a song, the first song. The next morning came back with full lyrics.

And then he was like, that was great. Send me another one. And we ended up, that went on for like two weeks. We did like eight songs together. And then we got like a message from his management to our management who didn't know anything about this. they were like, are you guys recording together? What you've made half a record?

What's going on? Like, we need to do some paperwork or something. But yeah, that was, he was like just, he was on a hot streak making that record. So he was like, anything you can send me, I'm on fire at the moment. And it is so good when it's, when it's just the artist to artist as well and it's not going through. So, you know, the management obviously didn't know it was happening or whatever. And we were just doing our own thing without all that. And that's, you know, such a rewarding relationship for us to kind of, you know,

have that situation with people we grew up listening to and our heroes and everything. And I think you get it to so much of a more pure product when it's not, you know, through their people, through their people and that stuff. Yeah, like you guys, the people y'all pick, man, you know, I can't front. Like, it is pretty much, I mean, it's like a dream, you know, just me being just the music nerd I am. like the people you get on every record I'm like yo like that was perfect fit and when I saw that it was

you know Terrence Trent Darby he was on this one and then tricky but when I saw that y'all got fucking Cornelius I was like yo dude like they've been in my iTunes or some shit like y'all must know like what was I'm like dude they pick it all my guys what was he like man what was it like working with him

but I don't I don't know what to say about Kago really he's like he's a dear friend and we met him like in 2001 or something because he put out that album. Fantasma. Yeah. And we were making since I left you listening to that album, just going, this is. Yeah, mic check. That was my shit.

Mike check. Exactly. But it's kind of like Disney. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one, two, three, four, five. Yeah. Exactly. Because Tokyo is only like same time zone is here in 10 hours. we go a lot to DJ and so we've become friends over the years and he'll always show us like

record stores and everything he's the this sweetest guy and then um he just happened to be in los angeles doing a show when we were there recording so that song just came about like that it was Robbie's birthday at the time yeah but the recording recording with him was a happy birthday the recording with him was so incredible the process because we kind of had the beat just going and he just had a guitar there and he'd be like all right let's do some takes and just, you know, and it just roll around. And so we'd sit there and go, that's it.

Then the next take, and then it just all started layering up that you go, that we're all like, okay, okay. And then towards the end, everyone's like, oh, we understand now. So he had this whole thing and he said that was like 12 layers of different guitar tracks that he was just like making. And it just, I mean, that's how the song came about. No, that's him.

Yeah, that's so incredible to watch. It was so impressive. Fantasma, like, Fantasma, like, Fantasma. Like, that fucked me up when I heard it. And then the one that, like, when I, I think it was after I graduated college, when he came with Point, like, I played, I still play that record. Like, you know, I love that album, man. He's a nut.

I love him. Hey, can I ask, what was it like working with Johnny Moore? That was another one that was done remotely. but I still remember the morning actually that you didn't get the nerd out on any Smith's questions or oh my goodness I think we would have overwhelmed him I think

yeah when he came to sit in with us like I think we I that's probably the only time like we really nerded out on like tell us more stories you know that's what yeah but we actually met we we saw him even before we approached him to play on the track.

We were like, he was at the next table at us at Fuji Rock Festival, like just backstage. And we'll both just go, go up to him and ask him. No, you go up. Come on, say something. Ask if he wants to be in. How would you meet for about 15 minutes. We're trying to suck each other up to go after him. And in the end, we're just like, no, we can't do it.

But, you know, we got in contact eventually. And he was really great. And he actually sent us a message after the Divine Corps, which is the song he's on. kind of got some playing in England and he's like, thanks guys, my kids think I'm cool again now. Oh, no. Nice. Hey, have you guys even considered or thought about releasing like all instrumental versions of the last two records? No.

Just for the Avalanche Purist or whatever, like just to hear it. Because sometimes I, you know, I know that you guys are going through a progression and you're the, you know, the metamorphosis of the group sort of blooming. But so there's no, just, there's not an instrumental mixed version of, of any of this stuff out there.

No, no, but we have them. We have them. Yeah. I think everything we do, we do. Sorry. We can send them over. Send it to me.

Okay, great, go, go, go. That's really what the fucking want to ask. Exactly. Is that what this interview's about? Yeah. Yeah. I just want to see the, Do you guys ever think that you'll try to do another all-instrumental project?

As far as I know, you're probably working on something now. Yeah, we're starting another thing now. I think, yeah, because it's just like, I mean, working with vocalists like that for us is almost like, it's still, you know, an active curation and almost sampling in a way. But I feel like we're making a slight turn back towards. just a sample-based record. Well, whatever the next record is, I'm putting my beard in,

I won't end on that motherfucker. So I'm late. Same. Hey, listen, man, even if it's just an interlude, just talking, yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.

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Cameron Whitcomb. Stream the new single, Kingdom of Fear. Available now. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years,

but today we're showing up as ourselves. tell you about Podlandia, AEO Rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor,

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Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clemens. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their career. by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller.

The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves that. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great.

I call him tarot reads. It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski. Yeah, I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time.

Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play, play game? I just really. I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. Mariano Rivera. Oh, my God. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app.

Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. This is probably the least that. I've inserted questions in an interview only because I feel like every question that I want to know the answer to is almost like inconsequential, like just, okay, that particular snare that you use on this song

versus the frog noise from this thing. Wait, I do want to know who decides the concept for your videos? Man. Especially with Frankie Sinatra. Like, or just all your videos. All your videos are just some next, level shit. Like who comes with those concepts?

It's mainly the video people. So we get we get pitched some things and then we kind of, I guess, just pick the craziest one. Really? Yeah. But yeah, I was Frankie Sinatra. I met. I hope this doesn't sound bad. But we actually had a Zoom or a Skype with the producers who were going to be shooting the video and they were French and like we struggled to understand what

but you're just like I do what you want to do guys you're French you know you're like okay it kind of sounds but they seem like lovely people so we're like okay so sweet and and the lady had this beautiful voice it was almost like a movie

like it was just my son's with my whole and they're like oh what cool okay yeah whatever it sounds good yeah oh my God Wow. Can I ask one more question? So in messing with loops and samples and beats and things like movie dialogue and horses and everything that you end up creating your music with, how often do you go in with an idea

I'm going for something specific, but then as Quest 11, I am constantly talking about some kind of happy accident happens. Yeah, ends up being better than your original idea or different. And how often does that play into what we hear in the final product? It happens all the time. Really, that's almost the whole thing. Like, you know, like, we will talk about like where we want to try and go next,

but you can, but you can't predict the mood you're going to be in. and the record you're going to be sampling at that time and maybe just one little like bit of atmosphere at the end of someone's song or something it's like and you're just in the right mood to hear how you can flip that moment. That's the catalyst. Or like if you put something,

if you put something in the wrong spot and then if you put it a beat behind or something and suddenly you're a rhythmic genius. Exactly. But that's also like our friendship too. It's like having to be able to tell each other that, you know, that thing you made yesterday morning in five minutes is like is better than the thing you spent a month on when you had this big concept.

And, you know, it's like, yeah, you just captured some magic there. And that's, we should roll with that. And I think that was also part of Wildflower too is like that magic of the five minutes finding the great loop and everything. And then we would just layer and layer and layer. And in the end, the initial thing is like this much of something that's like that. And then we, like, we went through a process towards the end of, you know, making it where we just took a lot of that away.

And this started to shine again. I don't know. Yeah. So dope. Kurt Vow, man. How did y'all go with him? His record, he's all right. That's like, I love that song.

And I always dug him. How did y'all hook up? It was, that was like a last song we finished for the record. And once again, it was a beautiful piece of music. but we just, and I just play his records like all the time. So huge fan and we just reached out. He's Philly. He's Philly.

He's from town. We just reached out on Instagram and he was like down for it. I think he might have messaged us about something else in the past. And then we're like, we've got this song. And yeah, he just did this beautiful kind of like poetic rambling spoken word thing. That was beautiful. I still remember the day that that arrived actually. It was like.

I remember the day that Robbie played it to me after he put the vocals into the track and we'd had that track for a long time and it was just kind of like, what do we do with it? Like, is it a melodic kind of thing? And then he played me the thing that Kurt did and I was just like, play it again.

And he played again. I just went, that's done. That's perfect. That's exactly what it. You know, just one of those things where you're like, you don't have to um and a hour about it. It's like, oh, do we have to change it around a little bit or maybe if we cut this bit, perfect.

It just felt so good and it was just like, that's it. That's done. Yeah. What made y'all come back? Because I don't be real with you. I was surprised to see that we got Avalanche's album in 2020 because after Wildflower, I was expecting, all right, it would be another 10 years before we do.

I was ready to wait it out. But y'all came back. I was like, all right. What led to the, I guess, the quicker turnaround in records? Like, where are y'all at now in your lives where y'all can kind of turn around a little quicker. I think we were just freed up from the long 16 year. You know, we felt the pressure to follow up since I left you. And then once we made another really great sample-based record in Wildflower that we felt like, you know, that was a really worthy follow-up to since I left

you, we just felt free. And, you know, we just got back to the very simple flow of creating and not overthinking. And it's just flowing really quickly. We've already got a bunch more songs as well. And it's so fun. It's so fun. to be an actual touring band and not, you know, broke musicians in a house is working on a record 16 years. You know, we play Coachella and we're doing Glaston Bram and like, why? We should have been doing this 10 years ago. So that's like, that's inspiration for us and and bring me my money. I love it. Wait, my last question about a guest on your record. what was the process of like working with a reverse quoma yeah yeah weaser yeah and did you

resist any uh pinkerton fan out uh moments or just you know that was so cool and i think we grew up loving like you know we have a love for like the beach boys and he's someone who i can hear that in his music and he's like can write such an amazing pop hook yeah you know And I mean, Tony can tell the story. But I think we'd already track the song and then he was in Melbourne. Did we meet him beforehand, Tony? No, so he'd sent us like the vocal. So he had like sent a spreadsheet with three different lyric paragraphs.

He had spreadsheets of all his hooks. Yeah. Just in a spreadsheet laid out. And he was like, choose one. Choose one. Choose one. But we need to hear the melody. He's like, oh, we want to hear how it goes.

So he's like, okay. And he set the melodies for each, you know, little lyric thing he had. So he just sent you a whole bunch of hooks and you could choose one? He sent, he sent three. No one does that. Not at all. So in the end, we were just like, they're all really good. Can we have them all?

I mean, we worked them all into the track eventually and, you know, like the outro and the verse of the chorus. And so that made up the three different things. But, and so we ended up meeting him in Melbourne and, like, they were out. They were supporting the food fighters at like a big stadium. And we're like, okay, we'll go. So Robbie and I spent a day like looking at all the coolest bars to take him in in Melbourne. And, you know, you want to impress him and do all these really cool things.

And in the end, it was raining. And all he wanted to do is like, we got some umbrellas from the hotel. He just wanted to walk around the city in the rain. And then we stopped at a Starbucks and had a coffee. and spoke for about an hour and then went back to the hotel. So I was like, okay, I guess we might be going to this cool bar where there's like, you know, whole the girls and all these crazy shit. Come on.

We'll just sit in Starbucks. But in that way, it was like perfect. Well, actually, wait. Speaking of your Beach Boys fandom, assuming that the woman who worked with you for sample clearances is the same lady that cleared the samples for Paul's Boutique. I don't know which albums he did it for, but I would assume it's Paul's Boutique because there's a lot of samples. Were you guys even aware of Brian Wilson's hip-hop album that was produced by the Dust Brothers? The world does not know about this.

Are he serious? Yeah, so I guess the story is that, you know, I mean, at the time when the Beastie Boys first signed the Capitol, I guess Brian Wilson had gotten a copy of Paul's boutique and was kind of impressed because they explained him and like how the album was made and how all these samples and that sort of thing. He was really impressed by it. So he hit up the Dust Brothers and said,

I too want to do an album. And he wound up making, I think they made like five or six songs together. And one of them, I think, was called Smart Girls or whatever. But it's like... Not this is Brian. He rapping? Or it's just... Oh, boy.

I think if you YouTube... If you... If you YouTube... No. No. I'm going to check this out. Yeah, wait, wait. No, you're messing with me.

No, no, no, no. Because the thing is, is that every time I tell the story, I'm like, wait a minute. I know. I know for starters that I actually talk to Brian Wilson about this in person and I talk to the Dust Brothers. But even in my mind, I'm like, wait, did I imagine that? But it's no. It doesn't seem real. Wait, is it still on YouTube?

Yeah, he did it. He did a song. Okay, so Smart Girls. Yeah, Smart Girls, Capital rejected the album, but it's still out there. It came out in 1991. And, yeah, Matt Dyke, like the, the, yeah, yeah, those guys produced it. And, yeah, it was the Brian Wilson rap album. It was called Sweet Insanity.

Yeah. I've never heard of my afternoon. That seems like a fitting title for it. Yeah, it is. Guys, I just want to say, I try to keep my cool with guests you know half the time on this platform but yeah man I want to thank you guys personally

because I will say that in hearing your record that's what really planted the seed in my head on how my DJ gigs should go because I just never thought I mean yeah like again I was raised on that certain bomb squad type of hip-hop that anything could go. But when I heard this album,

that's when I realized like, oh, anything can really happen in a DJ set in a sort of a creative context. So I will say that after hearing your album, and I guess I heard it in 2000, 2001, like that's when I just totally wiped the slate clean of what was current, what was then my DJ set.

And my whole goal was like, well, I'm just to do what the avalanches do and just throw any and everything in my DJ set, be it something normal, something off kilter, something unorthodox, something, you know, just, I thank y'all for that. Like, you guys were definitely the impetus to like my DJ rebirth that I've been running away

with like the last 20 years, man. But you guys are, our true geniuses, man. I thank you for doing the show with us. Oh, thank you. That's really kind. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having it. This has been, yeah, this has been so fun. Oh, thanks. Thanks. Really.

All right. Well, are you done? Oh, I was just going to ask, I guess my last thing. The other artists, like kind of soul artists in,

in you guys region. So, yeah, Australia. So, like, I'm thinking, of course, highest coyote. Fat Frady's Drop. I know they're kind of more of a ska kind of band.

Lisa could call it. Like, what relationship do you have with that community, the sole, you know, I guess, R&B community? What's that like? Well, we're just like kind of a couple of old men who like met each other on the park bench every day and talk about the weather or whatever. Like we don't like, I guess we're often traveling, but we're kind of not really like

out and about it. On the scene. Yeah. Except to say that there is just like, it's just a very warm music community here in Melbourne. Yeah. Everybody's very supportive. I think it's maybe because it's so geographically isolated.

It's like there's just like, it's very supportive anyway. We always feel very supportive. That's what's up. Yeah. Steve? Yeah, you left me out of them. Michelle Obama episode and the Jimmy fan of the episode as well.

Great callback. Great call back. Or if you have a Quest Love Supreme, Fon Tickalo and Steve, we like to thank the avalanches for kicking it with us. Oh my God. Yeah, man. This is, I never thought, yeah, I only think I've

ever read an interview with y'all, let alone, you know what I'm saying, half interview. So this was, this is a dream come true, man. Thank you guys for hanging out. Yeah, seriously, it's been so good, so much fun. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you guys.

Thank you guys. On behalf of Fantigolo, Unpaid Bill and Laiaa and St. Steve, Questlove, and this is Questlove Supreme. We will see you next week. Next go, go, right? Thank you. Hey, this is Shiger Steve. Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at QLS.

Let us know what you think and who should be next. to sit down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, Portlandia fans.

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, A.O. rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life.

Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that.

Listen to Podlandia. A.O. Rewatch on the I. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Summer Blockbusters are back. The Odyssey and Spider-Man brand-new day have taken over cinemas, and Raiders of the Lost podcast has all the coverage you need, including our interview with director Destin Daniel Cretton. What surprised to you about Tom Holland?

He shows up to every meeting early. He's the first one on set. Aside from learning all of his lines, is also able to memorize everybody's name on set. Download the free IHeart Radio app. Search Raiders of The Lost Podcast and listen now. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook.

Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHard. Art Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lease Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Tatoro, I deliver pizza to a new

guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, delivering happiness, and many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutor.

And listen now. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.