Reissue | TN:54 Disclosure

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Introduction to Disclosure

0:57Hello and welcome to this special Tape Notes reissue. We've been exploring our archives and are excited to share some of our most beloved episodes that you may have missed. For this one, we're revisiting episode 54, recorded back in October 2020, with Guy and Howard of Disclosure, talking about the process of bringing their third record, Energy, to life. It was mid-lockdown, so Guy and Howard were speaking to us from their North London studio. But the record draws influences from all around the world and features some incredible collaborations,

1:29including Fatoumata Diyawara, Kalani, Common and many more. If you're familiar with Guy's live streams, you'll know just how good they are at getting into the weeds with production. And they don't hold back here with a pretty comprehensive look into their whole process. So now, without further ado, let's get started.

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2:51Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music. Every episode, we'll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio. So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath. Where your focus goes, your energy flows. Are you hearing me? Hello, I'm John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes are Disclosure to talk about how they recorded and produced the album Energy.

3:28Disclosure are an English electronic music duo consisting of brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence. Coming from a musical family, the boys both began learning instruments from a young age and while at college, immersed themselves in the worlds of hip-hop, house and UK garage. In early 2010, aged just 16 and 19, they began releasing music together on MySpace. And in 2011, having taken time to fully develop their combination of energetic grooves and tight-knit production, the pair signed to PMR Records, making their first commercial breakthrough with the song Latch, featuring the then up-and-coming singer Sam Smith.

4:02Their debut album, Settle, followed in 2013, reaching number one on the UK charts and earning a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Album. Two years later, their second album, Caracal, did the same, this time featuring an array of world-renowned guest vocalists, including the talents of Gregory Porter, Lorde and The Weeknd. Following a worldwide tour, playing over 300 shows across the globe and one further EP, the brothers then took a year-long break from music, before beginning work on their third studio album, Energy.

4:32Chosen from over 200 songs, the album sees the brothers apply their distinct brand of house music to a myriad of styles, drawing on a variety of world music influences. Today, once again, due to the COVID lockdown, I'm at home in Morden, South London, and Guy and Howard join me from Guy's studio in North London. And what better way to start our conversation than by hearing something from the record. This is energy. Now we're going to take it to another level.

5:11It is energy by disclosure. Disclosure, the title track of the new album, which is out now.

Recording Energy in Los Angeles

5:45And I'm very pleased to say that on the other side of somewhere, I am connected to Guy and Howard, who are Disclosure. Hello. Hello, John. Hello, we are connected. We are connected, just about. So where are you? We're at my house in the studio in North London. Right. OK, so North London. And is this the very studio where you made some of this album or? It's where we mixed it all and produced a lot of the music. But in terms of writing the songs initially, we actually did a lot of them in L.A. this time. We did write a lot of music in here, but the ones that actually made the cut this time around, just, yeah, the magic seemed to happen out in L.A.

6:19A lot in Capitol Studios, which is the label that it's coming out on in the States. And then we moved around a bunch as well. We like moving around from studio to studio for initial ideas and sessions, you know, getting inspired by all of the legendary places and rooms that people have made albums in. But for the mixing and the production, everything up to mastering pretty much, yeah, in this room at this exact spot. Excellent. And when you went to L.A., was that specifically to record or did you move over there for a while? I have a small apartment there. Yeah, I met my girlfriend in L.A.

6:50So I go there a lot just for, you know, life stuff, too. But I mean, it was more because the people we wanted to work with on this album are mostly all in L.A. So we ended up going out there about four times for like three weeks each time and just knocking out tunes every day. Yeah, it was really fun, actually. It was good vibes out there this time.

Working with Eric Thomas

7:08So I've got to ask, because Eric Thomas is the voice that we hear on Energy, who also featured on the debut album as well. And I mean, he is amazing. Have you crossed paths at all? We strangely, I can't remember why or how we crossed paths in Australia once. We both happened to be on tour, I guess. We were playing a show, I think it was in Melbourne, and he happened to be playing a show there like the next day. So he came to our show and did like a live introduction to our DJ set, which was awesome. Wow. Sort of like, I guess you could say sung when a fire starts to burn.

7:41I don't know if that's performed it. People are like, what's going on? Who is this? And then he just said the words and everyone was like, oh, it's the guy. Oh, it's that guy, right. But yeah, no, Eric's awesome, man. We've got a really nice relationship going on where we're just hugely mutual fans of each other's work. You know, I listen to his stuff, especially on Instagram, like most days. It's such a good thing to wake up to of just this guy with an incredibly enthusiastic voice just being like, get your shit together. And you're like, yeah, OK, I'm going to do something good today. He like shakes it into you.

8:11And it's definitely an energy that is appropriate for house music, I think. Fantastic. I love the idea, Howard, because I was always a bit curious as to whether that was just a sample that you use from some random guy you came across. But to think that he's a living, breathing preacher man giving you daily advice on how to live is really exciting. But I'm curious as to why he was in Australia then. If he was performing there, I mean, he's a roving preacher man. Yeah, so he essentially is, as opposed to a preacher, he calls himself the hip hop preacher, but essentially he's a motivational speaker.

8:47So he'll go around to various conventions and does motivational speaking at them. So people all around the world want that. You know, that's something that is universal in its usefulness. So he seems to be doing really well for himself. I love it because, again, you know, he's got such a positive message. It's a simple message, but he carries it so well with so much enthusiasm. And that's what drew me to him on that sample in the first place. You know, like when we did When A Fire Starts To Burn, I didn't really know who he was. I just heard like his voice and immediately wanted to use it for a song because it had so much character to it.

9:19And so that's why, you know, the lyrics in When A Fire Starts To Burn don't really mean anything. It's like When A Fire Starts To Burn and it starts to spread and then just some gibberish after that, that like is me cutting up sentences halfway through words and things just because I liked how it rhythmically sounded. And so then for this album, especially with energy, we wanted to kind of make use of his message more, you know, because it really aligns with how we feel and what we feel the world needs to hear right now. So it was nice to be able to like include his artistic vision a bit more than just his voice, you know.

9:51So on that track, did you tape one of his speeches and use it that way? Or did you actually communicate with him and get him to say something more specific? So we sampled, it's from two different speeches of his that I had like cut up and the messages kind of matched very well. So he made it sound like one coherent thing. He's got so much material. You don't really need to ask him for anything. Lots of hours of recorded speeches that he's done all on like every platform, you know, whether it's YouTube or iTunes. And I've just trawled through all of them just looking for the ones that I like the most.

10:22And basically another reason that we did it again, you know, after doing When A Fire Starts To Burn, I think I found all those acapellas the first time and was like, this is sample gold, man. Like, I can't believe I'm the first person to use this. And so we did it, assuming that once I'd done that, it was like opening Pandora's box and everyone would start sampling him all the time. But no one did, as far as we know. Like, I haven't heard anyone else using that voice. So we were like, well, if no one else is going to do it, I'm definitely doing it again. I love that idea. I mean, maybe, you know, it was so definitive with your music that nobody else had the courage to actually use it again because it's like disclosure onus now.

11:00Maybe, maybe. I hope not. I want people to feel free to use it. That's great. So Eric Thomas is the name, in case people are wondering. And yeah, such a powerful message. So Energy is the title track of the new album.

Taking a break from touring

11:13The album is full of energy. It's a very upbeat record. You're releasing it during a pandemic, which is a tricky business. But it's actually your first new album in quite some time. And it's been five years since the last record. Was all of that time spent thinking about more music? Or did you think, actually, we need to decompress after our amazing success? We need to give ourselves a break. 2017 was definitely spent, yeah, recollecting, recalibrating and, yeah, just sort of realizing what's happened to us and trying to take stock of that.

11:45It was intentional. I think we knew that we would end the Caracal Tour, which was, you know, by far bigger and in every way than we ever thought we could achieve, you know, in doing this. I mean, especially when we started out, you know, making slightly more obscure underground electronic music. Just two guys from Reigate in Surrey, you know, and then before we know it, we're playing Madison Square Garden. I mean, it's ridiculous. So, you know, that takes a lot to wrap your head around. And, yeah, we needed that time to do that. So I went traveling for three months around Southeast Asia with just no plan, just booking flights as I went and hotels and just making it up with my girlfriend.

12:19It was so fun, read a couple of books and, yeah, just fully tried to get back to reality. And then Howard went and bought a house in the country and has got really into agriculture and farming and this kind of stuff. So we both just did what our, I'd say, our personalities are about the most, which is for Howard, yeah, being outside in nature and, I don't know, for me, looking at monuments that look like they could have been built by aliens. So, yeah, we did a bit of that and that was really fun and needed. And I think we just tried to educate ourselves. We also realized, you know, neither of us went to university.

12:51Howard got kicked out of college halfway through for touring too much. So we just missed out on a bunch of, you know, education. So we did a lot of reading, a lot of podcasts and then work began on the album. Yeah, start to mid-2018, I'd say, maybe end of 2017, just a bit. But, yeah, I think Birthday, which is a song we'll go through later, that was one of the first tunes we wrote for the record. And that was end of 2017. And we wrote about 200 songs since then to get these 11. So it was a big old process of letting go and sacrifice and all of those things, which is something we've not done before.

13:24You know, usually we work in a way that's kind of, we just write, write, write, write, write, bang, there it is, put it out. This time we knew we had a nice core fan base that would hopefully stick around for us and wait for us to finish. And we knew that we wanted to write hundreds of songs to pick those magical ones that, you know, don't come up every day. There was a version of the album, you know, about a year and a half ago, which just had Birthday, Marley Marley, a couple others, and then some other tunes. And we considered that being done for a bit, and then we just carried on, and then it got completely changed.

13:56And, yeah, the reason behind it being called Energy is because of that process as well. It's because of the fact that the songs we ended up choosing that made the cut out of those 200 were the ones that came to us quite easily. You know, we didn't have to fight for them. There weren't 20 versions of each song. They were just made on the day. We captured the vibe in the room just like that, and that's what's on the record. And you don't write those ones every day. You know, those ones do not come around very easily. But when we look back over our nearly 10-year career, those ones that happened in that way are always the most popular ones with the fans.

14:29You know, Latch to White Noise to Omen and Magnets. They were all written, the core of it, at least the hook, you know, in 20 minutes. But you have to write like 20 other tunes to get that little moment to happen. So, yeah, I don't think we could have done that if we just kept rolling out of album two straight into album three. You know, we would have just burned out, and the quality of the music would have suffered because of that. Yeah, it's a great moment of self-realization to know that and recognize that you need to take stock. I mean, so many great artists have kind of burned themselves out by not being able to do that,

15:00or for them to have outside pressure pushing them on to more performances, more recording sessions. And, yeah, it all gets kind of watered down and becomes not as great as it could be. So, for people so young, you have such wisdom from clearly such an early age, you know, taking charge and steering yourselves to this point. Do you actually think... Well, we have a great team as well, man. Right. That's another thing. You know, our managers have always been very aware that we're very young. You know, when we say managers since day one, Howard was 15 when we joined them, I was 18.

15:31You know, I think they were aware that they were, you know, managing kids here and, yeah, just trying to be respectful of that. And, you know, we're not kids anymore. But when you come off tour for like seven years, you basically are still a kid because you haven't done much growing up. So, yeah, we needed time to grow up a bit and evolve. But, yeah, I think, you know, there's a big chat about mental health going on in the music industry now with touring and all that stuff. And a big solution, a big help of that problem would be just people taking a break. And unfortunately, unless you reach a certain threshold of success, you can't take a break.

16:02Like you need to keep the momentum going. Or, like I said, that core fan base, like they might not be there after you've been away for so long, you know. More so now than ever, I would say that is true because, you know, like people feel music is so disposable now because there's so much of it coming out. Like if you get a new song from whatever band, it's like, yeah, that might keep you entertained for a week. And then something else incredible will come out the next week. You know, something incredible comes out every week. And so it's very easy to forget like, oh, five weeks ago, like, oh, yeah, that tune, that's old.

16:32Right. And it's like, whereas, you know, in like the 70s, it was like you'd get a vinyl of like your favorite album and that would last you for the year. And it's like, OK, yeah, things have changed, man. So you have to just keep relentlessly putting out material. And I think that's partly why people like Khalid are doing so well is because he's such a prolific writer. You know, he can just keep knocking out ideas one after the other. And they're always of a really high standard. And I think it's artists like that that will do well in this current climate, whereas artists that like to spend a year writing an album, it's going to be tougher, you know.

17:09And maybe it'd be about changing the release strategy and not doing albums and just doing like single after single to keep that output flowing. But it's such a different world now to when our parents were in the industry. Yeah, very interesting. But the great thing is that you gave yourselves a break. People have still been listening to your music, maybe, as you say, Guy, because you'd reached a certain level and people are hungry for this new album. And we're looking forward to Disclosure being back in our midst. And the great thing about Take Notes is that we get to unravel some of the secrets, some of the things behind the magic that is Disclosure.

Producing Douha Marley Marley

17:42And the first track we were going to look at in detail is Duha, Marley Marley, featuring Fatimata Diawara, which is out there now. And you say, Guy, that this was one of the first tracks that you had, that it was on the other version of the album 18 months ago. Yeah, that's right. I think sort of start of 2018, I think we wrote this. Yeah, it's the second time we've used Fatimata's voice on one of our tunes. So, yeah, it's a slightly different way of operating for us. You know, usually, well, 99% of the time, to be honest, we always start from scratch with an idea, unless we're, you know, sampling something or making like an edit of something.

18:16But, you know, if we're doing a truly from ground up song, we'll always make sure we have the singer in the room with us together. We'd never do it remotely or something like that. Just it's never been the way for us. We're musicians at heart. You know, I'm a drummer, Howard's a bass player, a keyboard player. It's like we jam a little bit, you know, in the room. We have to bounce ideas and that's important to us. But with this song, this vocal was sent to us by Fatimata as an unreleased demo of hers. So we already had that to play with. And I think, you know, the other reason we're comfortable with that, especially with someone like her, is that it's not in English.

18:48So, you know, we don't have much to contribute lyrically and her melodies are more than amazing. So that's kind of taken care of. You know, if the lyrics were in English, we might be a little bit more concerned that the meaning wouldn't quite be where we want it to go. But, yeah, it's funny when you're not working in English, there's a new freedom that opens up to you. You know, you can just kind of dispose of the meaning for a second. Just make the music that you think fits the vocal vibe wise. And then, you know, you come to learn what it's about after. And hopefully what you made matches the meaning of the song. Yeah. Is that the case?

19:18I think so. Yeah. I mean, Fatimata says it better. She talks about very serious things. You know, she's from Mali and there's huge problems in Mali. And she's aware of those and likes to speak about them. But then she says, quote, like, I like to dance my problems away. You know, she doesn't want to sit there and cry. She likes to make the point and then put it over a really uplifting funk driven beat. We were speaking about that the other day with her on Zoom. And it's kind of like what Fela Kuti would do, you know, really serious message, but unbelievably funky beat underneath that you can dance to. That's how she likes to express it. And so when we sent over our version of this song, you know, it's super uplifting and really dancey.

19:52And so she was really happy with that. Fantastic. So where did you start? So she sent you this demo recording of her voice. And did you have a piece of music already kind of that you're working on or did you think, right, let's start from scratch? Yeah. So I think I started this one where I found that section of vocal, the, you know, the main hook that you hear. And I just immediately liked it. So I like cut that bit up and just looped it. And then I started playing chords underneath, which ended up being those chords. But I just played them straight and it was like a pad.

20:24And I think it was probably Guy's idea to do them in the rhythm that they are in, which is the triplety type thing. And then we just went from that guy. Then I did drums. I did a bass line. Here's the vocal if you want to hear it. Yeah, we'd love to hear the vocal.

20:40A bit filtered.

20:47And there's some BVs. And then there's like a B section where she's talking about Africa.

21:07That's like the bones of it. Those are the vocals that she sent you. Yeah. Going through a lot of processing and stuff on the project here. I mean, if I bypass everything that we've added there, you know, it's now it's the real bones of it.

21:26You can hear some traffic in the background there. Also, we did actually change a couple of notes because the chords that I put under the first section, the melody of the second section wouldn't quite fit. So we had to change it to be in a major key for the last chord. So I think if you listen to the original song, it's quite different. It's like in a very different harmonic space. But yeah, it's not drastically different. It's like it would be like a major to minor kind of difference. You know, there'll be some minor thirds that have been shifted. I think it was on the it was on the B section. So it was like those are all Africa.

21:58Instead of you know, it's like it's a semitone different. But if you hadn't done it, it would have sounded horrific over these chords. Yeah, the chords are what made it happen. The fourth chord is pretty jazzy. Look.

22:18This one. I think she was singing the semitone above. It's something like that. I can't even remember. So long ago now. Yeah. It's a small difference, but yeah.

22:37And do you know what she recorded on? No. No, I'm not sure. It's a beautiful recording, though. Yeah. Lovely, like airy top end. So it would have definitely been in a professional studio for sure. Yeah, actually, I'm not even sure when she wrote the original song, because I think it was like it was a demo that she'd had knocking around for a while and wasn't sure what she was going to do with it. And so when we said that we would love to have some stems, she was like, well, take this. And we loved it instantly. Right. So that is what you had said to her just in conversation. We're working on music. Well, it was basically we did the original song with her, which was Ultimatum, where we had sampled an existing song of hers that was out.

23:13And then when we sent it to her for approval, she was kind enough to say, oh, well, if you need, I can send you the individual parts rather than us just working with the MP3 or whatever. And so then we had this relationship. And once we'd finished making Ultimatum, she liked it so much and her team liked it so much that they were like, well, if you ever need anything else, just give us a shout. So we were like, yeah, just send us anything, like, you know, anything you've got, we'd love to hear it. And this was the first thing we got. Yeah. So that conversation had started that communication, which is great. You know, it's great meeting these amazing artists, becoming friends with them, in effect, and establishing a great connection because it's great for both of you.

23:48You know, there's this two way thing going on. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, she wasn't familiar with our music before we did Ultimatum and us with hers before I just discovered that sample for Ultimatum. So, yeah, you know, we're not friends of anyone from Mali, I don't think. So, yeah, it's nice to know someone from that part of the world. We are now. Yeah, we are now. So you got the vocal. You were inspired, Howard, to put some chords to that vocal. And then you gave it to Guy to have a listen to. Is that how it worked? I would have put the chords to it with Guy.

24:19Yeah. He would have been sat right next to me like this. And then at the same time, he was probably working on the drums while I was doing that. Yeah, that's how it usually goes. So chords or beat start at 99% of the time. Bass line will be added once the swing of the drums is right. And then other textural things come later. But I mean, when you're starting with a vocal, I think it's quite important to get the chords in before the beat. Just to set the mood. Yeah, exactly. And that's one of the reasons that I think I realized that I might be able to make songs in the first place. I would do that often.

24:50I went to do music tech at college. And one of the tasks that they set in these lessons, we had a really good music tech teacher, was that they would give you a song. I think one that we did was Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N' Roses. And you had to re-harmonize it. So you had to forget the original key, keep the same melody, but do different chords. And I would always do these crazy, whacked out, jazzy chords over it. But for some reason, I enjoyed that more than anything else in that process. I really love re-harmonizing a melody. So we often end up doing that in our original songs now, like with Holding On with Gregory Porter, for example, on the last record.

25:28Me and Jimmy Napes wrote that with Gregory around a piano. And it was in this very conventional major key, very simple chord progression of 1-4-5-1. And then we wrote the whole song over that and then did exactly this. We recorded the a cappella, took that away, and then me and Guy re-harmonized it into what it is now. And I think you end up with this really unusual-sounding kind of song because you've got this melody that you wouldn't necessarily have written over such complicated chords because you'd feel a bit more restrained and confined to the harmony.

26:02I find it much easier to re-harmonize the chords underneath a melody than to write a melody over complicated chords. Yeah, really interesting. So it's like you're deconstructing your own work as you go along. You know, most people would have been happy with that. It's like we're remixing our own tune, yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah. Most people would have been happy with that session with Gregory Porter and thought, yeah, no, that's in the bag. But then you take it away and completely rip it apart. I love that idea. And also the idea that you're both working together at the same time. So it's almost as if you put that vocal on loop.

26:33You're both kind of thinking about it, feeling it, feeling the whole vibe, I suppose. Yeah, no, it's exactly that. And when we are in a session, you know, writing from scratch with a singer, like with the songs we'll get to later, it's very much like, you know, I'll maybe play some chords and Guy will have a kick drum looping and then me and the singer will start writing a melody. But that whole time, you know, when I'm spitting out stupid melodies that are suggestions for the song, Guy can already get a feel for like whether that's going to be swung or if it's going to need to be a really rigid, like techno-y type beat.

27:06You could start feeding off of each other, even though you're working on separate aspects of the song. And so where did this song go next? Well, the first thing I thought of was to sort of bring some homogeny between her vocal and our production was to run her vocal through a vocoder to bring it into that kind of synthy electronic space. And I think these are probably in the top five best Howard chords ever. So I was like, I want to show them off a bit. And so the chords in the vocoder are just doing the same as the ones we just played you, you know, these ones.

27:44So that's the Korg Poly 6 doing that. And then if I solo her vocal, but mute the bus, you should get just the vocoder. So this is what's happening underneath the chords.

28:05So that just gives it that kind of, for me anyway, an immediate disclosure feel, a little daft punk as well. You know, it just brings it into that space that I thought it would excite her. You know, I was like, there's no way that she's probably run her vocal through a vocoder. I doubt it. Like she's going to think that's really cool. So, yeah, that was one initial idea I had off the back of just hearing the vocal and Howard's chords together. And then I also knew it was going to be fast paced because it's actually slowed down a lot, her vocal.

28:38Do you remember how fast it was when you sent it over? No. The original song is like, Is it really? Yeah, it's like drum and bass speed. I can't remember. I was like, okay, well, we're not making drum and bass today. So we flexed it and slowed it down in Ableton because I really liked the algorithms in Ableton for warping audio. We're working in Logic here, by the way. So we would have done a bit of audio manipulation in Ableton first, slowing it down, putting it back into Logic. And then, yeah, the bulk of the drums are being done in Native Instruments battery. And yeah, I just, I knew that once we got it down to 124 BPM, that it would be pretty good with a 4-4 kick over those triplet chords.

29:15You know, you can, I just heard that straight away in my head. And, you know, that groove was just, felt right to me.

29:28And yeah, there's some nice skippy, the dum-dums in there already. So I was thinking, okay, you know, that would match up pretty nicely. And the beat definitely turned out like busier than I would have thought it would work. You know, there's a lot going on in there, a lot of percussion, a lot of hi-hats and tambourines. But, you know, panned in the right way and put in the right level, it all works together.

30:00Yeah, and again, just trying to bring her vocal into our world. There's another good example there where I've just taken a tiny bit of her voice and put that in a sampler. And then the ah. So you only really hear that at the end of the tune, but it's going on the whole time. And I think that that sort of thing's important, you know, just bringing her world into the drum kit. Just little moments like that, you know, just it's important. And I think we learned that from listening to a lot of UK garage.

30:31That was a classic garage trick is just take that little ooh or ah and put it through a sampler, put it in the drums, you know, put it in that space. So, yeah, that's that. I think the other thing to talk about that's important is the bass. The bass line in this song is so bouncy and so skippy. There is two basses going on in this tune. There's a big old sine wave underneath that's been played on the Repro 1 synth. It's a plug-in version of the Repro 1, but such a fat sounding synth. As you can hear, it's just massive sub.

31:02A bit of modulation as well and lots of saturation and overdrive. And then over the top of that to kind of cover the harmonics above it, you've got a bass guitar, which is here.

31:23So is that Howard? No, it's a plug-in as well. Yeah. So Howard would have played in the bass line on the sub. And then I've just sort of put it on different instruments to just make sure it pops out. So, yeah, I would have played it on a MIDI keyboard and then we just made it sound like a bass guitar. Yeah, it's a really good plug-in called Ample Bass. They do amazing stuff. For dance music, it sounds realistic enough, you know, especially when it's hidden in the mix like that. But it just covers that kind of 100, 200 hertz-y territory where you need that warmth. Because if I play the beat, I'll just mute her vocals. But if I play it all without the bass guitar being in, it's a huge difference.

31:58Because the subs are all there, you know, in the club it would feel the same, but all that warmth is gone.

32:07And then with the bass. So, you know, it's not adding any more, like, weight underneath it, but it's just, you can hear the notes a lot clearer. That's the thing for me, often with making dance music, is people use a sine wave for their bass lines. And so I'm always like, well, what is the note? Like, it's really hard to hear what note is being played with a sine wave, especially down in the subby range. So to have something like a bass guitar or even like, you know, a synth sound, it really allows you to play low notes and not lose the harmonic power of the bass.

32:44Yeah, it's important, I think. It's a busy bass line, too. It's really busy. It's really busy, yeah. Yeah, I think that's something we try and not do is make, you know, every part try and be too show-off. But that's definitely a show-off bass line in my opinion. It is, yeah.

33:01Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, you see, when I heard it, you know, I was visualizing, you know, one of you, fingers going crazy, doing this amazing. I mean, you could play that? Yeah, I could play that. I think it just, if we were doing it in a live show, I'd definitely play it on the bass guitar, for sure. It would be hard to get tight. Yeah, it's just with dance music, the sub is such a key part that you don't want it really on a bass guitar because you'd want every note to hit exactly the same level of sub. So you'd have to compress it really hard or something. And, yeah, it's just easier to use this synth bass for this one.

33:33And all of that, was all of that done really quickly with the two of you working together? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would have all been done in a day or in an afternoon. Yeah, a couple of hours, perhaps. That bass line, I think we would have written that in like 10 minutes, for sure, and then just looped it. But like we said, we probably wrote 20 other tunes that didn't get used to get to this one. So combine all of that, you know, it's not quite as simple as it sounds. Yeah, we should just not mention the other tunes. Yeah, we just whacked this together. Yeah, that's fine. Don't worry about it. Yeah, Sgt. Pepper star. Did it all in two weeks. Don't worry about it.

34:04But yeah, the drums and the programming and the mixing and the automation. I mean, there's so much automation in this song of synths rising and falling, delays and reverbs coming up and going down, filters, you know, her vocal at the start, you know, starting down here.

34:20You know, all that kind of stuff. That takes months. I think I spent maybe three months, four months just coming back, tweaking something, leaving it. Come back, tweak something, leave it. I'm a big believer in don't mess with it too much if you haven't got fresh ears. Yeah, just little short, sharp bursts of engage. And then I would have done like a kind of final fresh mix once all the album was written, just to make sure it was sounding cohesive. Not drastically, just, you know, EQ mostly and compression.

34:51But yeah, because once we'd written eight other songs that were all with different singers, it's quite hard to bring that cohesion. I mean, it's something I've always struggled with with Disclosure Records is getting the mix balanced because you've got a different singer on every track. So, you know, that requires different frequencies to be ducked out or put in and all that kind of really technical stuff. So yeah, it's difficult. It's always important that we have a foundation that sounds very disclosury because the different singers over the top provide enough difference, you know, per song. You don't go and see the Stones and expect Mick Jagger to play like trumpet on the next tune.

35:22You know, it's like he does what he does. Keith does what he does. And I think, you know, in dance music, there's a kind of perception that every song you've got to have completely new, fresh, different sounds and new textures every time. And I don't necessarily agree with that when you're using different singers on every track. Like you want that foundation under there that people go, oh yeah, that sounds like Disclosure. And I think, you know, that straight away definitely does. And then you've got this vocal that's not even in English coming in over the top. And I thought, you know, we had the impression or at least the idea that people would be like,

35:54whoa, OK, that's different. Yeah. And another thing, you know, is like we've definitely got a like a sound palette that I would associate with us, like that synth sound that you just played, for example. But also something else that we have that gives us a bit of identity is the fact that we write all the music, you know, like there's a lot of producers who, well, there's a lot that only sample. So that limits you because you have to like choose ones that sound like you, I guess, or something. But then there's also loads of producers that just get other people to write the songs. So it's like, well, if you pick a different person to write your song every time, you're going to end up with a completely different style of songwriting or chord choice or whatever.

36:29So I think we can't help but sound like us, you know, because most of the music comes from us in the first place. And we have tendencies because we're humans. So it's a weakness. But it's also part of having an identity. And I think you're right. That identity is really important. And especially if you are going to use lots of different vocalists and work with different people in that way, then, you know, your own identity has to be maintained. But at the same time, that's the interesting thing, because I think, you know, with the two of you and you can think of other examples, say, like the Chemical Brothers, whatever they

37:00do sounds like them, even though they might be going completely out of their comfort zone and welcoming in somebody from a completely different world. Somehow it always ends up sounding like them. And with Disclosure, it's a similar kind of trait. But, you know, that's what's so exciting, because people turn to Disclosure for a certain kind of sound or, you know, a certain approach somehow. With this track, once you'd started working on it, how engaged was Fatimata in what was happening? Because, Guy, you mentioned, oh, I think she'll be really excited hearing herself through a

37:30vocoder. She won't have heard that before. Yeah, I guess maybe she has. But honestly, she wasn't. Like when we did Ultimatum 2, she just hands over the vocal and she's just happy to let us get on with it. And I think that we're more excited to show her the finished product rather than something halfway through. And yeah, it's not that we wouldn't hear her out if she had something to say or change, but I'd rather hear that at the end when we've got it as best we can. And then she could critique it. I think so far we've done good enough job that she's been happy with the end result. Yeah, we've got some trust.

38:00But I think if she didn't like something that we'd done, she would tell us. So it's good to know. You know, I feel like we've got that relationship where she would give feedback if she felt she needed to. But luckily so far, she seems to really enjoy what we do. Yeah, well, it works a treat. So, I mean, the full title is Doha, Marley Marley. But Guy, you were referring to it just as Marley Marley. Is that just? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we were calling it Marley Marley as we were making it because that's the name of the original song. Then when it came to actually releasing it, it felt wrong to call it the name of the original song because she's already got that version, you know, and that's hers.

38:31So we asked her what she thought would be a really suitable name. And she sent a few examples of words in Marley and and Doha was the one that stood out. I think it means blessing. It translates roughly as blessing. And I think that's, you know, again, you know, it suits the vibe of the tune. It's a positive sounding song. And we just wanted Marley Marley in brackets because that's what we've been calling it this whole time. And it's like, you know, it's the main hook bit of the song as well. It's the bit people sing. So, yeah, that's how the name came about. Yeah. So before we move on, shall we hear the finished version of the song?

39:04Yeah, sure. I'll skip into it a little bit. But yeah, we can do that. We'll be right back.

39:37So what we've got to imagine is that we're all going absolutely crazy now, waving our arms in the air and somewhere in another part of the world, Patamata is doing the same thing. Whenever this is played, she starts dancing. It's irresistible.

40:07So, I mean, it's a great position to be in, isn't it? To have that kind of ongoing relationship with an amazing artist like Patamata. Definitely, man. I mean, it's a position that you've built for yourselves, though, in a way, through your success and through your work. And it's intriguing because, Howard, you mentioned that, you know, you started music tech at college.

Self-teaching and studio education

40:41Gar, you mentioned that Howard then got kicked out because you were already out on the road touring. In terms of this education that you missed out, clearly, though, from the way that you're talking, you have educated yourselves in the ways of the studio and in the ways of the modern studio. And also, in terms of the musical language that the two of you are using to discuss your work, it's clearly extensive and has a lot of depth to it. How did you pick up all of that? I mean, is this you alone at night with a YouTube tutorial?

41:12Well, the music tech course that we took at Sixth Form College was pretty much like a crash course in the basics of using Logic Pro on a Mac. So that helped a lot just in terms of getting you going, you know, learning keyboard shortcuts and just the basics, EQ, compression. We spent a lot of time learning how to mic up a drum kit because our teacher was always like, this is the hardest thing to do in recording. You can mic up a drum kit and record it well. You can do most things. So that was good. And so, yeah, after that, though, in terms of learning things outside of Logic, like other

41:43plugins, other techniques, especially, you know, learning about analog studios, you know, what tape saturation does, what different types of compressor add to different parts of the song, that's something that like we weren't taught. And that was all through me, you know, exploring different plugins and just asking questions. And I would say YouTube played a huge role in that, like 100%. I'm a fan of just, if you run into a problem, literally type that problem into YouTube, someone's made a video about solving it, which is great to have now. You know, I think, you know, people ask us a lot, if I want to be an artist, shall I just

42:17get out there and start or shall I get an education and shall I do a degree? And, you know, if you want to be a sound man, a sound designer, you know, work in a studio, you're going to need some kind of qualification, I think. But if you want to be an artist, like with YouTube out there now, that's a difficult decision to make, man. You know, the debt is there. Do you need the debt over a free YouTube education? I don't know. You definitely need something at the start, just a basic crash course. But even that's on YouTube now. I don't know. It's difficult to say. And, you know, the software is so good now and affordable. I believe Ableton, you know, over lockdown was free for like ages.

42:50So that's incredible. You know, if we were kids and we could have got Ableton for free with all the plugins, that would have been fantastic. So, yeah, that's great. I think, you know, that's part of the reason why we're doing these breakdowns, like what we're doing now. And we're doing a lot of live streams talking about this is because we want kids to see, you know, laptops are more affordable now. Software is free. You can start doing this at home in your bedroom like we did. You know, there's no magic secret apart from, you know, you need those ideas. The ideas don't come for free. The machines won't make the initial idea for you. But putting it onto paper is getting easier and easier and more accessible.

43:21And that's that's great. Yeah. And I think also musically getting a degree or not, it's not, you know, neither way is correct. You know, I didn't get a degree in music and I consider myself a musician, but getting a degree in, let's say, jazz, it will hugely influence the type of music that you make. And so it's just, you know, what kind of music do you want to make? If you want to make very complicated jazz, that's really sophisticated harmonically, maybe you should get a degree and learn more about how to do that and learn about brass arrangements and things and the harmony, even like how to technically speak about that.

43:55But then, you know, I'd also argue that two or three of the jazz musicians that I'm close with didn't get a degree in jazz and they don't know how to say like this chord or that chord, but they know how to play it. And if you tell them like, you know, it's this chord, they know exactly what you mean. They just don't know the name for it. So, yeah, I think, you know, either path is good. Just depends on what you feel you need. Like, you know, we were brought up in a musical family where we would jam all the time and we'd all listen to music actively speaking about it, you know, saying like, oh, this song's good because of this baseline.

44:25And then we'd all listen to that baseline or whatever. So we got a lot of background knowledge that way from listening and from learning songs, you know, like hearing a Jamiroquai song and being like, I'm going to learn the baseline from that or hearing an Aqualung song and thinking I'm going to work that out on the piano. But if you didn't grow up like that, I would say getting an education in music would be a really good idea because not only would you be taught the technicalities of it all, but you'd also meet a bunch of other musicians that you can discuss that stuff with, which is super important. I've learned just as much from speaking with fellow musicians about music than I have from

44:57sitting down and actually studying. Yeah, but at the same time, your immersion is a big thing, isn't it? You know, if from a family background, you're immersed in music, listening and looking and discussing it in such a way and then continuing that with everybody that you came across. It's immersing yourself and putting in those hours, fiddling around with the equipment to try and get it to do certain things. And when I say equipment, that could be just a piano or it could be a software program. But if you've got to put in the hours to get the results.

45:28Exactly. And I feel like, you know, doing a degree in music is one way that you can force yourself to put in those hours. But it's not the only way, you know, like look at all the best jazz musicians of all time. Look at Miles Davis. It's like he didn't do a degree. It's like he just put in a lot of hours of practice, man. And he had that talent in the first place. So, yeah, it depends on the person. You know, there's not like a one size fits all route to being a musician. It's the opposite. Yeah, it is interesting, though. And it's clear from the way you talk about it that you take it very seriously.

45:58And that you put in a lot of time getting on top of what you're trying to do to achieve what you want to do, because it must be very frustrating when you think I can't get this to work because I don't know how to make it work. So I've got to learn how to make it. I just have nothing else that I feel that is as fulfilling in life as I do doing this. So, you know, why wouldn't you put in all of your time and effort into something that, you know, gives you that feeling? That's what everyone's looking for, right? You want to get up in the morning and do something you love every day. So, you know, it's not even a choice. It's not even really hard work. It's just like this needs to be done before I can sleep tonight.

46:30You know, it's like, you know, there's a big mess in the lounge. You need to tidy up, right? It's only so long you can put that off. You have to do it eventually. And that's how I see, especially arranging and mixing and producing final songs. It's, you know, all the mixing, especially. I love that feeling of everything being put in its right place. You know, I'm quite a tidy person. Whereas I hate doing that stuff. Yeah, it's much more ideas and like throws. And that's where we work well together, you know, because I'm happy to spend hours working out the correct harmony of a vocal, right? But I'd hate to sit and EQ a hi-hat for 10 minutes.

47:01It would bore me to death. And like, I think the pleasure that you get from doing something is a really good indicator of what you should be practicing. Because, you know, it's the same with like exercise, for example. It's like if you choose a form of exercise that you hate, you'll probably end up sacking it off and not bothering to do it. Whereas if you choose something that you really enjoy and that is fun, like a sport or whatever, you're way more likely to get up and do it. And so that's why we've ended up with the roles that we have within the band. Because I really enjoy listening to a song by someone and sitting down and working out what chords are these actually on the piano.

47:33And whereas Guy prefers listening to a mix and being like, how did they achieve that sound with that clap and like experimenting with that more and just imitating people who are better than you, man. It's a really good way of getting better. Fascinating. How lucky that you complement each other so well. It would have been a nightmare if you both wanted to do the same thing. Yeah, I think that's probably the problem with Oasis. Oasis, yeah, exactly, you know, different brothers, different problem.

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Writing Who Knew with Mick Jenkins

49:39So the next song we're going to look at is Who Knew, which features Mick Jenkins, a name I'm unfamiliar with. How did this one start and come about? Yeah, so at the beginning of the writing of the album, we put together this big list, which we've kind of done for every record so far, and it's a list of people that we're listening to. So we just go through our iTunes or our Spotify and just find who we're into at the moment, and then we'll give that list to our management, and they'll hit everyone up on the list and just be like, who out of you guys wants to do a session with us?

50:11And yes, you know, some people say no, some people say yes. And luckily, Mick was someone that said yes. And we knew Mick's music. You know, we were a fan. And I was particularly a fan of his song Jazz, which I think maybe it was an advert or something. I can't remember how I found it now. But it's an amazing song, you know, and his rapping on it is awesome. And that's why we wanted to work with him. But when we got in the session, we didn't even know Mick could sing. I just thought he was a rapper, and I was excited to do the session for that. But as soon as we started messing around, we started jamming. I was playing those chords, and Guy had the two-step kind of beat. He just started singing in this beautiful falsetto voice.

50:43We were like, no way, like, this guy can sing. This is going to be so much fun. It was also the first time he'd ever been familiarized with UK Garage as a genre. So I think maybe he just thought, this will work with falsetto singing. Let's go with that. You know, that's a beautiful thing. We like working with people who aren't necessarily familiar, not just with us, but with the entire genre that we are so inspired by. You know, he's from Chicago, so he knows house music and, you know, that kind of thing. But specifically UK Garage, he was definitely not familiar with. And that's fine with us. You know, that's great because that person will always bring, you know, something very

51:17fresh to the session because, you know, they're not really tied to any which way of thinking like, this will be UK Garage when it has X, Y, Z. It's just more like, you guys make this cool music I haven't heard before. Here's what I do. See if it works over the top. That's a nice way of thinking. Yeah, and that's exactly what we had on our first record and with the stuff before that, you know, because we didn't really know any Garage. We might have known, like, the hits like Artful Dodger or Sweet Like Chocolate and that stuff. But we definitely weren't Garage Heads growing up because we were a bit too young for that. We missed it first time around.

51:47And so we started making these songs not really knowing that we were making something like Garage. And so we did stuff like Latch, you know, and we just made it in 6.8 and we were like, does that still count? Like, can we still call that Garage? And people loved it, you know, because they hadn't heard that before. It hadn't really been done in that way. So yeah, we love working with people who don't know anything about Garage. It's really fun because they, like I said, they bring you a surprise element sometimes. But we played Mick at the start of the session. We played Mick like a bunch of the hits. This guy called it a Garage starter pack. And it was like, you know, all those classics that you would get on, like, some Ministry

52:20of Sound compilation that we love, you know, and are the basis of Garage. And he loved it. You know, he was like, yeah, this is cool. Like, let's write. And that's the beauty of music is it transcends genre and background and knowledge. If you're a musician, you can jam with anyone from any genre. And so, you know, I started playing chords. Guy started playing drums. And Mick started singing. And we ended up with this song. Yeah, very jam-based song. Amazing. You'll hear it especially in the structure of the song. It's a very unconventional structure. Yeah, it was awesome to write with Mick as well as a songwriter because often when someone

52:53is a really good singer, like they're really technically able as a singer, there's this temptation for them to over-sing for one, but also to like just try and fill every gap with their voice. So like anytime there's silence, they'll like just put something in, even if it doesn't necessarily need that. I think that partly comes from wanting to fit in lyrics. You know, like if you've got a bunch of lyrics and you want to fit in a particular meaning, you want to use all that space to do it. Whereas Mick, coming from more of a rap background, coming up with words for him seemed easy, man.

53:24Like he was essentially just freestyling these lyrics. Words are his bread and butter, you know, like he's used to coming up with words very easily, whereas melodies maybe a bit less so. So like it freed us up to be able to really focus in on like using melodies when they needed to be there and then using space and just leaving space when it didn't need it. And because we were doing it in that jam kind of format, like I'd be playing a synth and maybe it would like swell up and be a bit louder at one point, he would just stop singing and just wait for it to go back down and then he'd come back in. And it was like this really organic process.

53:55And like I said, it led to a very unorthodox structure. So I think we should hear something. Yeah, yeah, sure. Let's do it. So where did the session take place? Was this in L.A.? Yeah. Capital Records, Studio D upstairs. And so when you're playing drums, Guy, on something like this, is it just you operating a mouse?

54:42Or are you triggering pads? You know, how do you approach it and how physical do you like to get? Yeah, I like to play pads or just keys on a MIDI keyboard. Like I'll usually just map a load of snares to one instance of a sampler, a load of hi-hats to another. I usually make my kick drums out of like a synth. I'll usually synthesize the kick drum and then layer a couple of acoustic ones over the top just so I can get the pitch in the right key and get it bending the way I want it to. So, you know, if it's an 808 style kick and you just need a big boom, that's one thing. But if you want it to like bend down and be more punchy, like then you have to tweak the synth.

55:16And I like having all that control rather than just browsing through hundreds of kicks till you find the right one. So, yeah, I can usually knock out a beat in, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes that I'm pretty happy to start writing to. He's underplaying that as well. It's like fully mixed at that point. Yeah, that's practice, man. Practice. No, I don't know about that. It sounds fully mixed to me, yeah. Yeah. Well, this tune's different though because this one is built around a loop. So this loop is from an old school garage producer called Jeremy Sylvester, who's one of my favorites and Howard's favorites. He's an absolute G. He's an unsung hero, I would say.

55:47He's a master of garage drums. He is, man. And he's got a huge license-free, royalty-free sample pack website online. And so, yeah, we got a ton of his loops off there. And they just give you that aesthetic that you can't really get from programming drums without it going through a bunch of, like, I don't know, NPCs or older sounding computers. And then also, like, onto vinyl. I think a lot of this is sort of ripped off of vinyl back onto the computer. You just can't get those squelchy hi-hats without it being put onto vinyl. You know, there's no plug-in that does it. And I really wanted this to sound authentically old and authentically two-step.

56:22You know, rather than it being a modern version of it, I wanted it to sound like a total throwback, like an ode to the genre. And, yeah, that all came from this loop.

56:34It's very generous of Jeremy to put that out there. It is, right? Yeah, he's a good guy. So that's the bones of the loop. And then I added this big kick over the top.

56:48So I'm giving it that swing. A few stops in there.

56:55Boom. There's actually two kicks in there. Skippy one and a big 808 star one.

57:03So that's taking it away from it. You know, it could have easily been... But it felt way too fast. We're at 139 BPM here. So it felt right to make it a little bit more halftime. Yeah, layered up over those. We've got another snare just backing it up. Yeah, those. So more skippiness going on.

57:32And then a hi-hat over the top.

57:36Just widening it out a bit.

57:40Lots of crackle and hiss. Got all this in here as well. I don't know if you can hear this. This is added by us.

57:49So, you know, again, I just don't feel like an old garage tune is finished unless it's got a bunch of tape piss and crackle over the top. Got to sound like it's on vinyl. Yeah, even if you have to synthesize that and add it, you know, which I guess some purists would be like, that's stupid. But I don't know, man. We're huge fans of burial. All purists have that nasal voice, by the way. Yeah, they do. Well, we're big fans of burial. And he did that very well. You know, sampling rain and like people talking in a cafe and yeah, crackly vinyl. And yeah, you know, even though it's not actually coming from the record, all my favorite songs sound like they're coming off the record.

58:20We've had crackly vinyl on our songs since the first song we ever made. Absolutely, man. We've always done it. You know, a lot of our favorite songs from Al Green to Stevie to Michael Jackson, you know, we were listening to those off of records when we were kids in our parents' record collection. And if you clean those up too much, they don't sound like the same song anymore. You know, you need those. I've been listening to songs recently, like annoyingly, like the artist name has escaped me, but there's this beautiful singer songwriter and they're Portuguese and they're writing kind of traditional, like Brazilian sounding music, I guess you would call it, like Brazilian jazz.

58:51And it's just like, if they had have released it in the 70s, it would be considered like a jazz standard by now, you know, but because it's so new and so polished sounding and the microphone is so good and the vocals really up front and the piano is like, you can hear every hammer hitting every string. It loses the magic, man. It's like you're hearing this plastic version of what could have been this beautiful antique record. And so, yeah, we're trying to make sure we never sound too clean. Yeah, that's it. I'm looking for imperfections now, not perfections, you know. And that's another thing with this song.

59:22There's a lot of that, a lot of skippiness and a lot of pauses, a lot of random bits where we just take the drums out because it just felt like it. Mix doing something, get out the way, back in. You know, it's almost like a DJ way of thinking, you know, chucking loops in here and there or an acapella in here or there, which is very garage, I guess. So, yeah, that's the drums all doing their thing.

59:44And so that drum set up, you were creating that on the hoof with Mick there? Yeah, I think so. Maybe I just pulled up a few loops when he got there after playing him the garage starter pack. Yeah. And I think we all decided we liked that one the best, but it was 4-4. And that was the only qualm I had with it was it needs to be a two-step beat. It's too intense as 4-4. So that was the main change was adding in those kick drums. Because it's also, it's really fast for a garage tune. 1-3-9, fastest tune on the album. Garage is rarely that fast. It was only when the producers started taking a lot more drugs that they got that fast.

1:00:15This is basically dubstep tempo, you know, like 1-40 is generally where you put dubstep. So he wanted to go like almost halftime like that, but still keep that two-step feel. And you can definitely hear a Burial influence on this song, I think. Yeah. There's definitely Burial influence in there for sure. I mean, in everything we do, but much more upfront in this one. Yeah. In terms of the, just the sound space. I don't think he would have written a song like this.

1:00:46I think Burial, for me anyway, he was the first person to make Garage retrospectively and actually improve on the sounds. You know, like he took the original sounds and he clearly has like an incredibly deep knowledge of original Garage. And he made it in a new way that I actually thought was superior to a lot of those old records, you know, because the equipment's different now and you've got so much more accessible. And so we've always been influenced by that because we're doing the same thing in some respects, especially in drums. Yeah, another similarity between this song

1:01:17and some other tunes on the album is, again, as a vocoder. So vocoder became a bit of a staple for this album, I would say. It's not something we've used since Ultimatum. Yeah, I didn't really notice that in the writing process, but it totally is on most songs, isn't it? It's just these two. Is it just these? Yeah, I think so. It felt like you used it a lot. No, just these two, but I think it just fitted the sonic space, didn't it? And again, I think it being Mick and him being unfamiliar with the genre, I'm just trying to bring him in and, you know, get him. I mean, I remember playing him it through the vocoder for the first time and his face was like full stank face,

1:01:49you know. So I sold him. We sold him on the sound. It's actually two vocoders this time. It's the Logic stock vocoder and the iZotope vocal synth. So yeah, here's, well, I'll give you a bit of his vocal first to give you an idea of what's happening. So it's basically an A-B song. There's like a whole sung first verse into a rap and then a B section, which repeats throughout. So here's the A section. So yeah, really beautiful, tender, airy singing.

1:02:30And then it goes into this like more intense rap section. So yeah, it's intense. You know, it's like a wall of sound hitting you at that point. So it just goes straight into a break after that,

1:03:02into a kind of that sample that goes throughout the whole song, the Who Knew sample, which is so Burial.

1:03:08Yeah, that's definitely. That's a direct riff of Burial. Yeah.

1:03:12Here it is with the music. I'm just thinking how amazing it must have been to get Mick in thinking that he was going to do some kind of a rap and then he starts singing that, which sounds so beautiful. Yeah, yeah. It must have been looking at each other thinking, hang on, hang on a minute. Well, yeah, in a way we were surprised, but then in another way,

1:03:44we weren't, you know, because it's like, well, yeah, he's a musician. Like, of course he can sing. Like every musician can sing a bit. There's no one that can't sing at all who can play an instrument. You know, everyone has got a voice. It's just, I think more of the surprise was just how nice his voice was. But, you know, singing is the language we're most familiar with in songwriting. You know, rapping is, we're less familiar with it. We grew up in Surrey. We listen to it all the time, but we never write it. This album is the first time where we've actually written rap lyrics, you know, but again, you know, songwriting, songwriting. And if you can do one kind,

1:04:14you can transfer it very easily to another genre. Yeah. So here he is with the vocoder. So yeah, just bringing him into that different world. And then, yeah, we move on to this B section, which is kind of a call and response type thing. Crazy bass line.

1:05:05Yeah, there's loads of mad sound design going on with this, especially in the bass. Like, as you heard on the drop there, does this huge build up.

1:05:31And then this one. Yeah, you know, it's just poking through the gaps where he's not singing and yeah, that was fun to work on. But yeah, it's a really unusual rhythm, that vocal. That's my favorite part about it. You know, I think only a rapper would come up with that kind of crazy, the way it lands over the beat, you know, the beat's already quite busy and he's just kind of staggering that. Well, that's the thing as well. It's like, you know, we keep saying that this bit's the rap bit, but actually he's singing all of it. It's all like in a note. It's just the flows that he's choosing

1:06:02are such rap flows. A singer would never write that rhythm. So it makes you think it's a rap, but he's in tune the whole time. So where'd you draw the line? Yeah, it's a blur. It's a blur between singing and then, yeah, he goes on from there to the little vocoder solo.

1:06:29You are making me think that this chemistry between you all just seems to create this magic quite instantly. You know, just the three of you in the room with an idea of what you're trying to do and you get this joy. You know, it's fantastic. Well, like we said, this is one of 200, so that doesn't always happen, but that's like, that was the critique. That was what made the album. We're only going to choose the tunes when that happens, you know? Meaning aside, you know, lyrics aside, there's no real lyrical theme that runs throughout Energy and really any of our albums.

1:07:01That's something that we struggle with. You know, we don't ever, well, not struggle with, we just don't, we're not interested in that. You know, the concept album is a great idea, but when you're working with a different singer every time and you don't want to tell them what to sing, you know, you want to write it with them, you're never going to make a, you know, homogenous album like that. It's going to be varied and you're going to have different ideas. You know, we'll write lyrics anywhere from how's your day going to is there any deep, like underlying message in your life right now you need to get out? And so that's impossible to tell everyone what to do. But musically, yeah, I mean,

1:07:31we'll just let the idea flow out of us. You know, we don't try and fight it. We just try and let it happen. And I think the reason for that is there's no limit to how many tunes you can make. You know, you've got unlimited hard drive space now, unlimited resources. It's not like back in the day where you'd book a studio for two weeks, really expensive studio and run out of tape. Yeah, you've got to run out of tape or you've got to run out of label money. It's, you know, we just write and write and write and eventually you'll get one like this, which is beautifully simple. One synth, one bass line, one drum kit, singing, rapping over the top and it just all flows nicely.

1:08:02And then, you know, I spent this song I'm probably proudest of on the whole record production wise because there's just so many crazy sound design moments that I would just not have been able to do when we made Settle and even the last album. It's something I've only really learned to do in the last like three, four years. I would say like moments like this, I would never have been able to program.

1:08:25That's interesting that you say that. Why don't you think you'd have been able to program them then? I would have the idea in my head and I would have probably been able to program a half-assed version of it that was kind of doing what I wanted it to do. But I just didn't have the knowledge of the plugins. I didn't have the knowledge of the effects. Well, didn't have the money to buy the plugins, you know, lots of problems like that in the way. Maybe the patience too. I mean, this song was a real labor of love to get everything in the right space and panning in the right way

1:08:55and, you know, build-ups like that with all that stereo-ness going on, none of it's by chance. It's not me just throwing the sound through some plugins and seeing what happens. It's like, I've got the idea in my head and I'm searching for the plugin or the effect or whatever that will make it happen. That just takes a long time to find. I think that that concept of having an idea in your head and trying to use all of the tools at your disposal to get it out and not change it in some way, it runs throughout all of music, especially in terms of writing a melody on an instrument. Because often,

1:09:25if I'm playing bass, just to give this a bit of backstory, I don't really play bass at all anymore. I play keys all the time. So I used to be good at bass and I now kind of suck. And I'll be sat there and I'll have an idea in my head for what should come out, but I don't have the technical ability to play it. Welcome to my whole life. Yeah, right? But it's swapped because I used to have that same problem with chords where I would know in my mind the feeling that I wanted to get from the chords and roughly what they should be. But I didn't know enough chords on the piano to actually execute that.

1:09:56I didn't know what they were supposed to be. I'd try and get something close and sometimes accidentally get something really cool like latch, which was a whole bunch of weird chords. But now it's switched where I can get chords out when I want them and I can't play them on the bass anymore. So the guy's now got to the point where he can hear a production trick or technique. Yeah, I can present what I want to present. And get it out correctly. And I'm sure in 10 years I'll look back and think, oh God, you couldn't do half the stuff you wanted to do. You just didn't realize it. But I'm at the point now where, well look, we're taking this track apart right now. I'm perfectly happy for people to have

1:10:26a look behind the curtain. And that was not the case at the start. I was not comfortable with letting people know that I had pretty limited knowledge and pretty much only using the stock plugins that came with the software. And now I'm proud of that. Now I look back and think, you know what? You made tunes that people really liked on a budget in your mum's house. And I think that's something that we're actively working on is just trying to be more honest as artists. You know, trying to be more open now because I remember back in the day, you know, I was like 15 in these nightclubs filled with like proper dance heads who knew like all these old records I had no idea about.

1:10:57And they'd be like, oh yeah, like, you know, that tune that you just played, it sounded like this Rosca tune that I like. And I'd be like, okay, you know, and I like pretend I knew that record. It's like, yeah, yeah, I know, yeah, man, I know that one. You like pretend like you were ahead as well. And they'd obviously clock straight away that you weren't. And it was just this stupid thing. And it's like, well, why is it bad that I don't know that record? You're like, what's the downside of that? I'm still making tunes that you like. So it's like, why am I hiding this? Yeah, yeah. But maybe that was all in your mind. They probably weren't judging you at all.

1:11:28Everybody, you know, amazed to be stood beside you and think, how is he so young? And yet he's done that. There's a lot of that as well. There's a lot of like people name dropping their most underground track to like impress you and show that they know more music than you. And really like, I don't know any underground tracks these days. I'm completely out of there. Guy knows a bunch. I'm still in touch with the scene because I like to know what people are able to do now. You know, it's come on such a long way and the technology is so good. I do like to hear what people are doing with the latest technology. But, you know, songwriting,

1:11:58classic songwriting, you know, that is what it is. And that has to come from your brain. But yeah, you know, if there's like a new flash plug in now, I've got to try it. Yeah, I like dip in a toe. Whereas I'm much more like, you know, I dig into older archives of songwriting because there's so much of it. You know, like songwriting's been the same for at least 50 years now. It's like, you just have to write something honest and try and make the melodies and the chords beautiful among that. And it's not about like, oh, which one is the least known? Like, as if like knowing this old obscure song makes you better than someone else

1:12:30or something like that. It's like, someone tells me a song I don't know, I'm like, cool man, thanks. I'm going to check it out. Like, it's not like, oh my God, you're cool. All of our favorite, well, not all, let's say like 90% of our favorite dance records aren't underground. They're the massive hits. They're the ones that like made it out and made it onto the radio, you know, like Gypsy Woman or like we said earlier, Artful Dodger, MJ Cole, you know, Daft Punk. Yeah. You know, those are our inspirations and nowadays, you know, people like James Blake, people who have made a big impact on the scene and that is because

1:13:01the music is the best. Like it just is, you know, and sometimes there'll be gems that will be in the underground and only exist there and you'll be like, how is that not bigger? Yeah. But honestly, yeah, we've kind of let go of that way of thinking a bit more. I still buy a lot of vinyl and, you know, I like playing out underground. I like playing up and comers out in the set, you know, I like playing people that we believe will become bigger, but, you know, the idea of playing something just because it's unknown, we've just let go. I think it's because we got a taste of our own medicine, you know, like we started off copying and getting inspired by people

1:13:33from an underground scene and then our music got on the radio and so suddenly our music wasn't considered underground and we were like, oh, what? But it's the same music, like it was underground a month ago and now because Annie Mack played it, it's no longer underground. It's like, how does that make sense? Also, I think the, it doesn't matter too much, man, you know, people overthink that scene and, you know, like I said, all your favorites are who your favorites are. Ours happen to be the ones who make crossovers that dip into both worlds. I don't care if music is popular or not, it just needs to be good and that's the same

1:14:04like criteria that we use to choose the artists that we're going to work with, you know, it's like, I don't care where you're from, I don't care what kind of music it is, I just want to know that you're making it and that it's good and I'm in, you know? I don't want to see on the credits 70 other people I wasn't aware of. It's good to know that the artist is making it, that's really nice. We've got a bit off track here anyway, haven't we? Yeah, we have. Should we get a nice little rant there? Yeah, let's have a look and maybe, should we recap with Who Knew and have a big blast of that so we can all get moving again?

1:14:35Sounds good. What you do to me?

1:14:47I can't fake it I can't break this spell I want it Cause who?

1:15:00Was out there by my nose You have me guessing on me You know me Well, I owe you I know I won't hold back Oh no, I can't hold back Oh no, I can't hold back Oh no, what you do I just can't Time waits I'm in my bag Way back when A nigga didn't have no sense She was a fab But yeah, yeah Well, I know I'm going to be exploring the work of Mick Jenkins now

1:15:31Thanks to your track I'll be going back and trying to work out what he's put out there before Cause that just sounds so great Thank you And it's really interesting isn't it? I mean, this whole idea of genre or how you go about creating a particular piece of music and what it's designed for and, you know, I think you two are good examples of this idea that, you know, you love dance music you make dance music but it isn't necessarily because, you know, you were out there in the rave for many years before you started making it It was the music that connected

1:16:01It wasn't necessarily the club or the situation which, you know, maybe in the early days of dance music the club and the situation were very important but the way the music has spread over the, you know, 30, 40 years of house music you know, so many different generations have got into it at so many different ages when you hear it and you like it and you're age 10 you're not going to be thinking oh, this blows up at 4am Yeah, yeah It depends why you're going to the club, doesn't it? Are you going to the club, you know to get wasted and have a great party with your friends? Is it someone's birthday?

1:16:31You know, fine That's cool But, you know, I would go to the club with a fake ID on a school night and turn up, you know to school brutally tired just because I wanted to go and hear the music You know, I was so in love with the music that was going on in like the late 2000s early 2010s because it was that time where dubstep was moving from just being about the bass lines into this more interesting harmonic space with people like Burial Joy Orbison James Blake you know, even Subtract who we toured with early on that whole movement was so interesting to us because we always loved dubstep

1:17:02but it was never something we wanted to make it was just like this is cool because it is truly like original sounding you know, you've taken elements of Jamaican dub and put it on a laptop on Fruity Loops and made this amazing new palette of sound but there's not a lot of interesting harmonic things going on you know, there's a bass and there's drums and a sample love it in the club but then as soon as people like Joy Orbison and James Blake came along and that whole scene like Hessel Audio Hemlock R&S those labels were all releasing unbelievable stuff back then

1:17:32Lone as well to name a few and that was what really made us go ah, okay, yeah this is something we actually need to make because it's speaking to us on a level of real inspiration you know like I said I'm a drummer I was in an indie band at the time with my schoolmates how it plays bass it's not like we were familiar but the music just spoke to us and we were like this is now something important that we think we need to make so yeah that's how it happened fantastic and you've done a clever link there Guy because you mentioned birthday yeah, I just thought that when I said it yeah, nice all right, cool great segue excellent

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1:18:34Visible puts unlimited 5G data and hotspot in the palm of your hand powered by Verizon's 5G network with no contract holding you back and for a limited time you can get Visible for just $19 a month for 12 months when you use promo code SAVE6 all the features of big wireless service for half the cost tap the banner to switch today terms apply standard rate applies at month 13 see Visible.com for planned features and network management details So that was Who Knew

Creating Birthday with Syd and Kehlani

1:19:06featuring Mick Jenkins we're going to talk about birthday now as Guy so cleverly did that great segue and maybe should we have a quick burst of birthday so people can hear the song sure thing I'm just wondering what you would say I'm just wondering what you would say would it be a big mistake? can I call you on your birthday? just to make sure that you're okay would you prefer it if I go? gross and let you go your own can I call you on your birthday? just to make sure that you're okay but I thought it'd be a good idea to get a feel of that

1:19:38so I thought it'd be a good idea to get a feel of that because we're going in a different direction now so the majority of energy is upbeat isn't it?

1:20:09it's dance floor business but there are a couple of tunes a couple of interludes and this particular song which take things downbeat and in a different kind of direction yeah the thing about it is it's actually 136 bpm so technically it's the second fastest track on the album but it's half time so you know if it was it would be a little different story but the makes it much more bouncy slower tune so that's the dubstep influence coming in there for sure

1:20:39mixed with some kind of UK garage hi-hats but it's definitely like we were going for a R&B vibe and very specifically like Brandy and Monica I think as soon as we heard Sid's voice we were like you sound like Brandy and then we hear Killarney's voice like you sound like Monica this is a great combination I think Sid sounds like Aaliyah man that's the vibe that was in my head that kind of era anyway and you know having them on our production was a dream come true we actually wrote this song in LA with Sid it was mostly well it was all just me, Howard and Sid in the room until we had the full structured song

1:21:10and then yeah a little further down the line listening to it back we thought it would be a really nice idea to add it in as a duet and we asked Sid, you know who would you want to do a duet with and she just off the cuff said I could get Killarney and we were like, what? oh yeah, whatever you can get Killarney okay, whatever and then bam, two, three weeks later the files are in our inbox you know, stuff like that gets said a lot in the studio oh, we should get blah blah blah we should get this person but she actually came through with the goods and I think it's the only verse on the album which we weren't involved in the writing but luckily Killarney being as incredibly talented as she is

1:21:43there was no need for us yeah, it's weird, man because we're such control freaks when it comes to that we always want to be involved in the writing of everything and so when we heard oh yeah, the Killarney thing might happen we were like, yeah, yeah if it does, we'll fly out and we'll write it with her and we just got an email with the parts and we were like, oh right, Jesus so luckily, as I said, it's so good that we literally didn't want to change one thing about it she nailed the concept she nailed it melodically it's so different from the first verse I love what she did so we made an exception did she record it with Sid?

1:22:14no, I think she did it in her own studio I think Sid called her and just told her what the song was about and then she just went off and wrote it but Sid did a lot of her own recording so once we were done with the beat on Logic or it was in a place to write to at least you know, halfway there we put it into Pro Tools which is her bread and butter and she knows very well she used to be a studio engineer she's also a DJ like she's multi-talented and so, yeah, she knows Pro Tools like the back of her hand and so she would sit at the computer like we are now with a mic right in front of her and she'd be pressing record and be doing words and phrases

1:22:45and it was great we could just sit back and listen and we all had headphones on and we'd just say what we did and didn't like or where we thought it should and shouldn't go so that was new for us too you know, usually it's me with my head stuck in a laptop for hours and this time I was able to be on the couch luxurious lifestyle like what it's like to be me oh, heaven that's quite a different way of working for you then isn't it? yeah a nice break or was that nerve-wracking too? letting Sid take care of that it was totally not nerve-wracking because she's so good at it when she said she was going to

1:23:15we were like, oh, I don't know about that and then we saw like how well she knew it so proficient and also Pro Tools you know, if anyone opens Pro Tools I'm already like you know, I don't know what I'm doing so it wasn't even it didn't matter to me but yeah, she did a great job we recorded it in Capitol through a lovely old Neumann mic through a Neve desk there's a nice Neve desk in the little room we used to use and a TubeTek compressor so super clean nice, warm and I think we probably whacked the treble up a fair amount to give it all that nice air in the top range

1:23:46because all those old Aaliyah you know, Brandy Monica I mean, even like Mariah Carey those vocals have so much like in, you know and we really wanted that vocal to float over the music and that's why the music's quite stripped back as well in this one and you know there's no like aggressive sounds in there there's nothing really above like 500 hertz it's all very sine wave warm, twinkly sounds and so lots of space for their vocals to just float over the top so yeah, I guess we should just start with the vocals here's Sid's verse so yeah, loads of air in there

1:24:29and nice, you know sparkly bits a bit of stereo delay and then Kalani's vocal I basically just tried to match it in terms of EQ and make sure, you know they sounded like they were in the same room even though they weren't different days different studios I ain't even calling for no reconciliation I just want to tap in and see how you've been I've waited for an adequate amount of time to give us both some space I think it's been good for us to stay up out the way but it can't hurt to check up on an ex not to flex

1:25:00but to put the hurt to rest for maturity to test so I'm calling to say yeah, and then they kind of come together in the second chorus so now you've heard Sid first, first and then Kalani second the other two choruses they kind of both sing along and both do their own little ad-libs as well classic duet style yeah, classic duet style so Sid's taking up most of the lead vocal and this is all layers of Sid

1:25:31can I call you on your birthday just to make sure that you're okay would you prefer it if I go ghost yeah, and there's a low octave in there that you can hear but she couldn't sing that low so we've got like a fake low octave going on using a plug-in called Little Alter Boy so I'll play you that just to make sure that you're okay would you prefer it if I go ghost so it sounds kind of like rubbish on its own but in the mix at the right level

1:26:01it does the job of providing that low octave yeah can I call you on your birthday just to make sure that you're okay yeah yeah, sounds great so I mean in terms of the narrative of this song because there seems to be a narrative there's a story here who came up with that idea that's going to be your domain Howard yeah, I think we were both Sid and I sat down and we were just talking about what was going on and I can't remember if it was me or her now that one of our ex's birthdays was coming up and it was that thing

1:26:31that I've had I think most people who've got an ex have actually experienced this thing where you like you've memorized your ex's birthday because you have to do that when you go out with someone and so like when the date comes you can't help but think about it and it's that thing of like you know I want to just give them a call and see how they are but if it's only recently that you've broken up there's that kind of dilemma in your mind of like is it too soon to have that chat am I opening a door that I should leave closed at this point so we both kind of had that as the vague concept at the beginning

1:27:02and then we just fleshed it out and we were like what would you actually say when you did that and like how could you do it with the best intentions you know and how could you do it not with the best intentions and what would the reasonings be for those things and yeah we basically just brainstormed on those ideas and came up with the idea of like yeah actually I do just want to call you to make sure that you're cool and like there's no ulterior motive here I just want to see how you are but yeah it's like straddling that line of what's acceptable and what's not in that kind of unnavigated terrain it's great it means that

1:27:33it seems really real when they're singing to each other in effect it feels like there is a conversation and that there is a backstory you know to this whole arrangement you really kind of end up living in this moment this moment of decision and indecision about these two people and yeah exactly the thing that I like about it being a duet is that both the people involved have an element of power but they also have an area of vulnerability because you've got the power to be like you know I've got the decision

1:28:04making ability to call you or not but then you've also like got that thing of maybe if I do call you I'll have a problem and I'll catch feelings again or whatever so yeah it's got like a nice double-sided what's it double-edged sword to it we took it pretty literally as well there's an earlier version of this song that actually ends with a phone ringing sound effect it ends with this kind of ambiguous did she pick up or did she leave it but then I think we decided it was a bit too cheesy but this is in the in the version you can hear it fading in yeah

1:28:37but it's left hanging you know yeah it kind of left it just like oh no 90s MTV video yeah I mean I don't know what phone you're using if you're still getting those noises but yeah we decided to take that out but you know I'm always looking for ways that I can bring the meaning of the lyrics into the production somehow whether it's you know like a little ah like we said earlier or a vocoder to just put the lyrics directly in the sound but yeah with this one it wasn't as literal as that needed to be yeah glad we sacked that off in the end yeah all right should we move on to the music yes cool

1:29:08so some drums to start things off yeah halftime beat very influenced by dubstep you know late 2000s dubstep going on in the UK with a little bit more of an R&B dry edge to it you know dubstep usually involved big reverbs and you know so I was always a big fan of Scream and Banger and Banger's drums were very inspirational pivotal moments in like my early listening days of dubstep and yeah he's definitely influenced this tune but then yeah people

1:29:39I don't know like Grant Nelson Jeremy Sylvester those guys where it was much more up front and the drums were really dry and like in your face so yeah that's in there and then I think we've got to give shouts to Jay Diller as well because the claps in this tune are so in your face it's so loud and up front and that was a classic Jay Diller thing was you know kick and snare the loudest thing in the mix by miles and then you know everything else just kind of squelching underneath and I always thought maybe that was like kind of a trick that people do because it's on all the D'Angelo

1:30:09records as well where the drums are way louder than everything else and it makes you turn it up because you want to hear everything else and you end up it makes the drum slam really loud song exactly yeah here's a bit of that so you know loads of crackle and stuff in there again for the same reasons that we explained earlier it just needs to be there but there's a lot of recorded claps and clicks in here as well so we've got

1:30:40oh my god look at that how many layers do you reckon that is oh my god let me count it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 layers of claps yeah that's a lot of claps wow clicks there it is and mouth clicks so if I mute this is just my mouth doing that and hand clicks layered up with that and then claps and you know the reason we've done that is because

1:31:10I didn't want it to sound like a loop you know there's something about hand claps that you need to do a take throughout the song or at least 16 bar loop or something just so that there's different flams and different things happening or it just sounds so drum machine-y and you know you can hear in this there are snares and claps that are in the drum machine but those ones we've panned really far out to the side so that you get those more authentic humanized sounding moments you know that goes to the left more out to the right

1:31:41center you know it's just different each time and that's something again I would never have thought to do at the start of our career I wouldn't have considered that important but now I listen to it and I'm just like ah it doesn't sound like an Al Green record unless it's someone in the room standing by a mic clapping away so we try and do that more now hi-hat loop in there which is an acoustic hi-hat I don't think there's really any electronic hi-hats I can't remember

1:32:12if that's a loop or if that's me on a hi-hat because we did go to a studio for about six months to write music for this album called Sleeper Sounds in Notting Hill and I did do a whole like two or three days of just recording drums I think that might be me just looping away I'm not sure but it's been manipulated and messed with a lot since then and chopped up so it's as good as electronic so yeah that's the drums oh it's a big breath in there as well just acting like a crash cymbal I think I was just kind of bored of using a splash crash cymbal so I went with that kind of breath

1:32:46as well just adding even more air to their vocal yeah you wouldn't notice it in the mix but yeah it's just a nice point of difference cool let's go to the chords because they're super important um sine waves another kind of classic disclosure sounding bleepy synth I mean yeah

1:33:18they're pretty simple chords man it's just the last one that's kind of a bit out there a bit diminished and very Aaliyah again you know I was thinking Timberland and Aaliyah all those songs yeah everything else is pretty basic there's just sevenths cool so we've got that just on a basic kind of sine wave with a bit of white noise synth and we're backing it up with some cool plucky sounds like vibraphone yeah just something

1:33:52a bit more acoustic bringing it into the real world and then that's backed up by this really lovely melody that Howard wrote which I remember you drew it in manually because it moved in a very quite unique way well it was I basically just wrote one part which was and then I basically went in and do what I would do for writing a harmony for a vocal line which is essentially how you would write like a brass section part yeah I hear this as violins you know that's why I put it on that sound because as soon as you wrote it I heard like

1:34:22I could see the orchestra playing that and that's why it sounds I love that bit the most when it just lands yeah yeah that's really cool so that was I don't know what synth you wrote that on but I decided to keep it in that very high up place it's the only instrument that's really tackling that sort of area of the sound palette some more more clunks

1:34:53here that's like a toy piano sound but with all of the notes EQ'd out it's just the clunkiness of the mallet hitting the piano and you put that all together yeah so that's the harmony and the drums

1:35:24moving on to the bass big bass my favorite thing about this bass is that the main sub note has got like a bit crusher on it you can hear the buzzy going on so it's just a single note sampled with a bit crusher so it means that when you move the note around the bit crusher moves with it usually the bit crusher would maintain just going but in this case it's moving around

1:35:54so you can only really do that by sampling a note I don't think they make a bit crusher that does that so that's a cool little point of difference bass guitar just low in the mix just filling in some of the harmonic space and then there's two junos over the top so more

1:36:26like electronic bass sound so yeah four basses all layered up to get that yeah oh there's a string note as well which has got some cool delay on it the delay is modulating and making it sound like the strings bending I'll turn

1:36:58the delay up so you know it just kind of sounds like an alarm almost but that's all just delay coming off of that string note and we're a big fan of just having a single string note throughout the chorus it's just a Roy Ayers move straight Roy Ayers yeah everybody loves the sunshine you know there's that one string that just goes throughout the whole song and that's just genius you know if the harmony lets you do that we always do it yeah it often doesn't it often doesn't work yeah but I love that that's a good and they do it in garage as

1:37:28well so yeah that's where we stole that idea I think that's it except for the next bit of structure which is the middle eight which goes to this nice little ooh section and a really nice chord progression here which Howard came up with what is it working working working if I called you on your birthday yeah would it be worth it should I call you

1:38:02on your birthday so I love that it's so satisfying to me you know the way that the harmony just all sort of falls to pieces and just goes to a place you wouldn't expect and yeah I love the way you brought it back to where it originally was as well yeah the chord progression came about because of a conversation that I had with Pharrell actually not to name drop

1:38:33but it was you can't not name drop if it's Pharrell where we were speaking about like old Motown songs where they would have like really simple chord progressions the whole way through and then in the middle eight all of a sudden you get this magical moment where the chords go all like expensive and jazzy and I was like yeah people don't really do that anymore because people just chuck in their best chords for the whole song they don't like have any restraint so I figured like this song having quite simple chords for the majority I was like oh we've got to go a bit crazy with the middle eight now and because we

1:39:04had Sid's voice to work with layering it up with the harms as well it made a lot of sense yeah that's right so she's doing some oohs here which just back up the harmony

1:39:24and some cool ad-libs over the top as well yeah I love those last three chords that's super cool man that's not something we'd usually do it's it's very classic songwriting yeah that kind of key change yeah it's very Burk Bacharach yeah that is basically

1:39:55it all of that how long did that all take in terms of working and working and working on it this was probably the longest song in terms of the production afterwards the songwriting itself was was it two days or one day I think one day with an extra day for recording yeah it was one day for writing and then Kalani's day so three days in total of recording and then I'd say maybe the layering like adding things like those plucky sounds and then you know there's like a little arp here as

1:40:26well doing I think that came in later you know that it's the oldest tune on the album so you could definitely say we weren't done tweaking it until three years had passed but it was very you know sporadic and very spread out it wasn't solid work by any means we wrote the whole other rest of the album in that time yeah I think it was just we had quite a lot of time to sit with it and like I probably went a year without hearing this tune because it was just like in the bank we were like happy with it we were like yeah we're definitely gonna put that on the record and then I'd listen to it a year later and

1:40:57be like actually you know we should change this note or we should change this sound just like minor tweaks though it was nothing big at that and same with me and the production I think I had a solid mix and then I didn't touch it for a year and a half and then with my new latest knowledge I would have added fresh plugins and new mixing techniques this was probably the hardest song for me to mix because I wanted the drums to be so slamming and so up front and loud and with their tender voices underneath it was very hard to get that balance so there's a lot of automation on the volume of the vocals especially sits because you

1:41:27know she'd be so soft in some of those passing notes that you'd have to boost the volume there and then take it down for a longer note and all of that was meticulously done and in and around the claps stuff too yeah had to be very careful with like where we placed it it wasn't just kind of like turn it up all right leave it there's a lot of manual automation going on there and same with Kalani so yeah it was a long mixing process this one just lots of tweaks and adding but no multiple versions or anything like that you know we rarely do that the demo project on logic is the final project you know this is where we mix it and then it goes straight to

1:41:59mastering from this there's not really such a thing as a previous version all right let's put it into Pro Tools and freshen it up we just keep building it and keep working on the same project and by manual automation what do you mean by that guy like riding the fader with your finger you know so if Sid's vocal dips down at the end of a note say she goes like you know you want it to go you just want that whole thing to be the same volume so you'd ride the fader it's like manual compression basically yeah so you give it some compression and then a bit of that I mean yeah if you could see the screen there's just

1:42:30tons of automation going up and down up and down so I'd probably do a manual pass of it to get a rough pattern and I'd need it up with the mouse right but yeah compression helps a lot I mean her vocal is heavily heavily compressed because it needs it you know it's so airy and light fantastic so good to hear that broken down and it's interesting you know that that was the first song that you felt was complete for the record and and that you kept working on it and it probably was the first song that helped move you forward into recording the record in a way yeah it's definitely one of

1:43:01the first ones we were really like immediately happy with yeah I think it's the only song that's a real stepping stone between the second album sound and this album sound as well you know it's the only R&B kind of flavor on there and maybe that's because we were yeah earlier days of writing the album still coming out of that phase and then you know as we progressed on we were exploring more and more especially in you know African genres South American drums and stuff like that you know we weren't quite as into that stuff when we made this tune and then throughout

1:43:31that next year that's when we really started focusing in on those other percussive elements so before I let you go there are a couple of questions that we'd like to ask everybody who comes on Tape Notes but before we get to those I think it'd be great to hear Birthday built up from scratch I mean I know we've heard lots of different elements but a quick run through of how it emerges would be brilliant yeah sure okay so the tune starts off with Howard's chords and the sine waves and a little hi-hat loop and the snare drum is

1:44:01filtered down this kind of sound lots of vinyl crackle as well moving around then the drums kick in with Sid there's her vocal and then this nice little string type element comes in and then the lead vocal on

1:44:37the chorus is multi-tracked and then the bass line boom boom boom boom then the Royer string harmonies little four-bar break

1:45:10little four-bar break second verse done and back into the chorus second verse done and back into the chorus then skipping along to the middle

1:45:47the late nice booze sit on the ad libs and the chords build up dropping back into the chorus there you go

1:46:21so so good thank you equipment

Essential studio gear and advice

1:46:24is there a piece of kit that you cannot live without yeah easy macbook pro yeah we're very in the box we do have some nice synthesizers here we've got a moog little fatty we've got a juno 106 we've got the novation peak i've got a bunch of the roland boutique stuff which are all like modern day like miniature versions of classic synthesizers like the d50 and the sh101 but yeah honestly i mean with a song like this it's all in the box there's no hardware going on

1:46:54apart from vocals and claps so yeah we'd have to say macbook man laptop and logic keyboard is pretty vital a keyboard any midi keyboard yeah and then for me on the mixing side of things i'd have to shout out universal audio we use the apollo 8 interface so everything we recorded for this whole album would have gone through my apollo and through all of their amazing plugins which all model old vintage gear they basically emulate what old compressors and old neve desks used to sound like in an incredibly accurate way

1:47:25so you know although we don't have the physical versions anymore the technology is it's getting there man it's so close now to the original that as far as i'm concerned if you're recording with a nice neumann microphone through an apollo with a neve running it's pretty close to the original i can't tell them apart yeah universal audio plugins definitely helped take this album i would say to be the best mix we've done so far and the other line of inquiry we have is about advice you mentioned that you had a good team around you do you have any advice that you would

1:47:55pass on to people or are there any words of wisdom that came to you that really struck home that you've kind of kept close and you mentioned howard that you have your own personal motivator mr eric thomas talking to you every day maybe not every day but uh yeah yeah he just calls you yeah just like personal that would be amazing if he called me i would definitely do it to be honest like i am quite cautious about giving out advice especially when it comes to uh like business moves

1:48:26and things within the industry because what we did to get to where we are is no longer applicable you know like the moves that we were making like we put all of our songs on my space at the beginning which i definitely wouldn't recommend now and like one of the main kind of marketing tricks that we did at the beginning was like we put our songs on facebook and said you could download them for free if you liked our page right which now is like a very old school move that is very well known but like when we did it that was brand new and so it got us like 10 000 followers but it's

1:48:57again no longer applicable nowadays you've got like things like tiktok to think about and like i don't really know i've got no idea like if you're brand new right now all i can say is just make the best music you can and everything else if the music is good enough it tends to fall into place and i'm speaking from experience but also from watching a lot of other people that i've seen rise to success is if you focus in on the music as a musician that's your job you know like you're not supposed to know about how the industry works and the business side of it you can if you want but like there's other people that are masters at that so if

1:49:27you can make the best music you can you're it puts you in good stead do you ever have a creative block in any way yeah for sure like i wouldn't even say it's a block like one of the things that told us that this album was finished for me anyway it was like i just ran out of ideas like i got everything out that i felt i needed to express after 200 songs like i was like yeah man i've said everything i needed to say and until i live a bit more of my life i'm not gonna have anything else to talk about so um i think i don't know if you can call that writer's block or like writer's success

1:49:59because like i got all my ideas out which is what you're supposed to do as a writer but i think writer's block is such a vague broad term you can have writer's block in the sense of like you're writing loads of stuff but you don't like any of it that doesn't mean it's not good my advice is just keep writing even when you have it even if it's shit like even if what you're making you don't even like just have it on a separate hard drive called shit or something yeah it's just you're still doing it because you know just be bad until you're good is the saying right you just have to push through and even when you're making

1:50:30stuff you don't like and this is probably from the producer side of things more you'll still learn tricks you'll still learn something you'll still learn little moves to make using a plug-in or using a synth that you didn't know before and what you make with that you might not like but there'll be a session or something that you'll do along the line where you're like oh that trick I did in that whole month where I made nothing that's become a bit of a signature move for me now there'll always be something man you know we've been doing this for 10 years and not a single session goes by where I don't use a bit of gear that I've had on my computer for years slightly differently and

1:51:01do something new with it like yeah you learn from writing bad songs yeah just and don't be afraid to just outright copy other people especially at the start you know just try and re-engineer someone else's song yeah you know that's what we did our early songs are just ripping off people like Joy Orbison and James Blake and Burial badly and then you get to a point where maybe you're getting up the ladder a bit and you're improving and then you start to you know bring in your own unconscious ideas because you can't not you know you're not making music that's true to yourself if you're

1:51:31only copying but to learn how to use the gear and learn how to produce I mean that's one of the things they literally got us doing at college was pick a tune and try and remake it on Logic that's a great way to start you and that's one thing that I've definitely learned is like if you sit down right and you try and write a song like Burt Bacharach it won't sound like Burt Bacharach because you're not him and he's incredible right so you'll end up making something that sounds like you because you can't imitate people as well as you feel like you could like all these people like you remember

1:52:01I don't know was it like five years ago where everyone tried to sound like James Blake or like Flume right and no one sounded like James Blake or Flume because they weren't them so Flume is always going to be the best at sounding like Flume James Blake is always going to be the best at sounding like James Blake you know and even on the producer side of things Skrillex you know you try and make a Skrillex tune no one can make crazy sounds like Skrillex yeah you can't do it so even if you are trying to copy people you're probably going to end up making your own sound yeah but aim for that it's an aim you know even if you're not you know interested in writing

1:52:32songs that are in that domain you could still get close and learn something production wise along the way recording wise even you know even if you set up a mic better than you have before during the making of a terrible song that's still something fantastic those are great things for people to get involved with this has been amazing and you know I've got to thank you not just for doing this but in the whole approach it seems to me the whole approach is about sharing and being open this new openness that you were talking about and you clearly do it well you

1:53:03could set up your own college the disclosure college of musical education it could happen thanks man well yeah if anyone wants to learn more and hear more of our stuff twitch.tv slash disclosure music that's where we're at every Tuesday and every Thursday we're breaking down old songs and making music so yeah please tune in it's a great service I'm gonna let you go now we will leave with one more piece of music that we haven't discussed another selection from the energy album any particular tune you want to go with that we'll hear a

1:53:33little snippet of sure well another song that's already out that we've broken down on twitch so if you want to see that one go there it'd be my high featuring Amine and slow tie another tune that we wrote in LA big pumping house tune I think the last tune we wrote for the record so yeah it's like the freshest one in our mind so I'm still a big big big fan of it because it's not three years old I haven't got bored of it yet yeah fantastic well let's hear it now Guy Howard thanks again and this is you together with Amine and slow tie this is my high

1:54:04disclosure thank you for listening and in particular thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on patreon I'm just one part of the team that brings you take notes and it relies on your support access to patreon includes the full-length videos of new episodes where possible ad-free episodes and detailed gear lists among many other things if you'd like to join head to the link on our socials or website but pictures highlight clips and behind-the-scenes content head to our Instagram or YouTube

1:54:35channel and on discord you can join the growing take notes community once again thank you for listening until next time goodbye we'll see you next time we'll see you next time great things are not built alone it

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