Sitting down with a REAL Anime Composer ft Kevin Penkin | Trash Taste #104
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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Good evening. It's me, The Monk. Have you ever listened to Trash Taste and Thoughts? That doesn't seem too hard. I can do that. Well, you're in luck, because today I want to talk about Anchor, the easiest way to make podcasts, and it's completely free. Anchor will distribute your podcast for you so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and

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anime it's everything you need to make a podcast in one place so if you want to give podcasting a go download the free anchor app or go to anchor.fm to get started anyway back to the episode lads lads lads welcome back to another episode of the trash taste podcast i'm lad number one and i'm with lad number two and three as always and i've got a lad sitting next to me who are you uh just

Just a lad, right? I'm just some fucking guy. We're just an Australian guy. I was like, I thought I was the only one. No, not today. So after many, many months, many, many moons, we finally have the one and only Mr. Kevin Penkin on the show. How's it? Aside from being just an Aussie lad, what else are you known for? Not much.

Okay. So I guess like on a good day, I write music for anime and games. Some of those on a good day, on a bad day, I'm just some fucking guy on a couch drinking a beer and watching YouTube. But hey, actually, yes, it's not a bad day. Actually. Yeah. On a professional day.

I am writing music for anime and video games, as I said. Some of those being Made in Abyss and Tower of God and Rising of the Shield Hero. And also did Star Wars Visions, one of the episodes for Star Wars Visions. Hell yeah. Which, not the worst thing to happen to anyone.

I guess me. I don't know. Are you being modest? Composers for Star Wars. Not the worst thing to happen. Not the worst. Not the worst. I'll be on my tombstone. Not the worst. I think the thing that is like always like, I've never asked you this. I'm just like, how the hell did this happen? See,

Yeah. Because it seems like Japanese anime would want to get Japanese composers. So, like, how did this all come around? And I guess they have for the longest time, right? Yeah. What's your, like, background with music and life? How did you end up here? Well, I mean, it's a very super random, like, kind of series of events that I don't really understand how it happened. I'm happy it did, but I have no idea actually how it happened. But I guess, like, the chronological events is that I actually started working –

probably, yeah, in the end of my teens, I started working with the Final Fantasy composer, Nobuo Uematsu. Nobuo Uematsu, wow. Yeah, which is awesome. Wait, how did that happen? Okay, sorry, let's go back. Like, no one just like works with Nobuo Uematsu, you know? Let's go back to conception. Yeah. Where was you? Your local neighborhood friend, Nobuo Uematsu.

I just saw a guy at the bar once and I just ended up composing for Final Fantasy. I thought you said Conception. I was like, uh, well. So yeah, I had always wanted to do video game music. I remember because I

My first game console was GameCube, and I played this game called Metroid Prime, which is still my favorite game of all time. Amazing game. Right, right, right. Yeah, it is one of my favorites. And when I played that game, I was like, I want to do that.

And so that's basically what happened. I was like, Oh, I want to do that one. And so, uh, kind of just like started, you know, pretending to write video game music. And, um, Australia also had a bunch of like video game concerts that happened, including the fun of fantasy concerts. Yeah. Uh, but, uh,

in a slightly different did you just burp? no I thought I had this click thing on yeah okay well I'll shut the fuck up did you interrupt my story? no fucking damn I fucked up my story a little bit so I fucked up my

So, yeah, Australia had all these kind of concerts going on. I met a conductor called Arnie Roth who did some concerts called Play. And so I went over from Perth, Western Australia, where I'm from, went over to Sydney to do this, to kind of view this event.

this concert. And, uh, he invited me to come say hello to him. And also one of the composers there who's a hill composer, Kira Yamaka. So I met him. Right. Uh, that was really cool. And he was like super kind of, he was very, very generous with his time for like some eager, you know, piece of shit, 15 year old. Yeah. I really appreciate that even to this day. But, um, uh, the,

because I met Arnie when I saw that Uematsu-san was going to come to a concert in Seattle, um, I was like, Hey, so we might come over, like me and my dad might come over and come say hi. And, um, they were like, Oh, well thank you for coming such a long way from Perth, which is like 36 hours in a plane. I don't recommend that by the way. Uh, but yeah, but certainly like 36 hours going to Seattle, uh,

met Arnie and then he was like oh just come to the dress rehearsal and come say hi as well to Uematsu and stuff wow so you're just going to these concerts we went to that one yeah you can just say hi well because we met at that previous one in Sydney oh okay yeah it was very very lucky

Yeah, you make it sound very easy. You met him initially and you just bumped into him initially? No, no. So we had been invited to come say hi at this concert in Sydney, which then led to this concert in Seattle, where we met for the first time. Right. And Australia, all the school years are flipped.

Because it's summer. Right, okay. Because it's Australia. Because it's Australia, yeah. Everything's reversed. Of course, you've got to flip it physically. Our summer holiday is December. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's when we have the classic school two, three month break. Right, right, right. It's basically all of December and January is just off. Okay, okay. But that was obviously New Year's and stuff and Christmas in Japan. So for summer holiday, we would go to...

winter in Japan. Right. End up, they very graciously say hello. Yeah, you can come say hi and stuff. Yeah. Eventually that just led to a couple of, yeah, it's like small, it's not the Final Fantasy game. I should be very clear about that. But yeah, I was, yeah. But you made some pretty insane connections from that. Yeah. I mean, it's still pretty crazy to talk about, but it's,

Yeah, you make it sound so easy. I just had them on speed dial. Yeah, not quite. I just went to a concert and then just went to another concert and then just, you know, things happen and then, yeah, here I am. Honestly, at the end of the day, I'm just happy it happened. I mean, I know I've been using that word a little bit too, but it's like, yeah, I'm just super just...

Things have just panned out not so shit. I'm trying to piece the whole thing in my head together. Yeah, me too. How it all comes together. So you met him again at another concert. How did that translate into then working for them? Because surely that's a massive leap.

Well, because of these Japanese trips that I would do over Australian summer, Japanese winter, basically what happened is we were able to just kind of keep a connection. And then eventually, like I kept on submitting some CDs and stuff like that. Right. Which in this case it worked out. But, you know, it's like you never think about it that way. You just hope you're invested. You just want to be involved in someone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels nice. So you just like kept submitting your work and like, I'm not like, okay, okay. I mean, more like, they actually, you know, listen to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would not hold it against them to not do it, but they so graciously kind of did. And eventually, I'm happy to say that I was able to be useful to them. So you were like making music from like as early as like how old? Oh, shit. Yeah.

I assume very, very young, right? Were you classically trained and stuff? Yeah, so I played flute. I came from flute. So see you playing flute with such a funny history. I can do the Anchorman solo.

Oh, really? Yeah, I can do it. Why didn't you bring a flute? Sorry, I left it in Melbourne. I actually picked it up a little bit last year, like during the pandemic. So I was like, oh, I'm fucking bored now. So yeah, try again and ended up using it a bit on the new shield here and stuff. So I did some jazz flute.

Oh, wow. You snuck that in. Hell yeah. Cheeky jazz flute. So you started with flute from like really young and then you kind of just went on from there. Yeah, flute playing, played Metro Prime, wanted to write music. I played on, I'm not sure if you know Finale. Yeah. I did Finale for a little while and like didn't understand what like working with actual like, you know, DAWs and stuff which are digital.

which are digital audio. Digital audio workstations. Yeah, so Logic Pro and stuff like that. And Logic Pro is eventually what I moved to and still use it today. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's very overwhelming when you look at it. I was like, what the fuck? I know nothing about audio. I'm that guy. I'm like the Connor of this episode. I'm like, yeah, that's letters that you were saying. I know more. For once, yeah. Well, I hate to say it, but Connor was kind of right with the whole beeps and boos thing. Oh, oh.

Are we getting into that already? What? What? I hate to say it, but I like the noise is the most accurate way to describe how I feel about music as well. You

You're a literal musician. You do this for a living. Oh, my God. My life has been a lie. Dude, like, I remember when Connor first brought up the whole, like, beeps and boop shit. I was like, don't worry. Eventually, when we get Kevin, he'll be on my side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I won't lie. I, like, opened a bottle of gin and just started drinking after that. I was just like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? At the same time, I was like, to be honest, like, yeah, maybe we'll go into, like, a little bit more detail about why the noise is nice, but the noise...

The noise is nice. I mean, yeah. It's just like I like the things my ear is feeling. I like hearing the noise. It's just soothing. But we should explore why. We should explore why. What? Why? Why? Why? Why?

that's a level that he's never crossed before I don't know I feel like it's the most primitive way of experiencing music like the way that it was just meant is there any other way to experience music well because everyone wants to add this super kind of like deep art meaning and I'm like noise is nice you know like it's just kind of like I don't listen to a piece of music and feel any emotion I just

take it in and I'm like, this, no, I mean, we all do, but we also, it's that plus alpha for us, you know, like, you know, it's, it's not just the alpha, right? Like, yeah, best way to maybe describe it. It's like, okay, so noise is nice, but it's the noise, the noise is nice because like certain things that are working together, right. Right. Right. Nice noise. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I brought you on today to explain this concept in the most monkey way possible. Not stupid way. Like I would explain. Yeah. Well, I mean, cause like,

It's just made up of like random kind of... What's the word? I guess sort of categories. So it's like you've got melody, you've got harmony, you've got rhythm and stuff like that. You've got texture. Texture is really, really important. So texture is like... What is texture? Texture is the sound quality. The sound quality.

quality of a sound. You're sounding like an alien right now. What is this texture you humans speak of? I don't normally talk to musicians and normally when I hear someone talk about texture it's with like food or like with things that you feel with your hands. Same concept. It's the exact same concept. It's like, okay, fuck, okay. Okay, you know the I think it's Billie Jean. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. The drums, yeah. The drum sound is super distinctive. Yes. Because anyone can play that beat and anyone can play a drum like that. Right. Why does it sound, why do you know that it's that fucking song straight away? Because the sound of the drum, the textual quality of the drum is specific and unique. So that's the whole idea of texture. Texture, I think, is criminally, well, not criminally, and I can't pronounce that fucking word right now, but.

now. Primitively. Yeah, primitively underrated. No, texture is like, I guess I would call it like kind of the secret ingredient.

Even though it's not that secret. It's the spice that you add to make it all come together. Right, right, right. There's many spices. I see we've inadvertently separated the musicians on one side and the apes on the other side. He's got like a glass pan on here. Don't fucking come near it.

yeah okay like we talk about anime yeah yeah i get it i get it okay so you started you know doing you know writing music from a young age you met nobuo umatsu so like how did you then go from like that to oh now i'm writing music for main debuts as

That's... Because I feel, again, that's not like one-step process. There were a couple of steps. So, okay. Number one, how did you learn Japanese? Because I assume you would need to learn Japanese to work in the army. I mean, obviously, I'm not... Yeah. I'm not this beautiful boy when it comes to that. But, you know, I feel like I do fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I do well. And so...

Yeah, I learned Japanese in Australia. There's this thing called TAFE, which is sort of a... A community college kind of thing. Yeah, it's like sort of a non... Not university. You can treat it as like a pre-college almost at some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do like certificate level stuff. So it's like bachelor, certificate. Right. Sort of underneath that. Yeah. So I did that because I went to school at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, WAPA, as it's called. Yeah. Yeah.

So I went to, I went to Whopper for three years doing composition there. Yeah. And that was in Perth. But then at nighttime, I remember, I'm trying to imagine me doing this now, like going to school during the day and like go to school at night. I did not have that energy.

I did not have anything at all anymore. Congrats on being 30, by the way. Welcome to the club, Kevin. Welcome to the club. I am a lit hire. I can't even use the jet lag excuse anymore. Oh, well. No, so I went to this TAFE school on like a Thursday and a, uh, so wow. Let's try that again. Tuesday and a Thursday. Yeah. Tuesday and Thursday. And on the middle of the day, the Wednesday, I would go with all the classmates that I, um,

that like I was learning with and we went to this seedy fucking bar in Northbridge, which is like kind of like the, uh, I don't even know how to describe it. It's the, uh, it is, it is the like club crazy, like seedy, you know, um,

I've heard a lot of things about Perth from every Australian I've met and one pattern that I've seen from every Australian I've met from Perth is that they no longer live in Perth

I know four people, including you, who were born and raised in Perth who are no longer in Perth. I would say that if you've grown up there, there is a certain... Shout out to our fans in Perth. There is a certain jovial, jokey aspect to saying, I'm from Perth.

Yeah. But like once you leave, I think there is like a little bit of homesickness. Like I haven't been, of course, of course. Yeah. I fucking miss it. So I might be there for two, two and a half weeks and be like, yeah, I'm cool. I'm yeah. Bye Felicia. But until then I'll, I'll,

I'm pretty homesick. Right. But, like, yeah. So we went to this bar in Northbridge. Because Perth is super, super popular with working holiday Japanese people. Oh, really? Super popular. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, Japanese people love coming to Perth. And that's great. And it is...

It is... What it's worth, even though I just, like, kind of described, like, a suburb of Perth. I'm just like... I'm trying to wrap my head around what the reason that might be. Joey, like, I've never seen that facial expression on Joey where he tried to understand either his Japanese side or his Australian side, and he's just like, there is something that's gone wrong with my culture. Both my Australian and Japanese side were like, that sounds like a lie. LAUGHTER

As far as I can remember, it's not, but... I wonder why, though. Honestly, sun. Sun and beaches. Right. And wine. Lots of wine. Fair, fair, fair. That's why they don't come to the UK, huh? No. I don't really hear about jetty people in London that often. Yeah, I don't either. No.

Not really. Of course, like, it's also very far away, but I guess so is Australia now that I think about it. Yeah, Perth's pretty fucking far away. Yeah, I mean, like, nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. There is a connection between Australia and Japan. There's quite a lot of sister cities and stuff. Right, right, right. And obviously it's like sort of the Australasia region. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry if that's triggering for y'all. Yeah.

But no, the Australasia region is obviously, yeah. I think there's a lot of, I mean, pre-COVID, of course, there was a lot of like kind of travel treaties and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Working holiday visas were...

rampant yeah like a better word definitely yeah um but we would go to this bar and all the working holiday people because it was a shitty bar but on a wednesday night it would be international night you got ten dollar jugs and which is like i think seven pound like 8.5 american dollars right and uh yeah you just get fucking wasted with uh awesome like working holiday japanese people and because obviously when you're a bit toasted your language confidence is

Yeah, right. Of course. Somehow it just raises up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you would almost have like the two formal training days on each side and then you'd have like the, the, the real training day, the toast. Yeah. And your brain was just like sponge it up. That was, that's how it started. And then actually like since,

since covid we've been doing a lot more like kind of business meetings and stuff on zoom and stuff and so like my keigo has like gone way through the roof now because it's almost like how i almost exclusively speak like sort of with that almost like i'm almost like i almost treat it as like a buffer almost feels like a buffer if like if you're not right if you're not like not sure how to speak to someone using the keigo almost feels like i'm just like i'm just like

Being safe. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't know where your like relationship is. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, I'm just going to avoid any, like, you know, faux pas by being overly polite.

I did notice that actually because like a couple of months ago that we did the Made in Abyss event. So I co-hosted like a Made in Abyss event for Made in Abyss 2. And obviously Kevin wasn't there like in person, but he was on like a Zoom call because there was like a segment where we were talking about the music for the show. And, you know, obviously because it's a Japanese event, it's live streamed to a Japanese audience. Kevin had to speak Japanese for the entire part.

And, you know, I hadn't heard Kevin speak Japanese in a while. So I was like, oh, you know, hopefully, you know, he'll get through it. And I was like, damn, he's keigoing the fuck up. I was like, he's like way too polite in this entire thing. He's like talking to the fucking prime minister levels. I'm like, he's just talking about like the music. The problem is because I...

I've almost like lost the middle ground now. So it's like way too casual or it's way too formal. And I was like, just in case, cause there's like something, something, something, instead of saying like, yes, or something, I'd be just like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's just like you in a nutshell. Right. Cause like one, one thing you'll, you'll realize meeting Kevin is like, he's like the most humble and nice person like you've ever met, you know? Um, but then that, that, that is until like, he starts getting like a few pints in

him. I'm like, I can always like, you can always track how drunk Kevin is by how much more Australian he is. So at the beginning of the night, you're like, you might not even know that he's Australian or something like that. Because he's like way too polite. Kevin is either extremely professional or extremely unprofessional. There's no middle. That doesn't sound right. I don't know what you're talking about. Fuck it, fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.

Give me a lighter. Yeah. Oh, that's a flip.

Because you were saying, I definitely experienced that this weekend. Because obviously during the convention, we'd go out and have a couple of drinks and all that kind of stuff. And it's like that Friday night where we're out drinking and we got that Burger King at like 2 in the morning. Bringing that up, you want that to be committed to you?

Yeah Because like you know God was saying like you know You know Kevin is drunk Because he just gets like Exponentially Australian right And I think That Burger King night Was the most Aussie I've ever heard Kevin I was so bitter about that burger It fucking sucked It was so shit That's Burger King Yeah I know But like there was like a Like first it was fucking 2.30 in the morning Yeah

There's going to be so many old fashions. I know, I know. I'm not expecting you to make great decisions here. I'm just saying. So to explain, it's like 2.30 in the morning. Obviously, everyone's like drunk and, you know, everyone's starting to get a little bit hungry, right? Yeah. So there's a Burger King there. Kevin comes out with like a bag full of what he thinks is like just a light snack, right?

When he pulls out of the bag, it's like the fattest double whopper that I've ever seen in my life. He pulls it out of the bag and he's like, in the most Australian way, he's like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, oh, fuck it. I've already bought it. It's whatever. This just goes back to that fucking Izakaya thing where I ordered too much. Can I just fucking hit the button? Hit the button.

Oh my God. You're like, this is an amazing idea. I can handle all that. So to explain that... So much ambition. Last time we went out to Japan, we went to an izakaya, and then Kevin was pretty hungry. We saw a drink before, but Kevin was like... Oh, this fucking time. Yeah, we were hungry, but we were also just a little bit tipsy. And Kevin thinks... Kevin thinks...

You know what's a good idea? If I order one of everything on the menu. It's like a four-page menu. No, it's four pages of menu for just the chicken. And then it was like four pages of menu for the pork. It was like an onslaught. It did not stop. I've never had to... It's a fucking all-you-can-eat. You can just do it. But at the same time, I was like, yeah, we had to talk to the fucking staff member and be like, can you stop?

Can you stop? Any food that you have not physically cooked yet, stop it. Because it was like, there was like 15 different livers. And I'm like, how do you even find this many livers? I'm just, I'm done. You're going to assault this shit. So like, we learned that day. If we go to an izakaya and there's a tablet there, we could order, never, never give it to Kevin. Because he's just like, oh, what does everyone want? And everyone's just like, oh, just whatever. And Kevin takes that too literally as everything. That's...

I think it's just because I haven't been back home to Australia in a while. I have a couple of mates in Australia who are very, very awkward. Kevin is next level Australian, especially when he's drunk. A little perfect. He unwraps the double whopper. He already has it in his hand. He takes three bites out of it and he just goes, this is shit!

This is so shit. I think I remember that. What was shit about it? Do you remember? It was so dry. It was so dry. It was so dry and it was so heavy. Yeah, it was like, oh, fuck that.

fucked up, okay? I fucked up because, like, in Australia, we don't have Burger King, we have Hungry Jack's. Hungry Jack's is good. Yeah. So it's like, you know, if Burger King was, like, better. It's good. It's fucking good. Like, Hungry Jack's is, like, I would argue way, way better than Burger King. Yeah, but, like, but not by much. Not by much, to be fair.

Sorry. No, no, no. I don't know if I'm crazy, but I swear Burger King, don't they like drench it in like sauce? I wish. So fucking dry. Right. Like the burger is like the most like skeleton-esque burger ever. Yeah. Extremely anemic. Yeah. Snap the patty in half. Yeah. I had the chicken, like there was like a long chicken burger type of thing. And it was like freeze dried. It was so fucking dry. I was like. Yeah, Mojano has a really good crunch.

yeah yeah yeah it was a bad tactical error that we'll hopefully not make again but it's just so hilarious just Kevin raging at a double whopper at 2.30 in the morning I remember I've got a good friend back home and I remember because I took him to this like really like there's this Ankara bakery thing on it's called Beaufort Street in um

in Mount Lawley yeah there's a place there's an Ankara bakery on Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley in Perth what did I say? it's a Beaufort Street Beaufort I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm a child alright all of our eyes just like gleam like Beaufort I'm gonna blame the dry London air not very successful but anyway

Beaufort Street, in Mount Lawley, in Perth. And like, they do like really good kebabs. They're fucking amazing kebabs. But my friend was not a fan of them. I remember because he took, he said the same thing and he tried to throw it out and it exploded all over his car. So this egg just fucking went all over his body and shit. Yeah.

I was just trying to throw it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, but there is like, yeah, there's food rage. There's a lot of food rage. So back to your music. This is the process. Yeah. Get inspired by dry burgers. Have a fucking shit burger and go write some fucking angry music. Oh my God. This burger fucking sucks.

Oh my god. Yeah. Why don't you call like a track and shield here or just like dry chicken salad. I have started going like more like psycho with the naming convention. I'm waiting for double whopper at 2am. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case on your phones.

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No, I mean, if you're doing like an OP or an ED, they do have the opening. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They use these tracks. Dry Chicken Sandwich by Kevin Rankin. Dry Chicken Sandwich OP for Insert Anime Here. He's never heard of it. Yeah.

No, because I did notice in some of your tracks in Shield Hero, like I think the first Shield Hero, there were like some weird names in there. Actually, I'm going to get it out now. There were like some of like the usual suspect names of, you know, like generic anime music names. And then there was just...

So you go through this soundtrack list and most of them are like, you know, normal. You know, you have a track that's called The Rising of the Shield Hero. Of course. The titular title. Of course. You know, you have like some, you know, isekai type list type track called like Game Start and stuff like that. And then you go down to like near the bottom. Yeah.

And then there's a track called like Spirit Bomb. I'm like, huh? Was that like a cheap Dragon Ball Z reference? Probably is. It's Kevin. Okay. We can get away with that. We can get away with that. And then you're just like, boom, boom, boom. And you're like, Kevin, are you kind of running out of names? And then you go down even further. And then there's a track just called Noms. Noms.

I forgot about it. I listened to the track and I'm just like, this name has nothing to do with the track at all. And then you go next and it's like Matty Boy. Matty Boy. Who's Matty Boy? Who's Matty Boy? I want to know. I can actually explain this. I can't explain the noms. I'm out. I'm up ahead on that one. That was a 2am chicken sandwich. It's like, I can really go for a BK right now. Noms. What was the first one you said it was? It was...

Spiriball. Oh, Boom Boom Boom. You've watched the interview?

Like with Franco and Seth Rogen. Yeah. The one that got suddenly hacked by North Korea. No, no, because when they finally shoot down Kim Jong-un in the movie, fucking Franco's character just goes, boom, boom, boom, and fires a tank bullet into the helicopter. And that's the reference. That's it? That's it. What's that got to do with Shield Hero? Fucking nothing. Yeah.

Is it even like a boomy track? I don't know. I think so, yeah.

It was like 50 plus tracks. That seems like excessive almost. Well, I mean, cause it was 26, 25 or 26 episodes. So that required, so basically what happens as, as I'm sure you all know, but just for Chiro, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. There's normally cause. So one call to cause. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a season. Oh,

So one core is 12 or 13 episodes. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Two core is like 24, 25, 26 episodes, something along that length. And so, for example, Bane of the Beast is... Well, Bane of the Beast season one, of course, is like...

13 episodes, so it's one core. Right, right. Shield Hero had 26 episodes, you got a two core. So normally for two cores, you don't double the music, but you probably like 1.5 times it. Right. So for Menbis, the season one, I think the soundtrack comes in at one hour and 52 minutes or something like that. And I think it's about...

I think that was actually about 50 something tracks or like maybe 40, mid 40 tracks. But then Shield Hero, yeah, it was about 60, 62 tracks and it's about two hours and 50 minutes of music. And is that like left up to you? Do you decide how many tracks you're making? No, actually. Or is it like, hey, we need 62 tracks, make them all sound different? It's actually pretty specific. So what basically happens is when you get commissioned to write anime music, you get a, just basically a massive Excel sheet called the music order. So when you get the music order, it's basically, yeah, just like,

you'll have like m1 like music one and then it'll say like main theme and then m2 will be like main theme happy version version and then like m3 will be main theme dark version yeah right right four main theme hero version or something like yeah yeah yeah just quite generic sort of like descriptions and they might have some explanation or they might have some you know some visual images and stuff like that so you actually get a lot of freedom which

which I really, really like. So if you think about how, like, cause they'll, they'll have all that sort of thing. And then maybe once you get to like M20, it'd be like battle one speed battle or like battle two, like serious, serious, sometimes we can get very specific as well, but like, it'll start from that sort of like slightly more abstract sort of approach, which is actually really, really cool because that way you, you actually do have a lot of kind of,

like I said, freedom to actually just try and explore different ideas. And you get the freedom to call a track Noms. Because when you're writing it, this has changed, my process on this has changed a little bit since Shield Hero Middle East, so I probably wouldn't do that again. That was a process? You know, eventually. So when you're writing, what

what I like to do is try and match a lot of like sort of the textual stuff I was talking about earlier. I love trying to match text to the actual visual sort of palette, if you will. Best way, like one of the most sort of like sort of basic examples or classic examples I can give is in Maiden Abyss, obviously like it's quite a small amount of like kind of kid characters going to like a huge like cavernous abyss instead of exploring. Also you see in the visuals, it's not, there's normally a lot of wide shots where you just see kind of the, the,

yeah yeah yeah it just goes like super far yeah yeah yeah and so like the idea of trying to actually depict that visual sort of stimuli yeah music is is quite appealing to me it's sort of um yeah almost like a

It's called like word painting, which is basically like, let's say you have lyrics and say, I'm going to rise up. And then the melody is, I am going to rise up. It's like, it's like literally rising with them. Rising with the shield. Well, actually, cause in the main theme, it like the, the violence that part of the start does actually rise up. And again, it's like, it sounds so basic, but it is good fun. Yeah. A lot of the court court stuff and made in the best also like saw that ascension. So you hear a lot of like,

Normally it's going down and up, but the whole idea of things rising and falling as best as possible. One thing I've always wondered is pretty much how you blew up onto the scene. Because I think you blew up immediately.

in terms of being a composer, which I find is really rare. But I think a big part of that was just that opening scene in Made in Abyss, where it was just the instrumental with the vocals as well. And it was just no dialogue. It was just a montage, just using this opening track. And it just immediately, not only did it sell you on the show, but it just...

put your work onto the map. Like, how did that come about? Was that planned or was that just like a happy coincidence? Um, I was like totally lucky and I'm, I'm glad it was, um, like almost cause I, I had a different track. I had a much more subtle track in mind for that. Right. Uh, called, um, swings and roundabouts. That was like kind of my original idea for that thing. Cause it was, it was supposed to be like, Oh, let's do these nice kind of really cool textures and stuff as, as the light kind of comes over. But then the sound director, uh,

and the director decided differently to kind of, because you don't write these, unless it's a movie or it's a specific scene that's been requested to be written, synchronized to picture. Yeah. All the music is written what's called free. Right. And then it's synced later. Right. Oh, so that, that wasn't meant to be synced at all. Originally the, like my like vision of it was to be different, but, um,

the director and the, the director and the sound director obviously had a pretty deep discussion. They decided to, to, to put that song then, and even better, they decided to put it there with minimal dialogue and sound effects, which is ridiculously like lucky. Yeah. And so just to, you know, I guess just to like, how did, how do you even explain this? It,

to see that happen and to be so happily wrong about like what my vision was for that. I think I was just like, oh man, thank God people are smarter than me. Cause that song, the song was written just as sort of kind of almost just like another, like trying to make another palette for the, for the soundtrack. When you start it, you just kind of going through like point after point after point. It's like, okay, well let's just try and write a piece of music based off this manga panel.

I'll write a piece of music based off this description or this idea, you know, obviously like reading through the content and stuff. I was thinking like, oh yeah, they must, what do they give you? I'm like, oh yeah, you can just go to the manga most of the time, right? Yeah. Yeah. Manga in Tower of God, you got manga as well. Yeah. Yeah. That is really, it really is helpful. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

When you're able to like kind of look at what is, essentially you can just see the entire story kind of pan out. Obviously you're given like anime specific materials as well, which is super, super helpful. But yeah, when you're just trying to find something that actually kind of hopefully like,

what's the best word? Respects the content as well. Yeah. Um, you know, you, you're kind of creating, you're adding an audio element that was not there before. Yeah. As the manga might be there before. So there might be referenced that, you know, people might be able to reference the

the anime to the manga. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is similar. This is different. Something like that. Right. Music never existed. So yeah. Um, it's both freeing and also kind of terrifying to, you know, potentially mess that up. Yeah. That's the thing. Cause like when I saw that scene, I was like, this is so perfect for this opening scene. It must've been like specifically made for this one scene. Right. Yeah.

It was made around scenes like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would almost describe it more as like, it was almost an impression of the show itself. Yeah. Did you feel, because that was your first, was that your first anime work? No, sir. It was, that's my, Jesus, that was my third. That was your third? Yeah, that was your third. Oh, okay. Wow. So no, the first one was, it's always the same company, Kinema Citrus, but we did something called Norn 9. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Norn 9 is... Well, actually, it was a video game. And it was actually a video game I did with Uematsu, like, way back when. So, he did a new theme for that. I did a new gem for this game called Norn 9. Right, right, right. And a couple years later, when I started doing anime for this company called Kinemon Citrus, they said, we're actually doing an anime of Norn 9 as well. Right. And so, that... So, you were, like, the natural pick, though? Yeah. Maybe that was it. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe that was it. I mean, I guess it makes sense to get the guy who did the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shit. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't think about it. What? What? Is that not obvious? No. Okay, yeah. That's what shit happened now in my fucking 30s. Just fucking sipping sparkling water. You're like, wow, what a coincidence. No, but like... What a happy little coincidence. That wasn't like a five-head observation. I'm a cumbit.

Oh, okay. Wow. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. I just apologize for microphone one. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. It's exactly why this thing is right here. Yeah. It's a shock absorber. Absorber. Yeah. Absorbs. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

So you did it on 9? I was doing it on 9 at the same time. Maybe this is why I didn't think about it. I was also doing something called Under the Dog, which was a OVA. A Kickstarter. Oh! A Kickstarter OVA. That came first. And so I didn't know how everything kind of progressed, but I was on that for the trailer music, and then they asked if I wanted to do the actual soundtrack. Yeah. So that was so cool, because that was the first one. I was like... Oh, wow. I had no idea. I was well happy about that.

that yeah i've been like you know just fucking for lack of a better word fantasizing about fucking trying to do anime for yeah yeah lucky enough to do games for a couple years yeah oh my god i'm so happy about that yeah i was in college i just finished college in london so i was living here at the time i had no idea what was going to happen and all of a sudden boom like like like when

Now you're in anime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were composing for games while in college? Yeah. So when I did, when I was doing undergrad, that's when I started doing lots of stuff and then that developed with other games, both Japanese and international. So you were busy in school. Yeah. Yeah, I think,

I don't know how I did it. Cause I, I mean, again, maybe we'll get to the bottom of this while talking to you. You obviously got track. I'll make another five head observation. It's just like, just like, like, like therapy times three therapist times three. Oh my God. Everything makes sense. It's all connected, man. It's all connected, dude. Nah. Um, but yeah, so I was working throughout college as well. Um, and yeah, this,

it just happened. I mean, I was just working, like just work, work, work, work, work. And just, you know, just fell over and just happened. Yeah. And fell into the enemy. Most people, me included, don't do anything while at college. Oh, okay. I thought you were about to say don't anything. Like in general. I was like, don't you dare go down that path. I'll bring out those compliments straight away, son. Okay. So like now what I want to know actually is like how,

you and Garn got to know each other because like I kind of I kind of met you guys through that right like I met you through Garn and whatnot so like it's like where was the connection there I

That's a pretty simple connection. I hope you remember. I have like a pre-story. Okay. Which connects to that. Right. So I think I might've like drunkenly mentioned this to Sydney or something potentially, but I haven't, I don't think I've mentioned it to any of you. At least I don't remember mentioning it. So I actually like when I was like going through like college and stuff, I like totally felt out of anime.

Right, right, right.

uh because uh i was like you know it's like one of those shows where like creatively was the first time i felt like oh i'm actually doing music that really feels like me sort of thing yeah yeah i feel like i'm bringing like a lot of this sort of more experimental stuff that i learned in um primary school in undergrad yeah and then like i did my master's in london and then that and that was sort of like honed like film music craft right right what was your degree in sorry uh

did a bachelor of composition and music technology at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and then I did a masters of music for screen composition for screen at the Royal College of Music in London oh damn sorry I'm dropping the microphone no no we can we can I can drop yeah um so yeah I forgot to have a fucking MA that's hilarious yeah

but um but um no I mean you were going on on Whopper for so long he's like oh yeah I also have a master's in the world no no RCM is awesome I mean it really kind of like honed the craft that's why it was like yeah and just like learned how to like produce music for film yeah but Whopper like focused a lot more on experimental music or new music a lot of art art music when you said Whopper I thought you were talking about Burger Burger King Whopper

I was on a beach just eating a bunch of wampus experiments with music.

Sounds pretty accurate. Nah, like, it just kind of all came together for this project. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, God bless Canima Citrus, man. They just gave me so much freedom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To just kind of actually just kind of try some things that I didn't know I could do. And I felt really good actually just kind of going through that process of, well, I can... Oh, I remember, like, that...

violin technique I've never like tried before and try that sort of thing and like oh I can try and like record in this giant space in Vienna that like can try and mimic like the size of the abyss sort of thing trying those sort of techniques that like were just introduced to me either through undergrad or postgrad it was just really nice yeah really nice yeah yeah what was the question?

How are you in garment? Sorry. There is a point to all this. I promise there is a point. Okay. So on the back of those feel goods, you know, doing this, I was curious. Okay. How is the show doing? Yeah. Right. And I would type in, you know, the... You Googled yourself. No, no, no. I Googled made the best. I Googled a best. I was like, okay.

Is it, you know, how is it? Yeah. And all these YouTuber guys were trying to talk about it. I'm like, oh, okay. They're talking about it. They're liking it. And then you made this video. Yeah. About like which...

What was your favorite anime? I think it was one of the anime of the year kind of thing. Yeah, anime of the year. You had the art category and the animation category and then you had the music category. And you made this great joke about the fact that I was Aussie.

There was this one clip that got posted in like the behind the scenes documentary of Made in Abyss. Of course, it's like very professionally made documentary. And there's just this one clip of Kevin going to be like, he was talking to someone and I can't remember the exact line, but he talks about, oh yeah, can this, he's like, you refer to someone as like a mate or something like that, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, Dimitri was the guy I was talking to. Right. He's just amazing. He's, he's like the main violinist and all the abyss stuff. Right. He is like the bosses of bosses when it comes to. Right. Right. Right. Unbelievable. His big dupe boys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like, he's like, Oh yeah, I'm trying. It's good. Sorry. I don't do a good impression of him.

we don't know it's a music so i don't even know yeah i'm more discovering my life but um so because um yeah i was because i don't play violin i play flute yeah so i checked with college friends before going over i'd be like is this shit is this fucked up if i give this to someone in a recording studio so obviously remember like when you go into a recording session that's fucking thousands of euros or dollars whatever it is like a fucking hour

Yeah. We're talking like five figures easily in a couple of hours. Yeah. Or eight hours, depending on how many people you're hiring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super expensive scenario to be like, oh, the flute player wrote fucking stupid fucking violin lines. So checking with friends or mates beforehand was exactly what I did. And I was trying to be chill about it. I was like, yeah, no, no, just check with like a mate. And like that...

but the phrase, hey, he did not understand. He's Austrian-American. Yeah, right. And he's like, joking with what? And I'm like, oh, with a friend. It was like... Yeah, it was in the behind. Yeah, it was in behind. But you can't, like, fucking superimpose land down under over that fucking clip. Yeah, I mean...

I checked with a mate, but he seemed to say that was okay. Checked with a what? With a friend. Okay. But for some reason, it felt really cool to have that response from this YouTuber fucking guy. And then I started getting really curious about, okay, this lovely gentleman over here is thinking like this about, you know, maybe this guy. Who else is thinking? Like, what is everyone else thinking about? So, like, fucking AniTubers were the reason I got back into anime. Oh, shit, man. No shit.

Holy shit. Yeah, yeah. And she was doing a positive thing for someone? Something for the anime industry? Yo. You guys brought it, like, brought me back. Holy fuck. And then once Abyss hit, we started going to conventions. And then I saw that you were going to be there. I was like... Yeah.

Oh, I must, I must say hello. Yeah. I've been enjoying the content. I have ever since. Cause like, like I remember cause we were both going to control expo and I was like, Oh, Kevin's going. And you know, when you like, I don't know why. Right. You just, you just, you just like bring out this aura of just like, he's a lad.

he's a fucking lad that was extrapolated just from that one clip that's like oh I checked with my mate and then he goes check with a what and you just see the panic being like check with a friend is equal parts resting bitch face and spastic and I was just like from that one clip I was like seems like he seems like a lad of course we met the first time at like the bar or something

Yeah, it's like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where is a more fitting place than meeting each other? But I was... Are you Gigguk? Yeah. And it was like, I was like prepared to be like, are you Kevin? Oh my God, I'm like a big fan of your work. Made in the best of apps.

absolutely amazing. Lo and behold, Kevin comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder. And I like, at this time, you know, Ani-chi was like way smaller than it is now. So like, I'm just like a random guy who got just like invited to this anime expo. Been really excited to meet people in the industry, people who's actually worked on anime. And then Kevin taps me on the shoulder and be like, are you Gigguk? I fucking love your work. I'm like, why are you saying this to me?

I should be saying this to you. It's true. No, but that's the thing. I came from the exact same position. Right, right, right. I was just happy to be there. I'm not happy to meet people. Yeah. I mean, really, because of that show, I'm here. Yeah. Right, right, right. We got to get

And now I got like, and we, and it's like, now it's us. My first time meeting you is when you ordered too much chicken. So that was, that was a bonding experience. I was going to say, we can, yeah, we can, yeah, Trump is very good. Trump is very good. I've never been back to that chain. Well, the first time I met you was at a Nizakaya in Shibuya. And that was, and you were just like, oh, you want a new long high? Yeah.

And at first I was like, who's this bloke? And then I realized it's fucking Kevin. I was like, oh, okay. You have to take four Magnus signs in a day. Yeah, so of course, like, Crunchyroll Expo, we, like, immediately bonded over fucking...

getting pissed as a british and aussies do of course but like i remember you got to a point of drunkness where you started like spewing some really interesting shit about your creative process of made in the best i did that last night you did that one yeah where he like for some reason there's like a certain drunkness level where kevin gets really eloquent about talking about his creative process and music and he was talking about this one track which um

which was played over like a very spoilerific moment in Made in Abyss season one. It was a very emotional moment. He was talking about like using like juxtaposition and like techniques that you learn from like university and college. And I was just, I remember being like, I was pretty toasted. I was just like, this is really fucking interesting. I just really like, as like an anime fan, I would love to hear this when I'm sober. Cause I'm like not remembering any of this.

So like, I put a mental note to ask him about it the next day when I'm sober and so is he. So we can explain in more detail. It's really fucking interesting. So I go to Kevin. I was like, Kevin, you were talking about this track and made an abyss and like how you came up with that and what process you did. Like, can you like expand on that? Cause that's really fucking interesting. And he just looks at me and goes, I have no idea what the fuck I said, mate.

Kevin did that to me on Friday. He went off about this one synthesizer for like two hours. He's like, you don't understand. When you put your finger on it, it's like 50 springs. 50 springs on your finger. And it feels amazing. It is amazing. It's like velvety and it feels so good. And I'm just like, uh-huh. Imagine putting your finger on, you know, like divers, not skin, divers skin. Divers skin.

Like a wetsuit. Yeah, so I got a synth that's made out of diver wetsuit with all these different springs underneath. And you play it like a seaboard. So you can, like, you play synths and stuff, but it's like a Lugato sort of thing. All right. You should assume I know what a seaboard is. Oh, yes. Imagine a piano, but with no keys. And it's just a lion.

Yeah, that's a C-board, yeah. Like that. Imagine doing that with a piano. Is that the thing that they did like the fucking jerk it out meme on? What? Oh, fuck. No, you know, it's one of the do, do, do, do.

No, no, no, not that. What is that? Okay, imagine that, but instead of a pen, it's your finger. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a pen. Could have a pen this. Penkin this. Yeah, yeah. So he was going off about that for like what felt like two hours. And it was really interesting, but I was, his exact same situation. I was like, I'm really hammered. This is really cool. You're showing me all these like YouTube videos and it's like really loud, but I'm like having to do this. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like really like specific, like quite nuanced sound. Like I was like, oh, it's a 43 minute video. Just let me scrub for a minute. It's just, yeah. But it's good to hear. It's like great when you're hearing someone who's like so passionate about something. Yeah. To be fair, like I do actually fucking love it. I might like joke about it a little bit. Oh, I don't remember how this fucking.

But you know, it's like, it's like at least like, you know, as like a fellow musician, I understood majority of what you were saying. I can't imagine what it was like to God. It's just like hearing all these like musicology terms. It's just like, be like, yeah. Have you ever heard a moose? Yeah.

Is that something I should know? I don't know why he chose it most of the time. I asked about like the Doom soundtrack and you were telling me about how to compose it, he got some Russian synth and I was like... You were telling me! I was like, I was like, I was like, I understand that the...

it being from Russia could add to the sound of it sounding more doom-like. Yeah, I was just like, I'm in my head, I'm like, does the Russia have a lot of influence on the synth being like more dooms-esque? Like, is the soundtrack of Russia just doom? So I feel like once I tired you out, I like went next to the next victim. Sorry, let me tell you about Russian synthesizers.

I was like, I don't know any synthesizers, but I'm open to hearing. So the Polyvox is a Soviet era synthesizer that it's about 50 kilograms and it has one of the most gnarly fucking sounds. Because you've got to think of, okay, the synthesizer is basically, I mean, among other things, it's voltage being put through an oscillator.

So it's a fucking biblical sound. It is beautiful. And the way that you can shape these oscillators and then filter them through different effects and stuff makes a synthesizer's character come out. So like the different types of processing that you have, I mean, you can just listen to the oscillator be an oscillator. But at the same time, the way that it's processed through certain other like kind of effects and boards in a synthesizer gives it a certain unique character.

characteristic this is exactly how we sounded like you know in the same way like you have like a guitar right and you have different makes of guitar different types of guitar depending on how it's made the pickups and stuff like that yeah it'll have a different characteristic yeah think of it like that but electricity okay yeah right and so this particular synthesizer that yeah was was used in the doom soundtrack and i i would love to get one but like they're

They're not easy to get on. It's like they are dated instruments now. That is dated. So is your house just...

filled with just instruments and synthesizers and a bunch of other random stuff that you use so um my fucking i guess call it both a quarter life crisis and like my pandemic kind of like pandemic crisis right right depression fucking fuck covid sort of like yeah outlet was just to fill this room with just all this fucking shit to just yeah yeah and like it's

- It helped. It helped a lot. - Yeah. I mean, I saw you tweeting about it constantly, right? So I'm like, yeah, it was all, but like, that's the problem is that like, all it took was for me to ask about this, like one particular synthesizer that I really liked. All I said was, so Kevin, I heard you bought a Moog and then he just went off for two hours. - Sorry, let me tell you my life story. - Yeah. - Now we always think like, what's the opposite of, you know, the horse girl? Well, apparently it's the synthesizer guy. - It's the synthesizer guy.

The synth guy. I'm still trying to figure out why I tried to make you think about what a moose sounds like. I don't know why I picked that. See, this is the problem. It's like I'm too sober. I'm not making enough sense. Yeah, I'm not making enough sense. There's like a little gray area between like dysfunctional and functional. Functional and dysfunctional? I don't...

Again, why would I just decide? Yeah, I know. Everything's upside down. So I'm a bit afraid to ask after what we've just talked about, but what is your creative process? Do you have one? Right. Um...

Because I'm sure you have, like, the answer prepared for, like, when you get asked that on a panel. And, like, I hear you ask that question on the panel, and I'm just like, that is not like the Kevin that I know. So, yeah. So it's kind of weird because I don't, like, I haven't...

He's buffering. He's buffering. He's buffering. And like, what is the end? Like the old DLR, whatever it is. Whatever it's called. A DLR is the top of the hotel. My bad. My bad. The

Don't worry. This is it. This is the process right now. The pro's fucking having some fucking stroke on camera. You're good. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. I don't know how much reusable content we're actually making. It's all cut. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a one minute supercut video. You left the end. Is it the beeps and the boops? No, well, yeah. So it comes from many places.

I can't make that sound good, so I'm just going to meme it. So let's say, for example, one way is that I've, like, woken up in the middle of the night, I had, like, some sort of fucking weird fever dream, but then I'm woken up with, like, some sort of melody in my head. I'll write it down as, like, almost like a musical Morse code on, like, Evernote, because I've got, like, Evernote, and I love Evernote. I'll do, like, a little memory. It's, like, B dash dash is, like, B for two beats. So I'll write, like, a tempo and maybe, like, a...

like tempo. You wake up thinking about melodies? Only like sometimes, but then the problem is I'll like write it down and be like, Oh man, it's fucking good. I'm gonna go back to sleep now. I'm going to wake up nice and early after I've had a nice rest and you know, just like get, get to work. And I wake up and I'm like, Oh,

means fucking nothing to me so I have to like reinterpret what I like wrote because I used to do that as well and but now now when I but now when I do it yeah I just sing into my phone so the next morning I wake up and I'm just like it's just like audio of me just like yeah

Really quietly at like 3 in the morning. Akima's thinking I'm fucking psychotic because I'm just singing to myself at 3 in the morning. But it helps. Another way that I'd start a piece of music would be like literally just try and find a cool sound or a cool... Right, right, right. So yeah, whether it be like one of the sort of... One of the...

Therapy synthesizers that I decided to get. Right. Which synthesizers should I use today? Learning up Logic Pro and just being like, okay, let's fuck around and just see what happens. It's a cheeky little piano sometimes. It's nice. Stop playing stuff. Yeah. It's just like, well, most of it shit, but then eventually you get something that's like, okay, it's not too shit that I couldn't come back and like refine it later. Mm.

Right, right, right. It might be a little bit of a riff or something, sometimes stuff like that. So, like, let's take the Rising of the Shield Hero main theme. At the start, it's just like sad piano. It's just like sad piano. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you have this violin coming in going...

Yeah. It kind of rises up. Yeah. It's the Mario theme. Yeah.

I was like, I don't remember that in the Rise of the Shield era. No, I would be very out of work. Nintendo lawyers knocking at your door. I was trying to do like the... What's the melody version of that? Really not. I'm sorry, people. I'm very sorry.

I'm sorry guys I'm so sorry I'm too sober for this I didn't come prepared like my blood alcohol is not of of of of part so the right thing to shield here so the da da da da da da da da da

That was where that, so I would start with that and try and work around that. Right. I guess you could think of it as like, you know, you create like one little line and then you're creating another little line that kind of connects to that. And so it kind of slowly becomes like a sort of more of a complicated kind of beast. It's like patchwork type of thing, right? Yeah. And then like, you kind of like go back to like kind of fill in and refine. Yeah.

so like maybe i'll have like a structure of something i'll have like you know most of a structure of something uh to work with and then i'll just kind of sit back and be like okay what sucks what needs to be changed and just kind of refine almost like um somebody uh it's a trench fishing

What's that? It's where, like, they... Are you sure? Yeah, it's like a net. And they've got to drag the seabed and they start to pick up fish like that. It's like a filter process where you just drench fish.

dredging that was the loudest like five seconds of silence ever on the show that was like that was the loudest silence I've ever heard in my life I was trying to process it was just like I think I was yeah I was trying to say dredge but then I thought of like the Mariana Trench yeah I was like and then I combined it all

Welcome to the fucking Freudian nightmare. That is my head. Dredge fishing. Yeah, dredge fishing. But you think of that as like, but you're just like going through, you're listening. I don't know what this action is anymore. And then you're just kind of refining, refining, refining until you kind of

can't find any more like flaws so to speak right right right or you run out of time but right yeah do you kind of like do you kind of like show those like unfinished or like you know combed through pieces to like other people to get like a second opinion or do you kind of just like there's like a few kind of like kind of core people where i'll be like hey so yes yeah

Right. Just be honest. Tell me, tell me real. What's the track and you wrote like, and you're just like, this one's the banger. This one's a fucking banger. I can't wait to hear this. This, this, this is the one that will explode my career. I don't think like that. I don't think like that. Um, what, what I normally like more, what I gravitate more in terms of like being confident about a track is kind of the process of it. Yeah. Um, here's an example that I can't tell you like now, but like last night, but, um,

Let's take like Made in Abyss season one, for example. Right.

um there's a track that i mentioned earlier called swings and roundabouts and it involves a really cool sort of arpeggio style playing uh playing technique um called arpeggiation on a violin so normally when you play a violin and i'm sorry any violins out there about to fucking hate me because i'm gonna i'm gonna explain what a violin does like as a flautist and it's gonna suck but um if you think of it because normally you see a violin they play one or two strings at the time and then they normally like change their fingers like that um

one of the techniques that I really enjoyed was where they put fingers in all four strings and then just kind of bow up and down, uh,

on all four strings and always make like a chord. Well, if you do like that, it doesn't do much, but you go one, two, three, four, back one, two, three, four. So it's like this kind of cool kind of chord sort of thing. And you can play it quite, play it very, very fast. Yeah. Fucking good musicians. Yeah. But then you can change that all the time. So you can always like, kind of changing chords all the time. And you can make like these really cool, like, cause it's a very shimmery sort of texture. Yeah.

But I did that on one violin. And then I had in the best season one, we had three violins, three viola, two celli and one bass. And they're all of them playing like solo parts. So it's like nine songs together. And they're all playing these different chords, like arpeggiated chords together. And it's sort of making this bit of this sort of concophony of like sounds and stuff. So like doing those sorts of things makes me feel good about that track. It's like, oh, I got to explore this kind of crazy thing.

I got to like kind of make this. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, I got to like kind of explore that and it didn't fucking fail. And it sounds good. Yeah. It sounds great. Yeah. And I like the noise. Yeah. This is so alien to me that you're explaining all this stuff and it literally just sounds like another world. Like it doesn't sound like a thing that I can even comprehend. But I appreciate it because, you know, I know you're making sense. Yeah. It's just like,

To me, I have such engineering and math brain. The way I approach everything and it's very like, okay, I just do it. There's nothing that's just a gut feeling. There's no experimentation. I mean, there needs to be a part of that in this process as well. Because experience means that you can execute these ideas.

I've had like crazy fucking ideas. I have no idea how to do it. I still don't. Yeah. I was going to ask where you said something earlier and I was like, how do you convince? So like you said, mentioned that you're in like a chapel or something and you're recording like orchestra or something. Right. How do you go like, Hey, Hey, Hey, higher ups. I have this idea. I'd like to rent out a church somewhere in Austria.

Can we ship and get a bunch of violinists and all the people there? Yeah, it might work out. Let's just see how it goes. By the way, it's $100,000. The might part is definitely not something that I translate. You're like, it's definitely going to work. It's definitely going to work. First off, thankfully, there's trust. So like that. You've proven that you do. Yeah, a little bit of trust. So obviously, when you start a project, you give it a budget.

And, you know, the budget, you know, sometimes you can like kind of stretch it a little bit and, you know, you can do some little bit of black magic just to get some deals. This might sound stupid. There's a budget and then you get your pay separate, right? That's like completely. Yeah. Make it all in one. There's a composer's fee and then there's a budget. Right. Pretty standard. Yeah.

So when we were able to kind of like explore this idea of using Made in Business as an example, like, yeah, we're trying to explore this massive studio called the Synchron Stage in Vienna, which I think it fits like 135 musicians, fantastic.

It's a massive room. I'm pretty sure it's like a football field, if not slightly more. I understand that metric. Oh, no, there we go. And it's got a really unique sound profile. And so you can stick a really small amount of musicians in there and it will sound fucking huge because they put all these microphones around. You get all these ambient microphones. They stick them like fucking 30 feet up in the air and stuff. And you have what they call out triggers and you've got everything, man. You've got all this sound to play with. Is that not just like a nightmare to have to go through all those different like...

of sound. That's a pleasure.

To me, you're saying that to me and I'm like, holy shit, the setup required. Can we get some off on that? I'm raging hard on front. Just setting up like four mics for this fucking podcast gives me an aneurysm. He sees a mic 30 feet up in the air and he's just bricked up. He's like, damn, that's going to sound so good. These mics got me acting out, man. You have absolute permission to slit my throat if I don't actually utilize a space like that. You'd be nuts, dude.

But no, like, so the space is phenomenal. And then we get a small amount of musicians because we decided like, okay, small amount of characters in the film, in the show, a small amount of musicians to kind of like mimic that, that kind of party size. And so just having like, yeah, like three solo violas, three solo viola, three, two solo viola, one solo bass, but then them all kind of doing their own thing. But because the space is so good and so clean, you can have all these voices like really not, if you orchestrate correctly,

Right. You can, uh, so it's like if you balance your textures correctly and all that sort of shit, um, you can have like a really rich sound with a small amount of people and it can sound phenomenal. Yeah. It's,

It's beautiful. It's really fun. You're performing magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This means you just said like so many words that I'm like, I'm dead. I'm like, damn, man. Say that again. I mean, because sometimes like... I appreciate it. No, not at all. But I mean, sometimes like just the basic stuff, like even just doing the basic, like it is like kind of, let's call it simple, like refined simple sort of ideas. It's really, really fun. One of the other tracks that's in the best season one called Recapitulation. What's that?

something in recapitulation sorry but i should probably remember my own tracks um but it just involves the nine strings just play like playing just notes and all they're doing is changing the duration of the bow hand in order to get shorter or longer uh shorter or longer notes but

So they have like three different levels of length of note. But it's the same note. It's the same note. I mean, we change up the chords sometimes, but it is quite minimalistic. Right, right. But so basically if you change the texture in that room, because you have something called... Oh Christ, I should probably remember the damn thing from... The...

Fuck what's called... Nope. You're remembering. You're remembering. All good, man. All good. It's like early reflections. Early reflections. I think it's called early reflections. Okay. Right, right, right. The early reflections of the sound. So like the sound that kind of like... Because...

Sounds flying everywhere in the room. Right. Yeah. Sound goes everywhere. And obviously it bounces off certain, certain points and then comes back to the microphone. Yeah. Early reflections, early reflections, uh,

in that room are really, really cool. Right. And they have a lot of character because it's almost like an echo effect or a chorus effect. And so, for example, if I recorded your voice in there, but I didn't use like the mic that's in front of you, but I used the mics that caught like the first reflections of you just behind you or in front of you or something like that. Right. It would almost sound like there's like 10 of you.

Right. It's a really cool chorus. It's quite unique to that room. Because it's kind of like spread out and bounced around a little bit, right? Yeah. Because of the quality of the wood in the room and stuff like that. Things change. So it is like a really good room. So is this place like famous? Because I can't imagine, okay, you're going to record a soundtrack. You want like a certain sound profile for like Made in Abyss because this place seems like it was tailor-made for a series like Made in Abyss set in caverns and wide open spaces.

How would you go about finding the perfect recording spot? Or the perfect recording space? The correct recording spot, yeah. Yeah, the correct spot. For Abyss, it was that one. I think for Rising of the Shield here, we recorded in Boston with a rock orchestra.

And they specified in rock orchestra. So the players did live performances at the time with a full live band. I think they did some Final Fantasy stuff among other Square Enix projects, among other things as well. So they kind of specialized in that kind of quite cool kind of attitude orchestra with rock, which is what we wanted to achieve in Shield Hero. Tower of God...

And obviously, I mean, it's in the name as well. It has like a slightly biblical sort of sensibility about it. And we found this hall in the Czech Republic called the Dvořák Hall.

So it's this beautiful old hall. It was built, I think, in the name of Dvorak. So he's like a very, very, very famous composer of romantic, late romantic music, I should say. But so this hall was designed either for him or by him or around him.

So sorry about not being specific about it, but it is a beautiful concert hall. It is, it is ancient. It is, it has this beautiful lush sort of like reverb tail and stuff. It is fucking pretty to like listen to. And it's, it's a performance hall, but they also do recording there. Yeah. And, uh, we, so we recorded string orchestra there for shower of color because it had this sort of almost, uh,

cathedral-esque sort of sensibility, which worked great for certain aspects of the Tarot God soundtrack. Right, right. Concepts. Right, right. So this one hall, it had a very specific sound that, say, a normal cathedral wouldn't? I'm sure a normal cathedral would, but that's when practicality comes into it. Right, right. So you've got to make sure at the end of the day that, you know,

you've got to fit within certain budgets and stuff like that. I mean, that's part of the business skills part of it. Right. Imagine you have these grandiose ideas and this concept that you have and there's a guy there that is like, I am here to scale you down. So you're pushing the envelope a little bit, aren't you? I want to record on the

Because it's a space opera. I'm like, you know. Let us know sound in space. We're getting real experimental. We're going to build a cathedral in space. Apparently a dying black hole, like a black hole is like the loudest sound ever. But you can't hear it. I believe that. Yeah. The moon would be nice, but I don't think I'm going to get it.

You're not going to make a whole lot of progress there. Why don't you tell us the fact about the dying black hole being the loudest thing ever? I think they did manage to record it. Oh, no, yeah. I think it is. It must be the loudest sound. It's a black hole consuming stars. But they've managed to record the sound of it, I think, recently. And it's like this eerie fucking... Yeah, it's atoms being crushed into nothing. Yeah, right, right, right. Anyway...

Anyway, yeah. Interesting bit of... We're not going to the moon. We're not going to the moon. Second loudest is a Modern Warfare 2 lobbyist. Exactly. So, like, going, like, I guess moving from Made in Abyss, one thing I've noticed is that you always try to do something new with, like, every new project that you take on. I guess that's why you put a lot of experimental stuff into Made in Abyss. And I feel like...

Tower of Gods, right? That's just like dubstep, which is like so far removed from what you were doing in Made in Abyss. Like, how did that come about? Like, did you have to listen to like a lot of dubstep to like study it? Or did that just like come out? Did they tell you or was that your decision to be like, I'm going to put a bunch of fucking dubstep in there right now? No, it's because I used to go to a lot of fucking raves. LAUGHTER

I just feel like me and Rafe. No, no. Like, one of the people I worked with, okay, pre-story again, but, like, yeah. So, Perth has, like, a massive drum and bass scene. We've already hit the back story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Pendulum from there, for example.

It has a great scene. And yeah, so when I went to Whopper, I got introduced because I was like, oh, I love video game music and that's it sort of thing. But then one of my friends, one of my really, really close best friends that I still, you know, we're still really, really close today. So we've known each other for

fuck it's getting on 13 years now yeah but um yeah he used to be like oh well we're going to this fucking you know uh we're going to like this like hotel bar to go to rave and i've got a track and one of the djs is playing one of my drum tracks come and then yeah let's do a bunch of fucking like vodka cruises and whatnot just dance like a fucking energizer bunny on the fucking floor

like for like three or four hours and it would be great and so I kind of kept that and when I moved here obviously there was this big kind of EDM I just like to imagine you at like Defcon or something and you're just standing there like they don't know I'm a flautist it's just like standing there I'm very good at the world's shittiest shuffle you know like

I would pay to see that. Yeah, no, but that culture of dance music and especially... Like hardcore music. Either liquid drum and bass or dark drum and bass fucking just kept with me. So if you think about those elements where it's either very, very fluid synthesizers or it can be like... There is some fucking hardcore music...

like in that genre yeah yeah yeah if you've like been to like a there's there's so many like there's so many like examples but you know if you if you hear like um i can't even think of like i remember going to a couple of gigs uh in either south or east london when i was living here yeah and the fucking bass that comes out of some of these like venues yeah yeah there's like speakers like

I went to this warehouse gig once. I can't remember where, cause it's been so long ago, but now, but like, I remember like just walls and walls of speakers, meters. And then because it's like a three-story warehouse, they've got something that's going on. Fucking bass that comes out of those mixes. And when you're on the dance floor, you know, obviously you had a couple of the vodka tonics or something like that, man, you just like, it's, it's,

wettening you feel every atom in your body just like shake especially the bass it's a fucking physical reaction biblical man it's so good and so like you know the bass is good when you don't hear it you just feel it that's such a good adjective biblical I'm going to use that more often it's resonating your chest it's really good and it feels awesome and it sounds great as well until you start blowing

eating this chicken sandwich biblical biblical biblical it's so good that Jesus had to get involved there's a little spiritual there's a little spiritual but yeah so that culture and that feeling still is with me even though I write a lot of orchestral music

as well. Yeah. When it came to, when it came to Tower of God, um, if you look at the manga, because manga, unlike manga is, um, it's colorized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, if you look at the color palette for Tower of God in the manga, it's actually very minimalist. Yeah. Normally like three or four, like very big, bold colors on, on a, on a panel. And then you go back and you,

So you see these really interesting... Some of the characters are sometimes just silhouettes against a huge, beautiful background in front of a giant creature or something like that. So as a composer, it's kind of a bit of a wet dream. It's really good. And so if you think about taking really bold colours that are contrasting and trying to put them together in a musical sense, you can split it into, let's say, a frequency range. You can go high, mid, low. So if you have...

I did a theme for one of the characters called Rachel. Yeah. And her theme is literally just harp. So it's harp in the middle. There's like dial up style tones on top. And then just this bass comes in to just kind of punch you in the face, essentially. Right. Chest cavity. And so like that sort of like dub set with harp, for example, how can we find an interesting combination that still kind of relate back to this idea of frequency spectrums being kind of split up to represent very minimalist, but maximalist style coloring in the

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of thing. So, like, you know, you have all these kind of pretty harpeners. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then, like, also, like, very subtle. I know. Welcome. But, like, you know, these sorts of...

Also radical changes in textures as well. That suits Tarot God in my mind, at least. No, it definitely did. When you handed it to them and you were like, here it is. They were like, whoa. It was kind of interesting because we did essentially what you could call almost like a concept album.

we did like 13 tracks we were like we're going to put together 13 contrasting tracks that's quite a lot of tracks it was a big investment yeah but like we did like the first 13 tracks as like sort of a proof of concept saying like this is what we want to do this is how we want to do it this style of choir and you know this harp and this

dubstep idea and want to, you know, punch people in the face with like beats and shit. And they were all for it, which again, just fucking lucky. And thank you to them for like actually just being like, being cool with it. Yeah. I feel like when you explain stuff in music, I'm like, yeah, okay. All right. I have a tree.

into the impossible. Yeah, I feel like if I was the exec, I'd be like, you sound like you know it. I'll just, I'll believe you. You mentioned the word biblical. That's all I need to know. He said, he said, biblical, minimalist, and then maximalist. Within like one second, I was like, that sounds like you know what's up. I said, look at,

my eyes. I'm like, yeah, okay. Half is good. Yeah, of course. At the end of the day, you also need to execute the concept. Because obviously everything's done in a computer, so to speak, until you go to the recording process. You're also showing a demo. You're not showing the full...

sort of thing so then you've got to potentially risk you know going and finding the right musician finding the right space within the right budget of course as well are you the one handling all of this? I mean it's not like I've got sort of the music supervisor the director that we work with every day so you need someone to play the harp you need someone to record it you're like I know a guy or you're like please find me a harp person well this is the lucky part about going to a music college

You know everyone. You get to know a bunch of musicians. A couple of the composer friends that I went to Whopper with. Sorry, I'm going to come back to it. It's all fucking connected, man. My man's got Dimitri on speed. I know the guy. He knows a mate. He's a beautiful boy.

Beautiful boy. Beautiful man. Yeah, no. So like, for example, like when I went to undergrad in WAPA, like I had a couple of friends and stuff that like I started working with on Tower of God. So, you know, Matt McLean feeding here is his name. And we did some drum bass stuff for Tower of God. Yeah. Like really, really nice. Yeah. And then I knew some musicians because I went to the RCM here in London. Right. And like those student musicians are brilliant.

bloody good. Yeah. Super musicians of the RCM become, you know, they have a very, very good chance of becoming working musicians. Right. You'd hope so. You'd hope so. There is a, there is a really, like, they are beautiful musicians and because you, because you're just basically breaking bread with these guys for two, three, four years. I mean, you are going to the,

the RCM bar and you're getting hammered with these guys all the time. And so, you know, you have like this connection because, you know, in the same way that we kind of, you know, broke a little, broke a little bread over, over about 600 gin tonics, you know, but you do the same with like the music and stuff. They're good friends and, but they also just, they just, they, they come to work. Yeah. It sounds like every,

aspect of the entertainment industry. It's like, you can be good at what you do, but also you need to go out and talk to people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's super important. And so when it came to certain projects like this, like Tarakod, like, oh, I mean, Valeria was the harp player and she does not only classical harp, but she also does improv harp. So I can just give her like, you know, I could almost give her some, you know, really...

piece of shit fucking sheet music where I was like, I've done my best to make it so that it doesn't look like an absolute insult. But feel free to just interpret this

In a non-shitty way. Right, right. I was going to ask you about this. You're mentioning that you're the one writing the sheet music, basically, roughly. How do you come across the knowledge of every single instrument you want to use? Pain and suffering and practice. Because obviously, if you're a violinist, you do violins.

You're very good at it. But like, you're like, I need to know this Russian synth. Also, can I find the harp? And I need to write that. Like, this sounds like an overload of knowledge that you have to acquire or have a rough understanding of almost everything. So, um,

Yeah, so when you're orchestrating for a large ensemble, so harp is a very, very specific and very unique instrument. It works on a peddling system, which I understand the concept of, but don't know how to like achieve. So what I would say is that you're kind of working up your base knowledge of certain things. Obviously, like when I write woodwinds,

like woodwind sectionals, it's a lot kind of, let's call it more natural. Yeah, because you understand that. Yeah, it's like, okay, I understand that if I do something quite fucky, that there's going to be a will or a way to kind of get it done. That's why I hear quite a few flute passages and whatever. And you hear a lot of flute jumping up and down and up and down and up and down because it's like, oh, yep, yep.

It's just your comfort instrument, right? But then when it comes to, say, Dimitri the violinist, because he is such a fucking boss, I can do what would normally be insultingly stupid shit, but he'd be like, okay, let's go. And you just fucking do it. I can do this, I can do that. And then he just fucking does all these different permutations of it, just do a bunch of takes and just cut them together. And it just sounds fucking awesome.

And I'm just sat there like, oh shit, it actually worked. And then like, so it's literally like fuckload trial and error. I was going to say it must have been a long journey. A couple of risks, but then also, yeah, like I did learn orchestration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is basically just going through, yes, going through every instrument and just being like, what does and does not work.

and you just build it up so flute but then there's alto flute bass flute and then yeah bass flute has certain characteristics in which you know if you go too high on the bass flute it's gonna start doing overtones right right right alto flute and the flute or the piccolo won't do in the same way would you say there's always a concern then when you're like i don't want this guy to think i'm a fucking idiot for writing this and then handing it to a professional like that's why i like giving a chill atmosphere in the

studio okay okay for example that's why you see in that in that that's when you start to call people mates yeah yeah it's like i like you want to bring your a game so yeah you come you come with like the best possible job that you could have done yeah you've done as much research as possible yeah it's it's i mean because that's what that's why i gained a lot of weight in pandemic working but i couldn't do anything like kind of get rid of the stress because it's like right right it's like

okay, I need to do this. I need to do that. And like, like the star was saying, like, you know, you want to make sure that is right. Yeah. You want to bring the best fucking sheet music. You want it to be beautifully typeset. You want that to be the best looking music ever written. Right. Right. Right. And you want the musicians to be happy because you want the project to go really, really,

really well. Thankfully it did. But like, again, like you, you bring your a game and then you give the musician enough adequate scope. If there is a mistake or you, or you get yourself, you know what it is? It's almost like you're refining the, the level of potential mistake down to where there's an, like you're in a, a sphere of like safety. Yeah. And then within that, if there's a mistake, if there's something like that, Oh, that dynamic doesn't work. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. Well,

Will they tell you, will they be like, yeah, this, this part isn't really doable or like, let's just try it. They should tell you. And that's why it's good to be like, Hey, just so you know, if there is anything wrong, just tell me, I don't mind. But that is literally the conversation. You have that conversation all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you like, I don't, yeah, there are like, there are people that, you know, it was like, okay, we will go for a take now. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. People like that. That's fine. But I guess maybe my style right now at least is like, I'm just happy to be here and I want to make this happen. I'm just a mate. I'm just a mate. I haven't composed anything yet. But they keep rehiring me. Just tell me if I'm being a dickhead. Just tell me. Just tell me.

like just we're going to sit down we're just going to play it through any questions I've done my best to make sure that you guys have a good time and if you do a good time I feel like you just because I was explaining this to you last night as well like there's a couple of

thoughts of school about like how many takes you should do. Right. And, you know, in certain countries there'll be like one, two or three or four takes that you'll do, do a run through and then there'll be like, okay, we're done. Right. And then there's other times where, um, there were, there's other types of composers, um,

where you'll basically like do like multiple takes, even like what would be considered potentially unnecessary takes just to get like different kind of like permutations and certain phrases. Right. So you can cut together and kind of do like kind of different things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I'm in that second part, which is really not economical, but at the same time, um, there have been like more than cap, there's been countless times where I've been able to basically like create a really cool sort of,

almost like a combination or like an out amalgamation what am I trying to say amalgamation yeah of like different takes where like you know I was like oh like

bar 34 beat four the cello like kind of slipped a little bit on that one note right it sounds a little fucked up but let's cut that in because i like the fucked upness yeah and then go back to like this other take which is a bit more clean some of that and then let's bring in this sort of thing the more you're telling me about the more stressed out i'm getting like what if you know because if you have like you said you had a three of each uh instrument earlier what if like one guy's just sick doesn't turn up well

Well, like that's, that's not a thing. Not a thing. I shouldn't be. What if, uh, like someone's, uh, they got to fly over the visa, get delayed or something. And it's like, Oh crap. We need to find another guy. Like, this sounds like I'm getting stressed out. I'm messing all these moving parts. If it makes you feel better, they're already there. Okay. Yeah. They're already there. These guys do that day and night. If there was, if there was someone that was unable to come in because they were sick or whatever, the next person's just there.

Okay. Right, right, right, right. Just wondering how this whole process is. No, no. I mean, okay. So in that case, you're hiring maybe not just a room, but there'll be what's called a fixer, an orchestral fixer. Who will help get everything. Who is like, they organize everything. Because you don't know everyone. You really don't. Right. So you're coming into a situation where you're hiring a service. So you're hiring the studio. And they give you everything you need. And you're hiring... Normally, the studio...

More times than none, I've seen that the studio and the musician hiring service are one and the same. Right, right, right. Or they come hand in hand. So if you're hiring a studio, have you got musicians? No. Okay, use the person that fixes all that. Right, right. That makes sense. And then they'll say, okay, well, we need...

X amount of yay and X amount of woodwind this and that. And then let's say, you know, someone doesn't rock up, they just make a phone call. And I've seen it happen. Like it's like, oh, something didn't happen. Can you come in? Yep. Great. See you in 10 minutes. Wow. Right. Wow. You just kind of like, you can tailor the session. And I, like if, unless there's a request,

for them to use their own conductor i always get up my own stuff yeah we have a lot more control freaky so right so um i'm sure i'm sure we all i figured that yeah of course appreciate being very very anal about control yeah but uh yeah just like let's say for example like you're missing a cello i'm just using an example say the cello you know cellist falls down and you know

Explodes. Yes. That's good. I was about to say that. You're about to say some real shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like,

I could feel something coming out there. I was like, let's not go there. No, sorry, microphone. So, yeah, let's say like Chellis is suddenly, you know, explodes. Just like Thanos snaps out. That was a very good snap. That was a firm snap. Do you know why? Conducting is you to go one, two, three.

Why were you shocked by your own stabbing? Oh my god, I can conduct! I have the power! This entire episode is going to be best tension. You got the whoppers. What was I saying?

So the cellist explores. Let's say, okay, let's quickly switch over to like a different, let's switch over to like just a violin and viola only track for like 10 minutes. Okay, let's record that. Great. Finish that. Welcome back, cellist. Let's go back to that. Right, right, right. You have to keep like working through it. Yeah. You work in tandem with what's called a session producer, which is basically someone in the booth. If it's not you, like the composer can produce their own session if they are hiring a conductor to produce it.

conduct yeah but uh if you've decided to conduct yourself you work in tandem with the producer or maybe two producers in the booth saying yep we've got that take no don't be a psychopath about that move on please sort of thing it's like you can get in your own head especially yeah exactly okay yeah actually i remember you saying like have you got it have you got it like in in a video when you're talking about how you have to i think you were on the scene like you it's like the boys club or something like that and you were talking about how you you're doing takes of interviews and stuff yeah and then you're like have we got it do we need to go again yeah like that sort of

what would be the word nervousness about, okay, do we actually have the content? Do we not have the content? Do we need to go again? And that, yeah. Right. It's important. Yeah. But if you're filming it and you're also, you know, in the shot, then you've got to go back. You've got to go back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if,

but having someone behind the camera or in this case in the, in the recording booth saying, no, we got it. It's chill. Let's move on. Yeah. That kind of moves. It's like nice reinforcement. Yeah. It's like, I guess the, they, I mean, they, they should, but like the cameraman, he's like getting the shot, but he doesn't necessarily give a shit if it doesn't look great. Sometimes it depends. I would avoid that. Yeah.

I would recommend that. And it's also sometimes they don't know what kind of shot that you want. Yeah. As like, normally there's with a director. They don't have as much investment as like, say someone you hire to be invested. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're hiring a session producer, they should. Right. So you're hiring someone who's like, his job is to be as invested as you. Right. Yeah. But obviously not everyone will be. Because otherwise he's just a guy at the booth. No, I do see where you're coming from now. So,

There are times when someone is just saying, okay, have we got the standard? They'll be like, yeah, we got it. Yeah, we got it. You go back and you're like, you didn't have it. But then that would be hopefully where you could, that would maybe where experience kicks in and you say, no, we're going to go again. Yeah.

going in. At the end of the day, you're kind of driving the train. People are really supporting you. People are there doing their job. Between you and maybe the music supervisor or something like that, you guys are driving that train. You've got to be on it. This is where it's not just a physical job. It's also super mental. You've got to focus on not only, especially conducting, you've got the physicality of making sure, okay, cue that person in. Keep on going like that. You come in. You come in, beat three. You're cueing people even though you can't do it. But

you know, through the physical act of conducting, it's not just about keeping tempo, which to be fair, everyone's got a click in their ear. It doesn't really matter too much. But what it's about is coaching more performance out of it. Like you're basically just like micromanaging everyone, right? Yeah. Hopefully in like an apartment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, for example, if I'm going like this to you, I'm like, okay, sing, sing, sing, sing. And then, okay, on that last one, that is like, sing more. Yeah. Right. Sing! Do it again! That sounds a bit constant.

But at the same time, it's like, okay, that should hopefully coax a little bit more. You know, push a little harder. So if you're doing that at the same time, you're also listening to everyone else in your headphones or in your room, making sure that everyone else is playing at the same time. So you're doing that over and over again for nine hours a day. So you take everything you just described,

how much, how many more layers of difficulty has been added on with COVID. I was going to ask this. And having to do things remotely. That sounds like a nightmare in person. Yeah. Yeah. There's a reason that if you see me like in the room, I'm like a sweaty mess because it is like super intensive. In the COVID times,

It's been interesting because depending on where you are, it's actually a little more convenient in terms of the time difference. Because obviously, it's so far in front of everywhere. So if you're recording in America, it's quite nice because it's sort of like an early morning thing. And I became a bit of an early riser during COVID, at least for a time, until suddenly it was very not an early riser. But in Europe, it's kind of interesting. We did a lot of recording in Prague.

Some Budapest. During the pandemic. During the pandemic. And for an upcoming project, we did a little recording in America as well. Right. But, yeah, normally for –

For Europe, it's normally like an Australian nighttime sort of recording. So you kind of sit down at like seven, eight o'clock at night and then you do six, seven hours. So you kind of finish like two, three o'clock in the morning. So you're on call with people who are just in a big hall? Yeah. So basically just stream the audio on audio movies and Zoom.

Yeah, it's actually, to be honest, it's actually not bad. Really? Yeah, but what if it lags halfway through a recording, right? Yeah. Because it's like fucking classic Australian internet. It just crashes. Yeah. I was about to say, I'm like, it must be shit. Yeah, it's like, because, yeah. It's like, oh, Kevin's connecting. Yeah. It's like, why is our conductor in like 480p? I can barely see him. At that point, you're not connecting, obviously.

Yeah. That was what was really nice about like going back to Sydney for a couple of projects. Sorry, going back to Sydney, going to Sydney for a couple of projects. Cause like, yeah, Melbourne city is like an hour and a half on the plane and stuff. And that's pretty cool. But yeah, to finally get back to conducting for, for Star Wars was really cool. That was the first time I'd done it. I forgot.

Because the muscles just go away. To conduct? Yeah, because try doing this for nine hours. Right. It's very... Just the right arm. Just your right arm. You're like quack fire. It's like, what's up with your arm? I'm a conductor. I swear I'm a conductor. We were talking about Carpool Channel and Jump King before, but it's like that, but for your entire arm. It's like that, in fact.

It's fine. God, he's left-handed. So they balance. It balances out. Oh my God. Kevin just post-pandemic. It's just arms are huge and nothing else. Perfectly balanced. It's all things should be. Nah, it's like, um, so, uh,

yeah i forgot how like physically intensive it was so i'm just saying like because um because what you're normally meant to do is like maybe be a little bit reserved in like moving your arms and stuff yeah yeah but like you're getting into it yeah yeah all of a sudden you're moving your entire body doing like zumba yeah yeah like quite a few hours jesus yeah yeah it's a little interesting sounds really intense yeah so like speaking of oh sorry no no i have nothing of value to say

literally talk for an hour and a half that was all just bands bro literally talking to like an anime composer composed for some of the biggest shows in like the past few years i literally have nothing about you to say yes so star wars yeah how was how was that like really cool

How was it when the news came in to be like, can you compose a piece of music for Star Wars media? Because I'm assuming like... Great honor. You know, obviously it has the history of history. And just to be able to kind of... So Star Wars Visions is an animated series based in the universe of Star Wars. And I did one of those episodes. I did the episode four called Village Bride.

And what I really liked about it is that Star Wars Visions, our episode, explored some really cool spiritual things

and biblical shuffling. I was waiting for that one. I was like, where is it? It explores some really nice concepts with the Force, which was just... I mean, I grew up watching that. I watched the original trilogy with my dad, and then my dad and I watched the prequels, and then I did watch the sequels as well, of course. But yeah, it was really...

It was really nice to sort of have like one hand in like sort of that aesthetic world. At the same time, we're exploring certain like spiritual aspects, especially considering like the backdrop is very like sort of Kyoto-esque. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like to have...

to have like the ability to use like traditional Japanese instruments. So we use a show, we use Koto, we use shakachi and we did a shinobue as well. And so we recorded those in Tokyo, recorded orchestra in Sydney, put them all together. But especially, especially that the, the show is, is a, is a wow. Show is the mouth organ.

I mean, I'm very, very oversimplifying it. I've never heard of this. Yeah, I know. And then when Kevin said it's a mouth organ, I was this close to being like, no, it's not. So you blow into a giant amount of like giant amount. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin giant amount, a large amount, a large amount of, um, um, bamboo pipes. You've definitely seen it before. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of a temple culture. A lot. I mean, you would have heard it. You would have actually heard it, but, um, it's not, it's like 12 to 14 sort of, um, uh,

individual little pipes right blow into it you can blow in and like blow in and out right to create sort of a very very yeah this thing this thing have you seen this thing

Oh, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. I have seen this. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a very complex, very beautiful sort of cluster of notes that create a very, very dense, very specific chord. And all these chords have very, very, very special meaning. So first off, obviously, you know, as an Australian, you really wanted to be very careful about that. And, you know, there's been, I mean, there's always a bit of an attitude in Australia when it comes to

uh, using, um, Australia's indigenous instruments, which is, uh, you, you, that you don't want to fuck this up. You don't want to be that person that has really disrespected a very, very important and very sacred instrument. And so that mentality, uh, I've carried, like I've been lucky enough to use, uh,

like sort of Australian instruments in the past. And it's always been in very explicit collaboration with First Nations people using those instruments because I'm not going to use that instrument on my own. I feel like I have the,

I can't do that. And so even though I am Australian, I want to make sure that when it comes to Japan's instruments, it's the exact same approach. Very, very calculated in a good way. Talk to the musician saying what is okay, what isn't okay, what are you happy with, what are you not happy with, what is natural, what is unnatural, those sorts of things. Thankfully, the musician, especially the show player,

is phenomenal and was very, very, very open to just sort of discussing, okay, what does and doesn't work. These are the chords. These are sort of like the core chords, so to speak, that you can't like that, you know, come on like the... Yeah, it has like different systems. It's very, very interesting. So it basically, you have like different combinations of notes that they have like a different kanji and it works actually on the circle. It works on a...

not a pendulum, sorry, but like a circle of fifths type of thing. Yeah. But not first circle of chords, but then all of them have different meanings and stuff like that. Um, I really hope I'm not bastardizing us as well, but like, I wouldn't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, but, um,

basically what happens that we've did a lot of workshopping and just said, okay, how do we make sure that like, is this good? Is this okay? Is this okay? Right. Why and when sort of thing. Yeah. Is that like, sorry, cause I just made a rinse on this. You're saying like, is that good? As in like, if you were to use it incorrectly, it would be disrespectful.

Well, it might not like, I don't know, but the problem is I don't know. Right. And I'd rather like, you don't want to overstep the boundary just in case. I'd rather ask too many questions and just like, or to be just said, Nope, don't worry about it. It's great. Don't worry about it. But that's not my permission to give. Yeah. Once I've received it, then I feel, okay, let's now, now we can record now. You know, work with these instruments and obviously like being commissioned to do something, which is anime, obviously Star Wars as well, but like,

doing something that is anime. Yeah. And in this case has a very specific relationship to Japan and its instruments. That's super important for me to make sure that like, you know, I get that right. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to fuck it up. Yeah, of course. I really don't. Yeah. Is it, is it, is there ever like a difficulty when you're working on a property that has had so much history and previous works that you could kind of

get lost in inspiration with yeah i mean yeah it's not it's not an easy one right yeah i mean there's a lot of music right yeah yeah there's a lot of the best music yeah because i guess you're just like naturally going to be compared to the likes of like john williams right so it's like yeah yeah i mean but you don't want to sound too much like that yeah right yeah because you have listened to it there's no way you have not listened yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but um like

I mean, thankfully, because it's animated, because it's not live action, we almost in a way had a little bit more freedom because we were trying something new. And that was one of the ethos of...

of the show, at least that, you know, um, that was one of the, um, sort of the, the core sort of, yeah. Yeah. Um, concepts of, of the show was to, you know, obviously be in the universe, but then to explore it in this gut in a medium that, you know, I've been not only lucky enough to be part of, but I really do genuinely

love. Yeah, it's important. Yeah, because I remember watching that episode and I was like, of course, I've got to support my boy, Kevin. Of course I'm going to watch Star Wars Visions. And I remember going to this episode and I was just like, this is definitely Star Wars, but this is such a Kevin Star Wars. I don't know. I'm not like...

well-versed enough in like musical lingo to be able to like break down what makes it a Kevin Star Wars. It just felt like a Kevin Star Wars, like Kevin take on the Star Wars, you know, universe and just, you know, the iconic music as well. Is that something you do unconsciously? Like you have a kind of signature almost to your music? Yeah.

a good question i'm not actually even sure like you know i think regardless of whether you like aimed at or not i think you've achieved it yeah yeah do you think that when people listen to your music without knowing you thought or they have heard your previous works they can identify yeah another one of your work yeah because actually i didn't even know that you did the music for that episode but as soon as like the episodes start playing i'm like this is kevin i already know i know my boy yeah um i may i may gravitate towards certain uh cluster courses but

put it that way. I don't know. Like, I wouldn't know how to put my finger on it. I wouldn't know how to do that. But I think in a way, like, it's both a very endearing thing to hear and at the same time, I'm like, okay, how could I not do that? How could I not do that? Surprise, motherfucker.

how can I do that next time so it's almost like it's a great thing to hear and I am happy to hear it at the same time I'm like okay I do eventually want to it sounds a bit fucking wanky but like I want to evolve yeah of course and I kind of transcend no that's too far you get a little bit too biblical there at least the Russians sent for it

Well, I mean, one has to evolve in every, every year. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause as, as I, we were mentioning before, I just said 30 years, I've started like putting together like the list of, okay, what do I want to do in like the next 10 years? Like what do I want to do between 30 and 40?

And one of them is just to... I want to learn to sing again. I used to sing, and I used to not be totally shit at it. And now I sound pretty sure... A bit out of practice. Yeah, let's just say if the cat was angry and screeched, it would still sound better than...

what my voice would sound like in my attempt. I feel like you'll be dramatic. Yeah, you'll be fine. Like knowing you, Kevin, you're probably a lot better than what you think. I think that's just your musician side saying that. But yeah, so I want to sing again. I want to like... We've got to go to karaoke to find out, don't we? Let's fucking go! No, like...

Like singing and I want to kind of try a few different music ideas. It would be really nice to do like a personal album for the first time. Like I've never really released like a personal album, like personal music. Right, right, right. So it's been like for the last –

as far as I can remember, like in terms of my professional life, it's always been to a project, which is fucking awesome. But at the same time, I feel like, you know what, in the next 10 years, it'd be good to like really create something like, that's just you. Yeah. Me. I got to figure that out. Well, that is as well. Cause like, I don't, I don't know what I am. Welcome to being in your thirties. Good luck. Good luck. I'm sweating. A little while. Yeah. But, um, no, no, I'm, I'm,

That's really respectable, though. I think as... Because all of us right now are in the creative field, regardless of if it's different types of creative fields. I think we can all empathize with that feeling. Yeah, you want to...

get yourself out there and try and spread your wings out as much as possible creatively, right? I mean, look how much you've grown as well. Like, look at your channel and look at your content and how it's developed. I mean, all three of you. Fuck's sake. I mean, like, look at this podcast. I mean, last time we caught up, it didn't exist. And now it is this. Your personal channels as well. We watch them all the time. We watch the old content, we watch the new stuff. I mean, all of it's great, but it is so lovely to see how it has changed and evolved.

Likewise, man. Likewise. Thank you. Likewise with your stuff. Oh, yeah. I'm so sorry. Gentlemen, all men strive for gold in their life, right? Gold medals, gold watches, gold everything. However, there is a certain type of man that goes the extra mile on

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So I guess while we wrap this up, I gotta ask, like, what do you want to explore next? Because you always say you want to do something new. What's, like, something that you're

you haven't done yet that you want to do like musically speaking yeah like musically speaking i was gonna i was gonna mean for a second yeah we don't we don't talk about the impossible here to go to the source um well yeah i mentioned like the personal album thing i think what i want to do is um expand which is the best way to describe it i think right like you know i'm

I don't mean this in any sort of like shitty braggadocious sort of way. I am very happy with what I've been able to achieve so far. I'm 1030. I did like these wonderful projects. I met wonderful people. I'm part of a wonderful sort of industry and community. Um, you know, I've got friends and family and all sorts. Like I'm, I'm, I'm,

good. I'm a happy boy. I think balance, if anything, is what I want to achieve next. I feel like next is like, you know, it's been like the pandemic can go suck a massive fat bag of donkey dicks. It fucking sucks.

But it put a lot of things. I'll be bold statements. But, you know, it did put a lot of things in perspective because, like, you know, you could work hard and hard and hard and that's fine for a while. Eventually, like, you know, not only does your body tell you, like, you know, you got to take better care. I was mentioning, I think maybe off camera, but like, yeah, put on a fucking load of weight, drank too much, ate too much in the pandemic. And it was just a way to deal and fine. We'll kind of get it.

It's not healthy. You weren't the only one. I feel like I'm like, yeah, I'm not breaking any fucking... So you did what? I think the statement is going to come as a massive shock. That I was fucking down during the pandemic. Yeah. I'm very not unique to that. I was not the happy all the time. So, yeah, I think the one thing that I've, you know, coming into quote unquote endemic, which, you know, depends on what everyone's calling this.

Is that a thing now? Is this an Aussie thing? No, it's called optimism. Optimism? Optimism. Fuck! Optimism. So yeah, I'm optimistically calling it endemic-y and I'm calling it that because I'm sat here now. I'm on the show. That's not an Aussie thing, by the way. That's a Kevin thing. Let it be so. But I'm really keen to just kind of

get life back and just feel fucking as normal as best as possible like you know i want

like the day to day to be really productive at the same time. Like I want, like I live in Melbourne now. I moved back to Melbourne because I really wanted to be closer to community and family. Yeah. And I missed, fuck me. I miss Australia so much when I was living here and that's why I moved back. Yeah. But, um, you know, Melbourne's like a beautiful city to be in. Even though we had all these crazy lockdown stuff, like I'm really happy there. It's a beautiful base. Um,

But it is nice to just fuck off and go to Japan and go to America and go to London. Come to London, I should say. So, you know, that almost is like it's such a pleasure to be here right now because it is a bit of a recharge. And people still can't. I mean, there are some countries that still can't do that. You know, so you've got to really take it, you know, you've got to really think that that's...

right now, pretty lucky in the context of the fact that we are going through a fucking pandemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, balance is what I want to achieve between, you know, lifestyle, friends, professionality, work ethic, work quality as well. I don't know how the, you know,

it'd be nice to potentially go back to school. Like not like school, school, but like, you know, I've tried learning Korean a little bit and still trying that. Yeah. I've had to kind of, you know, pick my battles in terms of trying to like learn more stuff. I like the idea of just trying to expand a little bit and try things, try a little bit of streaming in like mid 2020 or like late 2020, a little bit of 2021. I kind of like put it on the back burner because I just got,

really really busy with you know some of these projects yeah yeah um i didn't miss that yeah i missed the streaming it's good fun um you know just like live composing or like playing old games like you know yeah um played like like i want i want to play metro prime if it comes out hell yeah hell yeah i played um eco on stream that was really really fun yeah i want to play shadow the colossus yeah like that's a fun thing to experience all games that have amazing music

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Surprise, surprise. This is why I like them. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, just like playing games that are really important to me on stream or like composing music in front of a live audience that almost activates a different part of the brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess you can relate it to like content creation offline and online. Right. So yeah, expansion, expansion and balance. I think is a, yeah. Expansion. Yeah. I'm British. I will the expand.

yeah i mean like we've wanted to have you on since basically like the beginning of the podcast we were like who is would be the most perfect guest for a show like this the mate kevin yeah i'll make kevin i have some bad taste i can commit and we've had like so bone and chicken

Oh, fucking boneless, mate. Come on. Yes. Come on. Yes. I'm sorry. It's my boy. You have Korean fried chicken. Do you want bone chicken or do you want like a fucking beautiful? This is like, you know what? It's been a fantastic episode. We'll bond together. We'll bond together. Look, I appreciate that you've come to terms a little bit better on bread.

I do respect that you are getting better. Just as a person. I'm just saying that, what do you want to achieve in your 30s? And why is it boneless? I want to expand. Expand.

The expansion. World domination. The 30s expansion. What can I say, man? But yeah, I mean, like, yeah, we've like had to, I guess, like fucking move mountains to get you on because we're not filming in Australia. We're not filming in Japan. We're filming in fucking the UK, you know, which neither of us even live in. It's a weird detour.

It's a weird detour, but it's nice that we are able to make this happen. Finally. Hopefully, when Japan decides not to... Please come back, because we've gone two hours and somehow we've not talked about Oolong Hai, Oolong Dai. We're not going to, by the way. That's the next time. This is the sober conversation.

This is like the pre-convo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next time you come on, we have to do it. Second episode is going to be Oolong High. Yeah, that's the thing. This is almost like, you know what? This is season one. This is the conversation we should have had in the old studio. Now I've got to come to the new studio. Yeah. We've done one call. Now we've got two calls. Honestly. We're going to do 1.5% more alcohol.

Hell yeah. But yeah, I guess we'll leave it there for the time being. You know, obviously we're going to get you back eventually in Japan. Thank you very much. With a little bit more booze and a little bit more bands. Yeah, but hey, in the meantime. We're trying not to talk about fucking synthesizers for like three hours. Oh man. We've only talked about the same ones I get between now and

there yeah we'll hear your top 10 synthesizers list pretty soon I've got a list I've got a fucking list man actually do you know no tell me off camera tell me I was gonna tell you at dinner but hey look at all these patrons though these amazing lovely patrons look at them Kev they're just floating by oh my god so many of them who's your favorite that one that one that one that one that one that one oh my god damn it

But hey, if you'd like to support the show, then go over to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Trash Taste. Also follow us on Twitter. Send us your memes on the subreddit. And if you hate our face, listen to us on Spotify. And hey, go check out Kev's stuff. Wait, is there anything you want to shout out? I do the Twitters and obviously like Made in the Business is coming up.

in July which I'm so fucking pumped oh yeah we didn't talk about Made in Abyss 2 yeah maybe next time maybe next time it'll be out by hopefully like next time we like hang out so we can finally talk about it in depth yeah we've got a couple of things going but most of them yeah it's like the thing of it is like there's like a little pinpoint on your head with a sniper rifle at the end of it and you're just like oh I'm gonna talk about yeah it just doesn't happen yeah I'm ready to be depressed that's hey welcome to

welcome to the club, buddy. Yeah.

well yeah thanks for coming on Kev my pleasure thank you to all and on the final night I just want to say thank you to all three of you both personally and you know it's been nice what a lad what a lad what a fucking lad that's why he's our boy what a nice boy love you all thank you that's our man right there that's the most wholesome ending to a trash day since I've seen him thank you for doing what you do yeah of course likewise man I'm sorry I didn't mean to get in the way

You're not going to cry? You're not going to cry? Thank you for helping both of us through this because it's been a really bad pandemic. It's nice to... Sorry, I don't... I don't... I don't... Maybe if I got fucking drunk...

I didn't expect it to be like sober but seriously thank you for doing what you do it really helps it's really nice every Saturday to come like wake up and watch the trash days it's lovely to see your content we will so thank you thank you for doing what you do because it does make you know man lots of love likewise man lots of love made for life I'm just happy that I'm gonna hang out again man I'm so fucking happy man fuck can I please have a drink that's the end alright bye

Bye.