The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 62: The EDM Cinderella - How The Glitch Mob Exploded

Episode Date: February 23, 2015

Justin Boreta is a founding member of The Glitch Mob. Their music has been featured in movies like Sin City II, Edge of Tomorrow, Captain America, and Spiderman. In this episode, we discuss The Glitch Mob's path from unknown band to playing sold-out 90,000-person (!) arenas.  We delve into war stories, and Justin plays us never-before-heard "drafts" of blockbuster tracks to show creative process. Even if you have zero interest in music, Justin discusses habits and strategies that can be applied to nearly anything. Meditation? Morning routines? We cover it all. The Glitch Mob's last album, Love Death Immortality, debuted on the Billboard charts at #1 Electronic Album, #1 Indie Label, and #4 Overall Digital Album. This is particularly impressive because The Glitch Mob is an artist-owned group. It's a true start-up. This podcast is brought to you by Mizzen + Main. Mizzen + Main makes the only "dress" shirts I now travel with -- fancy enough for important dinners but made from athletic, sweat-wicking material. No more ironing, no more steaming, no more hassle. Click here for the exact shirts I wear most often. Order one of their dress shirts this week and get a Henley shirt (around $60 retail) for free. Just add the two you like here to the cart, then use code "TIM" at checkout. This episode is also brought to you by 99Designs, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. ALL SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello ladies and gents, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode. Ahem. Ahem. Goddamn! Optimal minimum. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite?

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So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where I deconstruct world-class performers to find the tools, tricks, routines, habits that you can use. And of course, those experts range from billionaire investors to chess prodigies to Arnold Schwarzenegger

to everyone in between. And you do find commonalities. And in this particular episode, we delve into a world that I know very little about, and that is the world of music. We have Justin Barretta, who is is the world of music. We have Justin Bereta, who is a founding member of the Glitch Mob. And if you haven't heard that name, or you don't recognize that name, you'll definitely recognize some of their music. And it could range from their trailers, or the trailers in which they're featured. So you could list Sin City 2, Edge of

Tomorrow, Captain America, Spider-Man, to their commercial work. So commercials for Fiat, Audi, and so on. They also debuted their last album, Love, Death, Immortality, incredibly well on Billboard. Number one electronic album, number one indie labels, number four overall digital albums. And this is fascinating because from an entrepreneurial standpoint, not only are they indie, they're not associated with a big label, they're artist-owned. And we delve into all of this. How did they go from unknown to on top of the world, playing to 90,000 people in Quebec with Deadmau5, for instance. We dig into the war stories, the creative stories, the process, how that has been refined over time. And you get to hear some never heard before early drafts of some of their biggest hits. And Justin walks through exactly how those were refined over time to become what millions of

people now love and listen to all the time. It's a fascinating discussion with an artist. Even if you feel like you have no interest in music process, you will find things ranging from his schedule to his meditative practice that you can use. It's a really fun interview. I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, here is Justin Bereda. Justin, welcome to the show. Hey, how's it going, Tim? It's going well. I appreciate you making the time. And as a longtime fan, I appreciate you making the music, first and foremost. Oh yeah, it's my pleasure to be here.

I'm a huge fan of all the 4-Hour Empire as well, so it's an honor to get to talk to you. And I know we initially connected via Twitter, I think it was, is how we came in contact. Is that how the pieces came together? Yeah, I think so. I think you had posted something on Soundtracking, which is an app that we both used. And I started following on there. And then we just kind of just started chatting from there. That had to be a year or two ago.

Yeah, yeah, it probably was. And then I've continued as a consumer of music. And now we finally have a chance to dig into the music. So the first question I really wanted to ask you is what you are world class at or what your closest friends or associates or band members consider you world class at? That's a good question. You know, I think that we're known to perform crazy intense and perform and produce really crazy intense cinematic music. We're kind of often in our own category. And we're also known for being a very DIY operation. We do almost everything ourselves. We have, uh, we, and we own our own label and we have a very close relationship with our fans. So the, how does the closeness with the fans manifest itself? What, and, and what has led to that? Well, you know, the funny thing about, I mean, because your fans are, are diehard. I mean, really, really diehard, which I appreciate.

Absolutely. So how did that happen? What do you think are the factors? I think one of the interesting things about building something that's very DIY is it's been a very, very slow burn for us. We've been at this for a while. I think the very first Glitch Mob show just the other day... by the way, I should mention Glitch Mob is myself, two other guys, Edit and Uwa, names Ed and Josh, who are also in the group. And when we got our start,

Josh found the very first mixtape from us in, I think it was 2006, the other day when he was cleaning out his house. So it's been a long process for us. Right out of the gates, we were interacting with our fans. This is going to date me, but this was back in the days of MySpace. On our mixtape, it said myspace.com slash the glitch mob. Right away, what we would do is, when we first started playing shows, we would finish every show, and we would take a stack of CDs and hand them out to people. And we continued that tradition. And in fact, we still kind of do

that. So it was baked into our DNA from day one to have a very hand-to-hand, face-to-face interaction with people. And we've kind of continued that ethos through into the era of Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram and everything where we have a very close personal relationship. People, there's people we've known and we've been touring for quite a while now. And we actually also have a group of very ultra diehard fans that are in a sort of a forum called the mob and we meet up with them before every show and after the show and we have you know we do fun projects and stuff like that so so for us we also get a lot of a lot of feedback back from them when we very first started doing this it it was it was us we were making these more more dance floor centric tracks and i think the

the more we started to realize how much music has the ability to affect people and we started to get these stories about back from people about our music being a part of their lives in some way we started to take everything really very seriously because we have such a close relationship with people people they have the the logo tattooed in their body which is the first time we saw that we thought wow this is someone who took the time to get the logo tattooed on their body which we all have tattoos and our manager does too so we take we take everything very seriously and we take the power of music um to be very serious it's it's something that's very important to us and uh i mean one the stories, of course, that really struck me was the Grant Corgan story. It was a snowmobile.

After a snowmobile accident, was, I guess, basically diagnosed as potentially never walking again. And fast forward, after listening to the glitch mob and PT and interacting with you guys, planted a glitch mob flag at the South Pole after, I guess, traveling the majority of the way in a push sled and then walking the last, whether it was a hundred feet or a hundred yards, I don't recall, but just such an incredible story. How did that change you guys? And of course, I'm going to

come back to the origin story and ask more questions. But how did that change, if it did, your creative process or how you think about your craft after that type of story comes to you? Yeah, I mean, it absolutely did. And that was something that really, I'd say, got into the DNA we do you know i i think that when we really realized and when we so when we first met grant actually a friend of his had emailed us and and this is i think this is also part of us being really tapped into what people say is that i mean this this email could have gone away you know but we we pay attention to important emails like this. And someone had emailed and said, hey, look, my friend got in a really bad accident

and he's never going to walk again. And he loves your music, so anything you can do to cheer him up. And so we said, obviously. So we had someone on our team send him a bunch of stuff, just like we signed some drumsticks and some CDs and everything. And then we just got a friendship going with him from there.

And then he showed up at one of our shows in Reno, and he was on crutches. And he said, thank you guys for being there so much. And then he came to actually he came out to our show. We played at Red Rocks. And when he showed us that video, or the picture

of him at the South Pole, I mean, we all were actually moved to tears. It was a fantastic moment and I think that was something when we realized that music really does have the power to transcend or maybe it was, you know, I also feel like it's a, Grant is an amazing guy as is and the fact that he could do that the fact that we even

helped kind of nudge him along and i think that's also along with his friends and families and we played a part in that it really made us take everything very very seriously now i think it's easy to be cynical these days about everything um you know and and music in particular but we you know it's it's a very very serious thing to us no it's a very powerful powerful art form and i was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about just the interspecies differences and similarities related to beat and music and and just trying to determine uh obviously outside of music theory but what what itch does music scratch for human beings? It's such a fascinating question for me. It's so fascinating. Have you read this book called This Is Your Brain on Music?

I have not. I can't recommend that enough. It's by this guy named Daniel Levitin, and he really digs into that whole question, and it gets deep into neuroscience. But it is a really fascinating thing. And he goes into the evolutionary thinking behind why music does what it does. It's almost too much for me to even get into here. I can't say I fully understand a lot of the neuroscience, but it's really interesting. Awesome. And I wanted to just talk about or ask you about really what makes the Glitch Mob unique and different. Because there are obviously so many bands out there. There's so much noise. There's so many people and bands clamoring for attention. but you've you've hit a point where i was watching this video of uh correct me if i'm wrong here but i think it was 90 000 people in a in quebec and you know what is it that well number one actually i'm bouncing around a little bit but what does it feel like to be on stage in front of 90 000 people is there anything you can compare it to um you know actually it's a really

hard feeling to describe and the only the only way thing i can liken it to is skydiving have you tried skydiving before i have so you know the feeling with skydiving where you jump out of the airplane and it's it's so crazy you almost aren't even scared it's so fucking surreal you're like wow okay i'm just experiencing this right now. Right. Yes, I do. That's kind of the feeling of being on a stage like that is it's so surreal. And it's so, there's a, there's like a terminal velocity with the amount of people that once it gets so big, it just feels like you're in a dream. It's very surreal. And it's also actually very, um, there's something really fascinating that happens

in crowds that big where you can feel even even with that many people you can feel the way that the energy of the music can affect people and as you're you're writing the ups and down and the waves of the crowd there's some sort of primal interaction that happens and with that many people it's really intense and it's also yeah it's also a very meditative experience for me. Even that show in particular, when I was up there playing, I remember thinking, almost getting a chance to listen to my music and then see everyone experiencing the music and hear it along with them and sort of getting a dose of my own medicine there. So it's a very kind of spiritual, surreal of my own medicine there. So it's a very, uh, kind of spiritual, um, surreal experience to be up there. Well, it has to be some type of communion. I mean, it's, it's, uh, having done some experimentation in the, for lack of a better term, spiritual realm,

which we can get into the pharmacology of another time. But, uh, the, the, but that energetic transmission, that interaction is, from my just empirical experience at least, absolutely real. So I cannot even imagine being the focal point of 90,000 human beings. It just must be transcendental almost on some level. Absolutely. Now, you did send me an email, and we've corresponded, of course, and you mentioned a few things. And you said that these are all interesting because not only are we indie, but we're artist-owned. And I wanted you to elaborate on that because I'm not familiar with the music industry. I'm an avid listener of music.

But what do those two terms mean? And just to provide some context for people, and I'm reading from Wikipedia here, but the sophomore Glitch Mob album, Love, Death, Immortality, debuted at number one on the Billboard Dance Electronic Songs chart. Now, that sounds like a pretty big deal. And I would imagine it is, right? Yeah, I think, I you know in a way it is and in a way it's not i mean i guess you know to be quite honest we don't pay too much attention to the charting and it's all i mean it's nice to be recognized for for what you do and i think i'm um you know it's funny because we're kind of like the oddballs of the electronic music or EDM world.

And just a kind of a side note, I don't totally use those terms interchangeably. I was actually getting a chance to come on this podcast, made me kind of think about this. Because just for me personally, when I think of electronic music it's just music and edm is music plus industry plus apps plus festivals and uh spotify everything into one so kind of consider them to be two separate things but um that aside um you know the the whole thing with with the difference between an independent and a major and an um an artist-owned label so when we when we first dropped our album and it did well it hit number one on that electronic chart and i made it to number 13 in the top 20 which is pretty crazy actually because when you look at a lot of those the albums that were the top 20 in that point in

time it was people like katie perry or eric church who's this country guy and a lot of the albums that were the top 20 in that point in time, it was people like Katy Perry or Eric Church, who's this country guy. And a lot of these people are on major labels. So those are the equivalent of big, massive companies. These labels are huge. Something like Interscope is a very big company. So then you have an independent label, which is a much smaller company, potentially, that is owned and not backed by this effective, huge corporation. And then you have an artist-owned label, which means that we actually do everything. So we provide all of these things together.

So it's a very in-house operation. So you have, now your operations are not, at least the performances are real productions. I mean, this is not. So I would imagine you have had to wear, and you guys have all had to wear a lot of hats. What is your team currently look like? Yeah, absolutely. We've had, and I think that's also part of our ethos and everything that has gotten us to where we are today is actually the wearing of multiple hats. And we all have our own specific things that we're good at.

There was a point in time when we very first got this thing going where we actually built our own light show. Josh and I went to Home Depot and we were hammering and sawing lights outside of Ed's house while he was inside mixing down some audio. And I mean, we're very, very DIY. We schlepped this thing in a UL trailer around the country. And, you know, it's the fact today

that we actually have a team of people around us that can help. And actually, people that are better than us at what we do, that was a big moment for us, you know, because we actually would, you know, we mix and master our own music. Actually, well, the last albums we've had other people do the mastering. But, you know, we produce, we record, we do all the music stuff ourselves. We had actually built the stage show ourself. We programmed it. We programmed the lights.

We bought the lights. So we kind of did everything. And so fast forward to now, we have a team of people that are really experts at what they do. So for instance, for the live show, there's a guy named Martin Phillips. And Martin Phillips is a specific stage show designer. That's what he does. So he meets with an artist,

and he's kind of like a creative director type guy where he can hear the music, and then we collaborate with him with a bunch of other people to basically create the this the light the light um the stage show which was called the blade um so there's a guy a guy named matt who matt davis who's the programmer so he's an expert level stage design programmer i mean this guy is he's he's one of our dearest friends he's just he's the best. And he basically programs all of the under-the-hood stuff that makes the Blade tick. And so when we go out on tour, there's about 14 to 15 people total to make the show happen.

Got it. And how many of those people are full-time with you guys? Or are the core three of you the are full-time with you guys or are the is is the core three are the core three of you the only full-time so the only full-time people so yeah so there's us obviously we have a manager um kevin wolf who has been with us since when since day one and um our booking agent who takes care of all the live shows named steve and he's also been with us since day one. And then there's a tour manager who manages everything that happens out on the road and to make everything else happen. So those are the main full-time people. And then we have someone who does all of the social media strategy and stuff. And we actually do all the posting and tweeting and Instagramming

ourselves, but there's someone who deals with all the nuts and bolts of the internet side of things. this. When you're in the studio, as it sounds like you are now, what is the software that you use on a daily or weekly basis? What are the tools that you guys use? So right now, we base everything on this program called Ableton. And it's a very ubiquitous program these days. I think most people are starting to produce on it. And we've actually been around the block on everything. I mean, we've used, for the audio nerds out there. I mean, we started with Pro Tools and we moved to Cubase and then we've done Logic. So we've tried everything. And Ed used to have tons of outboard gear. So the... What is outboard gear? So right now, the term is called in the box, which means everything is done in the computer.

Like our studio, it's just a monitor, keyboard, and an actual piano keyboard for playing notes. And then some studios have tons of gear that lives on the outside of the computer. So there's compressors and EQs and a lot of tools that are these custom boxes that cost thousands of dollars that are really high-end stuff. Now that the technology is getting more and more powerful, we actually sold everything outboard and moved in the box so that we could actually travel. And it's arguable.

It's funny because the funny because like the analog digital argument permeates um music in all sorts of different ways and even in the sort of you know there's people who are vinyl purists or people who like to listen to spotify because it's it's easier say it's the same thing in their production side there's some people that think that analog is the way to get the best quality sound and we're not not really arguing that, but it's a lot easier because also we have a distributed studio. So our toolbox is Ableton, a handful of plugins, and then everything is synced on Dropbox. So that way we can have sessions open in all different machines. And then we use these plugins called Universal Audio that actually emulate all the outboard gear that you could buy.

Very cool. And on the road, does that change at all? Or aside from the actual blade and so on, does the actual music production side of things change much when you're performing? Or are you still working off of primarily laptops with Ableton? So it does change entirely, actually. But the Ableton software stays the same. And that's the benefit of the way that Ableton is put together is that it's actually a production and a performance suite all in one. So we write everything in Ableton

and then because we're all basically synced up and everything is very modular, then there's a system that drives the blade and that's the thing that Matt has programmed and we call it Lil' Kim. And it's this... Why do you call it little kim because we just we just needed a name for it and it's this big just gnarly pile of computers and boxes and wires and ed just said let's call it little kim um so it's a mac pro and then it has two Mac Minis in there, and the Mac Minis actually do all the MIDI routing for the Blade. And then there's another laptop, which is a backup system.

So if the Mac Pro dies, we have a button, there's a big red button that will switch, because when you're playing these huge crowds, you have to have layers of redundancy. So we have many, many different layers of redundancy. But yeah, Lil' Kim, it's still based on Ableton, but we moved the entire thing to a more beefy and robust system. And then there's a lot of audio that comes out. And this is actually something that does separate us from, I would say, 99% of other electronic artists out there, is that we split out our audio like a typical band. And what that means is like, let's say you go see a rock band play. There's a guy playing bass, there's a guy playing drums and vocals. And then there's someone who's at the front of house,

which is the sound booth up front, who's mixing all these together to fit the sound of the room and get the optimal sound. Now, when you go see most DJs play, they're playing music that's already been mixed together. So it's just one track, and there's not a whole lot that he can do. So we actually are a hybrid of the live rock world and then the electronic world, in that we actually send out kick, snare, and all the different elements of the sound

to come out so that our sound engineer can really tweak and get the most optimal sound for each room we play in. That's very cool. And the kick is the bass drum. Exactly, yeah. Got it. And just to rewind for a second, what is mastering exactly? So mastering, so let's say we finish our album. I'll give you a real example. We finished writing Love, Death, and Mortality after two years of writing it. And mastering is the process of taking it from being an unfinished product to basically a finished listening product that you would buy in a CD or something. And there's stuff that happens. A lot of it has to do with evening out

levels or changing the quality of the sound. There's certain things that have to happen to have it be on a recorded medium. And it changes depending on what music it is. But it's really just the finishing process. That the last

final thing that makes music all sound consistent. Or for instance, you know, let's say some of the, like one song is quieter than the other. Well, the mastering engineer, who's not us, would go through and tweak everything just a little bit so that it gets to be a consistent listen. And then the bass and the treble and everything is matched throughout it, the record. Got it. And I know I'm bouncing around here with ableton so ableton has come up a few times for me recently and one of the contexts which i was surprised by is that not that i have any right to be surprised because i know nothing about this stuff but

ira glass of this american life uses ableton for his performances when he does speeches and wants to layer in audio and so on. Oh, wow. If you were to create a podcast yourself, would you use Ableton for that? Or would that be overkill? No, I would. I would use Ableton. I mean, I guess it's hard to not be biased because I use it all day, every day. But I actually think that you can do some really complex and interesting stuff with it,

or you can do really, really basic stuff. I mean, actually, Ableton's a program that comes up a lot. Because the learning curve is not too bad. For instance, a friend of mine just had his girlfriend's 12- or 13-year-old little brother wanted to learn to DJ and produce. You would give a beginner, give him Ableton. Really? Yeah, absolutely. So it's easier than Pro Tools, for instance?

100%, yeah. Okay. It's not too hard to learn in the grand scheme of things. So I'm at a point where I'm interested in audio. I would, not that I plan on doing it everything myself, but I'd like to have a fundamental set of audio editing skills because I find it interesting. If I'm starting from scratch and I'm trying to choose from GarageBand, Audacity, Pro Tools, Ableton,

and I'm starting from ground zero, so I have no training in any of them. Ableton would be your recommendation? Yeah, I would say so. Also, because Ableton is so robust and it's used so widely, you get the benefit of people like us hammering on it. And so, for instance, Ableton has a very reliable crash feature. So if the program crashes, it saves your undo history. So that means that it will pick up.

So you won't lose a whole lot if it crashes. And other programs have that. But because it's a very living, breathing piece of software and it's used so much by the community, I think that it's really the right way to go. And the stuff that they're doing with it over the next couple of years, I think it's going to be really crazy. And it's worth the time to figure it out.

And also, you can do all sorts of other crazy stuff with it. But even for the really basic things, I mean, yeah, even for instance, you know, there's progress. It's arguable. Some people will tell you that Pro Tools and Logic are more robust and powerful in what they can do. And that might be true. However, I would say that Ableton, you get the most bang for your buck. I mean, we didn't choose it because it's the absolute best and most complex Swiss Army knife. It's actually the fastest way to get things done.

Cool. Okay. No, say no more. That's a great, that's a, that's a great way to convince me. Sold. Uh, I, I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about, uh, the, the commercial success that you've had, because I find it so fascinating and encouraging that you are artist owned, very DIY, yet you have, you've, your music shows up all over the place. I mean, it's, I remember you sent me a number of links, some of, some of which I had, I had seen before, whether it's Sin City 2, Edge of Tomorrow, Captain America, Spider-Man, and just the list just goes on and on and on and on and on. How, how did you as this, this artist owned upstart, and I should, I suppose ask, have you always been artist owned? So maybe you can answer that too, but how, how have you

ended up getting into these massive motion pictures, for instance? Yeah, well, and we all, we have always been artist owned. Yeah, absolutely. and we all we have always been artists on the absolutely, you know, just to jump around one, one little bit here, I think that, you know, the part of our whole genesis was really just out of the love of music. You know, when we first started in 2006, in 2007, we started doing this, you would never say, I'm going to be a producer because I want to be rich or famous or even cool. In fact, at that point in time, electronic music was relegated to raves. It just wasn't even anywhere fucking close to mainstream culture, which now it is.

So it was funny. I even remember doing interviews at at that when we very first getting some traction people saying what do you make we're kind of like oh you know electronic music because it was rock and hip-hop was really the thing so we almost had to love it because it felt like there was that's just what we were doing we were just kind of the oddballs of music and that's cool because we just like to do what we do and And we are fascinated with, there's a really interesting merger between technology and artistry, which is part of the whole thing.

It was sort of like we're tech guys and tech fans. And at the same time, we also like the art of music. So for us, it was really a passion project. Like none of us ever decided to say, you know what, let's make a band. We're going to call the Glitch Mob and we're going to do this. It just kind of happened.

So that said, that's always how we've done things. And when we started making, when we wrote our first full-length album, Drink the Sea, before that we were making, I would say, more dance floor tracks that had a more hip-hop swag kind of, it was more cut-up hip-hop style kind of um it was really like more more cut up hip-hop style stuff where it was just more dance floor music and so we made drink the sea people expected us to do that and we took a left turn and we all were having a you know we were all difficult we had a difficult moment in life and drink the sea for us became it was funny we all collectively were

like having a sad about something like breakups and heartbreak. And so we said, you know what, fuck what people expect us to do. We're just going to make this thing. That was a very cathartic record for us. And it was a very personal record. And we didn't play that for anybody. You know, we didn't play it for our managers. We didn't play it for our friends. We just basically disappeared for a year. And was that what uh that was that was like 2009 2010 i think is when i came out okay um and i think i think it was 2010 drink the sea came out um so so that said it we had no particular intention with that we about how it would be received or anything. It was very like a diary piece for us.

It was a very introspective record. And the interesting thing is that the commercial success or the superhero movies that started to glom onto it just happened naturally. We never intended for that to happen. I think we didn't even understand why. We said, oh, wow, this is really cool. We also just happened to like superhero movies, so it was a really cool thing. Were you a comic book nerd growing up or no? No, I wasn't a comic

book nerd, but I was definitely into Transformers. And I don't say that in a derogatory way since I have like... I was a major comic book nerd, but I was definitely into Transformers. And I don't say that in a derogatory way since I have like, I was a major comic book nerd. No, I, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't, I never really got into, I had the Ren and Stimpy comic. That was the only one I really had. I loved Ren and Stimpy. I was really into horror movies and, and, um, and, uh, Stephen King. I was read a lot of Stephen King books growing up and stuff like that. But, but yeah, but, um, you know, we, but I guess we never really just intended for that to happen. I actually didn't understand why these movies were choosing our music to use.

And I think there's something inherently cinematic about our music. And something else that I learned later in time was that it was about the dramatic changes in tonality that happened, which is something that we did naturally. So one of our songs, we'll start off with an emotion, and we'll say, okay, now this feels eerie and ethereal. And then boom, it switches to zombie attack mode, and then it becomes really violent, and then back. So we play with emotions texturally like that.

And that was just more of an explorative phase for us. Are there any particular songs or tracks that, that exemplify that, that, that people should listen to? I can, I can actually play you something right here. That'd be great.

Let's see. So I'm going to play, this is a track called Animus Fox off of our very first album We'll be right back. Thank you. there you go so you can kind of get the idea of that something felt very tense and you didn't really know what's going to happen and then it goes and switches right there right no i mean that's it's kind of and i mean this in the most positive way, sort of screams movie preview, right? Absolutely.

Because you need that sort of tension, build up, shock, curiosity, and then go see the movie, right? Yeah. Now tell me, I'd love for you to tell me a story of the first movie that you considered a real movie to reach out to you guys? Like, how did that happen? What was the email? What was the phone call?

Did you guys believe it? You know, tell me a story of one of those. I'll tell you one that sticks out. And that was actually the Sin City 2 trailer. And that one was special because I love Sin City. And the funny thing was that we were talking about making a video for Can't Kill Us. And that's the song that's in that video. So we had a visual.

So they're like, hey, no problem. We'll make a $20 million trailer for you. Yeah, exactly. And apparently Robert Rodriguez, who I'm a huge fan of. I love Machete and I love his whole thing and Grindhouse. trailer for you yeah exactly and and apparently robert rodriguez who i'm a huge fan of i love machete and i love the whole of his his whole thing and grindhouse um and so when he said hey we want we want to use this song for the trailer i was like well we don't have to make a music video you know it's just it's just the most badass thing possible and and a lot of the times um

they will with the people who cut movie trailers, who are actually, in general, the people who make movie trailers are a separate, and I'm not an expert on this by any means, but this is from what I understand, is the people who make movie trailers are different from the people who make the movie. Especially in these big companies, but it's different with Robert Rodriguez. So he actually does everything himself. He's kind of like us. So he actually chose the song, he found it, and then he stuck it in there. And I think that song, Can't Kill Us, it was for us, it was just pure, distilled badassery.

And the fact that that ended up in that movie, I was like, really? Are you actually, is that going to happen? I couldn't even believe. Doesn't hurt having Jessica Alba in there either. No, that moment did not suck. So did Robert Rodriguez just email like info at the glitch.com or like, give me some details here. So there's a company that basically serves as an agent for licensing and everything like that. So

they're called Zync and they're from Los Angeles, and they basically have our music, and they have relationships with people in the film and TV world who I actually don't know a whole lot about, aside from just making the music and my minimal access to that. So then I think the way it works is that the people in the licensing world have... So if you're Robert Rodriguez and you're cutting a trailer, you put a call out and maybe your producer will get basically demos

or a bunch of different companies will submit ideas for what this might be. And they'll put in what they'll call a temp track which is something that is it has a general feel of what you might want um and you know every now and again that doesn't happen like that actually you know sometimes there's a be there'll be a director who i mean i don't know i mean you know he might have heard the album and just said oh that's it i actually don't even really know but when we got that email, I kind of lost my shit. And how does someone like Robert Rodriguez find, I'm looking at your website right now, theglitchmob.com. How does someone find Zync, for instance? Do they go to some music-specific IMDB

and then search for your band and find the contact info for Zync? Or how does someone for the and i ask partially because uh not too long ago and i love your timeline by the way for your band because if you look at your like 2006 2007 and then you have 2010 for the for the for the first album it it matches my first book and second book. And I remember doing a trailer for our body, and I just wanted from the very beginning in my head, I had Splinter, this track from Seven Dust in my head, and I wanted to license it. And with a larger label now, suffice to say, I was like, cool, just reach out to the band, get the okay, no problem. And it was the most complicated quagmire of an experience. It's like, oh, wait, no, there's 17 people. This isn't true with Splinter, but you look at some songs, it's like, no, there's 17 people who own it, but then there's 17 people who wrote it. And then there's 17 more people who you need to get permission from. And I was like,

oh, my God, this is really complicated. So it would be really nice to just reach out to, for instance, an agency or figure out it was hard just for me to figure out who owned what um so how does someone find the zinc agency and then reach out to them about your music for instance well the interesting thing and that this kind of actually goes back to being artist owned is that we're very small and a nimble organization um because there's not that's part of the the thing when that's that clusterfuck experience you had that's exactly what it was yeah yeah it's it's and now in fairness just because i don't want to uh i want to give them full credit um the the seven

dust guys are total sweethearts and were awesome it It had nothing to do with them not wanting it to happen. And it did end up happening, which was very generous of them. But it was just on the label side. So not to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure I said that. Of course. I think that's important to say. And a lot of the times bands on labels don't know what their managers are doing to represent them. Or sometimes it's hard to get a hold of them. i just think that actually there's i know people that work at

labels there's a lot of super brilliant amazing people who work at labels but i think institutionally there it's just it's it's it's a difficult way to get things done when you have to telephone anything through 17 people to get a yes or no it's just it's just complex um but for us yeah i mean our manager our manager kevin for instance i mean the way a lot of this stuff comes in um we'll go straight through through him um and you know he's really the fourth member we call him a manager but he's just like one of our best friends and he's really he's like the the fourth member of the band and so a lot of this stuff comes in that and i I think because, I mean, I can't speak for other people, but yeah, I mean, we are,

I would say he reads most emails that come in and people, like sometimes people will tweet us and I actually read all the Twitter posts and so do the other guys. And so between all that, we have a, we keep our ear to the ground as far as what's going on. But you can you can also check out zinc it's like z y and c music cool no i i'm just so fascinated by the inner workings of all this because la and music in general it's just like one big labyrinthine

if that's the right word it's just this this huge uh mystery to me in so many ways uh it is you know i must say that it is to me too and i and i i have to say to take everything i say with a grain of salt because i actually don't think that i know that much about the music industry i because we're so strange i actually don't i think that i'm really the glitch mob is kind of the edge case here so no that's what this podcast is all about though studying the edge cases no i i'm so that glitch mob is kind of the edge case here. So that's what this podcast is all about though. Studying the edge cases. No, I am. So that's, that's part of the reason I really wanted to, to chat with you guys.

And so just to, to, to rewind to Sin City 2 for a second, was that the lead domino that triggered the other movies or, well, let me ask you maybe a slightly different question. So, and I apologize, I'm blanking your manager's name, the fourth member, Kevin, well, let me ask you maybe a slightly different question. So, and I apologize, I'm blanking your manager's name, the fourth member, uh, Kevin, Kevin, what is Kevin's superpower? What is he, what is he, what is he world-class at Kevin? We, it's funny. We, we joke about him, but we call him the Buddha and he, he is someone that in a world that is it's in it's in it's a it's a complex um it can be a very stressful very last minute high demand world um kevin as so what he does and what and i i gotta say that a huge portion of of glitch mob success comes back to kevin and obviously it's a it's a team effort

because the music is really first and foremost. But something that he's always pushed us to do is just to do us. And there's been times where he's never asked to hear our music or he's never pushed us in a certain direction because he just wants to foster what's been our natural voice this whole time. And some managers would say, okay, maybe this thing is cool right now. You should do that. Maybe that thing is cool. You should do that. And he's always allowed us to just and really helped us just do us.

And I think that part of that whole process is that he helps us, helps navigate and insulate us from a lot of the bullshit that can happen. Because ultimately, the creative process for us can be long. It can be fragile. It can be difficult. And he basically is there to let us do what we need to do to focus on music and just write good songs. Because like you said, the music industry is a really complex, crazy place. But when you really boil it

down aside from you know all the in the industry side of things i i'm just here to make music and we are here for that primal connection we were talking about that music provides between between people so he helps to um to create that dynamic. Very cool. And maybe you could tell me about an internal debate. You don't have to name names, but I'm really curious to know, you've had this success, which I hope will continue on an upward trajectory.

That creative process, in the beginning, it's just you and a couple of guys in the beginning, you, it's just you and a couple of guys in a room making music, right? It's, it's all the things in your head that you're, that you're bouncing back and forth at a point. There's a lot of inbound.

There's a lot of feedback from fans. There's a lot of feedback from, um, hosts, a host, uh, just multitudes of people. How do you, how do you guys resolve the the external

pressures with the the sort of silence and void necessary to do good creative work i think that um well it's it's definitely having being so plugged in is a double-edged sword because i think that if you are plugged in to a certain extent you're going to internalize some of the stuff that that comes your way no matter what um i i think ultimately for us the having three of us helps for one thing the fact that there are there we think three of us helps, for one thing. The fact that we have three of us to check each other, and it's a very ping-pong-style creative process that by the time it bounces off all three of us,

the average of our own creative worlds is just kind of glitch mob. And I think we have a very small trusted committee of people. And to be quite honest, I don't actually think we take anyone else's feedback. Even the very small committee of people, we really just listen to ourselves. And even if someone who we really trust is saying, you know, I don't like this or I don't like that,

then we still just have to follow what has gotten us to this point. And that is our own intuition and our own creative sensibility and really telling our own story about what that might be in a particular moment. And whatever that might be, we have ended up being the type of artist that can kind of go many different directions. I think some artists make similar albums and say the same thing um not not not the same thing but i guess you know textually speaking actually some of my

favorite artists for instance i don't know if you've heard this group called uh boards of canada i have not they're they're boards b-o-a-r-d-s yeah it's very um droney beautiful um music and their albums for me are it's almost like a familiar old friend that i can revisit over and over again and they have this this sort of one world they put you in and we've ended up being um and that that's just kind of their their dna um and for us we like to keep it exciting for ourselves and change things up. And that's just really part of our process. And following that intuition, I think, has kept everything true. And really not listening to what people say or what might be cool.

And that's kind of also how we end up being the quote-unquote oddballs of the current electronic music industries. We don't really pay a whole lot of attention to what our peers and contemporaries are doing. Yeah. When you're chasing what's cool, it's already too late. You know what I mean? Exactly. You're going to paddle like hell and you're going to be 20 feet behind the wave. Exactly. But I'm curious to talk a little bit more about this committee because i don't ask uh i ask for input but i'm very selective about the type of input that i let through

yeah into the process and i'm curious to hear how you solicit feedback what you ask for because for example in my writing uh before I ask anyone to tell me what they like or don't like, I ask them to read through a draft and just indicate what is unclear or what is confusing. And that depersonalizes it. And you get more of a consensus also. If I have five people read it and they all flag a couple of areas as unclear, it means those need to change. I won't debate that. That's a poor job on my part. What type of feedback or how do you solicit feedback? um i i think there's something about music that is about intuition right it's like it's it's about getting your brain out of the way and so this is a funny thing happens where i'll play it let's say for my mom or for a friend who doesn't have to be happen to be a musician and in a lot of times will i'll value that sort of feedback feedback tremendously in this sense because people will say something like, you know, I'm not a producer, but the song to me feels like X, Y, or Z. And for me, it's a more pure response. And I just want to hear how it makes people feel or what the very first thought that comes to them versus someone who's a producer friend of ours who might be there to who's going to zoom in on the details

right so i'm really looking for just a general feeling or what what is the song you listen to what what sort of images does this does this bring up and i wouldn't say we're really prone to changing stuff too much although with the last record we had recorded all these vocals and we actually wrote all of the lyrics and all the melodies so there's a point where we thought this record was just about done and we had said you know what we're gonna do this because we want to try our hand at it and there was just something not right about it there's it's hard to put your finger on when you listen to a song. It's such an interesting mixture between technical

and intuitive, but when we play these songs, there's just something that wasn't quite right. And I think at that point, that's when we go play it to someone else to almost confirm or deny what it is I feel. I wouldn't say, does this sound bad to you? I would just play it for someone. They're like, yeah, I don't know.

It kind of sucks. It's okay, Chris. So we actually had sound bad to you i would just play it for someone like yeah i don't know it's kind of sucks so okay so we actually had an entirely different record done we had vocals that we wrote and recorded and we deleted everything and that's why some of these songs ended up having two 300 revisions so we we had the a tour booked in september of 2013 and we had all this stuff pending on that. And then we canceled all that because we said, you know what? The album's not good enough. And then what we ended up doing, and all the songs you hear now

were done in an entirely different process, which was that we gave the song to a professional vocalist and lyricist whose that's what they do. And we just let them, let them run with it and, and, and be themselves. And we realized that at least at this point in time, that writing lyrics and melodies is not our forte.

So all the, all the, um, the lyrics you hear now we're done in this way. Got it. And what, when you're in the studio and you don't have a semi finished product, right? You're, you're in the studio and you don't have a semi-finished product, right?

You're starting from scratch. What does a day in the studio look like when you are trying to work on a track that is nothing? So the way we're working and, you know, our process changes so much. I'll speak to what's happening right now. We're actually in the studio at the moment. I'll be heading over there after we hop off this call. But what we've done is we take some time in our solo studios and we write what we call sketches. So we have a very basic palette of instruments. It's just like, it's almost as if you were painting and you just had three colors or even

just a pencil, like what can you do with this so it's focusing on the structure the feeling the the overall picture of the song so ed and josh and i all went to our own studios and wrote about five sketches each over the course of a week and by sketches you mean uh you were all independently djs before the band was formed is that right correct yeah and we have we're all producers djs on our own got it so you're creating that uh and again i'm not from the music world but in the same way that say a the neptunes might create a beat that someone would listen to to lay their music on top of you guys are all creating those that type of framework uh of sounds and that's the sketch got it yeah yeah absolutely yeah it's like something so like you know we would all be in our own individual studios and create create a sketch that's just

a really basic and the reason it's a sketch is that it's just um when you have instruments that don't sound glossy and super complete it's just like a basic piano patch very very basic drums you can really focusing on the songwriting itself and so it's it's just it almost sounds like like a demo from garage band or something like it's really crappy if you heard our sketches you'd think wow really like that's that's what that's what the song started as oh man we that might we might have to get that as a podcast bonus is a sketch versus finished product would be amazing actually i have some of those loaded up oh do you oh my god i would love can we listen to a sketch and then the finished product for

something yeah you know what let's let's do it actually and but while while we're here we should we should jump in really quick yeah uh i you know this is funny so no one else has ever heard these before outside of the glitch mom so i thought this would this would be actually a perfect opportunity to to illustrate the difference between both of them so um this is a song on a new record called um our demons and this is this is about two years of and about 300 um revisions in between these two so here's the first one that we wrote out, and we moved to Joshua Tree in the desert, and we lived there for a month to write music, and this is the very first one, version six. Outro Music Okay, so that's a sketch. And then here's the completed version.

Version 394 so that's version 394. Yes. God, it's like my blog posts. No, I love that, though, because I've interviewed so many people on the podcast, and if you look at the top performers, and correct me if this isn't the case, but there's a very significant degree of just obsessive perfectionism oh yeah required to to get to the point where you create something that has any degree of sort of pop and longevity uh yeah absolutely and there's there's a really i

mean and it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to have to be that way for us i think that but the the attention to i mean the attention to detail is really it's just microscopic and i think that that really it goes back to caring about and the funny thing is that it's not for anyone else either it's like you just have to know that every every punctuation point is there and that you know everything is just right what do you do the and i don't know if i should call them sound songs or tracks my vocabulary for music is off what do you prefer to call songs um i actually kind of use them interchangeably okay so what are your most the songs that have had the the the widest appeal that have ended up most popular what do they have in common if anything whether that's the actual in the the end product or in

the process that goes into it or otherwise um there's there's two there's two kind of points to that that are really interesting so um i would say one of our most popular songs and i've thought about this a lot and one of our most popular songs is fortune days um and the the interesting thing that that happens with this um this is a funny side note because i actually have the the sketch loaded up right here if you want to oh yeah yeah yeah i'll play it right for you right after this but um so when we work on songs we have working titles so when we make a sketch we just write something just some whatever that's like kind of on our moment on our mind at the time there's a really funny working titles for all these songs so fortune days used to be called something's about

to happen because it feels like there's something it's just tense i don't know something's about to happen to their songs like the that are there's another one called Yacht Sex or Super Bangin' Tracks. It's like kind of just ridiculous, funny stuff. So Fortune Day, something's about to happen. When we wrote that song, which ended up being one of our biggest tracks, and it's the same with our other ones,

are the ones that we didn't expect to be the biggest tracks. This was not the lead-off single or anything. It just took on a life of its own. expect to be the biggest tracks. This was not the lead-off single or anything. It just took on a life of its own. And so it's the same thing happened with Love, Death, and Mortality. The ones that we thought were gonna be okay this is definitely gonna be the one that takes hold absolutely was not. And in fact Can't Kill Us which we wrote the whole, which ended up being the one on Sin City and the one that was, if you look on Spotify, it's our most played track from that record.

And it's the video on YouTube and everything. Can't Kill Us. Obviously, Can't Kill Us, yeah. That one obviously resonated with many people. But again, that was the one that we didn't think was going to be. We were like, let's just write one just really kind of weird, off-the-cuff, badass song. But for us, that was us just letting go a little bit and running with something that we didn't really care if it had any sort of resonance with with people i love it so fortune days one of the most popular tracks from the glitch mob you have the draft yeah sketch i'd love to hear the sketch and the and the finished product or or the later draft totally yeah no one else has ever heard this so

it's just you and i here tim just us just the two of us. Thank you. okay so kind of get that vibe so then i'll play just a little clip of the finished version. Which version was that? That was, it doesn't have the song number in there, but that's July 2009. Okay, got it. So that was probably about, we finished the album in winter. So that was about six months. Thank you. very cool so yeah i think that um you know only consistent thing that shows Very cool. So yeah, I think that the only consistent thing that shows the songs that resonate with people are the ones that we're never going to be able to tell. So I've just given up trying to figure that out and just kind of make more music. It's kind of like the Costanza principle.

He's like, Jerry, I figured it out. I just need to do the opposite of everything that I think I should do and it'll be perfect it's like you're right you just have to change all the tracks that you you do for yourself that you care the least about or that you do for the hell of it end up being the ones that pop it's funny how how consistent that is even with my writing also you know i'll put and i have an attention to detail in both cases, but I'll put so much effort into something I'm sure from the very outset is going to be a huge hit and it'll just fall completely flat. And then I'll just kind of vomit something out that, that has a lot of emotion in it. And that rawness, I, I suppose just clicks and it's, it's, it's depressing or really,

uh, uh, you know, encouraging depending on how you look at it, because, you know, I'll, I'll do these things very quickly that pop and do very well. Like this recent blog post on, uh, what my morning journal looks like. And I think it's just called what my morning journal looks like, which took me a half hour or maybe an hour to, to get out. And then there are other posts I spent 30 hours on and it's crickets, just crickets. Wow. I would like to ask you, so is the morning journal, I was going to ask you, what is a post that you've done that you didn't think was going to do well and then resonated with a lot of people? Is that the morning journal one? That is one example.

There's another that I put up, which was, let's see, it's called something along the lines of, do you need to borrow some strength or borrow some strength today? Watch this. And it was just, it was a YouTube embed with a bit of context. And it was about, I believe that particular case is Kyle Maynard, who's this, he was born a quad amputee, but ended up being a very successful competitive wrestler, did the military, he was the first person to do the military crawl all the way up Mount Kilimanjaro. He's just an incredible guy. I've had the privilege of meeting him and spending time with him. Very short, very, very emotionally open. And, you know, it makes me wonder if that's the case with the music as well even though it's

conveyed through sound and not through words yeah i i think so and and you know that that actually just just made me um you know that what you just said right there reminded me of something so one of the people on our team uh our art director dean who helps curate all the visual aspect as we could do a whole nother episode on everything visual from the show visuals to the album cover Dean's a super old friend of mine and he designs everything for us and everything you see visually passes through him and the other day he sent me a text and he said I you have to go listen to this podcast, this radio lab show called In the Dust of This Planet. And the episode, if you haven't heard it, I implore you to go listen

to it. It's just fascinating. And the whole thing circulates around this philosopher and Nihilism. I won't go too far into it, it's a it's about kind of the the apocalyptic feeling of what's happening right now in the world and how the the what i took from it and how it resonates with the glitch mob and what he the reason why he sent it to me was that there's something about um badassery and stuff and something that and they even say that in the podcast about what is it about something that is badass that is resonating with people right now. And it ultimately has to do with music being like a force field or a shield. And when you said, can I borrow some strength? It just really made me think of actually music. And part of the reason why our music resonates with people is it's almost like in the darkness of, say,

our album cover has this samurai figure. But there's something about it that says that I've seen into the darkness, I've seen it, and I'm not afraid. And what they say in that podcast really resonated with me. And I almost see music in the same way of some of this stuff that you do of you're handing people these little tools, although maybe music is a different sort of emotional or spiritual tool. I mean, a lot of people will work out to our music. And if it helps you get out a couple more reps in your set, then I think that that's really one of the benefits that it has to offer. Definitely. Oh, yeah need to, I need to pick up, this is your brand on music as well. There's another one called musicology, I think it is, or musicophilia, one of the two. That's Oliver Sacks.

Exactly. Which I really want to dig into. And, uh, back in the day I used to take a five piece drum lessons and got into hand drumming recently, which, yeah, with the djembe and a couple of other types, which, which I'm really enjoying. And it's just a very therapeutic. Yeah. And actually, do you find, so for you, do you have a, uh, do you play any traditional instruments or have you, have you, uh, practiced any traditional instruments? Um, so the short answer is no. And I think that's kind of a funny thing. And actually, when you had tweeted this morning,

and I posted on our Facebook asking some people what they would want to talk about, and something that come up, one of the guys posted something like, how important is it for you to learn traditional instruments to perform or produce music? Yep. And none of us have any traditional music instrument training. We didn't go to music school or anything like that.

I actually can't really, I mean, I can kind of get around on a piano. I, I did go to UC Santa Cruz and I, and I studied, if you could call it that, in the electronic music program, which is more about smoking pot and playing with crazy synths, to be quite honest. But that aside, Ed and Josh both played, they can play guitar and keys just just a little bit but none of us are really that

good at playing playing instruments um although i feel like at this point i have an intuitive understanding for for music but i've come at it from a very non-traditional angle i actually came in more via technology um i'm when i very first started messing around with music. It was through computers. And we do stuff to make up for the fact that we're not really that good at... I mean, I'm just like, we can get by. And Ed's a pretty good piano player, but nothing compared to a concert pianist or someone who's classically trained. But for instance, one of the tricks we use, which actually we were using this yesterday,

and I thought this is a very Tim Ferrissian trick, is so, for instance, in Ableton, there's a plugin that allows you to transpose a scale. So what that means is that it allows us to only know one scale. So in the piano, let's say you study C major. That's just one combination of keys that all sound good together. Right. And then you use the plugin to move that around. So I actually only know one scale.

There's so many different things to know, but I play that one and then Ableton will actually translate it for me. So we- What is the name of that plugin? Do you know? It's just the Ableton pitch plugin. Got it. So there's? It's just the Ableton pitch plugin. Got it.

So there's plugins that come with an Ableton that allow you to program chords and transpose your playing around. It's basically just some shortcuts. Man, I went on a tangent there. No, no, I love tang tangents that's the whole point yeah i well i think that so so yeah so we are actually an example of people that um have had uh you know we've we've made a career but not actually fundamentally being able to perform music that well i would say well with traditional instruments So how have you found that to help you? Compared to if there are people, you know, in EDM who have traditional backgrounds, you know, how has that lack of formal schooling helped or hindered you, do you feel?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things there. So, you know, so one thing to mention is that Ed, before we were doing Glitch Mob, Ed wrote music for commercials. And I think this is an interesting piece of the whole puzzle. So the detail focus, the really hardcore detail-oriented stuff comes from Ed. And he used to write music for commercials and so what that what that looks like is let's say that you're writing a a commercial and it's it's a cheerful commercial for bubblegum and then he would have to write something that sounds like that or say that there's a a dark commercial for a new uh car that's really technological so so he for years and years he his he was basically writing jingles so he has the ability so you can say ed um we need to we need to have something that sounds this and he can actually just like piece

together something really quick and i think it kind of comes back to some kind of uh the gladwell 10 000 hour thought where ed has spent so much time just um churning out different emotions just really little short snippets of different feelings and emotions that he had that that kind of training but it's a very real world style training it was it wasn't like an actual music school and um so so that said i think you know for me um coming into it really bending the rules from right out the gates and and having that be part of the way that i see music i think has been beneficial because i didn't understand music really just i just kind of understood my own little corner of and i was just doing my

little thing and i remember when someone first explained a chord to me i was already actually like you know having a decent amount of commercial success but i didn't understand a very basic idea of music that's like what a chord is right and and you know it's the same thing like before we went to go play our very first show with our new live gear at coachella and i was up there playing drums i had never even picked up a drumstick in my entire life um which is sounds like something that that you have done i like which i actually i saw the uh episode of your show where you did that. It was a pain. Yeah, that was stress-inducing being on stage.

I'd never been in front of an audience for any type of music. Actually, I'd never performed music for anyone, whether one or two people, let alone a sold-out auditorium with an actual band. Yeah, that was stressful. But, you know, but it was euphoric at the same time. It was this very sort of pleasure pain mix. It was interesting. And once I got into the flow, it was fine, even though I feel like audiences are more forgiving. If you're transmitting the proper emotion for a few minutes they're very forgiving as long as you maintain the flow it seems yeah that's that's true and i think that's

and that's something why people you know like when people come to see us you don't come to see us play because exactly like what you're saying is not wow they're really really good at their instrument like if you go see santana play you're thinking wow he is incredibly good at their instrument. Like if you go see Santana play, you're thinking, wow, he is incredibly good at playing that guitar. That is unbelievable. You don't see us, but at the same time, you still use, you get the feeling of us being up there, being emotive and, and, and playing the songs. Um, and I think just to jump back as far as, as, as what has helped or hindered, you know, I know a lot of people that have gone to music school and gone to electronic music school

or electronic production school, and I think it can help you and hurt you because in one way you learn how to make a song sound finished and proper, but you also learn the rules. And I feel like most of the really good music that you like is music that inherently kind of breaks the rules. And that's just what's exciting about music is something that then inspires you or something that colors outside of the lines. And I think that had I gone to a music school and learned the correct way to

do it, that they that's the fast track to being an engineer and being someone who works in the studio and helps other people produce albums and that's that's actually a really cool thing and that's something that i would love to learn how to do and figure out is to be a record producer like a rick rubin style i mean i just he rick rubin is one of my biggest inspirations seeing at what he does but that's a very different thing than someone like us who are, um, you know, we're just kind of off in our own little corner creating our own little soundscapes. Yeah, no, it's, uh, it's funny you mentioned Rick. I'm hoping to have him on the podcast,

so I might tap you for questions. Uh, the, so if you were to, and I have just, uh, just one or two kind of longer form questions, then I'd love to hit you with some rapid fire questions from some of the listeners. If you were sort of assigned, it sounds like it's a very dreary word. If you volunteered for teaching me how to produce music or make music using the tools that you have. Because I've always found music very intimidating. But let's just say I were to spend a month with you and you had, you know, the prize was several million dollars to get me to the point where I could create a finished track of some type that didn't make people cringe. Where would you have me start what

does that first week look like um that's a great question so i think that the the core of a really good song it really honestly has to do with with what you want to say so I would actually do some like let's say I would I would ask you to go find ten tracks that are that resonate with you or something that so maybe I would want to produce a track that sounds like this or this is really what I'm feeling right now I just to get get you in the the general creative space of thinking about what you're really trying to say. And then the next step would be creating, let's say, a sketch, kind of like we do, and focusing on some very basic building blocks of music. So a very basic electronic song will be a combination of drums, melody,

chords, and bass. So those are the building blocks of a song. And electronic music is so fluid. You can kind of move all of those things around. So we would go over what all of those different things are and how they play together. And actually, I wouldn't spend too much time on learning music theory you know and and as this is kind of goes back to what i was talking about before is there ways to shortcut all that stuff to where we could just learn one scale or maybe not even just learn

okay these notes sound good together and there's a there's a thing in ableton that you could lock the keyboard to a scale which means that like if a cat walks on it, it'll still sound good. You could have an entire band of six cats on keyboards. That's actually a great idea. The cat mob? Yes. Oh, man. Get out the trademark lawyers.

That actually sounds like it could have a big... I'm just fucking with you. Okay. I like that. So, fixed. I'm just fucking with you. Okay. I like that. So, yeah. So I would put some tools in place to get everything fixed. So no matter what we did, it was going to sound good.

And then just kind of I think the next step is, you know, the interesting thing, something that's changed over the past couple of years since we started, is that you can actually buy sound sets that are really good. And this didn't exist when we very first started. It makes me sound like, hey, Sonny, we used to have to... Walk up the soundscape uphill both ways. I mean, compared to what we actually had i mean if you take to people who have actually been doing it for a longer it's it's probably i probably sound like a snotty child compared to started in 2006 there's people who actually had to write

music on punch cards and stuff like that just actually pretty crazy but that said you can like we could walk into guitar center now i mean i don't know this is a good answer i'll be like tim let's go to guitar center we're gonna spend a hundred dollars and like buy a great sample kit because the stuff that people have now are because it you know out of the box stuff sounds so good so we would find some really good samples that resonate with you that you like because a lot of music production has to do with starting with really good source material and then and taking away stuff is actually a lot more important than adding to it so what I mean is like if we went to Guitar Center and bought a sample CD that was good and it had really good source material and then you put a bunch of stuff together, it's a lot easier to start shaving away

and removing the stuff that's not there to get everything fitting in its right place. When you have a finished track, let's just say like the finished Fortune Days, and again, this is speaking from pretty deep in my ignorance pool, but if I look in, say, GarageBand and you have multiple tracks

right for different vocals or music tracks or whatever how many separate melodies drums etc do you have in a finished song like fortune days um it really changes on a song to song basis um what would you say the average range is you know the average is is somewhere around you know 50 wow um and it can it can be much i mean some songs we've had over 100 tracks and some songs have been have been less also because the the tracks that we write are especially something like Fortune Days there's so many different parts to it and the way that it's talked about in music terminology is so it's like each section you assign a letter to it

so like the intro is A and then the first thing that happens right after that when the drums drop it could be called B and then it goes back to A so it could be like you know and a pop song can be A B A C style layout, something like that. And, you know, our songs are like A, B, C, A, D, C, B, and it goes on.

We have a lot of like complex pieces moving around. So because it's like that, we don't always recycle the sections over and over again. Then it can be, each one of those sections can have 10, 20 tracks. And there's really a lot of layering that goes on too. And I say that's something that if there are any producers out there listening that are looking for production stuff, that's something that we spend a lot of time on is the layering of the sounds and the sampling. And all the sounds you hear have been processed and are complex packs of many different pieces together

to make one sound so that it sounds custom and not like anything that comes right out of the box. What percentage of your samples are uh sort of off the rack versus custom um you know it it changes on an album to album basis but um say a lot of the stuff is is custom um we're we're pretty like so if let's say you open a synthesizer a very popular synthesizer um that's used right now it's called massive so you can open it and there's a set of presets in there and you can cycle through them or you can um you can clear out the synth and then design from the ground up and we do a lot of that we do we do both um but a lot of our sounds are customized. And what that allows us to do is really,

really control the sound. And if we do use stuff that is out of the box or preset, we mash it and process it and layer it to the fact where you really couldn't tell. Right. Besides the Glitch Mob, what other bands might you recommend people listen to if they want to hear good layering that's a that's a really good question um i'm listening to right now so there's a there's a producer who's a good friend of ours called Amon Tobin. And his music is so complex and layered. And his album, Fully Room, he outlayered everybody. What was the name of the album again?

The album is called Fully Room. Fully, F-O-L-E-Y, like the sound effects? Yeah, absolutely. And he went out into the world and recorded sounds. There's actually a little mini documentary about it. It's really fascinating, but he's recording sounds of animals and motorcycles and walking around on weird sticks and rocks. And he made a whole album that's almost entirely comprised of stuff like that. And so when you really, if you put that on your headphones and listen to that, that is real um master level mix engineer creative undertaking very cool uh i would love to ask you some some quick questions from uh from some of the listeners out there and then uh perhaps we can listen to another track

and then uh wrap up for this round one uh so the first question is uh i'm gonna he gave me two and i'm gonna have to take the more ridiculous this is jan habich do you pee in the shower i assume the answer is yes i mean every guy pees in the shower of course yeah i think it's actually at this point especially in los angeles you you're you have to the drought police would come and get you uh in the bt winter uh this is the this is the desert island question so if you could take one book one album and one luxury i would just say one third item of any type to a desert island what would they be that's a great question um so i think my album would have to be fx twin select ambient works okay book oh man that changes so much so book is going to be the unbearable lightness of being okay

and third luxury item maybe my chemex man that's yes you need to you gotta hope there's some coffee beans on that island yes chemex is great uh have you tried the aero press i have tried the aero press i really like it yeah yeah the aero press is great if you're going to make coffee for more than two cups, though, the Chemex is a good way to go. Very cool. All right. Next question. You know, this is one I think a lot of people know, but we don't make any money from touring, to be quite honest. I mean, there's a lot of money that comes in, but we take all of it and we dump it all back into the show. So that touring for us, I mean, hopefully at some point it gets there, but it's really a labor of love. The process of building the blade and all of the bits and pieces that make the whole thing tick was really expensive. We just decided that we want to do this. That is not a revenue stream for us.

Eventually, it's kind of like an investment. As we keep touring with it, maybe we'll make some money, um, down the line and touring is a very, it's a very expensive undertaking. Um, because you know, there's people that have to set the, set the show up and everything has to travel around and be freighted internationally and everything. So there's a,

there's a lot that goes into that. Um, a lot of people do make money from touring, but right now for us, the equation is not that. Um, so most of our, our, the the what keeps the lights on is actually mostly the licensing for us and the music and the music sales very cool do you guys do any merch you probably do yeah yes we have them we

have actually that's that's another thing is that um'd say part of our whole DIY ethos is that we have a lot of merch and we've actually worked on and designed a lot of the stuff ourselves. And almost everything you see in Glitchmaw World is something that has passed through us. But yeah, you can see our merch stores, a lot of really cool stuff. And we've collaborated with some friends of ours and made some cool stuff. Very, very cool uh are there any bands that you're aware of that you suspect make the majority of their money through merchandising uh yeah you know that that's that's actually i was just talking with someone about this yesterday now that's that's kind of why you mentioned that but um in in uh the kind of punk rock landscape as it's evolved into a lot of those bands,

the whole warped tour. And, and I, I don't actually know this to be a fact. This is someone who, who's someone else who told this to me, but a lot of, a lot of what happens if you go to warp tour,

it's a lot of young, younger fans there. And the bands who play there don't get paid a whole lot of money, but they make a lot of their money from merch sales. I don't know if it's sort of the majority, but that whole touring entity is set up around the fact that they have these huge merch stores that there's like a big merch mall in the middle of the Warped Tour

as it travels around. Got it. Yeah, sounds like Ozzfest also, which i've been to a couple times that is a blast at shoreline amphitheater at least just insane i bet yeah uh let's see um so this this is a good one this is from i'm going to paraphrase here. This is from Agatha Fox. What are, what are some of your fears? What are some of my fears?

Oh, that's deep. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a good question. Um,

I have a very light question to follow this one up. Okay. What am I? You know, um, this one up okay what am i you know um i you know i i had a crazy long conversation with my my dear friend ben um deru who's another music producer just the other day we were coming back from the gym and we were talking about how the climate is fucked and how seemingly everything is turning from what can we do to prevent total climate catastrophe to now that it's happening, how are we going to wrestle with this catastrophe. And the more I think and read and learn about what's happening with the current state of Earth, it seems to be pretty doomed.

Maybe not for us in our lifetime, but definitely for our children and our grandchildren. So it's a pretty scary um thought it is it is just as a side note uh for folks i i just recently interviewed uh peter diamandis who's the chairman of the x prize he does a lot of work with space technologies and uh he's co-founder of a company called for instance planetary. The idea being to send ships to close orbiting asteroids to mine precious resources to bring back to Earth or use extra planetarily. And he is very, he would be called by a lot of people a techno-optimist, but I was similarly just in the last year or so,

especially after talking to climate scientists, getting very depressed and kind of put into a malaise about, like, wow, the whole planet's just going to be boiling in 30 years if we keep it up. And Peter was talking about, I won't spend too much time on this, but talking about how they could actually put up a pane in space that could be rotated very precisely, almost to enlarge or lessen its profile as it, in

between the Earth and the Sun, to modify the amount of energy hitting the planet's surface. And that he basically said, I think we're going to be able to predict, or I'm sorry, prevent sort of catastrophic meltdown. But if we're not, the good news is there are actually technologies like this that we can absolutely deploy to minimize some of the damage. And I was like, huh, that's the first time I've heard anything of that.

So, wow. Isn't there a Simpsons episode about that? Isn't Mr. Burns block the sun? You know, I wouldn't doubt it maybe maybe we'll all look back in 50 years and be like oh my god the simpsons fucking called it that's amazing once again and this no exactly like with the didn't they have a barack obama like versus mitt romney prediction like like you know 10 years ago i mean the simpsons i think there are people with with ESP working at The Simpsons as writers. That does make me feel a little bit better. Also,

I am with you following someone like Elon Musk that is saying, I'm just going to go and make this reality better. I get just everything that he does completely boggles my mind. It makes me feel a little bit better to know that there are real-life Tony Starks out there

doing what they can. Working on the problem. So to ask a much lighter question, what is your favorite pastry? This is from Medium Rare. My favorite pastry, I think it would have to be just a plain croissant. And you said it correctly too.

Is there any particular way you guys celebrate after shows? No. We have a pre-show meditation we do. I want to hear about this. Before every single show. And we've been doing it for a couple of years now. And before we go on, we have a huddle and we just, it's just a quick 30 second meditation.

And we say, we say, here's to the now. And it's just a way to let everything go and focus and go on stage. And it really, it really helps. After the show, no, we don't really celebrate too much. I love the pre-show. So is it here's to the now and then 30 seconds of silence? Yeah, exactly. We count down, we say it in unison,

and we also grab whatever other team members are in the room and then we do a quick meditation, just take a deep breath and then have silence. I love it. When you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind? that I consider to be successful. And I guess it can be boiled down to the way that I define success is, um, someone who's really genuinely excited about what they,

what they get to do and, and is carving out their own path. Um, any, anyone from someone like my sister, who's, who's in medical school working to, to a doctor, who I was just talking to, who I think has an incredibly difficult path. But what she does, I mean, I guess it's difficult in the sense of, you know, I was just talking to her. She's working at the ICU right now.

And I think it can be a really heavy job. And I think of other people who are my artist friends in LA who are getting to create and do these things. But the fundamental link between all these different people is just doing something that really lights you up on the inside. Definitely. Let's see. If you could give... How old are you at the moment? I'm 34.

34. If you could... Wow, we've got pretty closely matching timelines. I love it. If you could give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Chill out. Calm down. In what way? I feel like myself and other people I know that are in the early to mid-20s get really

wound up about things having to be a certain way. I don't know. I think that enjoy, because it all kind of doesn't matter as much as you think it does. having to be a certain way or is it, I don't know. It's just, I think that, um, enjoy because it all kind of doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Yeah, that's the truth. Will this be, will you remember this in 10 years? Probably not. No, people don't even remember a tweet 12 minutes later. That is the truth into the slipstream uh is there i i have never been to an edm show of any type uh what show or festival should i go to that is that's a great question i think that that if you've never been to a show, I think you should come to see us play.

Absolutely. Especially because... That has to happen. I think we missed each other by day in San Francisco or something like that. I was gutted. Yes, that must happen. Next time you should come.

If Daft Punk ever plays again, if you're going to see one show, your Desert Island show, I would say if they do another tour, you have to go see them play because what they do, and they have really set the bar for everybody, but it's just the perfect, their live show is the perfect marriage

between just fun, visceral, classic dance music and crazy techno futurism. I mean, it's really, it really changed my life. Wow. That's a strong statement. I love it. Okay. Yeah. That's that, that would be it. Do you have any particular morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like? Yeah, I do. And you know, it changes also because the way that Glitch Mob works is very much in phases. Our years rotate from phase to phase. So there's, there's, um, studio phase, which we're in right now. Then there's tour prep phase, tour, um, tour recovery, and then rinse and repeat um so right now um i i get up say probably around eight and i

meditate um every day and i um have for how long 20 minutes what type of meditation um i practice uh transcendental meditation um and i've tried all sorts of different different types um and this is just the one for me which i've heard you say in the podcast too that just kind of stuck i've yeah i've done yeah i did it this morning yeah it's great i do it so i don't actually do it twice a day every single day and i hope my teachers don't hear me say that yeah you know i wish it's since we're since it's just the two of us talking uh i the the two i feel like a failure if i mentally commit to two and then can't do two or don't do two, but once in the morning has a tremendous effect for me.

Yeah. It's really, it's really changed my life. It's been a couple of years for me now. And a friend of mine sort of gifted me a course cause he works for the David Lynch foundation. And so I got to, to take the class and it's really just been life-changing. And it's because I've been able to stick with it and actually keep it because I'm just reading, I've read so many books about mindfulness and meditation and I've taken different courses and it's just, whatever, TM just happens to be something that you can do on a day-to-day basis. And it's, it's really, it's really quite simple. Um, do you do it in, in bed? Do you just wake up and sit up against the headboard and do it? Or is it after you brush your teeth after breakfast? What's,

when do you do it? So I think, you know, actually an important part of my, important part of my morning ritual is that I get up and I don't look at my phone or my computer for the first hour. And I have this quiet time. And I used to be the type of person where I would get up and right away I'm like, emails, texts, whatever, looking at the hamster wheel of my phone and realized how much that was scattering my brain. So meditation for me actually was something that got me out of that state. So, so I wake up, um, I don't look at any technology. I make tea, I make matcha tea usually, um, or, or different, um, Sencha, some kind of green tea. And then I meditate and, um, then I'll have breakfast or do a quick morning workout. That's separate from a different weightlifting gym exercise

just to kind of get the blood flowing. So I'll do something quick, then I'll have a breakfast, and then I'll intentionally plug in after I have. And I also will, part of this time, I will be reading. So I get even just 20, 20 minutes to read a book in the morning before I plug in and jump on the information superhighway. What is the, what would the workout potentially look like? Let's say the current workout or the most recent workout. What was the, what were the movements? Um, this morning I just did some,

uh, some kettlebell swings. Um, and and that's that's kind of like a the quickest bang for my buck um thing to do and i've been working on on mobility quite a bit more especially with so much time in the studio actually i've been really getting really into these um the yoga tune-up balls they're these like hard um these these these balls of different sizes that you know you can take and i think for people who spend a lot of time sitting down i've been using them a lot even when we're in the studio we're not sitting in the chair each one of us will have a foam roller these yoga tuna balls and we're doing mobility stuff so that we're actually because sometimes we'll have these sessions that go you know 12 14 hours a day and and so i think it's important to to do

the the focus on mobility um and then i'll have another workout later on in the day which is um weightlifting or kind of like crossfit style workouts got it and your breakfast after that morning workout what does that look like um you know i i've follow a very like paleo slash for our body style eating. I've, I'm, I was a big fan of, actually, I've definitely evangelized your book to many friends of mine along the way. Um, so thanks for that. Um, but I have eggs almost every single day and I'd actually, I love the, I love the, um, either scrambled eggs or just fried eggs with vegetables and coffee.

Yeah, that's the breakfast champions. Well, one more question, then I'd love to maybe close out with a track. What is the best piece of advice you ever received? The most important. The best piece of advice you ever received the most important the best piece of advice i ever received and it's something my father told me when i was very very little when i was i mean probably five or six that just kind of stuck with me and that was um don't force it don't force it and what is

that is that everything is it referring to work what is that referring to yeah it's seemingly such a simple thing that's really just just stuck with me and it's been kind of one of the it's become um something that of a uh it's just it's an aphorism that's that's really stuck with me i think that for the creative process that's really our guiding light you know if something if something is not working um if something is not happening i think it's really important to just let it let it be yeah um and just let things happen organically. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like that.

It's very short, easy to remember. And if I think about all those posts that I put tons of time into or chapters that I put tons of time into that ended up failing or just not doing what I wanted them to do, there's almost always a point where it was just like, wow, this is a grind.

Like this is not, it's not coming together, but I'm just going to force it to come together like a Frankenstein. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that, that, that very rarely has the intended results. Whether it's something creative or just in life in general is trying to force a square peg into the circle hole. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would love to perhaps listen to peg into the circle hole. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would love to perhaps listen to another track for a bit,

and then you can come back and we'll learn where we can find out about you and all things Glitch Mob. But is there something we could listen to before we do that? Yeah, I'll play Can't Kill Us off of our latest album, Love, Death, and Mortality wonderful Thank you. so the best piece of advice i ever got was actually it was from my sister and yeah she's a she's a doctor and she was i don't remember exactly what she said but it was something the effect of she was um she was working or she's she's uh caretaking for some uh some older people

who are nearing the end of their life and they were just talking about what things that they valued had sort of come in, closing the door on life and closing the chapter, and they're talking about what really meant a lot to them. And then it was the things like love and friendship and these personal relationships. And I think for me, there was just something about the essence of, of distilling down to when it's all the, all the bullshit aside, what really matters in life.

And I, and I remember, I, I'll never forget that using that as a guiding light to, to just, uh, keep in the headlights. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, uh, it's incredible how easy it is to get caught up in the minutiae and nonsense. It's so easy. It's, uh, particularly with technology and just the never-ending stream of information and inputs. Absolutely.

And I think you know there's something to music and a statement like that or anything that, I don't know if there's a word for it in some other language, you might know this, but the feeling of when you feel really small, like when you look at the stars and you're, you're, you feel like your problems don't really matter. I think that feeling like something you're connected to something bigger than yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is, this has been a blast and hopefully we'll be able to do a part two sometime soon, but where can people, where can people thank you, find you, ask you questions online? Where are the best places to learn more about you and The Glitch Mob? You can check us out at theglitchmob.com

or on Twitter, everything at The Glitch Mob and myself at Boreta, B-O-R-E-T-A. Wonderful. Well, thanks once again, man. This has been great great and hopefully we'll get to do a jam session in person maybe i'll get to to play around with ableton and cause some trouble let's let's do it thanks all right thanks man take care