RECORDS LiVE

Tamara: Hi guys, thank you for being here at RECORDS LiVE. I’m Tamara. I’m your host, and we are going to be listening to some music. If you’ve not been to RECORDS LiVE before, please give a shout. Okay, we got some new people in the crowd. Basically, RECORDS LiVE is like listening to music in your living room with your friends. That’s the type of vibe and experience we’re curating today.

We have two amazing guests. I’m super excited to talk with them. If you haven’t listened to some of these songs before, write them down. You’re going to be put on to some amazing new music. And if you’ve heard it before, be vocal about it. Be an active audience member. Clap, woo, like have a lot of fun. It’s going to be a great time.

I’m super excited for my first…

*Doorbell Rings*

Tamara: Oh, okay, he’s actually here right now. Come on up on the stage. Yay! Oh, he’s got a little soda. Jarritos. Hey, do you want to introduce yourself for us today?

Zach: Hi, I’m Zach, from Famous Friend. Thanks for having me.

Tamara: He’s my famous friend. We’re going to get into the first song, which is “Pressure.” We’re going to give it a little time to start, but do you want to talk about how you discovered the artist?

Song Plays: 1-800-MIKEY – Pressure

Zach: Yeah, so this guy is called 1-800-MIKEY. He’s from Australia. And basically, how I found him was my friend Payton, who has a project called Faerybabyy, she’s so dope, and we were talking at a show, and she was telling me about this genre called Egg Punk. And I was like, “Oh, I’ve never heard of that.”

But then I found out this guy I had been listening to, called GT, was Egg Punk. And I was like, “OK, cool. I guess I like Egg Punk.” And that sent me down this rabbit hole and I started realizing that all the people from GT had their own bands. And so, Mikey plays synth and guitar in GT. And this is his solo project.

Tamara: Short song.

Zach: Yeah, they’re all like little punk, you know, minute and a half things. So, number one, it felt a lot like the scene here, where we all are in like five bands. And I thought that was cute. And then I also just liked that the Egg Punk kind of ethos is like energy, but it’s silly. It’s a little less self-serious and maybe a little less aggressive but still has energy. So, I liked that. And I liked that Mikey takes that a whole ‘nother step. He literally will write a song about a plushie from a claw machine that he’s trying to get.

Tamara: Cute, very whimsical.

Zach: Yeah. And he’s on the cover too. He’s like holding, I think, one of the plushies that he won. And he’s got a song called “Claw Machine.”

Tamara: Have you ever tried to dial that number? 1-800-MIKEY?

Zach: Should we do it right now?

Tamara: Should we do it right now? Who’s got a cell phone? We prank call it. Like, “We love your song.” He hangs up…

Song Plays: The Whitest Boy Alive – Burning

Tamara: Okay, Whitest Boy Alive. Who do you think is the whitest boy alive?

Zach: Probably me.

Tamara: Yeah? Shout out white boys.

Zach: Shout out Scandinavian Swedish motherfuckers. I don’t know, my brother was in Copenhagen for school for a little bit. And I’ve never been to Sweden. I’m Swedish technically on my dad’s side. And I’d never been there before. I still haven’t. But I was like, “Okay, Copenhagen’s like close enough.” And I went and visited him. And I don’t know, it just made me kind of more aware of that heritage a little bit.

This was a band that I had been really into like a number of years ago. I really like them because it’s like the energy of The Strokes in the instrumental, but his voice is like really chill and calming. I kind of like that combination of energy and almost like a meditative nostalgic tone. I think I try to do that in my music sometimes too.

Tamara: Yeah. What feeling do you think this song evokes for you? Do you get more energized or…?  

Zach: I was thinking about this on the on the ride over. I think – and this next song will be a good example of this too – It’s like, I like these songs that make me feel like I have main character energy. But like something really sad just happened, something kind of hard, but then you’re optimistic. I know that’s really specific, but that’s how I think my favorite songs make me feel. So, it’s like, okay, shit’s sad, but you’re going to change it.

Tamara: Yeah, it’s like things will get better.

Zach: Yeah, because the drums and the bass line are like, go on, go on.

Tamara: Yeah, you’re like, “We’re about to start running. We’re about to start going. It’s going to be good.” How often is The Whitest Boy Alive in your rotation?

Zach: Pretty often.

Tamara: Like top five artists?

Zach: Yeah, honestly, like in terms of how often I play them probably, because the other thing about them too is that this is all recorded live. And it’s just mainly four of them. It’s really hard to do this. To be this locked in and you don’t have really anything like, there’s no tricks to support it. So, the songs just have to be really good. The vocal has to be locked in. A lot of people will record everything except the vocal live and then retrack the vocal over it. I think they do the vocal live.

Tamara: They record everything at once?

Zach: Exactly. In a room and like, there’s a really cool interview with them about what producing means when they record that way. They said for their first album, their only production choice was which room to play in. Which studio was going to make them sound the best. They just went and played in a wood room, a stone room. Like, I don’t know, it’s fucking gangster.

Tamara: That’s really cool.

Tamara: Do you get inspiration for music production from hearing interviews from bands like that? Like just on like what they kind of…

Song Plays: TEED – Piece of Me

Zach: This thing is so cool, by the way (talking about the Recordtron™).

Tamara: It’s so cool. Yeah, it’s high tech.

Zach: But yeah, for sure. In terms of production, I think more so these days, I’m looking for ways of thinking rather than technical things. Like just approaches. Sometimes even just inspiration for how to be creative and, you know, it’s hard to be creative.

Tamara: It’s so hard to have an original thought. It’s crazy. This is a fun song. Walk me through this one a little bit.

Zach: Okay, so this guy’s officially called TEED now, but TEED used to stand for Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. And he used to wear a dinosaur onesie when he would perform. And you know, he’s just cool. His real name is Orlando Higginbottom. That’s his real name.

Tamara: Cute. Love it.

Zach: So, yeah, he’s a G. His dad was or is, I think, a music teacher. So, he is very well trained and taught with music composition. But he just uses all of that to make dance music. So, I feel like Fred Again might be someone in the modern scene who’s doing that.

But TEED has been doing it for a while. And similarly, I think he stays in this kind of like melancholy with slight optimism world, but it’s like this song. If the last one was kind of like a Strokes version of that, this is more like a dance version. So, if you want to move a little bit more the first one was like a good jogging song. This one for me, I think you can put this on anytime. Like in a car, at a pregame, like whatever. So yeah, I don’t know. And it’s hype, but it’s not going to give you a sugar crash afterwards. Your endorphins are like, “Okay, cool.”

Tamara: Something for when you study.

Zach: Yeah. It’s like really good dark chocolate or something. It’s pretty good for you actually.

Tamara: But it’s still a little sweet. I love that. What songs of yours do you think are like dark chocolate?

Zach: Whoa. I have a song called “Bunny Ears” that is a weird one where it’s not like one of my top songs, but I think a lot of fans identify with that one the most. And it’s probably my favorite.

There’s this mourning dove outside of my window. I was playing this guitar thing, and it kept cooing at this weird interval. And I was like, “Whoa, it’s in key with what I’m playing on the guitar.” And rhythmically, it was really interesting. So, I recorded it on my phone. And then my thought – this is also weirdly completely sober by the way, but this is like how my brain works – I was like, “Okay, this is going to be my duet with a bird.”

So, it’s Famous Friend feat. bird, mourning dove. If you go listen to the song, there’s this kind of rhythmic synth. It was me trying to mimic what the bird was doing. And the bird is in there too, like talking.

Tamara: I gotta go restream that bird. Did you name the bird afterwards or no?

Zach: I should have.

Tamara: I feel like I like a song a lot more when I know the lore of it. Like sometimes my friend will give me a backstory on their song. And then afterwards I’ll stream it like 50 times in a row because I’m like, “Wow, I never realized this before.”

Zach: I’m exactly the same way. And then I always feel weird about it because I’m like, do we fail if we need extra context for the thing? But I will say that new Harry Styles song “Aperture,” I was like, it’s okay. And then I watched his like huge dance number Brit Awards show and now it’s like my favorite song.

Tamara: Really? Were you a Directioner?

Zach: Oh my god. Hell no.

Tamara: Hell no? You’re dressed like One Direction right now.

Zach: My inspo. I always really respect good pop songs. So, like in that way…

Tamara: Clearly you have to.

Zach: Yeah, of course. I’m Swedish.

Tamara: ABBA!

Zach: I literally saw Max Martin at dinner the other day. It was fucking awesome.

Song Plays: Shabason & Krgovich – In the Middle of the Day

Tamara: We’ve got to dive into this song a little bit. “In the Middle of the Day” by… Pronounce this for me.

Zach: Sha-ba-son and I think Kr-go-vich. My friend Brian, who’s an awesome musician, put me on to this. I found out that in Iceland, they have a huge tax rebate program to record music. They give you back like a fourth of what you spend over there if you prove that you recorded 30 minutes worth of music. I was telling Brian about this for like a year and we ended up figuring out a way to get over there.

And it was a very long story with a lot of twists and turns, but we would drive around a lot and listen to this song. And the thing about Iceland is, it feels like they shoot all of the sci-fi movies, for like the distant planets, are all filmed in Iceland. Because it’s just really odd. It’s unreal. And so, on top of it being unreal, now it literally looks like a foreign planet because you’ve seen some of these movies and it feels like you stepped into those.

My favorite thing to do there is just to pick a direction and just go drive. I specifically remember listening to this song and we’re pulling up; it’s like a beach with black sand and there are these horses. But like really weird different horses than we have here. Like super shaggy, almost like carpet manes. Then it started raining really hard. And that was just super special.

Also, I had just been crashing out over this girl like the entire time. It was such a bust for recording, but in the last three days I wrote like 10 songs. So, it worked out. But like Brian would wake up in the morning and he’s a composer. He has his coffee and he does his little workout and then he goes and is super productive. And I’m waking up at 2pm, journaling for like an hour, crying and then going into this side room and then not coming up with anything. It was like a very weird intense experience, but it was super powerful and really gratifying at the end. So, this is a really special song.

Tamara: It’s a beautiful song. What do you like about it instrumentally?

Zach: Um, so Shabason, I think is the singer. I might have it flipped but one of them is a really cool woodwinds player. So, there’s all these little flutes that kind of come in. And it’s just a texture that I think is kind of rare to hear outside of jazz and classical music. And so, it’s really cool. I think there’s a tenor saxophone that’s kind of in the back right now. There’s the flute. And then like that, there’s a synth right there. And so, it’s just like a cool combination to have those, you know, different elements from different genres.

Tamara: They’re going off right now.

Zach: And it’s all live. Like he was kind of flat on some of those. Obviously left it in because it’s like, you know, the drums seem kind of programmed. The bass is like a synth bass. It’s got synth. So, it’s got a lot of synthetic, kind of perfect things. And then he’s putting in the really imperfect flute stuff. Really calming voice. I listen to a lot of ambient music. It’s always nice to find something that almost feels like what ambient music gives you, but it’s like a little more interesting or you can feel it in your body a little bit more because of the beat.

Tamara: I feel like his voice also adds a lot of warmth to the song that you wouldn’t get with ambient music.

Zach: Yeah. It’s also nice to just have a voice that you don’t often have with ambient. But yeah. I’ve been working with this producer, John, and we were talking a lot about just how important the voice really is, just the tone. The fact that he’s singing right there in that low monotone. It’s like, yeah.

Tamara: Do you still imagine the horses when you hear that song?

Zach: Yeah, I have pictures. Maybe I’ll post them up on my IG story. Like, IYKYK.

Song Plays: Broncho – Dreamin

Tamara: Bron-ko or Bron-cho.

Zach: I think it is Bron-cho. Now I’m like second guessing… Okay, this one snuck up on me. I really didn’t like the whole record that they came out with because they usually do more up tempo, kind of post-punky, surfy, indie kind of stuff. Which is obviously why I like them. And then I was listening to this record, and it was slow. This isn’t what I come to Broncho for. And I just heard this song enough to where I was like, “Wait a second. I think this song is maybe really good.”

Tamara: Like, guys, I have come to a realization. I was wrong.

Zach: Literally. And I’m still kind of unpacking why I like it so much. But I mean, one thing that is kind of cool is that it’s actually like a very 50’s progression. It’s kind of like doo-wop almost or even a tiny bit country.

Also, it’s a guy singing. He has this thing sometimes where it’s really hard to tell like the gender, which I think is kind of cool. But you can never understand anything that he says. And I know that’s really divisive. I feel like there’s two groups of people. Ones who would never notice or care and others who are like, “If I can’t hear the lyrics, I’m just out like across the board.” I definitely don’t give a fuck.

But it’s cool. This kind of sounds like Hawaiian almost. The bridge is cool. But anyways, I just thought it was kind of cool that he wrote this very classic rock/country standard type song and then put a vocal that’s really modern on it with cool production. It feels unlike anything else really. He does a lot of stream of consciousness lyrics too and I like to do that. Like, I’ve freestyled the choruses on half my songs, and then I go look back and I’m like, “Okay, I guess that’s what I was saying.” Because it just feels like you get out of your own way when you do that and your subconscious takes over. You’re like, “Okay, you don’t get to sound cool or anything. What comes out is what comes out.” So even if you can’t hear like what the lyrics are, I feel like because he’s doing things from that perspective, if you close your eyes and tap into it, the feeling does really come across of what it’s about.

Tamara: That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Zach: I like that song.

Tamara: It’s a great song. You brought some great records today. Thank you for being here. Where can people find you?

Zach: Just famousfriend everywhere, Spotify, @famousfriend on IG. And yeah, we got some fun shows coming up that we’re about to announce for summer in LA and I want to announce it so bad, but it’s coming up soon. So, yeah.

Tamara: Okay, very exciting. Thank you.