Final Thoughts on Music and Collaboration

Hello, welcome to Take Notes and our new episode with Tomora, the collaboration between Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers and Aurora. It was so great to meet them. Tom and Aurora joined us at Baltic Studios in Baltic's Beautiful Studio two. We'll put some pictures of the studio up on our Instagram. It really is a stunning space with some amazing gear. And Tom had gone to a lot of effort because he brought his synth along, his EMS Synthie AKS and his AMS 1580 FX Unit, and the team at Baltic very kindly hooked this all up to the studio outboard gear as well. But the adage that you shouldn't take the synth out of the studio still rings true because we had some problems with it and it just wasn't functioning as it normally did in Tom 's setup, but he'd gone to all this effort. But that was kind of part of the whole vibe. They were committed and so into talking to us about this incredible album that they've created together. And it's such a lovely collaboration. The energy and the chemistry between the two of them is almost palpable um and they're such lovely people and so entertaining. Aurora is such an inspirational figure, such a great character, and you've just got to listen to her to feel inspired and excited and full of joie de vive. We left the recording really buzzing about the whole thing. As usual, we filmed the whole interview, so if you'd like to watch the full video and see Tom and Aurora break down the sounds in their sessions, just head over to Patreon.com forward slash take notes. Membership also gives you access to behind the scenes content, the chance to ask our guests questions, and entry to our monthly gear giveaway competitions. This month's gear giveaway is an annual subscription to Waves Ultimate, which gives you access to over 2 40 Waves plugins. All the details are on Patreon.com forward slash take notes. A big thank you as well to our partners at Tape It. Tape It have just released their brand new D noiser, delivering instant studio quality audio by intelligently removing hiss, hum and background noise, completely preserving your sound without artifacts. It's available as a desktop app and a vs T on a half price introductory offer of forty nine dollars. To find out head to tape.it forward slash denoiser to give it a try for yourself. But now without further ado let's get started. Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music. Every episode we'll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio. So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath . This episode is supported by Cube, the world's first member studio for artists, producers, and all-round creatives. With over 80 professional studios across four London locations, Cube gives you the space, tools, and community to make great music and develop your career. And today I'm joined by Nicholas Schoniger, co-founder of Cube to tell us more. Hi Nick, what does a Cube membership do for music makers? Hey John. So look, I mean with Cube Members hip you get access to a whole host of things. First of all you get the studios, so you've got music production rooms, DJ studios, podcast studios and content studios, all bookable through our app twenty four seven. You also get access to events ranging from networking to industry talks to hands-on workshops. We've got amazing co-working spaces that you can come and hang out in, bars where you can socialize. And really the whole ethos is to bring like-minded creatives together and inspire each other as well as have a professional space to work. All of this happens across our four London locations in Hackney, Elephant and Castle, Canary Wharf, and Acton. So if I'm a music maker and I've outgrown my bedroom studio, or maybe I'm someone who just needs access to a space with professional gear? How do I get involved? Super easy. Just head over to the Cube website and apply for a membership. Application takes a couple of minutes. All we look for is a certain level of talent. You know, we're not looking at how many Instagram followers you've got. We just want to see that you're serious about your craft and then you know in terms of once you come into the cube community you're gonna meet a whole host of people whether it's people that are just starting out on their career but are super talented through to people that have got platinum cuts. Really we're about people that are always looking to up their skills and collaborate and be inspired by by people around them. And how does the membership work at Cube? What are the options? So we get that everyone's needs are different. So we have different membership tiers with varying studio hours included. It starts from £145 a month. And for the Tape Notes audience, you can double your studio time. Just use the code TAPENOTES90 when you apply in the How You Heard About Us field. Then if you release a pro ject made at Cube within the first ninety days, we'd even gift you your studio time back. Wow, that sounds like a great offer. Thanks, Nick. So if you're looking for professional studio space across London, head to thecube.com. That's the qub e.com and don't forget to use the code TAPENOTES90. T's and C's apply . Hello, I'm John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Take Notes are Tomora to talk about how they wrote, recorded and produced the album Come Closer. Tomora are an electronic music duo consisting of Tom Rowlands and Aurora. Each are highly regarded in their fields. Tom as one half of the Chemical Brothers helping to define British and global electronic music with 10 landmark albums. Aurora building a worldwide following from Norway through her ethereal introspective songwriting across five albums. Their creative worlds began to intersect when in 2019 Aurora featured on the Chemical Brothers Grammy Award-winning album No Geography. Tom later returned the favour in 20 24 by producing parts of Aurora's What Happened to the Heart. That natural chemistry between the two artists has brought us to Tamora and their debut album Come Closer. Today I joined Tamora in Baltic Studios and what better way to start than by hearing something from the album? This is Ring the Alarm . It is ring the alarm by Tom Aura from the album Come Closer, and I'm very pleased to say that I am sat in Baltic Studio 2 with Tom Rollins and Aurora, who together are Tom Maura. We hello. So I guess the qu first question has to be when did this come about? Because there's a and a longstanding relationship in terms of Aurora contributed to the Chemical Brothers back in twenty nineteen to no geography. Is that when Tomora was born or or was it more recent than that? It is quite more recent, but it came from because I I guess now we've almost known each other and worked together for ten years you know back and forth. I for you guys Vit and Tom for my latest record as well. So it kind of just began as a thing as we went back to kind of working 'cause we tr ust each other, we know we work well and we know the feeling we get while working on music is just , you know, really free and really back to just creating 'cause it's nice to create. It it's important to focus on what feels good and what is fun in this world without having any expectations from it. So that's the reason why we kept going back into the studio, I guess, just the feeling. It's a beautiful feeling . Yeah, it's a beautiful feeling. Yeah, maybe, yeah. One year ago? Somewhere. One more. Somewhere in between somewhere between those dates. Yeah. It's constantly being reborn. Mm-hmm. It's exhausting. Yeah. It's well it's it's an exciting combination and I guess in a way you explored beyond Aurora's own work, beyond your own work with the Chemical Brothers. Yeah, for sure. I think that's why it went beyond just being a you know a featuring thing, wasn't it? We when we actually got in the studio I'd finished being on on the last chemical Brothers tour and it was a feeling of like I'm not sure I could go in and make a tenth, eleventh Chemical Brothers album straight away. It was like I need some other you know, I spent every day of thirty years or whatever, thinking about the same thing every day. And it was like, it'd be nice to use some other bit of the musical brain kind of thing. And I guess I remembered the feeling of working with Aurora and how kind of energizing and uh inspiring it was and it was like okay okay pick up the phone yeah and see you know just if you want to do a session wanna make some music come to my house we'll hang out and make something. Yeah. Yeah. So th the key thing was to get in the same place at the same time to see what would happen. Yeah. And just with no you know, there was no thing of like let's we're gonna make an album or we're gonna do this or that. It was like have you got a week free and shall we just make some music? And what we made was so like fun. Yeah it was so like whoa. It was fun, but it was also so good, wasn't it? It was like it kind of we were both like, Oh this there's something in in this combination here. Yeah. Fantastic. Well I I think you can really hear the fun that you have with this project and we're going to explore that today which is very exciting. And the first song we're going to look at is Somewhere Else. So maybe Tom if you could give us a Blast of the Master of Somewhere else that's the one It is Somewhere Else by Tom Ora and it's great watching your reaction to that because you couldn't resist moving the two of you and and that when I was listening to it in preparation for this I, was thinking, but it's gonna be hard to not move because it has that effect. Um which is is so exciting. So how how did this come together? Well, that was actually I've got here like a very early demo I made of of that basic idea which went which I think is what I played to it . Didn't have had that guitar on. No, it was without the guitar. It was without the guitar. Because it had the Yeah. It was almost like that . That's another version of it . There's a lot of different anyway, because the fact there's so many different versions of it was like the that was the kind of problem I was having. You know, like I knew there was something in basically in that in that little I don't know if it's even a chord, it's like this sound here, this. Imagine the guitar is not playing, just the chords at the bottom. Yeah, the road or whatever. Yeah, ro ad . And it was like there's something in this idea. And I must have spent almost like ten years circling around this thing and like, okay, we're gonna try this again. I'm gonna try in trying to unlock this uh idea. 'Cause I always think that when you come back to something again and again it means there's something in it that you you're drawn to, but it was never felt complete. Nor was remember I played it to Aurora and it wasn't about about a minute she was going, you know, singing and I was like And you were like What have I done for ten years? You know and she just came in and was just like, Oh it did feel like the key was put in the lock and I was like, Oh You know, when or you know when we talk of fun, it's not like fun in it's not how much fun you're having, it's just that feeling of making something and like the puzzle becoming complete. Yeah. Ah. Yeah. But that really illustrates the human interaction, the importance of it. No, to you might have been working on that track for ten years, but the you m have a reaction to it, an emotional reaction and start doing your thing. And it's so like a huge part of my language when I create is melodies. Like I I my melodic universe is very important to me. And you say it's not important to me, Aurora . This is the good thing. It's to feel like a a river all over the place. And that's why it's very important when either if you make things from scratch in the studio or if you have like things like this where you're like, you know, what do you feel? What is this? It's always very important that I don't hear every anything before we are together in the studio and I'm actually able to sit with you and we like this basic ally together we talk we talk and we speak in tongues and we manifest the devil or something. And then we you know things pour out. We don't manifest the devil. But it's very nice that it's always so you know in the moment and I think it's easy to overthink things, but we never allow there to be any overthinking. Not in the creation phase, isn't it? In the in the post there's a lot of thinking, but in the moment of creation, it's like every idea can come, you know, which is I think it's important to us, isn't it? It's like Yeah. It makes the ideas feel welcome, I think. Yeah. Aurora's melodic sort of sensibility. You always like I'd play some last time we got together, I played just the most horrible kind of bassline thing and she was like I hear Yeah, and she started playing this chord sequence over it and it. It just like my mind can't work like that. He doesn't have that harmonic. I I know there's something in it, but Aurora just has a laser guider on the harmony. But also the sounds that come out of you is like it's things I don't even have access to where I live, where I am. And it's such a beautiful universe to be able to walk into and then you know, to get like it' its's absolutely it's so inspiring. Sounds are the seed of so many melodies, as much as the emotion is the inspiration. And it's absolutely so fun to play with nice. Oh my god. So what happened next? We probably ha had a cup of tea to celebrate, didn't we? A cup of coffee. It was like, oh that's good. Yeah, because I remember we were just like, dude, yeah, we that was recorded, one of the first things. Do you have an early recording of that one? Well I have like a session here, but it's it's a bit small, isn't it? But like uh looks very tiny. The way I work is in the studios. Usually I use Ableton as like a kind of playground and it's like so easy to throw things around and why we try this at different pitch, different speed, da da and get crazy kind of th ing and then generally move everything to logic to arrange and then all the mixing. Well, I work with Steve Dubb, who's been our chemical brothers engineer since the start of our band, and I worked with him on on the mixes and Magnus obviously mixed some of the record as well didn't he very beautifully. Yeah. So everything goes through a lot of processes so it's not like I can bring up the session and it's like the session. Yeah. Aurora reacted to it and came up with the doo-doo-doos. And it was after I sang them this melody, when you were like, ah, the birds. Oh yeah, the birds felt like waking up. The birds. Yeah, because you were like this is like a calling, like this mysterious voice being like, hello . Yeah, yeah. I have something, you know, for you. It's very eerie, kind of. There was this sound. And you added the birds because you were like, Oh I hear This sound Which is a very important part of the emotion you want people to have . Because this to me sounds like when something begins to glow a little and if that had a sound That sound was actually most of the synths that we use are our hardware kind of ones, but this was on a very nice plugin synth called a cursor . I don't know where it is. This synth here. Yeah . And then where do we go from there? Well that's kind of set the mood, didn't it? For like Yeah. These are very early. Yeah, the the very first like why you and would you just be singing any words that come to mind at that point or do you take a little break and start writing some things down or sometimes Tom hears a ver a word, he's like, oh I hear this and sometimes I hear a word and often as I when I say like okay just put it on and I wanna sing through it and breathe with the ideas and we kind of just know when we look at each other we're like, okay, yeah, that was right, let's do that again. But like this is very like i improvising, you know, but with very very very intentional improvising within a very open space that's also fram ed because we are very agreed on the emotion we want the song to have. So it's quite fun to improvise when you also have a very clear idea of the identity of the song, if that makes sense. Yeah. Also one of the things that always blows my mind with Aurora is like the kind of how ideas arrive. Yes. You have like an eye you know, a concept comes and quite a lot of the songs it's just like ah. Yeah, that's true, I guess. It's the the character almost, isn't it, of the song isn't it? Yeah, there's always the woman first or the human 'cause I don't always think it's me sing ing on the song because you can do so much with your voice that doesn't sound like you or doesn't feel like you and I'm not so important to me when I write. And I you you see like a a different person and you think, okay, who are they? What do they want to say? 'Cause they might know things I don't even I have never experienced. And I try to take inspiration from that. Like a somewhere else felt very like um it's quite a cryptic story. But you could see this lady kind of you know we always kind of thought about waking up to the bird noises or to the voice and being like I feel like I woke up on earth and And I hear a purpose calling to me, but I don't understand who I am or where the purpose of the voice comes from or what I should do with it. Is it important or is it dangerous or kind? I don't know, but I'll figure out during this s song. And it feels very like knowing that oh I forgotten something really important and I gotta just walk until I find it. And that's the lady I heard in this song, for example. And then you kind of I've forgotten something really important. It's a good Yeah, and then you need to go somewhere else to find it. So the title Do all I like is you play some bit music and Rora's like a part of her mind is already constructing the world and you're like Yes. And you always take me into this world. Ki I love it. This is often something you are also like, yes, exactly Maybe we could hear it too. Illustrate maybe going through the song how how things arrive. This is like uh the array we hadn't really worked out the arrangement. 'Cause a moment wasn't it? It's like all I want to hear is da da da for like three hours. That was one that was one concept. Thankfully for everyone involved that didn't come to pass. Yes. You was like this little bit you I was like louder put it up Louder more and then comes later. Why is that better? Because it sound so much like now it's becoming a bit serious, a bit dire. I have time but also I need to figure this out now before it the voice is gone, you know. Oh yeah, it was that bit, wasn't it yeah? My favorite sound from the song. And what are all these sounds, Tom? What what are we hearing? That's a good question. Let's have a look . Oh yeah, that's see that's from the very early version of the song. That's a uh octave plateau voyautre eight synthesizer which is one of the great polyphonic synthesizers. Beautiful. It's nice. Sounds amazing. Big new big new order synthesizer is very cool. And is that is that live percussion that you're playing in there? I'm not quite sure what that is. That's again from deep in the recesses. I think that's very messed around with the stuff. I really like the beginning 'cause it sounds like uh if you meet strange creatures on your journey and in the video it's obviously just me meeting people, but people are the strangest and most dangerous creatures in the world. So this uh sounds to me like those spiders or like teeth. Yeah. And I love the the noise because it sounds like danger and I feel like it's the sound of the humans around you and the whales, you know? That's more of that intro simp but played around with a bit more. Yeah . Use a nice swell to What is a song without some hidden bongo? Yeah . Oh yeah. What the hell is that? I don't think that actually made it to No you didn't. Why? It's a mono machine doing Yeah. Yeah . You were like , this cannot be on this record. No, I kinda like it. But also, what was it? That's an electron mono machine that's just Yeah Yeah. What was that other thing there? Maybe it's like to remember that you're human. I'm sorry it's it's so messy. That didn't make the cut did it? No . Maybe for good . And what are you using to play around with this? So this is this is all done in Ableton and you're just adding in sounds and instruments. Yeah, d like the drums, I always generally do the drums still in like uh hardware samplers or like MP60 or SP twelve hundred and then with Steve who I mentioned before, engineer, I'll get him to come down and I've got these drums and they sound pretty good, but we need to rinse them. And he is quite good at making it. You know, and then we do like hours of passes of drums where we just go crazy and like and then we re we record them and then we treat them like a sample. So it's like we chop them up and to basically making our own loops and sample stuff and then we re-sample. A are you able to show any of that? So we'll we'll record we'll have that through the desk and sat a EMU SP twelve hundred I think it was just doing just doing drums and I'll be on the on the machine and he'll be EQing it and compressing it and then we'll get on the on the desk and then we record it all and then I would have re-sampled it and pretend I found it on an old record and be like, yeah this is cool isn't it? Yeah. Which is a nice feeling. Because you don't treat it with the respect that you would have treated it if you're like, oh I've done this amazing thing three days to do it. You just say, yeah, it's the drums. Yeah. What's that? Low bass clear good , it says. Because now you kind of understand it's all glowy now. But in terms of the evolution of the song, I mean that that first session where you hear the original track that you Yeah, that's another session, that's like months later kind of thing. Where we've got to gether we get the idea Aurora and I of where we're going kind of thing and then Steve usually comes in when it's like mix mixy time. But then but then also but mixy you know we'll just focus on the drums. We won't try and mix the whole record. We're like, all we're thinking of is making banging drums. Yeah. For a couple of days. So in a way you've kind of sketched out the structure of the song and you've got a good idea of of what's happening and then then you can finesse the different Unfinessed. Yeah. Mostly unfinesse. Make it have put your disrespect on this and then make it fabulous. Because it's also like we we do a lot of like as the the baby you know it goes into a fetus thing and we're like okay now the song is quite clear to us what it is and w where we want to take it. And we often like re there's a lot of re structuring of bits moving around and like and there's always with every song one particular sound that I love that is like this has to be everywhere. There there has to be the intro because I'm very particular about the intro of the songs. Yeah. So it's very fun with especially enabled now how you can just so easily move around everything. And recording the vocals enabled to me. Like I like doing that 'cause it's so fluid you can just be recording and get up a new track and the water's singing, they're like, Okay, we the whole thing is running all the time. Which a lot of the other doors you can't really Yeah. It's very fluent. And how do you get to the final arrangement then? You know, at what point do you think, Oh, you know what, we're we're kinda done. I feel like we know sometimes when we are like doneone?. D Next one? Done? Yeah, done? So the arrangement is always, you know, so fluid. It's like Aurora's very good at arranging, I think. You have a very good sensibility of like get rid. of it This is the yeah, away with that. I've always just been very like uh maybe it's 'cause maybe it's like a neurodivergence thing that you get like hyper focused on particular things and then it's so becomes easy, surprising ly, sometimes to be like, Oh, this is very clear while other things are more like less clear. But the the storyline often is very like black and white to me, like this it has to be this. I love it when someone says this is very clear. It's like fantastic. I will follow this. Yeah. Can be a weakness too, but it it's uh so far it's good . Quite stubborn. I like it. It's nice when someone says this is it. Okay. Thank you. But it's good. It seems like that this is part of the the chemistry and the magic of the combination of the two of you. That you know you have different approaches and different ways of seeing and hearing things. And so bringing them together means that you can come up with this other thing that you wouldn't arrive at otherwise. And I thought, you know, as you were saying earlier, if I whenever we make something together, we always have to be in the same room doing it. There's no like we don't send the smiles or anything. Because just picking up as you were saying earlier, like the nonverbal thing of you know, Aurora will sing something, you lean forward or you'll be dancing around the room or you'll be crying. the sounds of the songs have different dances or like movements that we o we both know you know what this is or like we have these movements for the music, and I think even though technology obviously has done a lot of favours to humankind, there comes a time when you shouldn't take advantage of our current uh evolution in technology , because I think sometimes in music and art it comes in the way, especially creating. I think it's such an important thing to be in the room as humans. Because surely something is lost when you don't. Yeah. That's definitely what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, I think all the great ideas that are missed by an email, an MP3 file. You know, it's like Yeah, because it's hard to judge yourself. Yeah. Like we look so much kinder and more openly at everyone else than ourselves just as humans. And I feel like that's why it's can be easy for me to say Tom, this is it, this is great. 'Cause you will be more um what is a cult? What the shit is a cult? You would be more demanding of yourself than I, you know, I will also be, but it it's easier for me to see. Tom, this is great. And it's easier for you to see that in me, because we aren't our best judges in this life. And And a lot of things that you wouldn't thought about as good or important wouldn't be captured unless there was as someone else to hear the whisper, like the tiniest thing that's like ah yes. Yeah, often the world will as you said earlier, we'll zone in on some sound that I thought was not important. And it's like this is beautiful. This is like this this is the point of this song. This is my favourite noise I've ever heard. It's good. But also in the in the same way it's like sometimes maybe I have an idea and I'll play it to her and she just goes, No , no, you know, next. Yeah. Which is fine. I love that's a good that's a good. And that's valuable too, isn't it? Yeah. Is there anything else we should hear before we move on to another song or maybe we should just uh anything else in this did we play any 'cause it's very fun when we have the music on really loud in the room. Like we're on a in on a show and then we both just play synthesizers or whatever to kind of and it it becomes so meaty, you know, and it's the best feeling when it's just loud. And I don't know if there's anything off that on the side. I think you played some this MOOC, I think you played. Is it on this? Oh yeah yeah and that's on the beautiful sound. There's a big uh in my studio it's a big um moop old moop system fifty-five which is a big modulo and Rora came to the studio and was like well you were like there was some song from Hannah wasn't you're like what what made this Escape. Escape. Whenever that's yeah, escape. What's it called? Escape weight. Anyway, yeah. She was like, what what synth was on that song? And it's like, oh it's that one in the corner. And she just like, okay . I got amazing like sp you know, big speakers and It's so powerful like a spaceship. And I just had to go over and honker honka honk . Let me touch please so good. Um somewhere in the song. Oh yeah, so here you know we're talking about the like with Steve Dub who is like you know amazing guy it's like we'll run the track for ages and on the desk we'll get loads of different effects and we'll just do sess passes of the drums where they're just like so he'd be EQing and maybe he'll be EQing it and I'll have the delay and effects. And it was just called like hours of and it's so funny around to work like that because it makes you know obviously it's quite deliberate and you know what you're doing, but often when you play like this you have not always full control, which is so nice. It's like a third brain in the room. Never full control. You know, and you can just it really is so alive even though it's kind of all a twisted and wrong. I I just love the way it comes alive in a new way 'cause it's very like this other brain that we don't know how it works. Yeah. A lot of physical hands on making sounds, you know, and then just recording them and then recycling them into your arrangement going, oh, where's that cool bit where we distort it ? You know, it we just we just do it for hours and ho urs and find just the tiny amount. One bar, please. The three hour jam. But it's like, you know, they all feed in to the finished thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's all necessary in a way. Shall we have a blast of the ending and then we'll move on to our next selection? Desktop to be the soundtrack of the summer of twenty twenty six I think with all your festivals that you're playing and and it's uh It's gonna be fun to play. For all the people out there searching for the thing they forgot . Something important they forgot. Yeah. It's all there and somewhere else. Excellent. We're gonna take a quick break, and the next song we're going to look at is I Drink the Light. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. This episode is supported by the Masters in Songwriting Programme at Trinity Lab an. With a Write Produce Release Philosophy at its center, the course is designed to give you the knowledge and community to build a lasting and successful career in the industry. To tell us more about it, I'm joined by Dr. Tony Briscoe, Music Production Module Leader for Popular Music at Trinity Lab an. Hi Tony, thanks for speaking with us. Can you explain how Write Produce Release shapes the experience of the course? Hi John, thanks for having me. So write, produce, release is really at the heart of the MA in songwriting at Trinity Lab an. The idea is simple. Students don't just study songwriting in theory, they actually do it from start to finish. They write original material devel,oping skills in melody, harmonies and lyrics. Then we move to production, building confidence with using DAWs and shaping their tracks into something more polished and professional. And finally they release music, exploring identity and technology while also learning a practical side, such as you know, the IP, building a brand, mapping a five-year career plan, all of that kind of stuff. So by the time they graduate, they're not just leaving with ideas, they leave with a finished portfolio and the confidence to stand behind that sound. And it's very flexible. This isn't a traditional full-time in-one room masters, is it? No. So it's it's it's the one thing we're really excited about is that the course is designed as an online first which makes it ideal for working musicians and global students who can't relocate. And then in the summer everyone comes together in London when intensive writing camp modelling on the professional industry writing sessions.. Amazing Who do you think the masters is designed for? Well the good thing is that it's really for anybody who's serious about songwriting and want to build a sustainable career. We see emerging artists who want to build a credible portfolio. We also welcome working musicians who want to sharpen Thanks, Tony. It sounds fantastic. So if you're ready to deepen your craft, define your voice, and actually release music while you study, the songwriting masters at Trinity Larban might be your next step. To find out more, head to trinitylarban.ac.uk that's Trinity L A B A N dotac uk and search for the M A in songwriting. The next song we're going to look at is I drink the light, but before we get there, I'm going to ask a couple of questions from our patrons. One is from Robbie Scow. When you're building a track together, how do you decide what stays human and raw versus what gets processed and produced? Is there a moment where you feel like a live take needs to be left alone and how do you protect that moment from the instinct to keep polishing it? We both know exactly what this answer is telling . Because it's very I think that's why I'm having so much fun. I always have fun w when I make like you always have fun when you make music. But in this project it's exceptionally fun and free and when we hear the music back, it's not uncomfortable . It doesn't feel like I have to meet myself too much. It feels yes, I do like how this is enjoyable, which is rare when you're the creator of the music. It's hard to enjoy yourself. But I think it's because we don't polish anything almost. Like all the vocals are I think recorded on you know the initial day, some the first take, and the idea is like we don't polish too much but we refine a lot of things if that makes sense. Yeah I mean I the idea that you polish and something becomes like cleaner or something. We we maybe polish in the other direction. Polish with some sand grease. Not grease, like some grit. Some grit, that's what it's called. Because grease is not the stony thing. No. Like when you go. We give it a peel. Yeah. But yeah, we we put it's like the other direction. Direction. Yeah. Which is fun. What do we do? We're like um those people who I a ge guitars. Yeah. Instead of We age the songs. Yeah. So a lot of processing might happen, but it's not towards like a like an idea of making it clean and perfect. You know, it's all uh all all recording for me is is like just the emotion. Yeah. It's not about trying to capture perfection at all. It's like And we are very interested in that. To all the mistakes that happen and like, oh we did the wrong thing there. Perfect. That's better. That's it sounds great. Or like we it's we are very always just listening to those really small voices that could be mistaken for mistakes but are not. Yeah. It's just yeah. Also, I was gonna say with the you know, with that question, it's like there's no there's no tuning, you know, a lot of voc sometimes vocalists are very t into tuning and Aurora never would ever think of you know, like autotune on Aurora's voice. Like no, thank you. Yeah. Or any tuning. It's like this not not it's the thing we're going for. No no airbrushing, no photoshop of the image is there. It's like it's the real. Yeah. Also Aurora's like incredible singer. It's like okay, cool. No need isn't no need to like no nudging. And sometimes it's nice if it's a bit off. Yeah. Aura has a sense of timing and in you know, like phrasing and stuff. And I love it. It's like it's just w how she's responding to the music. And it's like some people might say, Oh well, that's not fit into the exact millisecond it should. But it's like that's life. Yeah, that's life. That's life, man . Um the other question from Patreon comes from Hugh Catchell. What elements of Aurora's creative routine will Tom bring back to the Chemical Brothers? And what elements of Tom's creative routine will Aurora bring to her solo proje cts. Can I eat another banana while he answers? Yeah, I'm sure. I'm not gonna chew in your ears. Delightful listeners. It's a very good question. I've got to eat breakfast, you see. Thank you. Breakfast was a long time ago. Yeah, but I'm I know different time . Uh it's a good question. Aurora is very uh direct in communication, which is good. But I mean it's very different, you know, Ed and I worked together for so long. You know, our relationship in the studio has you know, we have a a special relationship of like a long time making music together. And quite so maybe all with general sense of like it'll be wonderful. Quite the easy thing going. Sometimes yeah sometimes Ed and I can drive ourselves pretty mad with with the the making of a chemical brothers record. Whereas a war can be it's just going to be fine. It's gonna be fine. It's a good approach to life. That's what I'm gonna try and take on for my general approach. You'll turn to Ed and say, you know, it's fine. It's gonna be fine, man. Don't worry about it. And do you think you'll take something from Tom's practice? Yeah, I think I can forget sometimes to when I produce alone especially to take off my headphones and hear it and like in the room in its loudness to kind of feel it physically. You know, because the music is also felt. Even if you can't hear, you can still enjoy music because of the rhythm and the way it affects your body actually physically. And I think I want to do that more when I work alone to have because you're v v very good at okay, let's take a moment and blast our brains out which I never do. You know, I always just all day sit with the headphones on. I don't even know why, I'm on alone. I don't even need to have the headphones on. Yeah, my room actually it sucks with um you know the r it's very windows open, the fjord was bouncing. My mum uh coming in with a tray of like nuts, like with squirrels, like crazy music flooding the light floor. Taking the moment to simply just listen. I always do that at the very end. And I think also I'm very bad at remembering to eat and pee when I work. And I can just sit for way too long in one. And maybe you do too. But when we're together you're so good at Time for a flapjack. Yeah. And time for some water. Let's go and breathe a bit. Have a satsuba. Let's remember that we have a vessel as well that needs things. And I'm very bad at remembering that. And I don't know, it's really inspired me a bit. Even when I'm home paying , I'm like, okay. I should drink something and eat and take care of myself as well. Which I have actually learned from you, I think, 'cause I yeah, I didn't do that before. So that's a good thing. Yeah, that good's. Taking care of myself. Yeah. That's a really valuable thing to learn. We both learnt deep psychological deep psychological shit, man. Fantastic. Easy peelers. You get easy peelers in Norway. Easy peel Easy P C you mean? Easy peelers. The Satsum you know, we get through a lot of those little satsumery things. People call them easy peelers. Easy peelers like the orange? Clementine. Well it's not quite a clementine, is it? Is that an easy peeler? No, no, no, that's where they're marketed as an easy peeler. Ah, I see. We got through about three thousand easy peelers. They do peel very easy. They do. Well does it Tom always peels them? I don't like how they make my hands orange. Right. Fair enough. Offer up the easy pe eler. I drink the light is the next song we're going to look at. Could we have a Blast of the Master of it, Tom? Blast of the Mast. Just a little taste of I Drink the Light by Tom Ora from the album Come Closer and I'm gonna describe this as the epic centerpiece to the album. Is that uh an understandable description? I mean it's nearly eight minutes long. It's quite long. It's kind of in the middle of the record. It is? Yeah. No, but you get lost in it, don't you? Yeah, you do. It's dangerous. Yeah. Oh. I didn't know that it was so long. We just let it ride, man. Yeah, we really do. And eight is the best number, so I'm I'm very good with that. Well yeah, I guess it is. Um it has a very clear identity on its own as a song, which I really like. And the way I mean the the songs that follow it go in another direction. It's almost you know, you reach the pivot point, yeah. It is. And it all started with that with that this rift, didn't it? This yeah. This is a very early that's the first thing I I think I heard that you played me this this Yeah time? This is on uh on a make noise oscillator called a DPO which is like a complex oscillators trying to re plicate a kind of bootclub approach to oscillators from my sort of modular setup. And I'd done the take of that that's like about five minutes long where just messing around in the studio as is my day. Yeah . But it was always coming back to this Yeah. So it's all. Should change, man. We never bothered with that. No. No. But did this this bit it was again it was like this makes me f feel sparkly or something. And we played it to Aurora and she was I was like oh this is perfect. It was the first noise or the first piece of music I heard that morning. And it was what a wonderful thing to touch your eardrums with. Yeah. Um and I just thought this is wonderful. This is very and we both agreed very early that this is just like the water . You know, ocean, really the moving water and the s the way the sun glistens on the on its surface, especially if your vi vision is a bit bad and the light is a bit more like glittery looking, you know? And we just knew, yeah, that is this is a song about a human who wants to drink everything the sun, the earth, music, people , and the light. 'Cause I guess the light is everything, isn't it? But yes, it's it's it has very hopeful energy, which I think is very nice. This I love the our process in the studio because I'll play Aurora that sound and then this will flow from Aurora and it's like yes. This is you know, like I know there's something in this sound. You know, this sound has like bewitched me and I'm like I need to listen to this sound a lot. To me it sounds like you know, you have the idea. You're like I know it's I know it's like the thing you're looking for in a somewhere else. With this sound, you know so clearly what to do and I love the fierceness and the direction of it. Roy had this idea like the the the sparkles from the top of the light was we would drink. If you can only drink the very top imagine how good it would taste. Oh This is how we spend our day. It's a good way to spend the way to spend the day. But this fires your imagination. You have a an immediate reaction to it and you start thinking about It is exciting. Well then it was the noise that you had already on there and I just thought it was still nightful. Oh yeah, what was that? Made me feel It was kinda weird. There was a resonancy kinda Yeah, this exactly that that one noise in the background. You're obsessed with 'cause I love um frequencies. It's almost like a Norwegian mouth harp. It's very something in in it to me that's ancient and like Yes . And that wasn't in the song all the time in the beginning, but it was one of your noises that I just fell in love with and we give gave it an honor able place on its throne now in the beginning of the song. But this I remember this little sound you were like . This little. Ugh it just sounds so beautiful to me. If if I was ever in contact with an alien, this is what I would show us. I would'd be like, see we can do it too. It's just so beautiful to me, the a resonance. Yeah. I resonate with the resonance . And and what is creating th that sound or those yeah well actually I did find I had a session called R eso Experiments, which I think Oh that sounds that sounds very sexy. Led into that sound. I was running this thing called strokes which is Okay, so it's it's basically made out of uh me playing the bass guitar into this Ableton sampler and just playing around with the the resonance to the velocity . But harder you press it the more resonance will happen, so you go . And is that through a plug-in that you've Yeah this is like just the Ableton stock sampler . So it's just the yeah bass guitar and then playing around with the resonance and then then a record like a whole jam with me doing it . Yeah. I just love the way it sounds so much because it's like the a subconscious pi part of a sound and often it's the part that you would remove in a mix, you know, 'cause they they get in the way of the full picture and you remove these irresonant noises all the time. And I just love when they're emphasized. I always wanna add them back in . So just yeah no, so we've I must have recorded loads of that and then It's like a little ghost. It's really interesting though that it starts with a real instrument in the a bass guitar. So you've got the bass guitar, you're making some sounds with that and then you think, what else could I create with that sound now? Yeah, I love yeah, I love the interaction of acoustic instruments and electronic sort of processing for everything we need. I love sampling the guitaritar. Gu is still like the unknowable instrument. Yeah . Just because there's so many variable, you know, it's like so many, the touch, you know, so physical. And then to bring that world into kind of processing Cynthia world is a good combination. Yeah. The same with the voice as well, like Aurora's voice is like on this song, there's a lot of interesting sort of granular processing of Aurora 's voice. And it I don't know, there's so much in inside the voice . There's like some do you know it's frequent you know, it's got some So Aurora's shoot opening her mouth and pointing inside.. But it's true I mean i uh it's interesting. I mean across the whole of the album the range of the sounds that you make with your voice is quite incredible, from these crazy screams and wails to the tiniest of intimate sounds and and in this track you invent your own new language it seems at at some point which is quite exciting. I promise you in a few years you will all speak it fluently And that was the very last thing we did. Because of your Norwegian roots and your background in the countr yside, I'm imagining you on the mountain top kind of calling to the herd of deer that no trying look we're moving on now. Yes, and then only two sheep come. But I'm fine with that. Okay, we three will make a difference. No but it's very the song just needed something like this, something a bit incomprehensible. Cause I feel like once you've drunk the light, imagine if you got out there and the perspective of the glistening didn't move with your eyes, but it stayed like how the rainbow moves when you move, you know, you can never find it. But it's there somehow and you drink it and then you're like This is the ultra effect. not speaking in tongues. I think it has exactly the right reaction to the and then Tom, you know, I messed up the vocals a bit, which is really fun to do. Is that is that process so do you have the raw version? Or we're getting the raw version as as raw roll. Like that's how I was singing. And it just came as a kind of as a joke at the end Shaman kind of speaking to me. But then the resonant little harp kind of mouth can mean Yeah. It's a very natural Yeah. But it's freaking you out. Like it just you know, this is like this is like my perfect music basically to listen to Yes M. This is our ideal music. It's the nice hybrid. I love when things are so ancient and also so new. Yeah. Yeah, it has that combination. Yeah. Because uh it sounds like throat singing or or something like that. But it kind of does, but it's the same like spirit. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Almost. But it is processed. There is processing oil. It's a tiny bit pitch, must be. No pitch. No pitch. Never pitch. Never pitch. Isn't it? I think I just pitched down. Whoa . Or maybe I say it like woa whoa whoa I think I was just looping looping bits of it and getting like whoa that's a cookie loop. So I was speaking in tongues. Yeah? I don't know what I was drinking that day, but yeah. Well you had drunk the light. Yes. And it had gifted you this new language. Yeah, I guess it was just I guess it's not really processed that much finding interesting loops of it I think to remember . There's a lot of s here there's a lot of in in Ableton there's incredible granulator, granulator three, which is like I've used fluff y. I love using Aurora's voice because it's love it flood wave . I want to be one to one day on two want it, two wants it, two wants it, two want it, two want it, two want it, two feet , two, two feet . And when you're recording these vocals, I mean are you using a particular microphone or do you do you have any any use the new eighty seven like a old mid eighties new eighty seven one? Oh the songs, isn't it? Yeah. Well then we used a bit another cheap one limit as well, the SM9. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But it's a nice U87 . Yes. We have a nice you know like we have nice options in the studio for preamps and compressors and Yeah, it's nice uh in in your laboratorium of machines and spaceships because it's so you know all the a lot of the effects on my voice at least is done while recording and you it's all so tactile even though it's it sounds like you know, , this robotic weird machine. You know, it sounds very non human to a person who likes country music, for example, which is very human or human sounding, you know. Good clarification, good clarification. Which sounds very human, because we know what the instrument looks like in our brain. But this is very human as well because it's so tactile and it's so nice because I can all the synthesizers and a lot of the effects that are on it, I can picture them in your studio and s know how they look. I've touched them, you've touched them. And that's such weirdly such a comforting feeling. Just to know that they're there. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I just really love that my The mixing desk is like a an important part of my studio. Still having like a massive mixing desk and have it what I have on on one side of it twenty-four channels that were just all effects. So it's like you can just balance between loads of different effects and just be like, oh And often while I I read it. You will do things and then I change. Oh, is this what you hear? Then I'll 'cause you change the way you sing also if you know 'cause we especially even that is a creative in the moment. Improvisation. Often we have like crazy delays or effects and it just changes completely how you sing, doesn't it? When you're like suddenly oh your my voice is singing back to me at every second minus an octave and it's doubtly out of time, but it's like I can Aurora will then play with the effect, you know. I re I think with whether all was recording instruments is like find a new space and new inspiration, you know, do something to to make the performer like respond and play, especially when you've got what you think is the central bit of your song, maybe, is then let's push things to the side. So how big is your studio, Tom? So we're in quite a big studio here at Baltic Studio too. It's a big room, it's a big space. Yeah, but you it sounds like you've got banks and banks of this equipment and you've got a big desk and obviously you've got different instruments around you. There's a lot of different there's like yeah, there's a sort of control room that's kind of regular stuff. It's not as big as this is a nice room to sit in this room, isn't it? It's quite especially with my air conditioning wasn't working in the summer. I don't know. It's hot . I'm I'm like um I don't think I would notice if there wasn't air in there. No. I would be like, I'm fine. But it's like what I like about your studio if if you look closely, you just see truly treasures everywhere. And they're so they all had their space. They're they're all in you know, activated all with lights on already. No nothing is just bought and for a gotten and put in the back. It's all kind of placed on top of each other and it's up the wall s. But it's not in a that you feel like ooh look at all this. It's more like ah I feel warm and safe and in tune and very um I feel respected by the instruments and I respect them in return. It's a beautiful thing. But it's it's a very nice It's a nice balance that it feels very humble but also very just full of treasures. It's truly a dream to be able to be there, to come to you and work with Oh, it's absolutely a dream. You know, she's amazing as well as singer, amazing musician, you know, like So are you Wow We both we both have different skill set that we maybe but it's yeah I mean a war is yeah I just I love it when we often jam on the synths together and they're kinda like four you know four hands working this machine and it's like amazing kind of interactive yeah way of making music. It's very hands on fascinating. I think we need to have a blast of the master of the end yeah of the track and then we can move on to our next song that we're going to look at. So that is I Drink The Light by Tom Aura from Come Closer and Come Closer is the song we're going to look at next. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more from Tom and Aurora in just a moment So the next song we're going to look at is Come Closer, the title track of the debut album by Tom Ora. And you have brought some equipment. I'll I'll talk about the equipment in just a moment, but I think we should have a Blast of the Master so we get a sense of of what this track sounds like. Come close . So a little taste of come closer by Tom Ora. Now we were just talking about Tom's studio and the different equipment it has and what kind of setup it's like, etc. But Tom has very kindly brought in a little piece of that studio to this studio, to Baltic Studio too. So you carried some equipment from your studio to demonstrate elements who come closer, but I carried it not very well, it seems, 'cause a fundamental piece of it has not survived the journey. But yes, it's been a bit bruised and it's a bit tired, but so are we all. Yeah. We have set it up though, nonetheless. So this is the EMS Cynthia AKS, is that right? Mr. Cynthia In fact, I did take it to Bergen once to for a session with Aurora. It's the best vision to a to see you there at the airport with a suitcase and when he opens his suitcase this little spaceship is inside it. And for the people who don't see it it's like this little kind of black suitcase. It looks quite old fashioned and like beautiful. Then when you opened it it's like it has it looks like it could control some kind of sci-fi headquarters on what is it called? in a submarine? Or yeah, it could be a sputneck. So there's a collection of knobs. There's uh green and blue and silver and gold, but there's also a little peg board. But but through making the connections with little pins. And so often with a big modular synth you get too many patch cords and it's a pain and it I remember it was the first the studio we first worked in was Steve Dubb, and Ed and I together worked in was a studio in Clapham called Dada . And the guy who ran it, this guy George Holt had one of these synths that I ended up actually buying off him. But he'd got it in a plastic bag from the Greater London like education, what was it called? G L-E-C. And it had all of the GLC G L C E C stamps on it. And he'd rebuilt it from this plastic bag and it was the first meeting with a synth like this really and Steve was a master on it and it was just like whoa what is this thing I you know it's so exciting, it was like i everything you put it anything through it or made sounds with it, it was suddenly like, ah, this is this is that wild I mean you know it's a famous synth that was very you know Brianino kind of synth or pink floyd or you know, it's like a well known synthesizer, but that was in nineteen ninety-three for us. It was like, whoa, this is another dimension. And so we bought many of them. But it's like the most inspiring piece of gear really. You know, we'll often we'll be in the studio when we're working together in the main control room and then then I have another little studio next door that is full of more synthesizers. Yeah. And Aurora's like, let's just go and make something together that's has no starting point. You know, sometimes I'll go, I've got this as we've seen I've got a little synth or something, and she was like, No, let's begin with nothing. And so we came to this synth and we started playing it together. Like the thing that didn't survive the journey was the keyboard, which is one of the great ways of interacting with this machine . So you can play it in quite a harmonic type of way. And as you clearly can hear it It's very sick, isn't it? The keyboard looks, it reminds me a little bit of a xylophone type key keyboard. Yeah . And they're all completely blue, which is a very nice th ing. And they don't really have a dimension. It's not like the black keys are higher than the white ones, but they're all just flat and they feel your touch. It's not like a mechanical thing almost, it's more an it's very it feels very in tune with your skin, you know, in a way. Right. Which I love . But this ended up providing quite a few sounds for Come Closer, but some other songs on the album as well. Yeah, I mean the thing it's on there quite it's um a boy like in fact a boy like you is really starts with uh Well you really can hear. Where is it? I remember playing you. Yeah the angel. Just like. I don't know, I love this . It's the beginning of the song. Imagine it are like 120 decibels in my choice . Get aboard the rocket ship. I haven't heard a thing since we were And you're sort of there holding on to the Yeah. Where are we going? Where are we going Yeah, we added that body h stuff. Yeah, that's the same. We we changed it. Anyway, back to but come closer. Yeah, we were like, let's let's begin a song fresh and this machine is always a real inspirational kind of thing because you can make things that are melodic yet wrong. Yeah. And this song is like I think it was it was the moment where we found we had something we thought was really special, didn't we? It was like We really did. And it feels like I guess we both often describe this song as the most perfect essence of what tomorrow is. Tomorrow is a lot of different things but this song's song feels the most in tune with what we both wanted to create as tomorrow because it's such a good mix. Again, the word hybrid comes to mind between something really earthly and human, you know, 'cause it's kind of pagan almost with a doom dum dum is very like a ritual, isn't it? But then the the synthesizes is kind of like this and it's only my voice and this synth Mrs. Cynthia . And it's all the vo the vocals were recorded once and then never touched again. 'Cause we've really felt like On the recording, it's not anything after, which felt nice. And also the birth of your 'cause I think you were playing here and I was singing and you were turning the knobs and making it beautiful and ugly which is so perfect for this and me saying come closer and my volume is almost lower than the synth is always in the way and I say come closer and you're like, yeah, but I can't . There's this sound wall in between us, you know, which I love that my vocals are so low at at points, and then the scream comes to kind of break through the wall. So it m makes the mixing of it to me is very poetic. Part of the storytelling. Yeah. Hmm. And it has a cathedral like sound as if this is a massive organ in a cathedral. Yes,es. it do It's weird because this is a this is a monophonic synthesizer, but we were feeding it through uh this other unit here, an A AMS pitch shifter and delay. So we had like uh different pitches either on left and right. I mean it's a shame that's not but he's not playing ball to go. But we can carry on playing the d but you've brought in the AMS to go with So the chord is being created by the AMS harmonizer and we had an even tied H3000 on it as well, so it's making a chord together and then we're distorting it. And the great thing about the Synthe is mine has a mod where you can get the two oscillators to sync together. So if you have it hard sync, the two the two are totally locked. But if you it has variable sync, so you can bring it down a bit. Yeah. And you get these these bits where one oscillator is struggling to get in pitch with the other one. And Aurora responds to this thing. This moment very well. Yeah, this like when the when the th thing is struggling to lock on one oscillator's struggling to lock on to the pitch of the other. And it's just so beautiful. It's like a a sound, seeing a sound struggle with itself, but also dancing with itself and then the moment they re join in harmony, it's just like this puzzle you didn't even know needed to be figured out. It's it's there and it's so peaceful and beautiful and then it goes out again and they start fighting in like a beautiful way. I just I love it so much that it's s such on a minimal level and it can still be so emotional, you know, it just breaks my heart in the best way It's all over the album. Can't believe he didn't he wasn't able to survive the journey. Yeah. Yeah. We should hear that now. That change there just kills me. And the this wailing was in that moment as well. Yes. In the in the room the the sound of that bang is much was much higher and it came on really strong and you were really crunching up the whole thing. I just that's what came out 'cause it was like oh that that's feels so orgasmic but also so spiritual which an orgasm is if it happens in the right way. But it's very Yeah, it's the it's a dance, you know between and I love that about this song. It's very no looping, just a journey, which is it's meant to feel like a dance between that sound and the vocals. Yeah. I mean it's a m you know, for me it was an amazing thing being in the just being there. When it happened kind of thing. It was like a really I was like Yeah, brought a tear to my eye. You know, someone just feel ing this in the in the sound we were making and just communicating it so directly. And it was profound. We were crying. It was very nice. It felt like real yeah, I mean you know, it's fun ny. Do anything else to it? I mean do not really we just added the drums after didn't we? Which are just Yeah. To have like a bit of a like a bit heart a a heartbeat in it. Yeah. So in a way I me,an this is the closest to a pure live performance on the record. Yeah, it is. I think that's why we cried a bit, 'cause it's such a specific feeling on earth when something that only happened once and you love it and it's captured and you know it's kept and now it exists forever. It's like um how I would imagine it feels to be a become a parent when you think ah look at this now they exist a soul from nowhere have entered this body and now you are with me in my life forever. And that's how it feels with the song as well, especially when it's captured like that so in the moment. Makes you feel like people are gonna start crying again . But like you get so grateful just to exist because you're like, I can't believe this can just happen from nowhere, you know, and then it arrives and it makes life better. It's so cool. Yeah, fantastic description. Joy of creating you know of making things, isn't it? It's like Yeah . It's the deep thing. And are you going to get to experience that then when you perform these songs live? Is Mr. Cynthia gonna have some work done? She's gonna go straight to the doctor. Yeah. Poor thing. Because will you be attempting to Yeah, well I've got I've got like a more modern A sturdy replacement. The only thing about it is it it's very hard to make the same thing twice. Which is the joy. Yeah. You know, but it's like you can the grief. You can be very uh attentively and write down every single thing and it's like and also 'cause on the desk was such a combination of different routing and effects levels and the balance of everything was very specific. You know, so very it is like a moment and it's not, you know, and you capturing that, as Laura said, you're capturing that moment, but to make it again, we cannot make it again like that. Which is so hard to live with sometimes. But also the thing that makes you so grateful of just you know the moment happening. Oh but we found a more sturdy guy to pretend he's him. Right. But we haven't told him yet . So we know what we need of equipment to kind of feel playful enough and free enough but also achieve what we want. But yeah, good point. I haven't thought about that we get to feel like that every night. No e every time we play the shores now, then it's a good thing. Only after they get after that four hour version of I drink the light. minutes . No, and it it's gonna be a special experience for for everybody. Very exciting. We hope so, eh? Yeah, we don't know what we're gonna do, but we know it's gonna be all right. Yes, this is what I'm learning. Fantastic. Um we're gonna let you go. So maybe we should have a quick uh blast of the ending. But we have a couple more questions that we ask everyone who comes on take notes. Oh, nice. We didn't put no harm in house. See, that was added after the Um I feel very honored and privileged to have experienced that just talking about it with you, you know, because it brings us closer to that moment you must have felt. It's the only thing the song wants the whole time. Um we ask everybody who comes on the show um uh about equipment and about gear and I'm wondering what is one piece of kit that was essential to the making of this album? Is it the EMS Cynthia AKS or is there something else? It it probably is quite important, isn't he? He was always there for us. Except for today. But back then he was always there for us. We did a lot, especially when you came to Norway. Yeah. We were yeah, we wrote songs, yeah. Like the side by side is one of the yeah, and side by side. This is the one equipment that I think the album couldn't have existed without. It wouldn't have sounded the same, no. No . But then again, you know, look I know this is a gear sort of podcast, but as we've been h hinting all the way, like the key ingredients are are our connection. I mean, it's like how we make music, isn't it? But it's nice to have all the other things as well. I suppose it is actually important. The way you uh the way we responded to these tiny details in the sound, you know, we're all I don't know what the right op your mind is open to to the frequencies. And also you've got like a good the interpreter of the frequency. Tiny person writing the telling me what to do. And then I'm like, yeah. Yeah. This is if I had one of those that would be saying the same thing. So yeah. He pays no rent. The other question we ask everybody is about advice, whether you've learned something that you would pass on to other people, or maybe you were given some advice at some point about making, about surviving in this world? Tough old world. Obviously, you know, me and Tom are one of the few in this world that are very p pr privileged just from where we were born, the time we were born, um all the things we have access to and it's it is very easy to dream and explore when you don't spend all your time surviving. You know, like when you're floating down a river than swimming for your life is two very different experien ces and the for me being in a way aware of that gives music the heaviness and depth I think it deserves to have and needs to have to kind of be truly valuable to at least someone in this world. So for me, I guess it is a weird advice, but Don't tell Mistress Cynthia. But yes, um it's to be like aware of the world and bring the world in and allow that to give you perspective and also all ow yourself to escape into w what you might consider to be a medicine for the one who need it or escapism for the one who need it. But I feel like you can touch onto the very true essence of music and what it needs to be if you like keep the world in mind . Or f or for me it makes it so much easier. And we o always like every day before we write we talk about just the the world because politics are very emotional. We have a good morning just a good like morning rant about the world and then we it's kind of always under our skin when we write music, while we also escape and enjoy just the gift of being able to make but it's like um it's weird and beautiful and frightening contrast to be allowed to have in this world. But yeah, that is important to me at least. And it's a big part of our time together, the way our minds and hearts collide as we write and talk . That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Do do you have anything to add to that? It's kind of a you know, like connected to that is making music with other people, you know, not you know, people 'cause so surprise you know, I love to be surprised in the studio and Aurora is like to be surprised is a good feeling, you know. It's like yeah, you know, to have someone challenge you and take you somewhere that you didn't know you could end up is like that's what I love that in a in collaborating and Avora. Definitely we have that thing. Yeah, yeah. It's um often yeah, often surprised and often just which just inspires your mind. And also the feeling of just going where the music takes you and l you know it's such a liberating thing. So that's our our strength, I guess. That we're always surprised. My weakness is that I often have a booger in my nose. But strength, surprises. Yeah. Good card. Good uh top trump card. Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for being on take notes. Um it's been brilliant to to to be able to witness this chemistry and and uh the combination of the two of you. Um and you've travelled a long way from Bergen to be with us today, Aurora. Tom, you've travelled from Surrey, I think it's Sussex. From Sussex, sorry. Got got the first two letters right. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And also thank you to the team at Baltic Studios as well for setting up the Synth with all of their wonderful outboard gear. Thank you guys. My end of it was not performing so well. But we got a little taste of it. Yeah, we did. So that was nice. Um we'll let you go, but we should play one more song from Come Closer the Album, uh kind of outro piece. Um what would you have us play? What would you choose? Well it depends. Do you want something that belongs to the code words PixieTechno ? Or would you like something that goes along with the words? Mm . It's a big responsibility, Johnny getting asked for her. Yeah. Mind the el electric modules of the brain. I'm interested to know which uh so so these are the options I have. Pixie Techno or electric modules of the brain. Yeah. Um Well how what kind of frame of mind are you filling it. Okay, if I do like this, does it make it clear ? No.