oh I survived listen to it of course she was a tour how many times did you listen to her before it was finished and you could let it go was it quite a lot a lot a lot of times [Music] for me when I heard it for the very first time I would have just been happy from the second I heard it like because it's so immediate it's so instant and so stunning but I suppose I should remind
everybody who I'm talking to because I have a habit of just picking up wherever I started about 10 minutes ago Arlo it's good to see you yeah good to see you too how's it going good I feel well I'm kind of in this nice creative flow kind of having finished the record yeah doing a lot of writing good resting that often happens right like once you actually get
something that you visualized or you've dreamed of out of your system then new things emerge exactly you know it's best not to get in the way of those um does it make you sort of Wonder is it done this new thing I just did would have fit perfectly on this new app I feel like honestly when a record is finished like the space is cleared in my heart and I kind of it it becomes then a gift that I
give away and then there's just space like a complete blank slate and I feel like the record was made in this like very contained period of time and like nothing else would really fit it was just like this one snapshot how do you know when your heart is full enough to make a record or when your heart has something that you need to release there's just this urgency I remember my
my friend describing it as like a bird's urge to migrate there's just like something pulling you in a Direction that's like almost subconscious and that's how I feel sometimes I feel that but I don't know what I want to make or what I want to say and there's five things that I want to do and it depends on what time of the day I wake up and I realize I'm not in a situation where I'm
I'm clear enough or I have purity of vision to be able to I'm just going to be searching in the dark does it ever happen to you I think that's a good thing honestly you know it's like you you go fishing and you just sit and you wait and sometimes nothing comes and it can be frustrating or confusing or sometimes something comes you didn't expect but I
think just allowing that allowing for that allowing for being stuck or having some kind of block or wanting to go for a walk instead and hang out with your friends and leave the studio after 45 minutes like it can be anything yeah it sounds like you have a pretty mature relationship with time most of us are racing against it trying to make more of it running out of it
um even though just the last couple of minutes of talking to you if I it seems to me that you respect time and you respect what it needs to do is that fair assessment yeah I think it took me a while to kind of learn patience I think especially when it comes to writing I want it to be perfect now and I think I had that real sense of kind of frantically searching after the perfect
way to say something the perfect phrasing The Perfect chords but then I actually in this writing process found proof that when you actually leave things alone and allow for them to take the time that they're going to take then that's when the best things come it's collapsed in Sun Beams perfect and it's in its form I think it it is what it is I I rarely
use the word perfect but I feel like it captures where I was then and it felt like it felt honest and it felt like who I was at the time when you look back on that time and that person does it feel like light years ago or does it feel like yesterday it feels like light years ago honestly it feels like so long ago I feel like I've lived a lot of life in between then and now this is so funny
because most artists release music and then they start Tour it and do all the shenanigans right I like that you know all the stuff that comes with it you know hi I'm Shenanigans you know but you know what I mean I'm a little bit Shenanigans I mean it's all part of the stuff you didn't really weren't sure what you were going to have to do alongside what you love to do and
that takes up um it takes up time and and sometimes the the living of the life actually takes a back seat to all of that stuff how are you able to prioritize life lived over the pressures and the stuff that comes with being allo Parks the recognizable artist not the human I feel like it's kind of a constant struggle I think I realize I have to be very intentional about like
carving out that space for rest and honestly I think that shows in the work like when I have rested when I have like gone to the beach or met someone new or traveled the work is so much more rich and like my cup is full and then when I try and just work through my life then I realize I have nothing to say and that's even worse so yeah we're planning to chill
where else do you get a line like that like this you know um I love this lyric so much I'm so glad you made it the central theme of the song the North Star which is when you brace all my impurities and I feel clean again it's interesting that makes me feel a couple of different ways like on the one side of it I I love the the pure of the purity of intent um the idea of of being with someone who
ultimately makes you feel like even through your impurities it's okay there's there's a flawlessness to being flawed yeah but then also um to embrace someone's impurities is to absorb their impurities as well and that can sometimes cross a line into a selfish release um help me get over myself do you know what I mean I I I don't know where where it sits for you but I love the fact that
on any given day it could mean both exactly it's exactly that I think it started off as kind of a celebration of like the new community that I'd found in LA and the people that made me kind of feel like myself and like I could be myself and then I started thinking about the idea of you know somebody completing you and somebody kind of taking on the
things about you that you don't like and somehow saving you and that and and that kind of double meaning that was really interesting yeah no for sure I think it's one of the great tests of any long-term relationship friendship or otherwise well it's all friendship um as if you can present those flaws to people and someone doesn't feel either the need to
save them or you don't feel the need to be saved that's when you know you've got something good going on otherwise I do think it's kind of like a whole bunch of things set in motion and the end is always going to be the same exactly pretty bad yeah pretty bad pretty bad yeah I know that balance that balance is so interesting I think finding people who you do feel like you can lean on and
not having that kind of like Solitude Lone Wolf kind of insular approach to your pain and kind of caving in and never looking outwards but then also knowing that the change has to come from within I love that you came searching for that in Los Angeles it's a city that gets a bad reputation for community and friendship circles a lot of people talk about it in terms of singular ambition
drive all those words that kind of mean something when you're at a certain point in your life and left and right of them they can be quite ugly I don't find La ugly at all I've found some some of the most beautiful relationships and amazing people I've ever known in the city and have a great Community around me how's your experience been out here I feel the
same honestly I think maybe I came here just completely open I didn't really have that many um pre-existing kind of Notions of what it might be like and I came also you know wanting to make a record and having these people who I had that thing in common with who were just creative and loved music and that Community kind of just spread out into all kinds of
creative people and I don't know I think I found it it feels like home I think there was this sense of like the city did like embrace me and I feel like I don't know I wanted a new adventure and I just found good people and made a record that I love and that's kind of made me think of La like fondly forever we also worked with a member of a band that was like 50 deep and all lived
together for about five years so oh yeah Ramil understands exactly what it means to be able to share and collaborate and share space yeah um why did you choose to work um with the people you choose to work with and who exactly did you make this album was just for people who don't know so I have a long list of collaborators um all wonderful people and all who kind
of bring different things out of me um so I worked a lot with Ramil I mean this song in particular impurities was Carter Lang and Romel um and I honestly just chose them because I was I was a big fan and I felt like you know it's the the first track on the record it's kind of more spoken word and this is the first like song song on the record perfect and I wanted
it to feel like a door opening and that sense of atmosphere and richness and then the lyrics kind of then route you in like it's the people the people of the home and I love the people that make me feel at home what was the process of finding the thoughts converting them to words and making them exist like how did you find the song on this music I just like I honestly don't know it was one of
those songs that almost happened like by accident because it was the first day that me and Rome met and we spent most of the day just hanging out and then this was kind of just made like as an aside and very very quickly and he just played me that sample and the lightning bolt just struck yeah and I recorded it and then I was like okay let's go back to hanging
out and like listening to The Beatles and like driving around it was yeah and I think that you know those songs that happen almost by accident or that feel like you're just like channeling something you're just like a vessel for this moment um and I think I only started to really understand what I was writing about retrospectively in the moment it just
was like yeah and you needed it I think that's the only way you really should I know it's not that easy every time a lot of times you know it is a conscious experience and you have to search for what it is you're trying to say and it's deep and you need a you know it's like a garden sort of spade and cement it's like I've got to just find this thing and I'm never gonna find it yes but the
dream is obviously to be able to listen back to it and realize that even you were caught off guard and honestly it's all the songs on the record were like that yeah I never went into it with my Spade the Spade Vibe is not for me I'm just like when it when it comes it comes yeah yeah so what role has the has the previous few years and and um finding us
and your fans and your audience and us find you know and and US finding you what if any impact has that had on this album and on this point in your life can you separate it completely do you let it absorb I feel like I the process that I make music by is always going to be quite insular I feel like I try it but I try and cultivate that almost like I like the idea of feeling like a teenager
in my bedroom all the time like I like feeling like I'm away from the world and then I can kind of craft this little thing that is just for me at least for now but I think definitely a big impact that like being out in the world and having people embrace my music was just it gave me a lot more courage I was like I can be brave I can be myself and that I guess encouraged me to go
inwards a lot more radically on this record rather than speaking about characters and people outside of me it was a lot more I interest yourself there was a lot of really beautiful observant songwriting on your debut album and I never felt like you were writing by proxy but it definitely felt like you were there was it was an imp it was an empathetic album I thought yeah
definitely a lot of empathy a lot of sharing a lot of searching a lot of trying to repair and fix um so far this based on what I'm hearing right now this doesn't sound like that yeah it's a little different I I don't know I guess I haven't really I didn't go into making this record with an intention it was just like I don't know I was taking notes of of
growth I guess like unconsciously and just taking notes of what was around me and how I felt about the world and how that changed and just made music that felt really good I was just like chasing that feeling who else did you work with on this record apart from Carter and Romeo um I worked with Buddy Ross I work with Ariel wreckside who worked with Paul Epworth amazing I worked with bird I
worked I did some of it myself as well yeah and let's talk about that side of it um you know I know you make your own music and I know that you produce yourself and ultimately you co-produce everything even if you're working with other people so when you're on your own um how do you find that experience would you personally like to make an entire project on your own in the future no no
no no no I'm a very like I need people like when I swim too long by myself I'm like oh yeah this is not for me I think what I enjoyed about kind of demoing alone though is that I felt like that's where I am I'm most courageous because no one's watching and I can make mistakes and I can kind of fumble around and you know I was I made a few of the songs on tour
um one of the songs called Dog Rosa made in like this hotel room in Toronto and it's just to kind of bottle the lightning honestly it's like it will strike me and I just have to get it done I have to get it done I have to sketch it out otherwise I'll forget because I have a bad memory um so it's more out of necessity rather than the desire to work in room 306 in a
Marriott in Toronto [Laughter] we've all stayed in room 306 Arlo it's it's a rough day um you got a chance to do some really amazing shows and be and see stages that people dream of seeing um you know going into environments with with artists who love you you know like Harry and getting a chance to share in his world for a split second what did you enjoy about that I feel like it just
seeing even just seeing somebody seeing his show like after I had played seeing his show seeing the way that he commands that stage seeing like just feeling that energy and being part of being like a small part of such a like massive machine and just being like a student you know I've never I'd never been in a stadium before just in any way not even
as a matter of pain no no no no no so I just like stood there I was like wow this is your first Stadium your first stadium was you in a stadium yeah and the last and the last time I played that city was like in a pub that like smelled horrible and there were like 50 people there and it was the last show before the pandemic and and then it ended up yeah I want to talk a little bit about
the album I know it's it's a you know we've got a little bit of time but I want to talk about this album my soft machine I want to talk about that uh the name of the album um soft machine conjures up lots of different imagery for me um predominantly and immediately the band uh so what was it that you that that inspired the title it was um this film that I watched called the
souvenir and I wanted the title of the the record to kind of convey this sense of it being the World Through My Lens and kind of that that sense of Urban Flow that sense of contrast that a lot of the record is kind of about like feeling deeply and surrendering to that feeling or kind of closing up and hiding behind walls and and I think even in terms of the
instrumentation there are moments that are a little bit more abrasive and energized and there are moments that are more kind of soft and hypnotic and I just wanted something that had that sense of contact I heard some age I mean I don't want to give too much away but I mean obviously you know I heard a couple of songs a little while back and there was definitely
um and by Edge you've always had that but I mean it was it was tough like some of the musicality in there and some of the performance in there I felt there was an energy that you were you tapped into that I'd heard on the debut album definitely and I think honestly that just came from like just growth and also feeling like I was able to kind of probe into the different corners of my musical
tastes that's something I want to talk a bit about because I feel like you came out with such a distinctive voice in an area that people were drawn to and it was unique it was the cross between poetic thought malady Soul music pop music it was it was bierk it was you know um Soul Williams it was all this beautiful thing wrapped up this is just my observations
in a way we all did you a disservice because we were like well that's Arlo right right and then when I heard this new music and this is why I made the joke not even a joke because they're one of my like arguing my favorite rock band of all time and I said man this is rough like I hear almost Chino Melodies in there and that's when Toby was like well you should talk to Arlo about Deftones
and I want to explore your tastes a little bit because I don't I think we did you a disservice before by not asking those questions or I didn't I feel like yeah my taste I guess would be maybe surprising to some people like I listen to mainly um music at the moment because this is just like my brain toothpaste as I call it um but listening to a lot of like Duval
Timothy and Brian Eno and also a lot of dance music I listen to a lot of objects I listen to like other mono pears and sound and I listen to a lot of rock music I love white pony so dearly and I saw Deftones play at this like a thousand cup menu O2 kentish town uh North London when was that like a few months ago the day that I finished the song wow that seems like it's in there
because I've seen a couple of shows of them there and now I feel like that's their living room I've seen Chino I mean scorched that room I mean I've seen him crowd surf from the front to the back get a pint of beer this is a true story get a pint of beer and then jump up on everyone's shoulders and crowd surf back to be fair decent amount of the beer
still in the Pint glass wow and then smash the bear and keeps it I mean this was younger Chino he'll probably be like don't tell that story bro but like they are to me like on their day they make that rage that people search for in a room like that it's emotional it is it is so emotional and I think I kind of wanted to just tap into that that sense of like abandon that sense of I think
the first record there was a little bit more sense of control and I was kind of like what happens if I dissolve that I was listening to that and I was listening to like mvv and that song who sees you and I was like how how that makes me feel how did they make it so soft I know and yet it's just like it's like insane intense but it's so soft so ethereal that to me is the magic Act of
what Kevin Shields achieved is the ability to be able to put that wall in front of you yeah and yet I'm not scared by it yeah it doesn't intimidate me it's so trade does that as well and it's so dull how is it so delicate yeah Trent resin is a master he can hit you so hard and at the end you almost so you're almost like thank you thank you like I needed that like it's
amazing the ambient thing is interesting to me as well I've been listening to a lot of things like Nils from and Max Richter a lot of solo piano a lot of uh and what Fred would call the you know the essential Reverb you know um the idea of drones yeah and stuff which you just mentioned with Brian Eno and things like that um how does that where does that take you and how do you
use that in your life I feel like well in the music I feel like my my kind of ambient music taste kind of would like Veer more towards like there's this uh record called kamachi by Mai Tai which is just like that's wonderful uh there's this how do you spell Mai Tai do you know um m-e-i-t-e-i okay check it out thank you then there's this record by like um LA plantine and then I
listened to this NTS thing which was this kind of more like Doom ambient music by this guy called cool chain what is two-man being music I don't know it's like it's like imagine Like My Bloody Valentine but like just very like muffled wow and it's like so suspenseful yeah it's it's suspenseful and it's just like this kind of like bubbling like thing and it's really good see simmering
and suspense aren't two things I've ever leaned into in my music um the only suspense I've ever really embraced is the hard Dynamic of a soft part and hard part yeah right so I know it's gonna get out of here and there I'm into yeah but I've never I'd be interested to know how I feel if I really immersed myself like you're saying into something that has a
long-term tension to it I like that though I like it when there's this tension that gets the point where it's almost unbearable and then it drops you I really feel like you are somebody and I don't know if this will land in a you'll understand where I'm coming from but your ability to your willingness to be curious and to learn and your ability
to absorb that and translate it goes beyond music I wonder whether or not the there are other areas of the Arts perhaps in front of the camera or even behind the camera that interests you definitely you know I would love one day I would love to be in a movie and I would also love to write a script that's what I was thinking as well I mean I think you'd be incredible actor but I I
think you'd write something remarkable there are moments where I've like kind of started brainstorming bits and pieces and I guess the one thing is that with something like a script or a novel you really do I just have to like sit down and do it for a long time I don't know how people do it I know and I have to be like in a certain I think maybe a less like frenetic like time in my life yeah
when I'm like in my like mid-40s in Upstate New York calm down calm down some of us don't put your dream your dreams are not my problem I think it's something cool to look forward to it the idea of you being able to pick anywhere in the world this is the artist's life and this is the thing I always try to bring it back to at this point in my in my life when I talk to
someone inspiring like you for anyone who's one looking for inspiration is that the reason for the risk the reason for the hard work the reason for the for embracing all of the unknowns is that if you can get yourself to a place where as you've done you understand your purpose and you understand your value then really there is no box and you can choose at any given time
to go to an airport with no fixed agenda or destination buy a ticket fly somewhere and write something yeah and that's your life exactly that is my life and it's so exciting to know that I think it's so exciting as well to know that there are so many people out there as well who do many different things and who do them well and who have kind of different phases of
their life and kind of creative flow and who might just maybe take three years to just write a novel because that's what feels right or maybe they'll build furniture or maybe it'll be you know like going back to school and studying architecture whatever it might be and having that freedom is really exciting because I feel like I can kind of go anywhere we're not going to talk too
much more about the soft machine because it's a little bit off way off and there are people here at Apple music who are dying to talk to you about the soft machine and so I have to play my part but I've really enjoyed talking about life and um you're in La for a while now huh well we should get that coffee and talk about Deftones let's do it talk about the white pony the white pony [Music]