Inside Thom Yorke's Great New Album with Producer Mark Pritchard
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I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. One of my favorite albums of the year so far is a collaboration between the veteran electronic producer Mark Pritchard and Tom York of Radiohead. It's called Tall Tales, and it's a sort of progtronic journey full of freaky soundscapes and really strong songwriting. They also teamed up with an artist named Jonathan Zuada to create what they call a visual world for the whole album. You can watch the whole thing as a film on YouTube.

Now Radiohead haven't released an album since 2016, but there's been a lot of great music from its members in the intervening years. There have already been three great albums with The Smile, which is York's band with Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood and jazz drummer Tom Skinner. And since 2020, York and Pritchard have been quietly working on this project, all remotely. I recently sat down with Pritchard to go deep inside the creative process of a really unique album. ♪

You did Beautiful People, which is a great song. How did the two of you first cross paths? The first thing that happened was being asked to do some remixes.

And then I think it was 2014, 15-ish, Radiohead came to play Sydney, Australia. And at the time, a friend of mine became their second drummer. Clive Deamer, who drummed with Ronnie Size and Portishead and Robert Plant, various sort of people. I'd worked with him years ago and kind of kept in contact with him. And he said, he told me, I can't tell you at the moment, but

Something's happening and I might be coming to Australia because it was a secret kind of you know everything has to be kept secret With Radiohead and and then he told me I'm definitely coming over so

I knew I wanted to see him. I knew I'd be able to get on the list to watch the shows. But then Tom had a night... I think the whole band had a night off on a Saturday, which I guess is quite rare. And Clive just said, I think the band might want to come to where you're playing tonight on their night off. So they came and watched me and Steve Spacek play. We did like a set at this festival here. So I met him there. And then the next night...

We went for dinner with the whole band, me and my partner. I guess I met Tom properly that night. Just sort of sat down and chatted for a good few hours. Saw the shows, hanged backstage with them. I went to both nights. So that was the first meeting in that room.

In that conversation, I said, would you be up for doing something if I sent you some music? He just said, yeah, yeah, just send me whatever you want. I'm definitely up for doing something. So I guess in the next couple of years, I started sending him things. And then one of which became the single on Under the Sun, on my album Under the Sun, the Beautiful People song. What was the path to this album? How did it start?

So maybe like 2019, I was thinking about what my next album was going to be. At the time, I was thinking it's probably going to be an album of

of maybe various featured vocalists again. So I was just working away on that really. Then we got into 2020 and of course the crazy pandemic hit. So we were all adjusting to that. And then maybe a few months into the pandemic, I got an email from Tom who just said, I hope you're well. It's all a bit mad. I'm locked away at home. Hope you're doing okay. If you've got any music, send it through because I'm just stuck at home.

you know, can't go out. So I thought about it for a couple of days. And I thought I'd really like to write specifically for him.

But I was kind of working on some other things and I was kind of thinking about the album as a whole, what I was doing. And after a few days, I was like, well, it's going to take me a while to write. And then I just thought I'll just, I should just send him a load of random things. Like just some songs that maybe were kind of complete. Some songs that might just been a really good drum idea that had a couple of sounds over. Some songs that were just ambient. So I just sent him like a folder of like 12s

20 ideas. But I now know at the time he was working on the first Smile record. So I think they've been working on it, but they're in lockdown. He was doing vocals. So he was in the writing stage of vocals, I think, for that album.

So then I sent him those things. He got back to me that night and just said, oh, can I please do this one? Which just ended up being Happy Days. Maybe a few days later, he just emailed me and just said, can I just do these 14? Well, yeah, you know.

Just whatever you want to do, you know, I'm happy. Just try it out. And he said, look, I'm really busy working on a project. But when I get this through a bit further, then I'll have some headspace to be able to

think about this project. I just kept it chilled with him really. A few months went by and he'd email me just to touch base to say, look, don't forget about me. I'm going to do this. I'm getting through this project. And I was just in the background trying to work on the ideas because a lot of the things I sent him were kind of demo sketch ideas. So I thought a smart move would be to try and

tidy these up a little bit and work because once he starts then I want to get ahead of it so I just worked away on all those songs and then it was took a while it was probably later that year August September he emailed me and said I'm going to start sending you the first demo sketches next week and he just sent me two or three a day for a week and um I was quite nervous I was just like

i had no idea what i was going to be hearing and you know and the first day the i think the first day he sent me three and it was like them that dance with stag's heads fake in a faker's world and i can't remember maybe this conversation missing your voice

The first three are really strong and I'd never heard him sing it like with the Stag said so I've never really heard him sing in that register before so I was like these sound amazing and then he just kept sending me a couple each day I was kind of replying and then at the end of that week I just said okay so what's the next you know what's the next stage so from then on in I guess it was picking songs things he had to write lyrics and then

because sometimes he sketches lyrics. He sketches down songs with some lyrics, but he's looking for hooks, like where the melody's going to be, where the tone, where he sits. Some things had most of the lyrics. It was a mixture of things, really. And then, so he just focused on the ones that I think...

kind of needed to be thrown around for a while. Just certain songs need to be slowed down, need to take stuff out. He needed to try and sing it in different ways. Wasn't working, he'd send it back to me. I'd try and do something. So we did that for...

Quite a long time. I was just trying to give him the things he needed to work on, the things he wanted to work on, and then try and work on other stuff at the same time. The initial batch of demos that he picked, those were the tracks, or were there additional kind of back and forth? The 14 that he said he wanted to try, a few fell away. And then I sent him, I think I sent him Stag's Heads, which I'd done quite recently as an additional one. And I sent him White Cliffs, which I'd...

done a long time before

I actually sent that to him when I did Beautiful People, and I never got a response. And I just thought, well, he obviously doesn't like it, or he didn't get that email. So I played that to a friend of mine, and he just said, you should send him that one, that's killer. So I sent it to him again, and he just said, oh, this is amazing, I definitely want to do this one. So I guess a couple, maybe at least two or three got added, a few kind of fell away, but...

Most of the core of what he got were the ones that made it on. You know, you've done all sorts of music. It does seem like you must be in a different zone when you're writing things for vocalists to write over. That must be a whole different mentality than when you're just making an instrumental track. The weird thing was, is that everything I sent him was already written in various periods over, you know, I think maybe Wonder and Jeannie was nine years old.

Because I write all the time and just stuff sits there and then I try and think about where it could go. So it was a weird process because from the moment of starting the project, there was no writing. It was more production. The challenges was how to get songs to work, which was an exciting challenge because I've done lots of tracks with vocalists before, but not a full album.

And very different styles to what I tried. We were both basically trying to push each other. He was definitely trying to do something different and I was trying to push the songs in different areas. So that was the main challenge through that period and it was a very long process.

Probably three years of work. To take you back for a second, obviously when Kid A came out, it was this huge rock band drawing on the sounds that people like yourself were creating. I really liked it. You could hear it a little bit on OK Computer already. I didn't find it that surprising because I could hear aspects of it there. And it's an interesting one because a couple of tracks...

I think I heard Idiotech maybe quite early on I'd heard that song. I was really pleasantly surprised. It's a strong electronic song with electronic drums with an amazing pad and an amazing hook. So yeah, I thought it was great. Because I was into indie music when I was younger and electronic music. So it wasn't any...

to me and I think it was actually a very good move to me I actually thought I enjoyed those records each time they shifted a

to me, that is what makes them a really interesting band. When you got the vocal tracks, I know you did a lot of interesting stuff working with them. Tell me about some of those treatments that you did. It's a mixture of him and me. From his perspective, I guess, he was trying to find a way to get his voice to fit in with what I've done. He also likes to spam with his voice. So he was running his vocals through his modular system, things like Ice Shelf. Choose now, I'm blue.

He was having fun doing that because I guess he also wants to try and find a different vibe for this. He doesn't want it just to be the smile stuff or other things he'd done. So it's a mixture of that. And then I would just, obviously you want to have a contrast. So you want some stuff to be manipulated. You want some stuff just to be his voice. And then I picked some things. I think Buggin' Out, I put his voice for a Leslie speaker. Buggin' Out again.

I was always wanting to try it and that song felt like the right one to do it on so I sent that to a friend of mine in the UK that's got a few different Leslie speakers and we just recorded the vocal through those multiple times. It's quite a tricky thing to do because you get a lot of distortion and it's quite random but that's also what makes it kind of good. So yeah, I thought about certain ones that it would be fun for me to mess with. Back in the game there was no effects on that vocal when he did it and it worked as a song but then he just said...

just go wild on the effects on this one. Like now take what I've done and just mess it up.

So certain ones he was, you know, he was encouraging me to do. Other ones he'd done himself. Other things he just kept clean. I didn't want it to be all manipulated vocals, just because it's, I guess, more of an electronic thing. You know, I was wary of that. But he did a good range of, quite a good range of things. He was definitely having fun. And also, you know, from his perspective, imagine like being singing for that amount of time

He needs to find new ways to be excited about using his voice and writing songs in different ways. And so he thought about that a lot to try and... He said he wrote in a different way to normal on this project because he doesn't normally let his lyrics go out. And I just thought he wouldn't want us to put the lyrics into the world. But I wanted the lyrics for myself. So I knew what he was actually saying.

and also for jonathan who was doing the videos um i wanted to make sure that we knew what he was saying so i had the lyrics but i assumed he wouldn't want them but he actually emailed me and said i actually do want to put these in the world and put them into the album this episode brought to you by progressive insurance do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game shifting a little money here a little there and hoping it all works out

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So what's a good example of a song where he sent an initial version and then altering it back and forth? What are some that stick out like that? Yeah, the Spirit was one of the hardest ones. I wrote it, it was faster and it had drums in it.

And he tried singing it, he said he'd take the drums out, because the drums I had in it were kind of like an old school drum machine, but doing almost like a Latin kind of, a Latin preset kind of thing.

Going on and they were taking up a lot of room So he just said let's take them out, but we'll have to find a new way to put rhythm in He put a guide drum in to sing to it. Which is the basic kick and snare drum We slowed it down which helped with the key arranged that it was in and then he sang it to the guide Drums and I was like I need to replace these drums But I couldn't I couldn't find I mean drums is one of my favorite things to do and I couldn't hear anything and

on it. Tried a couple of things and then I just made the decision I'm not going to put drums on it but I need to then find a way of how I'm going to get this to work as a song. So I just got bass on it first. So I got my friend who's in the building where I'm working, he's a bass player. I got him to play a very simple bass part because bass can be a little bit percussive and it's a good starting point. So I got him to play very basic kind of notes through there. Tom just said make it even more simple.

So you just hold off on the bass for a while and then I just put some percussion. There's a lot of subtle percussion going on, some like just pedaled hi-hats. So I've got a drum kit so I just like pedaled the hi-hat now and again.

electronic snare and some kind of electronic hi-hats. I kept adding to it and seeing whether I could get this to work because it had something special and I needed to leave space for the vocal performance because it's all about, it's like that vocal is about his delivery of that vocal. And then he still wasn't happy with the vocal. He changed it from being

what's the word? It's like, um, instead of, I think it was like, you, we are not the fools. He changed it to a first person perspective. So it's like, I am not the fool. And then just got the right balance of performance on the song. And then I then carried on trying to add things to it, live with it a little bit. So that was one that was, yeah, I just didn't know how I was going to get it to work, but I knew that it would be a more interesting song with no drums. Yeah, that's definitely a, it's one of the more upbeat, hopeful songs.

Yeah. Both lyrically and musically on the album. Yeah, because Tom just said that, I mean, it's an unusual for me to write in major bass. It's so basic. Like, it could be more basic chords in a way. And I don't write in those chords normally. We usually go for sadder minor chords or stranger chords.

but I guess every now and again you just need to do something that you don't normally do. So I did that and I assumed he would sing minor over it. I just thought he's just going to sing minor over major and it's going to make it sadder. And,

And then when he sent me the demo, I was just like, he's gone with the chords. I was like, nah, he needs to go sadder on this, not go with the chords. And then I tried to add some stuff to it to almost steer it. And then he emailed me and just said, no, no, no, no, no, get rid of all of that. This is going to be really difficult to get to work. But if we can get this to work, it's going to be a really strong, interesting track for the album. So he actually sent me a song called

by Janet Kaye called City Games, which is charted in the UK. It was on Top of the Pops even. It's like a reggae song, beautiful vocal. And he just said, this song's nothing like this reggae song. But there's a feeling in that song and in a lot of the music from that era that

There's a hopefulness and an optimistic feeling, and we need to keep that feeling in this song. And as soon as he sent me it, I just went, okay, now I get it.

He just said it's going to be down to me getting the performance right and then you finding a way to get it to work. And he's totally right. On A Fake in a Faker's World, I was going to ask about the vocal samples that start to circle around and then ultimately kind of take over this song.

Do you remember how that developed, if you know what I'm talking about? That song was one that he took the drums from a song that I sent him and the bass, and he got rid of the pads that I had in that song, and then he took...

The strings are in that song are another song that I sent him that he chopped over the top of the drums. And then he added the modular bleep section that comes in after the first set of vocals that goes on its own for a while. Drums come back in. He added the drums up.

and put effects on the drums. There's quite a few songs where he actually added synthesizers, modular systems, extra sounds, extra pads, which is kind of cool because it was not just me sending him a track and he sings over it type of thing. There was actually, I think he enjoys doing that stuff as much as he does singing, and I guess sometimes more than singing. So yeah, because he likes having fun playing synthesizers and whatever he can. So

There's a lot of that going on. But yeah, with Faker to Faker's World, I think he just sings a verse and then a kind of a hook and then it goes off for a few minutes with instrumental again. He arranged it all. It was longer than that, actually, but then we chopped it down a little bit. And then he kind of does a kind of a second verse and then a refrain at the end.

The Men Who Dance in Stag's Head, very organic, you know, could be almost like a Velvet Underground song or something. And it's got, sounds like Mellotron or Organ is dominating that song. I'm a big fan of Ivor Cutler.

who's a Scottish poet, played harmonium, which is the instrument that you kind of pedal with your feet. And the studio that I've been working with in the UK to have... Basically, I was using the studio in the UK. He has loads of 50s, 60s valve synthesizers and organs. So I was sending him some parts and then I'd get him to replay them with the original synths. He had a couple of harmoniums because he's a full-sort of fan of Ivor Cutler. So I...

asked him to sample every note of the harmonium and he gave me it with close and room mics so I could then play that in and the idea was to then get him to replay it live. So I'd write the piece and then he would then kind of read it. In the end, it sounded so good that I just kept playing.

just from the sort of the samples that he gave me. It just seemed to work. I didn't need to re-record it. So I kind of recorded that first. Then, so it's going to be a folk tune, really. It was going to be like a very folky kind of song. But then I put the harmonium through a little bit of distortion, which kind of edged it up and made it a little bit more psychedelic. And then when I put the drums in, which is like a medieval timpani,

um, doing the simple drum kick drum part. And then I use this tambourine I found in a kind of secondhand charity shop, recorded that in. And then that gives it definitely the velvet underground feel, but then it's like a folk version of velvet underground in a way. But then I was like, I need to balance this a little bit. And I put the bassoon part in. So I basically recorded the bassoon part in, which gives it more of a,

Yeah, I guess more of another feel again. To me, it made it feel a little bit more of a mixture between English folk, either cut the Scottish poet and then there's still a bit of the, you know, the Velvet Underground vibe. And then Tom, I didn't know what Tom was going to do on that song. And then he sung that. He went for the kind of Bob Dylan low vocal thing, you know. And when he did it, I was just like, wow, I've never heard you do that before. And he just said that...

He basically just told me that he'd always wanted to do that and he never found a way of doing it. He never found a way of getting into the headspace. And he found a little trick where he found if he very speeded the audio, it allowed him to get into character a bit more to deliver the vocal in that register. Because he did it on that song and he did it on White Cliffs halfway through. Yes. Please don't look what you're dressed.

Yeah, so he did that twice on the album and I was like, it actually sounds great. I think that was the first demo he sent me. It was that one of Faking the Faker's World and I was like, wow. It wasn't finished when he sent me it, but he just said, I've almost got it. I just need to find a way of getting a little bit more. I need to put a little bit more of my own thing in.

I need to find a way to actually do that sort of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed area. But of course I need to personalize it. So he kind of had another few goes and then got it. Yeah. I love that one. And then there's a few things where there's some really even weirder shit going on, like Happy Days, which is, I think the one that has all these like spoken high pit spoken voices going around.

That kind of track

to me, has the essence of this record in it, but it's not like any of the songs on the record either. But it was important that I found a way to get that to work. And Tom did the most wildest vocals. I mean, when he sent me what he did, I was like, this is nuts. But we had no idea how to get that to work. That one was getting messed around with right up to mastering, actually, because I liked the fact that he'd done vocals before.

all the way through and it's just a crazy song and it felt like it needed to be constantly hitting you with vocals

And he felt like he'd done too many vocals on it and he kind of overpowered the track. So that one was going backwards and forwards a lot. And it was really hard to get it to work. It was so many vocals and they're so odd. I mean, it sounds like a kind of almost a, it sounds like a female well-spoken English 60s kind of announcer for the intro parts. And then it's almost a bit punky in the middle. Yeah. And then he sings those really nice lines.

The Drowning in the Deep Blue Sea, very 60s kind of vibe. And then some of the other vocals are wild, like that come in just after the first chorus. I mean, yeah, so I love that one. And I love what he did on it. To do those kind of things, you need to be

You need to be confident enough to be able to do something that sounds ridiculous to get something like that. You know, you need to be not afraid to sound like you're doing absolute nonsense, really. You know, that's how that song would have come about. He'd have worked on it. He'd have tried all different types of things, got rid of all the rubbish and came to that. And I was really impressed because I knew how wild that would have been to have done. And I heard all the takes he did.

So yeah, I was really impressed. But it was the hardest one to get right. On Tall Tales, he has almost that old school Macintosh vocal generation going on. Yeah. And this gold and this sand is our sand. Black and the sand is our sand.

Yeah, he did all of that. I mean, I think, I guess he'd done it before, hadn't he? Yes. On an IK computer. Yes. I'd done it quite a lot. All the weird effect stuff is his voice. Huh. So he used his voice, I think he just manipulated it inside a certain plugin and kind of made it more granular, but didn't feel like he could do the spoken word parts himself. I then thought, should we just get people to do these voices? Yeah.

instead of using a computer voice. So at one point I was actually going to try and employ voice actors to do the voices and then flatten them out to make them less human. AI was kind of happening at that point and people were using AI to clone voices and I thought about that.

But it was in its early stages. And then I just spent a lot of time trying to get those kind of Mac voices to work really. And because it's something that I think the idea behind that song to me feels like the sound of 2020 when we were online, you know, that, you know, it's, I guess Tom was trying to have a cascading of, of just voices and noise, almost like a sort of an audio version of Twitter in a way.

I love that.

just noise and chatter or voices over the top of each other, but trying to put it in waves. I guess, you know, we were very reluctant about talking about this as a lockdown record because for me, the music was all written before the lockdown. But of course, Tom was writing the lyrics and the songs through to 2020. So you can hear it. You can hear some themes across the record, but it's not just about that period. You know, there's, like Stag said, it's from a book called

It's inspired from a book called The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, which is a book about people that used to get coins and file them down for the metal in the 1800s as a way of getting money. So it's kind of, I think the album has various themes in it and political themes, but they span different time zones, you know. The final track, Wandering Genie, is really a journey. ♪

He tried to do a vocal on it. First of all, he did like, I think he thought about a song, but then he realized it's not going to work with the song. So he just layered up his voice, ghosting the riffs. It was a huge amount of vocals. It's like four tracks of vocal layers. And then maybe 20 tracks of this falling vocal. And then with effects, modular effects layered. And then there's a huge block chord that he's done, which is kind of like...

He was going to play piano on it and he was going to do strings. And he said, no, I don't want to do piano. And strings are going to take too much room. So he just decided to do it with his voice. So he laid up these three, four part harmony block chords. And I think in the initial discussions, we were talking about vocal areas to try on this record, not specific. But I told him, you know, I'm a huge fan of the high lows and the four freshman vocal

And I sent him some of that stuff. So to me, it had a little bit of that kind of...

you know, harmony group type vibe in there, which I was really happy about because I love, you know, I love those kind of vocals. In this conversation is missing your voice. That's one that I could hear an alternate life for that song as a rock song. I feel that vibe in it. It's ghost life as a rock song, which is interesting. The original instrumentals,

Had a slightly different bass line. The chords always felt, even though they're synthesized chords, it has like a slightly indie feel to it, even though there's no guitars. Something about the chord, which I guess stuck out to me when I started playing it. To me, yeah, it's electronic and almost quite soulful, but it has this slightly indie feel to it.

I thought about putting guitars on. Tom was just against it. Like, I thought you could put some guitars on that, even if there wasn't like distorted guitars, it could have just been strumming. And I suggested it a few times on a couple of things, and I think he was just, I think in his head it was just like, I do lots of stuff with guitars, we don't need guitars. Yeah.

Whereas for you it would have been novel. That's interesting. Also, he was working on Smile stuff at the same time, so he probably wanted to keep that clear delineation as well. It kind of made sense. It worked without guitars. He just said to me, keep the vocals small, doesn't need to take much room up in a sonic way, like in the way that how Prince had his vocals sometimes.

So I think the first demos I sent back may have been a bit warmer in the low mids. And he said, no, thin it out so it doesn't take too much room up. Then he sang it slightly more soulful in the first demo. And on the second one, he kept some of that and then sang it a little bit harder, which I think worked. It needed that edge to it, which I guess is maybe what you're hearing. It has a slight edginess to the vocal sound. It's quite rough, almost sounding in a way. Were you at any point during this process face-to-face?

No. When we started, we were doing emails. And then I quickly realized that it was too difficult to do emails because the stuff was getting lost in translation. So I was like, okay, we need to do Zooms. So quite quickly, we'd have a Zoom every week.

However many, you know, depends on what was going on. We'd do it every couple of weeks. If I was just working on stuff, he was working on stuff, we'd do it every month. Or if we needed to speak about something where we needed to discuss what we were going to do, how we were going to make this work, we'd just do the Zoom, which really, really helped. Because, you know, face-to-face, you can read what somebody's saying or if they're unsure about something. But all that stuff was really, really helpful.

really good. Like there was no nonsense all the way through. You know, we were fighting. We both had different opinions. Sometimes he pushed something and sometimes he was right, sometimes I was right. But it was always very much about how we're going to get this to work and for the better good of everything. There was no

Yeah, he's a very straight up guy and I am so we trust each other straight away. There was no bullshit going on, no angles, just straight up honest chat. All that stuff was great and actually worked really well. I mean, it would have been nice to be in the same room, but it was just circumstances. You know, we couldn't leave Australia for two years. Yeah. And it was actually fine. He could do his thing. I could do my thing.

The only downside is that he was locked away at home and he couldn't go to studios to do certain things. But other than that, it was fine. Is there any thought, and I don't know how it would work, of the two of you performing in some way? When Tom just did his recent solo performance,

He was going to play Beautiful People, but I don't think he got time to work that one up. But he basically found a way of doing a solo tour live by himself, which he'd been trying to work out, he told me, for a long time.

And he's found a system to be able to add songs as he's touring and be able to have fun with the instrumentation and have a range of instrumentation to cover lots of songs he's made over the years in different styles. So when he was in Sydney, he said, do you want to come up and tweak something while I'm playing? I was a bit nervous about doing it because I'm not used to being on stage. We're not in front of that amount of people. I don't like being in front of people full stop.

But, yeah, I could see that it could work. Because to start with, he said, I don't think we can do this live. It's too complicated and the sound sources are so unique. Because I use lots of old synthesizers and...

It's all about capturing a certain vibe and then protecting that vibe. But yeah, he just said, maybe we could do some stuff where we run some stuff live and maybe we do it like Depeche Mode style where we have stuff on a backing tape, just a reel-to-reel behind us pressing play. He was thinking about ways of possibly doing it. I was a bit worried because I'd never played live really and never really had much will to want to play live. So part of me was petrified. I might have to go out on stage and tour this thing

But I just said, look, I'm open to it, but I don't know how we're going to do it. But then after the tour that he's just done and me seeing how he was doing it, I was like, this is actually interesting. Because I think what's put me off touring is electronic stuff's quite hard to do live. And I didn't want to stand there and just press a button and the stuff's just happening. But it was really impressive what he did live.

It was just him for two hours and he played some songs would be acoustic with him singing, some of them at the piano, some of them at just one synthesizer playing something. And then sometimes it's just a sequencer running his palette of sounds and

that he had on stage. It was all live, it wasn't no computers involved and there's a lot of chance for things to go very wrong which is kind of exciting. And he can also add songs in as he goes along which means he doesn't have to do the same songs over and over again. So he found that way and I just said well if you're open then I think I'm up for it. Realistically it's at the mercy of his schedule and he's one of the most busy persons I've ever met in my life.

annoyingly productive and busy. You know, he'll do another Smile album and another one. I'm still working on this one. And then he's doing a soundtrack and then he's working on something else. And then he's, you know, it's just like constant things going on. So I guess I'd be surprised if it could happen this year, but I have no idea. You know, at some point, I guess...

It may fit in somewhere, depending on what he's doing. This is a mini meditation guided by Bombus. Repeat after me. I'm comfy. Come.

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Yeah. I'm curious how this whole experience sort of, you know, you're deep into your career, but I'm wondering if this sort of transformed any ideas about your own sort of creative possibilities or way of working. Having to throw things around is something that I've not had to do a lot of.

I write something and then I usually get it to a certain place and it works. And then I don't often take huge parts out of songs. But I guess once you're dealing with songs and vocals, then you have to... I'd already heard it before. Lots of people have kind of mentioned it. It's like finding a way of making the song work and you have to throw things around sometimes. That was really interesting work.

to me, and it was a bit of a shock sometimes because I'd send him something and he'd take the whole bass line out. Like White Cliffs had a totally different bass line, which is quite a lot of the song, and he just got rid of it. And then I was like, what the hell have you done with my bass line? And he was just like, I can't sing, I need to take the bass out to be able to give me the freedom to sing, to find the hook. And it made total sense straight away. And then I had to find another way of getting bass in that went along with what he did because then it was obvious that the song...

worked being very sparse. It was a huge challenge to make these things work I found really interesting. So I guess there's that, you know, working on a whole song with one person, there's something about that that obviously is, it brings the album together, I guess. It's like, you know, you can do collaborations with various people and it can work, but if you work with one person, it instantly becomes more together as an album through that process.

just that happening. You know, I've just started to think about what I'm going to do next. I've been writing some club stuff because I hadn't had a chance to do that. I started working on whatever the next album is going to be last year, but it was very early stages. But yeah,

I'm definitely at the point where I'm just writing really to see what I get, where it all goes to, to then think about who could vocal this next, see where the music's going to, to then think about who could be the collaborator. And I think if I could find somebody to do all of the tracks, I would try to do that.

depending on how varied. I mean, Tom is very versatile and he got on a lot of different types of styles, which is very impressive. And there's other people out there I'm sure can do this kind of thing. But, you know, he's very, very talented and it takes a lot to be able to do that amount of range. I wanted to ask about the Gangster's 8-bit sound. You didn't do that on your Atari, did you? No, it's actually a... It's...

I think Tom was almost shocked when I showed him what it was. It's a Mattel Bee Gees synthesizer. You know something? I've got to tell you something insane. I own that. When I was like eight years old, I own that is insane. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I own that.

Yeah, it's got like maybe one octave and you've got these three bass presets. And Kraftwerk used it, I think, definitely sometimes live. I'm the operator of my pocket calculator. Oh.

They put some tin foil over it so it looked cooler. And then they're playing, I'm pretty sure they used that to do the bleeps on Pocket Calculator maybe or one of those songs. So I knew that they'd used it and then just went looking for one like years ago and then didn't really use the bleeps but just used the bass preset but then it's just one note, you know. So I just put it into Melodyne and just changed the key of it up and down so it moved around and then, yeah,

that was that so you have that the 8-bit like lo-fi 8-bit thing going on i should have kept it the last thing i want to ask you is is one thing that you have in common with tom and with radiohead is this sense of physical space in your music and i really hear it on this album every track is sort of a realm that you create and i'm just curious to what extent you think in those terms yeah the

the sonic thing i'm trying to get i guess we both do us you know we both through the producers and the band they're trying to get a certain overall sound it's a different sound because everybody has their own sound and their own ways of doing things but yeah i mean what spent so much time doing is finding a way to make this all fit together from quite an unusual range of sounds and

source sounds, synthesizers, trying to make it all fit. And also what I've been trying to do with the last few albums is I like the sound of old records. I like the sound of 50s, 60s, 70s, but definitely I really like 50s and 60s sounding albums.

But I also don't want to make anything that just sounds straight retro. So the mission I'm always on is how can I use the sounds that I like and then mix it in a way that feels like at least the area of these records. It's not been compressed. I've not limited the music. I've left the dynamics in there.

I've mixed it through a mixing desk. I use some old gear, some new gear. That was the mission really. Then how do I balance these very retro sources?

I don't want it to sound like an old record. I want it to sound like at least it comes from the world of that. So part of it's the mastering, part of it's the mixing. Then Tom adding his thing changes it again. And then Jonathan doing what he has done, he then balances it again. He can pull things with the visual world into a different place. You know, if you think like back of the game, to me, the original song sounds...

like a John Carpenter soundtrack. I put drums on it. It kind of went a little bit more new wave. Then Tom did a very hooky,

verses and then I messed those verses up and made them a bit more crazy with effects and then it goes into the instrumental section and then the last chorus goes into this totally different area again where he sings low. So the song has like a few different eras going on. The drums, I used a 60s organ to do the drums. There's like these different eras happening. Jonathan then made this crazy video that is CGI that doesn't look anything like you can imagine. It's not retro.

At all. So he adds a level to balance the whole music. Cause there's certain songs I wasn't sure about. Like I was still unsure about that song until he did the video and I was unsure about gangsters until he did the video. When he did the video, then it became, it actually finally made sense to me. So yeah, there's a lot of that going on and I guess Radiohead do the same. They're trying to do the same thing, but in whatever different ways that they try and do it, you know,

I mean, you know, finally, like you guys are at a stage, music is so ageist and people assume that, you know, it's kind of, you're in your 20s when you do your creative boundary pushing work. And then by the time you're in the 50s, maybe you're supposed to be doing, you know, nostalgic stuff.

tours or something and both of you are pushing forward and Tom is instead of you know touring the world with Radiohead and doing the hits is doing anything but it goes against sort of stereotypes of where people are in their careers in the 50s for both of you yeah so I guess we

you know, you always worry about it. It's like, what's going to happen when I start to, I guess this retro thing is a worry, you know, it's, that's why I've been so worried about it because I don't want to make music that sounds old. I want to make fresh music, but I also don't want to throw away what has been done in the past because music sounded incredible in the fifties and sixties. And then different shifts in technology, sometimes incredible, sometimes doesn't sound so good. And, you know, there's,

the different periods where you have to work around that. Where we're at now is it's amazing. You've got the best of the new technology and you can use old stuff. So it's trying to find ways to combine that and keep, you know, you have to keep an eye on it. I think I just try and keep an eye on it without it becoming this

thing that's over my head all the time I still try and put the ideas down how they come down it's still very natural and quick how it comes out and then think about it later and try and balance it if you can um I think that the time where you don't hear any new music

is usually a sign. You know, I've always tried to push against that. And, you know, I want to hear new music. And there's times where there's not new music that I like, but I'll just look harder. But then there's all the old music you can still go back through. So I do that if there's a period where I'm not finding as much new music. But I'd also still believe that there always is going to be interesting stuff coming from people. And sometimes you have to look a bit harder and you have to look at different places and different countries and

Which does get a bit harder, I guess, as you get older, but it's still doable. So yeah, I try and keep looking forward. There's areas of dance music that I found more difficult in the past five or ten years. It's harder for me, maybe in the last five, to find dance music because it's gone very looking at the past. It's gone very referential, like drum bass is back, but they're trying to make drum bass like drum bass from a certain period on.

But there are still people trying to do it. There's still people trying to push forward with it. You just have to look or look in other areas if it's not happening, go to another area because I like all different styles. Luckily, I'm open to hearing anything, any tempo, any style, you know, and there is a lot of fresh new music coming out of the UK. There's fresh music coming out of America. So I guess Tom's similar, you know, I think he's always been on that mission. Let's go forward and backwards at the same time. And, um,

it's important to try and do something new. I mean, I don't know how new this record sounds, hard for me to judge it, but I was, you know, I was trying to get some balance of things, you know, but I was very wary about it not being cranked. A lot of new, you know, a lot of new music is very hot, limited, and it's not a sound I've ever particularly liked. And that is also dangerous because you're then pushing a sound that is a

It's an old school sound in a way, but to me that sound sounds better. But there are some types of music that do sound quite mad, hot and cranked. There's some club music sounds, you know, just exciting because it's just been smashed. And that's energy. And kids love that energy, you know. But for this kind of music, you know, I didn't want it.

I didn't want to do that to it. And we didn't limit it. We didn't try and make it loud. Kept it totally open. Tom does seem to be in a sort of rage against the dying of the light phase where he is this wildly creative and doing all sorts of shit. Did he say anything to you about where he's at? Like where all the stuff is coming from right now? That he's so prolific at this particular moment? Not really. I guess...

He always loves working. He's definitely, I mean, I'm a workaholic and all I do is go to the studio every day. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. It is a very productive period. When was the last Radiohead album? It's been a while. After that, he did Suspiria, three Smile albums, this project, and then another soundtrack came out in the midst of this as well. I think it may be an Italian soundtrack that he did maybe. I don't know. He's working on various other bits and pops all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, I've no idea why. I mean, it's great. It's great that he's obviously happy and he's excited and he has that drive. He's obviously in a really good place to be doing that, you know, and...

Yeah, I guess it's good he's a bit older than me, so that gives me a bit of hope. Not much older, though, but a little bit older. Does he talk about Radiohead like it's a going concern? No, he definitely does not talk about it to me, because I guess they have to keep it on lockdown. They got together last year, didn't they, and played together? So that's interesting information.

you know, if there was no chance they were going to do that and they'd all fallen out or anything, that wouldn't have happened. So I can only guess what everybody else is guessing is that everybody's enjoying doing their stuff. I think it might be working on a new record. The drummer did a record and Colin's been

Been playing with Nick Cave and just did his photography book. Everybody's kind of busy doing their things, I guess. And I think that the Smile Project is a great project. The last album had some really, really killer songs on it.

as strong as any think they'd ever done i think yeah the strength of the smile albums and then the strength of this is absolutely wild i want people to hear the whole thing because it really is an album i've made it as an album it's not really singles you know right i will let you get on with your day but i'm so glad we made time to do this great talking with you yeah likewise yeah thanks for that

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All right, here we go. New Phineas and Ferb is here. We're back, baby. For 104 more days-- I know what we're going to do today. --of Summer Vacation. I am ready for summer shenanigans. Let's do it. Oh, yeah. All right! We're going to ferp once and for all. Are we going to do this again? New inventions, shenanigans, inaters, adventures, and songs. Red Summer Vacation. New Phineas and Ferb starts June 5th on Disney Channel and next day on Disney+ on Disney+.Disney.com.

Panoply.