this might just be the end and this might be the my great like last thing that I will ever put out it's totally fine I think to come to that conclusion and I wasn't even sure after that thought whether I will make more music cuz part of me really was this exhausted mentally I and physically how do you feel now I feel better now you going to make another record now I'm going to make another record now you may make another record [Music]
man we're still here I'm so grateful I'm so happy to see you I'm happy to see you too man you know you gave us so much and in such a short period of time as such a young man you came out and you just you gifted us with so much Amazing Music you
worked really hard and you gave everybody memories they'll never forget experiences no one will ever forget and then you know you've taken your time and and you look like someone who's lived some life yes and I love see it right
here yeah you can see it all over me as well but I mean that in the highest compliment because because it's hard to get off that wheel and take your time and I'm glad you did I hear it on this album I hear the time you took I'm
excited to see you and talk to you man yeah I'm really excited to see you it's been a while it's been a minute it's been a minute and I knew you working um and I know that when you're here down and you you'll be done when you're done
yeah but I always think when someone takes an amount of time with no real sense of restriction or boundary you know people say I took my time but really they were given a year and they took a year yeah you took multiple years to do this
you know not to start off on the on a sort of challenging note but are there times when it when that can actually start to work against you a little bit where it's like man I'm I'm so in my in my own space here and there's and and
the only pressure I'm under is my own yeah how do I actually how do I close the loop on this thing it can definitely be a disadvantage to take too much time but it really depends on what you're trying to do and I think for me um this album specifically at some point in time I had to make a decision what this album was going to be about and in 2020 or so I started working on an album but I had no idea what I'm actually doing it was kind of
like well there's a pandemic when am I going to get another chance to sit down and make music but I didn't have real genuine inspiration yeah and I was aimlessly trying to make music without any context or real reason you know how
to sound design bro you know it sounds good I can make a good song yeah but that doesn't 10 of them aren't going to make a good album well they're also not going to that's your out of voice you got to find out what you're in a voice
is saying right exactly and I grew up with these albums that were more than just 10 good songs they stayed with me to this day and they still inspire me and I feel like they made me the musician I am today and I wanted to
create something that was dis meaningful yeah I wanted to make an album that in 30 years I will meet a kid who's like I heard this album and I wanted to get into music and it inspired me to look into sound design and maybe combin
genres and so this there was this moment throughout making this record where I had to make the decision that this is an album for me and when I made that decision it sort of put everything in place all the songs that I had started
where I was like how am I going to make 78 work in dance music well it doesn't matter yeah it's no longer dance music it's just going to be my album forever and it's mine and I'm making this for myself not for the fans not for the
label not for anybody it's just for me and if everybody wants to join me that's amazing and if it's just for me then that's amazing too how freeing it's really freeing and it's all in your head that's the crazy part I could have made
that decision years ago it's all in but I haven't our here is infinite possibility that we create finite finite boundaries for yeah and I just I I just it blows my mind that we've been sort of indoctrinated into that way of thinking
generation after generation after generation after generation but the Arts are a way of actually exploring what is possible so when you come to that clusion you inspire us to do the same in whatever Walk of Life we're in that
would be the best case scenario but I think for me it was a very freeing moment to realize well this is going to be a work of art it's going to be concept album I will do all the little things that I want to do that will make
me really happy like connecting almost every song besides the ones where I want you to feel a break and really think about how am I going to get from song A to song b in an intelligent way that's a really interesting way to approach it
people get scared of the c word and not talking about the one that's offensive in every country except New Zealand concept concept albums it's tough it's a it's a tough thing for people to get their head around because what it says
to fans is this is an investment of your time this isn't a collection of songs you can listen to song three or song six I really hope you listen to it in its entirety and that is a beautiful request but obviously time is precious to people and uh we try to and we try to keep the trade simple right give ourselves the best chance of staying connected to one another we try not to complicate things and I think sometimes coner records can
feel complicated yeah so I'd love to I'd love to hear from you in your own words um what it means to you what what what that what that word you just use means to you in terms of this album it has a couple meanings um I think we in today's
day and age live in a playlist world and albums have been heavily impacted by playlists so that a lot of people have been just putting tons of songs on an on an album scale scale of music scale of Music quantity and more chances to be
part of many playlists to the point where artists don't really give fans a real reason to even listen to the album front to back because the playlist often times is better than the actual album so yeah so my idea was I'm going to have
to make an album that is just a reason to listen to front to back and not just random songs thrown together can I tell you my theory right now pleas your generation right now is so important to the Arts because you're coming out of
the algorithmic social media feed playlist everything is so modular that you sort of get to pick it apart and build your own version of what your day of entertainment will be we have every right to do that that is progress that
is efficiency I work at a company we meaningfully try to provide that for people so you've got more time to do things that you want to do right yep love it that's part of the purpose of of of of innovation mhm your generation's coming out of that
coming out of of the social media feed and coming out of the playlists and coming out of the algorithm and you're saying I'm making an album yeah I'm Billy Alish I'm making an album I'm going to promote it like it's 1996 I'm going to tour the world for 4 months and tell everybody that I'm proud of it I'm Charlie XCX I'm going to show up every single day even though the album's been out for months and I'm going to do something cool and exciting
to let you know it's a brat summer right yep so you have done the same thing you're saying to kids man my music is not for the algorithm and it is not for the social media feed and it is not just for Tik Tok my music is for me come
along for the ride yeah and yes there's been many moments in the album where I had to make that decision over and over for example and you will know this I grew up with CDs um I passed the vinyl stage but I remember listening to
a record over and over and then I did didn't press stop and all of a sudden there was a little hidden track at the end yeah they used to annoy the out of me but going really oh yeah cuz I was just like I don't have 30 minutes to
wait okay well 30 minutes is a little bit long sometimes you just be like oh my God or you put the Alum on to go to sleep and you just be go to sleep and kiss your bonus track kiss your bonus track it's like oh you it excited me it excited me because
I didn't grow up with a lot of money so I would spent my money on albums and then it felt like wo I got a complimentary little extra it was great and I love that feeling Easter egg really in music in a weird way yeah I loved it I remember like I couldn't believe it there was something else so I this is something that inspired me so I wanted people to have that experience but how because in today's world you can't hide a track you will see that
there's more to it but still I decided to the algorithms yeah and add silence at the end of it and then give you the experience if you just listen to it and don't look of like wo there's a little bit of extra for me it carries um
things that matter to me little notes string hits a trumpet hit from albums that matter to me that inspired me I would sort of pay homage to those little things um I had a song in 78 or have a song in 78 rather where you know before
I feel like I would have been scared away and would have made it 44 and made it dancable but this is I really love thean which is the band I collaborated with on the song and they have a lot of weird time signatures and and I've been
loving that kind of music so why wouldn't I make a song like that if that's what inspired me so over and over I wanted to make um to remind myself that this is for me and I want to be happy with with this album for the rest
of my life and I'm not going to please an algorithm that's ever changing and chase this tail that I'm never going to get to because it's always different well it's hungry as yeah and it's insatiable in fact and so you know you
just don't have enough music to feed the algorithm in and in a way that's going to satisfy you that the trade is going to give you back what you need it will always leave you unsa fight no matter what you do because the next second
something changes and everything you've worked towards all of a sudden has changed my goal and I've said this with my first album Clarity is in 10 years I want to look back at my album be just as proud of it and feel like it's just as
good and I felt that way 10 years in and I want to feel the same way about this album and I will in 10 20 and 30 years from today I'm going to look back and be so proud because this is a personal album with collaborations that matter to
me with artists who have inspired me with people who I love working with um and it's it's a personal album and and how could something ever be um not amazing if it's personally made for me if it's not made for the algorithm or
for the people blessings on that man I I love I love that you've come to that conclusion especially coming out of a heady time that we both experience we did the same festivals we did the same tours we were traveling around the world
you were working way harder than I was but I was working as hard as I could while I was doing radio shows I mean we were running around and the money was great and the shows were awesome and everyone was having a great time
and I and I was like who's going to come out of this who's really going to come out of this by that I mean who's going to make a proper solid Mark yeah a positive impression on music in the decades to come and not just tell the stories of 2008
2016 who's going to be around and I knew you would be straight away because I could tell you were really actually a producer and a songwriter and that dance music you are have a passion for I'm not sure and correct me if I'm wrong you
grew up thinking I'm going to be a a touring Dan Superstar never that's the very last thing I I would probably have guessed that I'm a teacher before I'm a DJ yeah I started with classical music and then I was in a rock and metal bent
with my brother for nearly a decade can you hold your thought there for one second I really want to come back to that but also I I have to acknowledge that there is a very um common transition from people who are
classically trained into heavy metal and and and speed metal I've interviewed so many people who were classically trained who then went through a speed metal phase and then end up going back and now composing Cinema or theater and go back
to their first SL but ABS lutely had their shred era because it's hard I think you learn all these you get all these tools through classical music and then there's genres that are a little simpler than others and metal is a
pretty hard genre like think about the Dragon Force of the world that s's hard to play so I think it's kind of like a challenge like if you're into gaming one day you're going to look for all those heavy games that are like you're going
to have to repeat and repeat and learn and learn and I feel like metal is along those lines it's really hard to do you have to be really quick with your feet you have to be very like you have each limp has to be completely independent
from one another repetition and discipline involved which seems to draw people into that particular type of um goal yeah I mean I was drawn into it and at some point you kind of zoom out you got the technicality down and then you
really want to do something for the heart there it is so what draws you into and I haven't forgotten about your brother what what draws you in to the discipline before the heart because for instance I'm I know people who leared
the discipline of writing songs by writing from the heart for 10 years and then eventually they just got good right but you wanted to get good before you felt you could go searching for what you wanted to say yeah definitely I mean the
same by the way goes for my approach to actually making dance music I made a whole album as Z that I've never released that was just there to learn a practice album yeah one song was called it's automatic ironically now I have a
song called automatic yes but the only purpose of the song was it was made of one sound and everything else was Automation and I told myself this is the song I'm going to learn how to automate everything like automate you're a bitc
Crusher and like can I make a drum with this and the song wasn't great but it was kind of a concept I'm going to learn how to do this I'm going to learn how to do that I don't even think I've ever shown you guys this Al I'm kind of in awe I mean I've heard of songs not being not making the cut yeah yeah the whole album didn't make the cut I can take it further than that based on what you're telling me you may not even acknowledge
this yourself the whole album wasn't even supposed to make the cut the whole album was by Design with intention teaching you how to makeing another album yeah because I knew music that's first that's a first I'm sure it's not but in my in in in our house that's a first and I learned about sampling I didn't know that sample packs existed for example that that was like a revolution in my production skill and when you listen to the album that's the
first time I started doing transitional songs where I made a song and my goal for this like experiment was I'm going to pick up the last bit of a song and make some a new song out of this out of that song so I learned to make
transitional music go from one song to another very early on before I really knew how to properly produce because the albums in my early life did that so just getting back to the question cuz I'm so glad you answered it the way you did but
are you witing closer to understanding why when did you start learning to play an instrument how old I mean I was two or three years old okay so when were you cognitively aware that you were practicing and learning something four
years that's when we got our first keyboard so you're about four 5 years old you know kids at that age man you're bouncing off the walls like a Adam figuring out what you want to do when you're 5 years old you're going to be Li Messi
yeah you're not going to be LD Messi I I'm certain not you know I mean it's 00000000000000 1% of the people who start playing sports as a kid because everyone should play sports as a kid it's great exercise and it's passion and
its teamwork and its Community but it's 00000000000000 1% that you're going to be play for Argentina professionally that is just the odds yeah it's not to say you can't do it it's not to say you won't do it it's just the way it is yeah right
mhm you are like boom yeah why first of all both of my parents made music and I was exposed to it from a very young age so my first memory like of being alive is actually playing on the piano playing and people laughing
and I was like why are they laughing I remember this so vividly cuz in my mind it's like I'm this is not good I'm being not good that's like my first at all and the second was like eating ice cream but um your first memory was being
laughed at so brutal I love I'm surprised you hear at all I'm surprised a you're not either a stand-up comic or a psychopath as well I'm kind of a psychopath maybe both okay good they're like it kind of is so when your parents make music and you're surrounded
by music all day my parents uh their work was to teach people instruments that's what they did for a living most of their lives so they started teaching me very young and they made it a Challenge and maybe that's where this
challenge started because I believe a lot of in our lives kind of points back to the very first memories that we go through totally great and they purposely would structure it in a way where my mom would say should he play this piece next and my dad would be like oh I don't I don't think he could do that and and I'm listening to that like yeah I can do that of course I can do that and it was this challengeing me like I'm going to
prove that I can do this and they of course did that on purpose so I always kind of skipped ahead and was ahead of like what I should have been playing at that age to prove everyone that I can do it maybe that's where a little bit of
that fire in me was started that I want to do these difficult challenges in my life y your parents on some Monsur manifestation my man I'm telling you that is like deep that is deep I mean that is that is that is deep to understand just
how you're built at that age and able to face a commitment and a challenge I love it but I it was not something I it was fun it wasn't like in a bad way it was like a Challen they made it fun for you yeah I mean they also made it not fun there was a there was a part where you get to a certain age and you don't want to listen to your parents so at some point they were like okay you have a teacher now every week you're going to go and have
piano lessons with this teacher I'm like I don't want to have lessons from anybody else I'm leono Messi but I did yeah and I hated it I hated every single lesson I've always struggled to read music like it visually
I couldn't make sense of it I can't do it either man and I even tried at University I was try take a basic course part-time paper University and I I checked out I was like this is worse than math yeah yeah it's it doesn't work for me so I always just
learned the skill of listening and watching her hands and I play it back and pretend that I can read it until she's like yep that was good onto the next one but this like music sheet to this day doesn't make a lot of sense to
me I feel like there's so many better ways of notation it's incredible though I was talking to Max RoR about this the other day and he was describing his process on on on music that he's been making lately about how um he was he was
notating it and having the feeling before he even heard it being which was now that blows my mind because when you're in a situation where you're so in touch with how you hear and feel music you don't even have to hear it to feel
it and you can feel it just by notating it like you're getting emotional knowing full well how it's going to play simply by putting it down on the sheet I was like damn Max that's like another level I I cannot do that I cannot but I I
often turn my brain off my cognitive side of the brain I mean that's how I write most of my core progressions and I just my hands just guide themselves interesting they go wherever they want I'm not actually thinking about anything
in that moment and then and you waiting for it to happen and it happens always like in the studio sometimes just press record and I just play around and then all of a sudden and then I feel it I get this whoo What was this but I wasn't
thinking it it was just happening it's so funny cuz you do make a physical reaction I do it when I write a song when I'm writing and putting something down I realize I go I'll go okay or I'll go oh whoa something will happen
instinctively where my cognitive ability recognizes my subconscious and and they go yes hey I I got that I heard what you just did this is exactly what it is it's one part of your brain that's making you play certain things I mean that's
improvising right when you improvise is actually kind of like speaking in a sense when you say a word you actually don't really know what your next word is you're not reading that's true you're very good at your job so I can see
you're good at improvising and writing and then once you realize what you said then you start feeling it it's almost like a backwards it is like a backwards thing yeah but isn't it beautiful when you realize that you can't replace the
work and so you got to Chip and Chip and Chip and Chip until something clicks and you know when it clicks you definitely do when did you know when it clicked if you could put the album into one immersive experience for you what was a
click moment for you I honestly I don't know this is probably not a good answer but the click moment was when I was sitting down and thinking I'm going to make this album for me and every question for every song how am I going
to do this how I'm going to do that all checked itself off because when you make it for yourself none of the things that you subconsciously worry about matter anymore these albums that influenced you obviously Jeff Buckley being one of them
and yeah that's a whole other conversation we could have for hours and hours about Jeff yep you know I interviewed him once I do know I told you that's how we started talking we started talking about yeah and um yeah
it's it's to this day memory I'll cherish forever M but um but yeah I mean what what are these albums that as you're moving forward you're like well the feeling I got from this is what I'm trying to achieve right now with this I think I have to put on the number one spot because it has it's the most influential album to my life is Silver Chair diarama that is unexpected and very welcome in this room they are an incredibly influential and wildly
underrated in terms of abolutely Daniel joh and also shout out to to the guys to B to the to the Rhythm Section but Daniel is has the genius Chan absolutely on another level and I remember this is the day I remember my
brother brings home the album and we are in the living room and we sit down and our activity is listening to music yeah I feel like this is something that people don't really do these days music has sort of Taken on the role of either
being the back ground to a video or a background to your work or activity or why that is that's because it's the most I don't want to put out in I don't want to put it I don't want to put the Arts in hierarchy but it is it is it is very
magical M and it is very easily sharable and it is very malleable to experience and and make I can put it this way it's salt it's in everything it makes everything taste better yeah so everyone's like why wouldn't I use it to
make it better completely fair but I understand what you're saying it should be additive not replacement it shouldn't replace the opportunity to go and put on diarama yeah and sit and stare at the Hudson yeah and feel it for an
hour that's the point you're making the right point the feeling aspect is something you lose when music takes on the role of being the background for something else you can actually extract so much emotion out of and inspiration
um out of an album if you actually if it's a good album means something to you if it means something to you it can actually make you very emotional and besides the sense of smell which I think is possibly the strongest smell you can just smell
something be like I know this person it's very intense right the the the emotional side of listening to an incredible album is like it's it's so meaningful and it was my development my musical development and the way this
album made me a better musician and a writer and a producer I wanted to make this album myself it's so funny you mentioned that album because that that is their version of this album for you that is the album that broke them out of
being this precocious power Trio who would touring with sound garden and on this grunge train and and Daniel John's is like well I ain't de anymore yeah and so this is where I'm going come with me or don't and a lot of people did
yeah I mean this is when I started falling in love with the band they're a profound band for their time I would love for everybody to listen to Silverchair just to try it's really incredible yeah I got to know him a little bit just just literally online through the quarantine we just got connected and I called him one time and spoke to him on the phone and yeah it was a sweet conversation I mean yeah he's he's been he's lived a life Daniel
he's had his ups and his Downs for sure not an easy life but I've also read that this album in a way destroyed him personally because he set these unachievable standards wanted this album to be everything that he wanted it to be
even if it killed him in that regard so this is an interesting place for us to go because um we just did the 100 best albums of all time on Apple music which was obviously a huge discussion we were looking at this list as a whole and and
this thing because through line came through which was really you know a lot of these albums nearly broke the people that made them yeah can you say that about this rck or did it take you to the place of insanity at times it did and
I'm not surprised I don't think any other album I've made and I've only made two other albums have gotten me to this point um and I could physically I have physical receipts right it's not just mentally I was exhausted what in what
sense in the last I don't know five or so weeks of making this album I started losing weight and I just couldn't keep it on and I'm this whole year and a half I had this amazing regimen I stopped drinking for the most part um I worked out a lot I ate very healthy I wrote down every calorie I ate or drank I have a whole spreadsheet of every single day I can look back to and I did amazing in terms of my health Journey but towards
the tail end of it I started dropping weight and I was still eating the right amounts and I was tracking my calories and I couldn't figure out why there were days I was in the studio where I was sitting down doing nothing but recording
a vocalist and at the end of the day I burned more calories than if I run for two hours and that was kind of my first time actually realizing what stress does to your body oh it is a killer it's really the worst thing it's the worst
thing and it's actual poison dude well okay sure I was a cortisol addict for about 35 years I did not do that I did not eat out there I don't think I ate a breakfast and lunch regularly for 30 years I would eat at night wow and I would just work work during the day and I figured that's how I'm going to achieve my best right cuz the cortisol was just filling me full of this motivation and it's was just like you can do it go go go go my wife of
nearly 25 years would just tell me I mean she's just thousands of times like you're killing yourself you know yeah and it's and it's dude very recently that I actually recognize what what what what core disol and how addictive stress is stress is not only
very damaging it is highly addictive I did not even know that as a motivating tool I think it is I mean I see it all the time I hate stress oh I hate it but man did I but I felt like I needed it to get me to to where I needed
to go and I didn't even recognize it I was I would say I was the opposite I structured my whole life around only spending a certain amount of hours which was 6 to 7 hours a day in the studio so that the chunk of work because truly
making an album that is like climbing this mountain you look at it like there's no way I will ever reach the top you got to CH a p and you got to just yeah one bit at a time you're going to get higher and at some point you can see
the end of the tunnel but those last bits of making the album felt like the the tip of this Iceberg was like just getting further and further away did you recognize the stress was coming into your body and into your into your sort
of spirit or would it was it surprising it was surprising cuz I I'm actually such a grounded person that I feel like I can tolerate stress pretty well and I started having trouble sleeping that's the first symptom I would wake up in the
middle of the night song yeah something like after a few hours of sleep yeah but that's your natural RM which is waking you up and then it's telling you hey go back to sleep and if you're stressed out you can't and that's why you're up and I would think about the song that I had just worked on and that wasn't the case for forever I was able to shut off sleep restart but at that point I started not being able to sleep I started asking
people like why do I have trouble sleeping that's not normal for me and then further on I started losing I lost in the last month I lost about 20 pounds which was 20 pounds at a month I was at 143 which I don't even remember the last
time I was this low on weight and I just couldn't do anything about it wow so I realized that it came to the last days of making Telos and at that time I hadn't decided on a meaning yet or or or a name and Telos one of the meanings of
Telos is is the end yes and while I wasn't exactly sure if this is the right title I really heavily resonated with the meaning that this is the end and for a little bit of time I thought this is the last thing I will ever do I thought
that I just poured everything into making this album and I have no more energy left and if you can answer this as honestly as possible how did you feel when you came to that realization that that was possible for you to walk away
um well I really didn't want it to be the case but how did you feel knowing that it quite possibly could be could be the end um I don't even know that's it's such a good question that nobody's ever asked me but um I think for a minute I
felt like there that's the only outcome possible because I have nothing left and the way I felt like I could never make a better album than my last two which is why I haven't in a decade attempted to make an album um I felt like well this
is definitely it I will never be able to beat that um plus the weight loss plus the stress and sleepless night I was like this might just be the end and this might be the my great like last thing that I will ever put out into this
universe you know what the crazy thing is and this might really pissed some fans off but as I've moved forward in my life I've come I've come to the realization that's okay mhm that's that's totally okay difficult emotion to
feel in that moment it's totally okay to do something else mhm people do it all the time yeah yeah you know they're so good at it we even forget that they aren't making records anymore and we're waiting for the next one you know and
they ain't making one so it's totally fine I think to come to that conclusion and I wasn't even sure after that thought whether I will make more music cuz part of me really was this exhausted mentally Ian and physically how do you
feel now I feel better now you going to make another record now I'm going to make another record now I got but it's good it's good to acknowledge that you can I think I think you've got to be able to let go in moments when you're holding on real real tight or try to to realize that at the end of the day man it's it's all just time and space and it's all we got it's all we got man the people on this album it's it's a it reads beautiful the
collaborators read beautiful I don't know what the connection is you said there is one I just think that it's a really lovely looking selection of people um one of which I wish was still here so how did you go about choosing
people and if this is a conert record what who qualifies I think people qualify if I genuinely love them if they give me some sort of inspiration if they do something that really does something meaning meaningful to me and each of the artists have a
different influence um for example Muse my very first concert with my band was a muse cover plugin baby first concert 12 years old you did it they can't even play that perfectly half the time have you ever heard Matt that up so
good if you ever seen them play live and they it up man man you will never see anyone laugh hotter than Matt bany I've never seen them it up but um for an example Matt one of the most influential people to my life you remind
me of him by the way but that's a whole other story oh that's a compliment I would definitely take um I made that song and I said this is going to be the instrumental song or with Muse but nobody else yeah yeah there was no other
option that I would have considered because Muse is very deep in classical music they oftentimes rework classical pieces and this is what the last song is I reworked my favorite most influential classical piece to My Life um and it was
going either going to be Muse or nobody else there's no so what's the Outreach for that like well I've met Matt uh before and we've always wanted to make music together and we actually have tried a couple times but I think neither
him or I are just going to make a song so that we can put our names next to each other if it's not meaningful and right it's not it and we've tried and it didn't work he doesn't do that either he doesn't just show up on people's albums
right which is another amazing thing that we actually got to this point where I have a song with Muse that is the most unbelievable collaboration I could have ever dreamed of and then Matt Bellamy has a deep connection to Jeff Buckley he
does he owns the guitar he owns the guitar and is deeply inspired by Jeff Buckley and I feel like a lot of the collaborations on my album ended up happening because people heard the album I genuinely just invited people I played
them the album and they didn't want to be on it and then they were like I'll do whatever song as many as possible multiple of the collaborators which is amazing and and B me played guitar on another song on the album which one uh
the census yeah aming some of the solos and a tailed bit of John Mayers at the end of it too yeah and John recorded guitars for um another song essentially it became like this super group where everybody kind of wanted to contribute
to little bits of the album and I feel like I formed my perfect band to make this album with where everybody just wanted to be a part of this larger project that was really important for me um for everybody to know the context of this whole album it's not just you're not part of a song you're part of a project and I want you to know what you're part of you obviously did an incredible job of explaining your intention thank you because you know
everyone showed up and you know you it's like anything you know if you if you put it meaningfully people understand what it means to you they'll at least consider it with meaning yeah you know Matt balam on a song like this isn't
your only first so when Jeff Buckley died I was in New York and I actually saw the news report on MTV when he went missing in the days before they ended up finding his body in the river and I didn't have Grace on me at the
time I was traveling I I hadn't settled I went straight down to I think it was like Tower was still open and I bought Grace and I came back I listened to it and I had a pretty emotional day and I think deep down knew that you know when
if he's missing and he's he's in the river it's it's not going to end well I was hoping and what has come to pass is how beautifully the estate has been managed by his mother Mary and by the people who I'm sure who assist and help
and how thoughtful Jeff Buckley's music has been carefully curated even after his passing I feel as a fan yep like everything has been done thoughtfully mhm and with purpose so it's not lost on me that Jeff Buckley's name appears on
your album and one of his most impactful pieces of music I'm sure if he was alive today he would still say dream brother because it's really about his father and the lyrics which and I'm taking my time here for a reason have been poured
over because of the imagery that he just describes which ultimately many people feel is very closely connected to his own ending I don't go there I think it was a tragic accident MH but people get very intense about dream brother and
about Jeff and so I know cuz we spoke about it when it was in the works how important this was to you I'm sorry I took my time but je means a lot to me too so let's turn this now over to you and about the Journey of working with
dream brother it deserves some time so dream brother has always been one of the songs that was the most inspirational to me and that's a hard statement to make because everything that Jeff Buckley has ever touched is absolutely incredible in its own way um and as being in the dance music world I've actually always thought that there's a side of dream brother that could live in a different context that composition to me has always
screamed it could live in another way um and I was on tour at the point and just thought I could probably make this into an incredible respectful Danish song and I never thought it would ever happen but I had my management reach out so you
never did an edit of it to try it first you just the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go we're going to reach out yeah it was just an idea at this point cuz by the way I I want that to be really clear because most people
maybe even including myself would have sat in a laptop in the back of of a van on the way to Ros Kilda and whipped it up taking that taking that riff and it just I would have been like let me see let me just see and the fact
that you didn't I didn't need to see it because I could I could feel it I could hear it in my head and I knew it was going to be amazing but I also didn't think it would it would ever happen um because there are no Jeff Buckley remixes
collaborations um so You' barely even hear you I mean name the sinks can you can you name the times you've even really seen or heard a song in a movie or certainly not a ad just doesn't happen right so the chances weren't great at least that's what I thought um we reached out and I think they were really relieved that I've asked for this song specifically because apparently a lot of the people people all wanted to do Hallelujah and they
just categorically said no no no no no sorry my my shoulders dripped and I really should be more respectful that's cool yeah I mean that's yeah it's a phenomenal song no question and his version is phenomenal it's not as good as lard Cohen's version because the original in my mind should always remain as the blueprint of any song that's ultimately embraced like that but it is phenomenal he made it his own like he always did like anything he did
like he did on kangaroo he made that his own as well however he did it right what the Smiths but really that's what you're going to go for I'm sorry like Hey we're trying to sell a SUV can we get Hallelujah I understand where the
requests are coming from sorry I tried to be I tried to pull back I'm going further please save me from myself so we've asked the question and um they were really happy to hear that and they were very open to it and they essentially agreed to it without their
ever having been even a demo of it I've never even mocked it up this is his mom this is his mom and his estate and they were they happen to like what I do which is really a blessing for me and this was in 2015 16 17 so 2017 so 7 years ago um but I didn't have the song I just had the idea and they didn't have the files because they're somewhere on some tapes really of dream brother they were on tapes so they went back to the studio
they Andy Wallace cuz Andy Wallace mixed it right so I believe it was him who reprinted all the tapes right they only had the half in tape they only so they only had the basically they had one shot you got it wow I mean this really gives
you an insight to how Jeff was moving he was just moving right he was moving he was like where next yeah and some of the files that I've received with a photograph of the handwriting what things were meant to be like Vibes for
example I don't know what actually really made the record because there's tons of takes that I know didn't make the record he was just getting it out of his system he wasn't he wasn't making it and Cat cataloging it like it's a piece
of music he was working it out wow I think we've talked about this that's that's deep 2020 you mentioned that you interviewed Jeff Buckley and how big of a fan you were and then I let you in on the secret four years ago that I was working on
dream brother I nearly throw up in my mouth with excitement but I thought you know this is a really really difficult balance and we spoke about this it's this song that means so much to me and this Vision that I had to take the song to a different place but you don't have the genius to give you a yes or a no or maybe do this maybe do that impossible absolutely impossible impossible to make the right decision you can only trust your gut at
that point right you can only trust your gut and I try to find the this and I think I successfully did find this balance between keeping every bit of the DNA that makes dream brothers so special and uneasy in the best way possible
alive you know it's got this like tension throughout the whole record that I wanted to keep alive but let it live in a different Universe while respecting every bit adding every bit of open high head from the original drummer and every
bit that I could somehow repurpose I could have used any sample but I really wanted as much of the origin stems that I could make sense of to live in this well as much as we all and we all wanted to make Jeff some kind of like um
Timeless Renaissance human being who seem to exist in all the decades he was a futurist too you can tell I've read so many things about him he was looking for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing you know um even his
decision to work with Tom vain which people thought he was trying to go back to get a sound no he was trying to make something edgy and a put me in the room and get it out of me right get out of me and um I always felt like his music
was just just dying to get out of him yeah like he was just like just get it out and I think I think you've you've put it into an architecture with so much thought and care because I that's what I love about JF is there was never any
architecture even the drum tracks didn't feel remotely stuck mhm you know yeah and I feel like you just did it in a way when your way where you you know you bended technology to his will that Bas put it thank you very much for saying that that means a lot to me and when I mentioned this to you and you I was really nervous to send you this four years ago whenever I sent you the first demo of it because I knew that you know him so well and you
know everything about his music that if you had told me I don't know if this is the right then I don't know how I would have reacted because that was sort of the pillar of tellos everything was built around dream brother that's from
when I started making songs for an album without really having a goal that's the only song that remained every other song is gone I started over completely besides dream brother that's the one song that to me was kind of giving me
that emotion that I wanted and remained so if you had told me that you think this isn't what the song deserves the whole thing would have crumbled I don't remember what I said I'm sure I would have taken my time to say it I remember
being moved by it but would have told you to you should know that I apprciate if I thought you taking it into into the wrong room to try to appeal to the people who wouldn't get it yeah I think I would have tried to find a way I
wouldn't have done it in text right but I would have tried to find a way to say Hey you know you sure you you sure you got the feeling right mhm I still feel the same emotion listening to both songs and after having worked on my version for so
long I forgot how slow and and different the original feels yeah yeah it's almost I don't even want to say because it just it buys into the whole into the whole chatter around it but it's it's it's like a funeral March dream brother
almost you know it's got a real sense of sort of like a uh yeah it's definitely the end and it's so it's so crazy that it's it's yeah it's it's the end I mean it was the end of Grace it's the end of the only album he ever really was able to
see through to its completion it's nuts man life is crazy right life is crazy I totally give into the things I don't see understand but man sometimes they are not fun yeah that's part of the emotion that we need to feel
to to let all of that out it's not always fun you must have had some emotional moments listening back to this oh still do yeah real moments stillings yeah cuz it's so you it's a very special song and like I mentioned it's it's the
only song that stayed from just aimlessly making music and years before this was 2017 I I had the vision for the song yeah and by the way a lot of the music on this album it's not just I I didn't sit down and made an album I
wrote out of time in 2015 right after I delivered Drew colors my album and I bought my first place in La and that was the very first core progression I wrote in 2015 that was that the joint with the M&M's machine that was not that was a
different one that's before that right so this was a long time ago and I wrote this core progression I always thought well this is amazing but what am I going to do with it now this is like not where I musically am yet it's completely
Timeless well it's also such a jump forward I mean you just finished this album then you go and you make something that I feel is like a gigantic leap I mean in some respects you must have just been like like I love this album but holy how did that just happen yeah yeah so some things take time and I think if you make music from the heart it's Timeless because it's it's you so what is life like when you don't take when you take 9 years to make
an album you know when you're not when you get off the treadmill what has life become well I think when you take that much time you can remind yourself how excited you felt when you made your first album because when you make your
first album that feeling is incredible everything you make is exciting every transition you make you've never made before every drop you made is the first thing the first drop you've ever made and then you make another album and then
you have to follow up now expectations were set in this world now it's more of like okay well what have I not explored yet because I've done this this this and so I know what moves the crowd let's just be really clear it's impossible not to think I know what's going to move the crowd I've seen it with my own eyes and I'm addicted to that feeling and I'm going to smash the out of that Festival once you have this drug of like crowd reaction and
love I try to remind myself to forget it but you can't it's in you forever it will never leave but you know time heals and when you take a decade to forget about all of these things you can start feeling those emotions again you can
start getting excited about the transitions that that you make and it's like wow it feels like the first time again but what is life like when you take 9 years to make an album you know so many of your peers have still not
stopped I still see mutual friends and people we played shows with I stopped when I joined Apple I it was conscious for me I was like my ears are getting burnt I've had a great time I may come back to it I may not but I'm going to do
this now because my kids are going to grow up and I'm not going to miss that by being over there till 2 in the morning so made a conscious decision thankfully cuz this came along a lot of people don't you made a conscious
decision what has life been like I did and I didn't because I never stopped I just restructured my life I still kept touring and never took a year off I mean the most I took off was before stay I took I mean my friends from Germany came
over for like four weeks and I didn't have shows and I had probably 6 week stretch of actual downtime and then I came back with stay and I felt refreshed and it felt like new version of me but I've just decided I'm going to try the
single route I'm not going to put the pressure on me to create an album because it really kills me it's so much pressure and a part of me never wanted to make another album again because it's just so much work and so much thinking
it's not just the songs it's how they live with one another and it's not like back in the day where you would hire a guy to tell you well this should be song number seven this should be song number two the way I made this album is there
was only one way this album would have worked the the way it is and the keys were set in stone and they had to transition the way they do and I didn't want to put that stress on me so after true colors I made singles and luckily
for me they were successful and there was a middle and there was a stay and and what else I released in between it kind of gave me a little bit more flight time to get inspired and get back to the feeling that I needed to feel to sit
down and create an album that I find meaningful to me that's a totally fair answer I mean you know and please forgive me for not you know realizing that you have been touring as much as you have because I stepped out so I I
don't know who's kind of on the road and who's not anymore I have stopped doing these like brutal tours where you're on a bus for 3 months for the most part in 20 um 2017 18 it was probably the last one I've done and I've I've decided to
sort of try this model of where I do a lot of Vegas yeah that's a a part of my career I do a lot of festivals and I do these one-off markets I do a thing called Zed in the park in La that do I do once a year um I play my bigger markets and I I don't go on a bus and sleep crawled up for 6 days I mean there's a convenience to Vegas and that's why a lot of people do it it opened up its doors to the clubing community and it was very successful and
it's been lucrative for all you know I've spent enough time in Vegas to know that when I'm there working I was there for the Super Bowl when I'm there working um I'm on the outside of why 99% of the people are in Vegas right yeah
I'm going to and fro with purpose I might have a nice dinner I might have a glass of wine but man it's go time now I I feel like you're in that 1% as well you are not doing the 99% you're going in you're doing your thing you're
getting the out how have you as someone who really has a lot of Vegas experience now if you can put it into context how have you been able to manage that because because you're there to ensure that that 99% go back home wherever they wherever they flew from or they trained from they drove from and they're like Zed was off the hook and now I'm back at work y does it ever get a bit much because we you know it's it's like it's a dystopian
disconnection in some respects you have to provide them with that but you aren't live in it it is sort of a disconnection and it's almost my only connection to the world as well because I have to say that I stopped listening to the radio
the radio was my imagination of what what this country likes yeah that used to be what I would drive and listen to the radio and I'm like okay I think I understand what people like and I would use that information kind of to bring
that to Vegas and and make sets um I kind of stopped listening to music a lot I listen to all the stuff that still inspires me from back in the day but I don't go and explore new artists unless it naturally happens for me Vegas like
you mentioned it is work I'm not going there to gamble I'm not going there to party mhm I show up we program a lot we improve the show and I've been at the club Omnia that I'm at right now this is probably my fifth year we still improve
the show every week between the shows it always has to improve it always has to get better better I'm there to ensure that the 99% that go to Vegas to have an amazing time go back and think this was the best night of their lives perfect
it's not for me yeah but I mean if you approach it with the same level of intention you do in your music then why wouldn't you get the same joy out of it right I mean I this is another crazy thing that I discovered and we've talked
about alcohol a little bit earlier um I used to drink before nearly every show my rule of thumb was I don't drink until the sun goes down that was kind of like what keeps me in check they show let's play those sober and it was just it
became this normal habit of I go to a place somebody gives me a Jack and Coke and like I have one before the show I have one on stage maybe two maybe one after it became so normal that at some point you know you get older and all of
a sudden the hangovers last more than the next show and then when you start like measuring your your calorie intake there was this moment where I had to make a DE sugar off the chat it's pretty bad I don't people actually realize how
bad it is it's pretty bad I think we do and we choose to ignore it know you truth I do now but I think I and I did for a long time and I think you know man there comes a time where you where you've got to ask yourself some
tough questions you know about about how you're living your life on a health level and um I was scared of that conversation with myself so was I I was scared that I wouldn't be able to be on stage yeah if I couldn't drink yeah yeah
y because it's been a a decade of me drinking on stage and it became so normal that I remember the show The Vegas show that I played sober the first one I was really scared of it because at some point I started writing down my
calories and I had my dinner and it's like well either I'm going to have food or I'm going to drink that's that's my choice because I only have this many calories left and every shot is 100 calories yeah so I don't have that much
room so I remember this feeling of like today am going to play Vegas sober and Vegas isn't the easiest room to play it's not 3,000 fans that flew across the world to see you it's people who are in Vegas who are like I know Zed I'm going
to see Zed I know this guy and most of the time they're looking for each other fair enough they're looking for people to meet hang out with what of course it's a social experience I'll play Kiss 100% it's more like a festival than
it is a dedicated Zed show yeah it's not a headline hard ticketed thing where people go to see me so my role is a little different and I was scared of that show I was scared how it was going to feel can I assume that you were
scared that you weren't going to enjoy it not everybody El of course oh yeah I wasn't scared that I wasn't going to be able to be professional I was scared that I'm going to be on stage and like not feel it and not want to do it fu yeah yeah yeah and it was probably like 30 minutes into the show that I realized wait I didn't drink I had the same feeling I had the same emotions and the same Joy if not more when I was sober and that was the
realization that I really had to make and I possibly wish I made sooner that the alcohol isn't the thing that gives me the joy it's really the adrenaline and the happiness to do what I can do I mean also at a certain age you can afford to do certain things sure have a good time you know but yeah yeah no I'm with you man and yeah I mean you say you wish you did it earlier you're right on time I mean I'm just discovering this in this at this point
in my life and I'm happy I'm discovering it now I'm scared to discover the salt one you're fine how much how how much time do you have till I have to cut out salt a lot okay a lot I'll take it a lot by the way when I told my when I told my
guy that I'd spent a week with no salt he looked at me like how that's hard what is food like what have you eaten you know but I did it I did it for a week I did it for a week and and I actually learned more in that week about
what flavor is you forget huh you forget how forget how good natural flavor is and then you know now I'm I'm I'm kind of in a low sodium experience and I'm dabbling with it and putting it in it's so amazing how little I need than what I
had a lot yeah but you don't that's how I feel right I need to do what you do well come to me in like 15 years time and I'll talk you through it but because any anytime before that I'm just going to be your bummer friend and I'm not
going to be your bummer friend is going to bum you out on salt salt the it up buttercup salt it up um well couple of things first of all a sincere and heartfelt congratulations on completing this body of work thank you very much I know what it means to you I I Knew by listening to it and and our conversation for the last hour and change which went like that yeah holy um has only just just qualified what I already knew so congrats thank you very
much it means a lot I don't know how you're going to bring this to life I I know you're not going to probably Reserve this only for Vegas I'd imagine that you have ideas on on doing something with this album that
in a live setting that works for you yep and not just for all of us so I'm looking forward to that thank you and I'm also looking forward to the next body of work whenever it may come because thank goodness you came to that conclusion y it will happen