Gorillaz "Feel Good Inc"

I love that harmony stack at the end. Yeah, I don't think I knew that that was there. I don't think I'd ever really noticed it either. It's somewhat buried in the mix. You feel it, but that's the only time I think the vocals are so clear as well because his whole vocal there was also filtered. And do we know if that's just him singing the higher registers and layering it? That sounds like a stack of daemons. It sounds like daemons, a stack of daemons. Yeah, it's a stack of daemons. What a great gift that would be. Here's your stack of daemons. Here's a stack of daemons for you. I know it's your birthday, so I bought you a stack of daemons. Oh, you're so kind. Luxury today, we're diving back into the work of an artist who helped define British rock in the 1990s, then turned around and helped imagine what a band could be and look like and sound like in the 21st century. That's right, Diallo. And after covering Blur's song, too, we're continuing our daemon all-bar and two-parter with a group that technically isn't even real, but somehow became one of the most important bands of the 2000s. Today, we're covering a song, called Around a Filthy Bassline. Disgusting. A haunted laugh, a massive De La Soul feature, and a chorus that feels like escape floating just out of reach. Plus, this song won all-bar in his only Grammy and scored him his highest ever ranking U.S. chart position in the top four. That's right. We thought it was a song, too, but it was Gorillaz that helped him finally break it in America. Daemon's biggest hit is this song. It's a song that sounds like pure fun on the surface, but underneath it, it is asking a darker question. If Feeling Good is a company, what exactly are they selling? So, windmill, windmill for the land. We're talking one song, and that song is Feel Good, Inc. by Gorillaz. ♪ Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade Electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates, better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. Our refrigerated trucks keep your items fresh while our associates are committed to getting every detail right, carefully selecting and packing your order with care because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now, enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury, aka the guy who whispers, interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs if you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, hey, have I got good news for you. You can watch us on YouTube, Spotify, and while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, Diallo, I want you to start with your first memory of Gorillaz because depending on when someone found them, they may have experienced this band in a completely different way. What was your way in? Well, I think I was a fan of Damon Albarn and Blur early on, and so I was kind of hip. I think what caught my ear was the story around them. Like for a minute, you know, is it a band? Is it not a band? Is it animated? Right. Damon Albarn is involved. Yeah, this is technically, this is a virtual band. It's a cartoon, but it's also a band. Yeah, and also, you see pictures of these cartoon characters popping up and, you know, it's kind of still pre-the internet the way we think of it now. Like, it was just like, I knew that there was something coming. I knew there was this whole concept and nothing happens in a vacuum. Like, you got to think about this in the context of everything else that was going on. Daft Punk at this time is already starting to vanish into the helmets. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the times when you could just go to Nikki Beach and see, you know, the Daft Punk guys out there spinning records, you know, in Miami, like, that was already starting to fade away and they had come out with that cartoon In a Stella 55-55, which also had a cartoon and, you know, that cartoon, they're singing the songs of Daft Punk. We knew there were corporal singers and there were just, there was a whole lineup of people who were trying to reinvent what it was to even be a band at the turn of the century. So, with that in mind. Like a concept, like you were saying the word concept, concept art. I concept, sadly, 9-11 hadn't happened yet, so there was, like, a good mood and it felt like art in particular was a place where all kinds of expression were, like, really, after 9-11, things got really dark for a while. But into this weird sort of, like, pre-9-11, you know, 2001, let's say, very happy time. I don't even just think in my life, it was just a different time. Yeah. And the Gorillaz have, it gets announced, I don't know how I would've found out about it. Maybe I was looking in LA Weekly, you know, like, where you get your concert info. Right. But the Gorillaz had a big show in Hollywood for all the hipsters were on their way to the Knitting Factory. The Knitting Factory used to have a place on Hollywood Boulevard. And I just remember that night, everybody piled into the theater, not knowing what to expect. Like, is this just gonna be a band playing the music of these cartoon characters? Is it going to be animated robots? Like, we just had no idea. Showbiz pizza. How did you even know in this era what it was? Like, where did you get that piece of information from? That it was a band called the Gorillaz? And that it was associated with Albarn. I might have seen the cover of An Enemy. I think I would, more likely, I would have read a review of the single or something, like, in LA Weekly. In Atlanta, we had Creative Loafing. Like, I felt like those used to be places where everybody who wanted to know what was cool and what was next, it was either that or Time Out. So, you, you were aware they were coming before you heard, like, Clint Eastwood or whatever the first No, I think I heard the single Clint Eastwood. Okay. And, you know, like, being a DJ at the time, I thought that song was really cool. I'm feeling glad I got sunshine In a bag I'm useless But not for long The future Is coming on I ain't happy Propel Fitness Water With Gatorade Electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? I thought that song was so cool. Yeah. And, by the way, I wasn't just a fan of Blur, I was a fan of Del the Funky Homo Sapien. Yeah. Who had stayed with me for the two nights he was playing a gig near Harvard. Yeah, he's, they were like, hey, do you, I used to be on Student Government, they were like, hey, the rapper needs a place to stay. I was like, don't call him the rapper, you call him Del the Funky Homo Sapien. And, yes, he could sleep on our couch and I'll never get Del showed up. And I expected him to have like an entourage or even luggage and he literally showed up with a PlayStation in one hand and a blunt in the other and he was like, hey, man, can I hook this up and play some video games? And I was like, sure, Del, you can do whatever you want. Did he have a bag? And I remember he was just sitting there like, yeah, this game's sick. This game's sick. I was like, I'm not into video games or marijuana, but I thought it was so cool that the man who made Mr. Dabalina was sitting right in my living room. All that is just to say I thought Gorillaz was always going to have Del on the song. And so when I showed up, as far as I knew, I would have Damon on stage and Del on stage. We show up and it's basically just a huge screen. It's almost like watching a movie with sound. Fault me, I don't know if the music was prerecorded and piped in or if they were hiding a band behind the screen. I don't know because I didn't have any inside information on that level, but it was a great show and they introduced the band members of Gorillaz as the only people that you needed to know to appreciate this music. And it totally worked. The presentation was the band, the characters, the visuals, the music. It was all just one thing. And I'm just going to admit this right now. For the longest time, I just assumed Del had done all the raps and that's including not just that first album, but even some of the rapping on this album, including Feel Good Inc. When Del, when Delas starts rapping, I actually thought that was Del pulling. It's easy to forget that this is a Gorillaz featuring Delas old song. Yes, yes. I mean, I'm telling you, and it's a little embarrassed to say shout out to Delas old. You know, I'm a huge fan. I thought Del was doing voices like the same way that like he does different voices on Give Me the Loot. I thought that was all still Del just doing different voices. Because I did not read closely enough to see the featuring Delas old. Well, this is as good a place as any to talk about the fact that Gorillaz are a virtual band. There's a lot of lore about them. Suddenly, they're a 25-year-old band. So not only do we have these four primary characters and I'll name them for you because they have names. 2D is, is the vocalist. Noodle plays quote-unquote guitar. Murdoch Nichols is the bassist and Russell Hobbs on drums. So much lore. You can go down a real rabbit hole on the Gorillaz wiki. There's not just Wikipedia, but like a Gorillaz specific wiki. And there's characters. These characters all have phases one through seven. I think we're in phase seven currently. One can get very lost in the lore. And it's important to point out that Damon Albarn has created this lore and this band with the understanding and song hero of the episode. Yeah, so Damon did not do this in a vacuum. Tell us about it. Jamie Hewlett is the animator who created Tank Girl. Sorry, comic book and creator and animator, I should say. So artist. And in 1998, he moved in with Albarn. The two of them lived together in a flat and both of them at the time, in 1998, had both recently broken up with different members of the band Elastica. High-profile breakup in Damon's case. Right. They had both broken up with different members of the band Elastica. So perhaps bonded by that connection. - Trauma bonding, yeah. in 1998 the conversations begin to began to ensue like maybe we should put a project together and the idea of this virtual band started to come together designing the characters creating the backstory all the lore and by 2001 that first record drops the one that you're talking about with with clint eastwood famously on it as the first the single that really broke them you're referring to the self-titled debut album gorillas that's right from 2001 so great by the way amazing uh that's the one with the jeep and the camouflage on it with gorillas spray painted in red to me that's one of those iconic 2000s records i i see it in my sleep so much we end up talking about on this show reflects where we were when this music was released yeah 2001 is the first year that i was really really sort of like doing more djing than anything else like i had my little stupid internship at at virgin records but really i was djing at the standard i was djing at a place called the road uh here in la and that first gorillas album really had some major cuts on it uh most people know clint eastwood my favorite song on there was rock the house and also 19 2000 another great song uh featuring uh miho hattori and uh from chibamato yes and uh tina from tom tom club oh wow it's funny you say that about 2001 because that was a really transitional year for me where i was doing things that weren't music and suddenly i i put all of my effort and attention into like figuring out how to write songs produce them i got my first pro tools rig and this was this was the moment that i was like i'm i'm done with the advertising thing i'm done with whatever i was doing before and what's interesting about it that i'm only making the connection now is in a similar way that damon albarn is coming from a band background and i have talked about this on previous episodes but there's this moment that i think damon has had where he's like he can break out of this band box as it were where there's a lot of music and there's a lot of music and there's a lot of music for opinions and the music making process requires expensive equipment and studios etc but in this moment a lot of us are realizing that there's gear out there that's more affordable and there's also musical ideas that kind of comport to what we want to do with rock and roll we want to take rock and roll in this direction that has different beats and different rhythms i found this great quote where albarn literally says one of the reasons i began gorillas is i had a lot of rhythms i never thought i could use in blur so as simple as that like what the beats were kind of implied a different musical that you know on top of that i was gonna say bad but it's the opposite of that yeah no that makes a lot of sense because also we said a lot in part one of this two-part episode yeah that there was you know there you know in the mid 90s it was all about the guitars and then the groups as early as like 98 99 you could see that things were moving in more of a pop direction everything for the spice girls to britney in sync uh the backstreet boys i'm sure that at some point david was just like you know what i just kind of want to do the other beats in my head like it's well known that at this time he's sort of getting more into african music he was definitely feeling hip-hop he wanted to do more dancey stuff yeah and this would be a project that would allow that and the beats are both the rhythms but also the sound of sampled instruments the sound of like hip-hop sounds and production techniques and for me personally the revelation i'll never forget was when i had a song that was very i was super into stoner rock i was super into caius and queens stuff and i first got my pro tools rigged together and i didn't have any way to record drums so what i needed to do was sample drums so i started chopping break beats from my record collection from my cd collection which necessarily and that meant i would go i remember some early beats that i got i got a sonic youth beat from the song 100 there's this part where uh steve shelly goes i remember taking that beat and basically that was my first sample and i took that loop and i put it down in pro tools i laid it across the song go back to our song two episode we just did that's what they did in that song and then on top of that i started playing guitar and it just it had this feeling of rock but with robot rock but with robot robot rock daft punk is doing robot rock in this moment using that breakwater beat absolutely the convergence of the genres was happening because of the tech and maybe because to your point a feeling of getting away from the you know we're post grunge we're post brit pop and maybe we're post spice girls i think we were all feeling it man it was it was definitely a time for like a post-modern mashup by the way mashups are really big that's right 100 right post-modern mashup the tech enables that and the tech enabled that too the tech in your point right yeah girl talk literally is enabled by the technology to your point to do these mashups where he takes the instrumentals from one genre and the acapella different genres i always say you can't talk about mashups without talking about zach dj z trip who was one of the first people i knew to do on all mashups that in miami at winter music conference one time that was the first time i actually heard uh uh war pigs oh yeah yeah because he mashed it up with it's fun how all these things converge in this moment 2001 and in damon albarn the connection between blur and gorillas is also happening as a result of maybe the desire to put new beats together like you're saying but the technology is also enabling it to the technology is allowing a new scene to sort of grow out of the 90s it was it was very fun yeah so now we're moving forward to 2005 their second album demon days uh an album that if you thought that uh the first gorillas record was damon clearing a path with his collaborators to do more genres than blur have maybe been able to do this one even further expanded the musical palette if you will of collaborators of what yes of what gorillas could sound like and the type of people he could work with yeah and i think that's a really good point because i think that's a really good point yep it wasn't all the same people from the first album and i think that alone sort of lets you know that oh no he's going on a on an even grand on an even more diverse journey uh into sound and that's why this song is so special because it had such a combination of factors that hadn't really been put together yeah in this way especially in 2005 we do a little bit take for granted that a song like this does sound more like a 2026 song but in 2005 this combination of you know essentially a live bass line a live guitar player i think doubling that bass part yeah and then of course there's damon singing but then there's also de la sol rapping yeah this combination of things in one song in 2005 was we hadn't really heard anything like that before i think even his singing on this song is a little hip-hoppy yeah that makes sense oh we're gonna get to that i'm so glad you said that there's gonna be a callback to another recent episode but you're 100 percent yeah yeah i don't also say that um it's funny because i agree i feel like the song is hip-hoppy but you got to remember this is at this particular moment the definition of hip-hop is very broad yeah like i think we i think outcast kind of changed the world with hey yeah yeah technically a rap song but it feels like a song from the 60s it's a pop song it's a wedding song you're right it's like a pop song with 60s stacks motown vibes it's fast and by the way feel good ink on the relative scale of hip-hop tempos yep kind of a fast song yep and yet there's still enough hip-hop there maybe because of maybe because of the way that damon is also rapping oh yeah they're rapping like mad men the speed of their rap you know the cadence is 16th notes this bpm not far off not from a dj sense from outcasts hey yeah so i think that again this is a very fun time in hip-hop when hip-hop can be as grimy as get rich and die trying the 50 cent album or it can sound like feel good ink by gorillas and hey yeah by outcast it's a fun time by the way i think there's a pop makes you think yeah because it's got all this commentary about where society is and it somehow put it all into a really infectious baseline well it's also the kind of song too that like i think the title itself being feel good it does kind of work it's a trojan horse it's a little bit of a trojan horse it's almost like this is how we do it like oh totally it's like the band name happy mondays why happy mondays because you're fucked up on pills but it frames your experience of the song that going into it that's the title yeah no totally this song makes me feel good i don't know why all it lacks is like a parenthetical coming after it makes me feel good because it's been sold to me this happiness can be bought happiness can be packaged and be sold exactly shoved down your throat by the way if you caught part one of this two-parter when we talked about blur song two first of all thank you and if that sentence confused you go back and watch that episode please do because one of the things we talked about in that episode is how the gorilla sound was already starting to sneak into blur we want you to go back and listen to their blur and there's a song on there called on your own which i really like that song it's kind of a pubby song for blur but in it he mentions hooligan gorilla we feel like that is not an accident damon has even said that on your own by blur is sort of one of the earliest gorillas songs so well since you are such an all bar and a-lister you know you do know the lore of this man in his career what is it about that song in particular that feels like it's the beginning of gorillas well you know i i don't know this for a fact i mean like he said that that's one of the earliest gorilla songs but i didn't realize until we were working on this episode the jamie hewlett of it all yeah and they would have they would have been talking sort of backstage at a less at elastica concerts you know what i mean like yeah and so he might have just thrown out a word or an idea to to damon and that and that meant that damon took those ideas into a blur session yeah and uh hooligan gorilla i mean like you know i i can see some soccer hooligans you know that seems to work for me but it's also probably not an accident that they were both dating a member of the band at that time that you know there are times when the when the spouses get together and talk. And so I imagine that was sort of the beginning of them talking about possibly collaborating yeah and again taking some ideas that him and jamie had been tossing around and throwing that into a blur song so whether it was you know because he was a 10 girl fan or maybe because like i said they're talking backstage at elastica concerts at some point there's a friendship here and there's a bond and apparently as the story goes there was one time when they were watching mtv you know sort of in the late 90s and they were just like man everybody just feels like a cartoon and it was like you know like all the britty spears the in sync totally right they were like why don't we just skip the middle man right and give mtv exactly what they want which is a cartoon that pumps out good music totally and the earliest days i think to your point about like the band maybe being behind a scrim maybe not when they're touring it sort of conjures up ideas of like you know blue man group or like even kiss you know putting together a musical entity that can survive beyond the members desire to even have to get in a van and tour or a tour of the world you can have a show and not even have to be there for it i mean if you wanted to be really cynical i said for years daft punk could tour every year we would never know who was in those robot helmets absolutely and i do feel like to a certain extent this is damon saying look more artistic freedom i can i can do hip-hop and nobody's going to be like hey but you're from you know you went to school with damien hess you know like nobody's gonna ask him for street credit because it's a cartoon yep you know it gives you more freedom and uh like you said they can go they can tour anywhere and you don't have to to feed them yeah and it can outlast you it's a brand that can go for hundreds of years and your family can eat off of it because you don't have to stop touring just because you're old or you died i think about that all the time when i think about even artists like prince like prince i thought aged wonderfully well but at the end of the day his his even if his voice had gone he could still play that guitar yeah you know i mean i feel like similar with gorillas like even when you know damon gets a used to be able to fit into he can still call up 2d and noodles and they can just bring the band back together and pump out some new music oh yeah no they just came out with a new record the mountain just came out and we want to talk about how this idea of collaboration has ballooned the list of collaborators on this record is incredible i won't name even one third of it but we've got dennis hopper idols we've got tony allen we've got sparks we've got asha putley we've got marky smith there's at least two dead people on the i know r.i.p so when we come back we're going behind the screen we're going to be the ghost of the machine and we're going to get into the stems don't go away stick around we'll break it down propel fitness water with gatorade electrolytes zero sugar and vitamins propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self what propels you propel with gatorade electrolytes when you shop kroger delivery you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door our refrigerated trucks keep your items fresh while our associates are committed to getting every detail right carefully selecting and packing your order with care because bringing you fresh quality groceries is what we do best and right now enjoy twenty dollars off your first online order of seventy five dollars or more restrictions apply c-site for details kroger fresh for everyone all right welcome back to one song before the break we talked about gorillas as this manufactured band commenting on manufactured feeling with that said now let's get into the song and as we do on the show we're going to listen to some stems let's listen to some drums and then we'll talk about them here is the two bar loop that goes through the whole song you've heard it twice now i've heard it all my life because anytime i hear that particular drum pattern yep i think about beat it yeah boom which therefore makes it a little later we have some 16th notes that join in the party let's listen to those very subtle do you hear that oh i heard it and then it goes away which to my ears sounds like a sample because it's got such a very distinctive it's not a hi-hat from a drum machine it's a very distinctive like it has recording artifacts yes attached and it has tone yeah it has tone it has a note there's a color yeah can you let it play because i want to hear how often it comes in sure well it's about to go into that other thing oh my god it's about to go into that other thing oh my god it's about to go into that other thing oh i see yeah never mind well maybe it happens twice hold on here it's just a sort of subtle thing that's peppered throughout that loop to spice it up make it a little bit different and then in addition to that we have basically a hook in the drums there's a motif that is very much when you think about the song kind of like one of the parts that's cool that you think is iconically part of this song here it is this those two crashes right yeah one two three four bone which mirrors what's happening in the vocal feel good right one one two feel good but there's something really cool about how that motif very simple it's just literally adding a crash to the two kick drums there and sometimes there's a little bit of a variation on it like this one sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry too close to it same thing two crashes but now three kick drums now do we know what human drummer played the drum so this is a great that's a great question and you know on this show long time listeners will know we do our homework there's a lot of hours of research that go into making this show i can tell you that not only was i not able to it's not a cartoon named russell by the way so not only was i not definitively able to find the answer to that but i'm fairly sure that was obscured on purpose yeah there are there are credits on this record there are splits we'll be getting to yeah and there are names associated with the making of the song and we'll we'll give you all of them but when it gets down to the who did what in terms of what you're hearing gets a little bit i think again obscured on purpose i can't it's not in the liner notes and it's not in the splits that there's a guy who programmed these drums however one thing we do know is that there are three credited producers on this song okay danger mouse yeah we'll be talking a little bit more about i feel like in the 2000s danger mouse was maybe the steven street yeah like he was an in-demand producer who worked on so many great great songs beginning a little bit with this one this that's this is a little bit his origin story but we'll be getting into that in a second there's also jason cox and finally damon albarn's cousin whose name is james dring and he does get a production credit a programming credit in different sources i've seen programming drums every time yeah so it's possible that james dring programmed this beat yeah and then there are other times where the sometimes live drummer for the band when they perform who at the time was cast brown he i also have seen credited but that feels a little less credible all this to say we're not really sure who programmed it maybe it was damon he's up he's moneying the waters to have his collaborators maybe feel more included you know i do feel like i feel a little bit of assuming that danger mouse did anything on this track i feel like it does sound like a danger mouse track when i saw his name i was like oh i kind of get it because yeah this doesn't seem completely far from some of the other songs of his that i like like people who know danger mouse know that he was uh one half of narls barkley with uh silo green and their song crazy so just a little bit of shine for unsung hero one of several for this band and this episode brian burton aka danger mouse he had just done the gray album in 2004 now for those who don't remember yes sorry that's what put him on the map do you want to tell us about the gray yeah the gray album it was taking the beatles white album and putting it with jay-z's black album that's right all of a sudden jay-z's rapping over the beatles it was an intellectual property nightmare but it was it was artistic gold at that in that mashup era that we were talking i was just gonna call back to that exactly right so in the mashup era one of the biggest records to come out of it and a breakout in this tech era he could with his laptop and access to the you know material thanks to the internet put together as you put it the acapellas from jay-z with beatles instrumentals and did to great effect they also throw out there that in this in the middle of the 2000s there's so many technologies coming about like you said more and more people have what used to be you know only happening in studios you could do it on your laptop correct and garage band and some of these early changed my life too like absolutely yes but there was also i think it has got to be because i come at this from the dj point of view and at the time it was it took me years to find out some songs had the same bpm because you might think oh that song has such a great vibe and find out that the tempo is actually really slow and vice versa there might be a song that you think is very slow but it's actually about 120 bpm when serato scratch live came out famously you were able to finally not only assign the the computer program could actually discover what the bpm of everything was but then because it was a data point in the line you could sort your songs by bpm and i'm telling you when that happened life-changing 100 dj started djing differently all of a sudden you were like wait a second radio has idiotic is the same speed as miami bass music you can start those two things go together genres absolutely this open format djing was and there was also but i think open format djing was sort of almost it wasn't a result i always say open format djing owes more to the birth of the ipod okay because all of a sudden all your songs you can play through your songs you can shuffle and all of a sudden the beatles are right next to jay-z in a totally different way but specifically with serato scratch live um and i realized that they were kind of different entities at the same time but they both came together to sort of show djs that all these songs had the same bpms that you would never suspect and people just started experimenting and then they started building those mp3s in their computers and i feel like i love this wonderful mashup world come the gorillas what a perfect metaphor to get us back into the song because from one stem to the next we have the ability as as we now know damon auburn was consciously wanting to do to put together different sounds from different genres different worlds to make basically this song doesn't necessarily fit into any one genre as we've been discussing it's got a hip-hop beat and rapping but it's also got this kind of maybe 60s into 70s bordering on like this this yes it's got this that kind of 60s b-52s borderline surfer surf freak very well put all of these things are coming together in one place and the technology is helping to enable that absolutely enable that or ableton so just to wrap up the brian burton of it all the danger mouse so auburn said that he had heard the gray album and he needed a producer he had been working on the first gorillas record it was dan the automator uh dan nakamura and the automator shout out handsome boy modeling school yeah that guy has been at the forefront of just great music for a very long time yeah so he'd been working with him and he needed a new producer so when he heard the gray album he thought to call up brian burton who remember wasn't part of narles barkley or anything this was his big break really was getting because at this moment there was litigation that came from the gray album as much as it gave him a name it wasn't with something that was saleable that he would trust the boomers were not happy yeah the boomers who grew up on the beatles and were working at record labels for jay-z were not happy about the gray album yeah this was a moment that he had that there was a an asterisk next to the fame of danger mouse in this moment so auburn calls him up and he says that this song feel good inc was one of the first things that they did together he says quote it was very instinctive when you don't really know someone and you say do you want to come over and try a few tracks it doesn't really work out this way which i love as a story because i was co-writing before the podcast era and before the djing era i came to la as a co-writer and i would get in a room with strangers every day for three years and there is always this sort of just uncomfortable moment of like well let's make art together stranger so i do understand what he's saying it's like it doesn't always work out that the first thing you make together i love that song like this you know the problem with our with not our podcast but like the idea of telling stories on podcasts is that it makes it seem like every choice that everybody does directly led to that really great thing that they did and we know that the story is written by those successful moments but there are hundreds of oh that's why you just got to keep trying absolutely pockmarked with failure as the expression goes yes hey i'm trying to cover up my podcast oh you were talking about something else well you're failing to do so no don't use that that's unnecessarily mean tension strays i thought it was a safe space you set me up for a joke i couldn't resist so and for his part uh danger mouse says nothing i had done had really prepared me for doing this i just thought it's such a statement but it's like he really was doing mashups and kind of working in an artistic realm he hadn't produced he hadn't gone on to do what he was about to do which in 2006 narls barkley and crazy this already that song took over the planet that was next level yeah that was next i mean you could play it at weddings you could play it for briefly you could play it for like really hip parties with like supermodels from wilhelmina like it was like everybody like crazy that sounds very specific did that happen to you yeah clearly but i was at the time i was hiring the djs for the chateau marmont and the bar momo and we had some very flaws and i was also doing the the standard in new york every so there were a lot of there was some fancy parties pretty fancy i wish i'd been friends with you then me too we could have we could have written some songs i think we could have done some damage back then younger leaner us come on man you would have done some damage i feel like there's a very distinctive clap in this song yeah let's listen to that there's a one bar loop and you can even hear the bleed proving that humans did this oh yeah and i'll add that to the beat it's really it's really on a weird beat it's very 60s that i'm trying to think of a song that does that like i think i think a thousand surf rock songs so that's what we're hearing in the claps and then i'll meet you phil the mcnasties man here we go so that's our beat yeah uh we probably don't know who did the claps either i'm not sure could be damon could be one of the damons what if we find out it's him just smacking his stomach like questlove said he got the claps on next movement go back and listen to our episode on the roots uh the bass guitar another question mark morgan nichols okay uh is the name of a friend of of jamie hewlett yeah and is the live basis or has been the live basis in the past on their songs for gorillas and his song is the live basis for gorillas and his song is the live his name is the bassist okay see that word his name is the basis the name his name is the basis for the virtual bassist because remember that character's name is murdoch nichols which i think murdoch nichols even though he tried to spell it all weird is like the most british sounding like murdoch like rupert murdoch and then the word nichols but it's like kind of cool but you can't that's a british name but he's not credited in the liner notes or in the splits of course we're not sure but let's listen so yeah no deterioration on that i love that slide up to the to the octave there and i hear it doubling a guitar which is a very surf rock very very reggae thing to do very rock steady thing to do yeah the same line being played on both bass and guitar so you get a little more high end you get a little more of that low register and the high end together it's possible also too by the way to play the bass and guitar together by the way because there is a guitar player who's credited simon tong with additional guitar maybe we're hearing him on the doubling there not really sure i will say like that there's something blursian if i can use that blursian uh there's something blursian about that bass i don't know maybe maybe because i knew damon but i could have i could have seen that being in a blur song i love that bass line it's so simple i just love these like really simple hooky um you know lowest string riffs again i don't know i don't know if i've ever heard of it but i don't know if i've ever heard of it again with the b-52s did a lot of them but so did dick dale it's a very 50s like surf rock on london loves you know like again i think that the a little signature bass kind of goes well with damon's style of singing and again we're sort of building that within these layers of stems we have a mix of machine made and human made that was very clearly a human bass and guitar but if you weren't positive we hear the little uh isolated thing at the end here i'll play the whole thing and listen yes that's definitely a human being and their fingers on the strings and the little imperfections and the different right now yeah i learned how to do all those little imperfections thanks to our show we will be inadequate our show is helping them scrape all that human content sorry we don't need sorry future we've heard the drums by the way russell hobbs sounds like somebody who did not get paid by barry christmas i don't know if you've heard the drums by the way russell hobbs sounds like gordon sounds like the guy who was definitely in the funk brothers in in the lore he's supposed to be from brooklyn actually he's supposed to be in the lore because he's a cartoon character right they're all they're all based in fact russell hobbs uh tell us about the guitar all right so noodles right uh right or simon tong who gets credited with additional guitar and by the way simon tong was in the verve he plays guitar on bittersweet symphony oh um and joined blore after graham coxson left in 2002 okay so he's on the thing tank lp and he played live for the demon days tour and by the way he's also in another damon auburn side project which is the good the bad and the queen the good the bad and the queen is damon auburn with simon tong paul simon in from the clash oh wow and tony allen the famous uh afro beat drummer from failakuti's band well fantastic yeah another really cool side project now here is what he is playing yeah and that's a loop we hear that exact same thing again warts and all can i hear where that is i'll bring in some layers so you can hear that in context i just love how imperfect that whole thing is though the sound of it the recording of it sort of in the red the note it's not perfectly tuned and then he does this slide which is a little bit awkward and off but with the repetition your ear just kind of likes it it kind of goes with it and i feel like i'm in you know hawaii it's very hawaiian sounding all right i'll bring in some other elements i'll bring in some other elements Okay, just so we know where it is in the song. Woo! That is. right here that's a little early that is not falling where i would have thought it fell that's pretty outstanding that gives it so much character that quirk the by the way that the non-pro toolsness of that not being on grid is really so much a part of the human the character and that's i think a huge goal of mixing machines and human i think that's a project goal i gotta say if you're working on the little squares yeah you would not think to put the notes there no i'm sorry just so we can have it absolutely clean could you just play the bass and that part playing in symphony yeah in harmony together i love that imagine driving home sunset uh simon tong well done well done well done well done that is something that i didn't really i don't know that i knew to give it flowers in the my 1000 listenings to this song but that is just um that is angelic there's so much beauty in the strangeness of all the choices of what's being played how it's being played the timing of it the sound of it being recorded the rhythm like the whole thing these are choices that only a person would make i i tend to agree the name of the album is demon days yeah but i should i would argue it should be called angel days because that is just beautiful it's so cool as a contrast to to the otherwise locked in rhythm the rest and not the bass and guitar aside just having the drum beat locked in like that it provides a really incredibly not only nice contrast but like essential you know give it it gives the song so much of its character i mean it's very balleric uh if you want to talk like that's a good word british yeah like i still say abitha and i don't know you're trying to be like fancy but like i say like the british say i say abitha uh but it definitely sounds balleric and that kind of fits with the other songs on this album because one of my favorite guerrilla songs of all time is on this album a song called dare with sean rider from the happy mondays ironically and uh he's a man who knows about partying in abitha so i feel like that's in keeping with the general sound of demon days let's listen to the acoustic guitar that comes in during the break or technically the chorus okay that's the part i like and then a little bit later that same thing that same part but it's it's treated a little different is that a different guitar that's an acoustic guitar it might maybe two layered probably certainly a third certainly on top that melody is another guitar and then what's interesting i hadn't noticed it until i was in the stems is when that same part comes in for the second chorus this is the windmill windmill part by the way uh it sounds it's treated a little different sonically let's listen it doesn't have that high pass filter so it's more high five less low five and there sounds like some claps yeah it sounds like it could be the reverb from the clap yeah but not the clap itself yeah you you with reverb what you can do is you have the wetness and dryness yeah if you put wet all the way to 100 basically you can take out the sound source and only have the resultant reverb from it that's a little bit what i'm hearing yeah so yeah that's the guitar line there from somebody's like you know what the claps on a feel-good ink that was me i was clapping for a while in there you know i told him to leave my name off i don't need the glory just for context here uh i'll put the vocals in so you know where we are you know every time you play it i know i'm waiting for those drums to come back in because they come back in like a beast i just want to call attention to this really fun sample that i've always noticed but i don't know what it is now that it's isolated maybe we can get the one song nation on board to figure out where did this come from i'll play it isolated then i'll put it in the mix and you'll be like oh yeah i noticed that before here it is right had you ever noticed that before no i hadn't you'll never unhear that here it is in the mix and it's dissonant it doesn't fit in musically with the bass line or with the rest of what's going on you checked who sampled there was nothing there not on who sampled i looked lots of interviews it's but that very much sounds it's one of two things either we were just talking about portishead this could be simon tong or damon they could have recorded it and made it sound old i would say play that again yeah play that little thing again and let me see let me see if i can shazam it oh good idea because not everybody has the stems and so they can't isolate it so let's see what we got all right shazam tell us what this is ready to go it's very short let's go and obviously that synth stab is can you loop it uh sure i'll try looping it one second i love that rabbit hole i'll loop it without that synth stab which sounds like it was overdubbed over this probably it's probably overdubbed over this probably it's probably it feels like it's a sample because i'm hearing other instruments it feels filtered it's just the top end of a record there's like even a a man talking do you hear that voice there's like a human voice on it there's several things happening there's a guy singing somewhere in there it could just be some old library record whatever it is we're not trying to get them in trouble very used i'm saying it's fair use and i'm a musicologist that you're not going to jail hey man we know music snitch man what the heck was that that was jamaican i never heard that that was clearly an undercover agent trying to sound jamaican then there's another sound that we'll be hearing right after this answering machine let's listen and then i'll explain what it is oh yeah i know this so that sounds you know what that is oh um did we talk you might know what you might you might know it from your childhood you might know it from grade school from like grammar school from like you know from being a kindergartner i don't know you mean the instrument that instrument yes what is that i don't think i know it's um it's called a suzuki omnicord off the rack yes we've talked about this on another episode of the show a while back i think maybe you know you've heard of it you might be right and i can't remember but what it is is it's a basically an electric auto harp it was very inexpensive when it came suzuki you know was was literally a brand a japanese brand they made motorcycles they made motorcycles but a lot of music education as well um and it's a single button i've actually got one here it's called an omnicord it's called an omnicord i've got a vst version of it so i can show you exactly how it works tell the people what a vst is a vst is just a plug-in so here in ableton so with a suzuki omnicord you can just with one finger actually two you can plug in a plug-in and you can plug in a plug-in and you one finger pushes a button and the other one like an auto harp you strum it so i'm not going to strum it here but what i will do is show you strum it no i refuse basically with the one button you choose the character of the chord if it's major minor or a seventh chord and then you can get an arpeggio out of it by strumming so here's an example of just strumming a major chord and then that was with one finger it was playing all the notes in the chord itself the root third basically uh but going up uh several octaves which is why you hear it go higher and higher and higher and now i'll do it for a minor chord that's a d-flat minor and here's a d-flat seventh dominant seventh minor seventh these are all not complicated chords but certainly like i said this is an educational tool so for children the ability to sort of make you know you can basically play a song if you know what chords what finger to go for one note to the next but the root of the chord is you're trying to play with you can play the chord you're just trying to figure out which chords sound good next to each other that's right and the simplest way to put this is this is a way to play a chord with one finger i could have started with that but i didn't that's it yeah that sounded great man so that's the omnicord off the rack and we know that damon aubarn loves the omnicord because the other place that you've heard it before is it also came with a little cheap drum machine and that one of the presets sounded like this that's a preset that's a preset on the omnicord he used the same toy for clint eastwood yeah but just a different you know use of it it's got the same chords but it's a preset so one button gives you all of what i just played incredible and can you use those presets on a song without everybody just aping it so glad you asked let's listen to a song that does that by luxury so let's stay together you there you go i love that you can because i did it and therefore the short answer is yes you can because it's an off the rack instrument just like using a Rhodes you know we've talked a lot about how sounds you know another example of this is the preset from Show Me Love right the M1 keyboard right or like the Mellotron on some of those Beatles songs 100% the Mellotron that we've heard millions of times since the 60s and evokes its use on Strawberry Fields anyone is free to use it it's just a sound that's available yeah that's a pretty good Mellotron nice work I like the hand gesture too that's why you need to watch this show on YouTube yeah you gotta see I'm doing so much with my hands well the song didn't sing itself so let's hear a little bit of the Mellotron a little bit of Damon's singing I would argue it's almost rapping let's hear a little bit of Damon Alberts vocals on the song I love how he's out of breath you know what that is like to my ears as a guy who stepped up to the microphone to do scratch vocals on music I'm working on that's the first time he's ever done it or maybe the second time it's such a scratch vocal the proof of the pudding is besides it's being charmingly imperfect normally you'd go in and overdub that second line so that you don't run out of breath okay can we address that yeah yeah the other though from the room is that I didn't know he was saying feel good I thought he was just going yeah all this time and um I mean a couple of years ago I think I figured out somebody said like he's saying feel good and I was like oh is he I think I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing about me when I like a song I almost never unless it's like you know like some hip-hop you definitely want to know oh wait what did he mean by that and then I'll go on genius or one of these websites or whatever but especially on a lot of like singing songs from my youth all the way up until like the 2000s it never occurred to me to go online and make sure that he wasn't just going you know I was going you didn't know it feels good it feels good it's the title I actually said feel good yeah there's no less I just love he just like runs out of breath but he just he does both parts but like normally you would you would have two people sing that or two takes yeah you would just ensure that they didn't interrupt each other like that well I'm gonna take it a step further I also hear a little bit of like you know he because we know he knows who Fela Kuti is and there's a little bit of that sort of like afro beats not to be confused with afro beats which is more recent but there's a little bit of that sort of like afro beats which is more recent but there's a little bit of that sort of bit of that you know afro beat where it's not so much a word it's just like yeah you know and also this is part two of a two-part episode that we've done about Damon's projects he went from so he's like I just got to take these two syllables that anybody can say and make it work two note melody a two note hook can you name that song can you name that song in two notes yeah I can name that song he goes feel good I can name two Damon Albarn songs in two notes Damon you should just do a song called Damon there's a sinister laugh at the very top of this song can you play it for us a long laugh too tell me that's one of the members of De La Soul it's Maceo it's plug three oh okay all right all right yeah totally I can totally see it and that's the part where I was like yeah you know there's definitely a rapper it's so long that intro it's like a seven second long laugh it might be longer than the Vincent Price laugh at the end of Thriller wait I'm gonna try to laugh that long creaking door sound we talked about just a couple episodes ago this is the Fred Schneider thing it's the talk singing where there's melody in it talk singing not toxicity no talk singing it's there's melody in there and he obviously he goes back and forth there is that's more explicitly melody but the da da da da da da da da da da da da sort of one falling note going down the stairs it kind of mirrors speech but we kind of wouldn't talk like that either so it's somewhere in between speaking rapping and singing it's also got that effect that makes it sound like he's got a tin can with a string up to his mouth that's right yeah he's either using a low-pass filter or it's an inexpensive microphone or it's literally a megaphone or some kind of like you know you can put a microphone in front of a megaphone you know there's lots of ways you can get oh that's kind of cool I didn't know that yeah I could totally see that but it has the effect of old am radio or old telephone right yeah because the we we've cut out all the high frequencies yeah it's just low the dodgers win it's just very lo-fi very lo-fi I love that harmony yeah I don't think I knew that was there I don't think I'd ever really noticed it either it's somewhat buried in the mix you feel it but it's that's that's the only time I think the vocals are so clear as well because his his whole vocal there was also filled and do we know if that's just him singing the higher registers and layering it sounds like a stack of demons it sounds like demons a stack of demons yeah it's a stack of what a gift what a great gift that would be yeah here's your stack of here's a stack of demons for you I know it's your birthday so I bought you a stack of demons um they lost souls on the track can we hear a little bit of they're isolated of course as we always would say R.I.P. True Grey Laffing Dasty's Hazmat! Ha ha ha ha ha don't forget about the laugh contest I'm sorry play that very last that very last laugh okay but listen to David I think by that point Michael Jackson in there that's a more of a feel at all in that one so I don't think I was crazy I was probably just focused on the later who's um and by the way Dayla has always brought a little bit of snark comedy laughter sarcasm biting wick acerbic wit uh to what they do and here nothing nothing unexpected in a good way yeah like there's still Dayla's soul even though they're on this track and even though the first time I heard this I just thought Dale was using different voices but it would have been crazy by the way also I think there was this thought that like hip-hop could only be one thing especially when Dayla came out they helped explode that myth and I love the fact that they were good don't stop get it get it which is Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew don't stop don't stop don't stop oh yeah you wouldn't necessarily think of 2 Live Crew and yes and Dayla's soul getting along but guess what a lot of your favorite rappers actually do listen to more than just the particular style of hip-hop that they perform and by the way Damon talks about like finding this voice for the song he said quote feel good was the beginning of it I really enjoy that voice because it's an opportunity to say some quite bizarre things that I wouldn't necessarily be able to sing about yeah so it gives them another character to play we were going to break down all the lyrics but I think it's important to point out that like the lyrics don't always have to be like interpreted literally yeah you know what I mean I think that we just decided to leave them as they are as it stands these lyrics are more akin to sort of like the the nonsense lyrics in a good way of a David Byrne song and I think that we're going to just leave it at that I think you're right I think they're just stream of consciousness a little bit and maybe the meaning is what you make of it all right we've heard the song how do the splits break down on on gorillas all right well Damon takes 37.5% of the publishing pie interesting splitting it equally with his buddy Jamie Hewlett interestingly who I don't know had much of a musical contribution literally but perhaps just as the inspiration source or maybe lyrically they work together unclear them the waters have been muddied in terms of who did what on this song sure except that we know his co-creator of gorillas Jamie Hewlett got 37.5% amazing and you know what's crazy but I think you know where I'm going with this like an older Damon is taking less of the pie and I think it's because he's gotten older and he sort of recognizes you know nothing happens in a vacuum and why don't I try to split the pie more evenly by the way who gets the last 25% Dave uh Trugoye Jolicoeur yes from De La Soul that's awesome 20% and Brian Danger Mouse Burton gets the last five percent okay well great that's super cool which to me maybe implies that he did have something to do with what sounds very Danger Mouse that bass line guitar part maybe maybe he found that sample maybe he found the sample it's unclear but those are the four names listed in the publishing splits well it should be said that feel good inc has taken on a second life thanks to tick tock like so many songs uh from the past these kids here for the first time gen z is like what's this cool song what's funny is that people are not really using it for the dark corporate dystopia side of the music they're using it for nature videos hiking have you seen this thing where they like rape benches no what is that there's like a thing where like they'll show the bench and then they'll pan over and they'll show you what the bench is looking at okay that's what gets the that's what gets the bench it's rating out of it sure and by the way some of these benches are amazing but they use the windmill windmill part of the song is the part where you whip over i love how things like that need an explanation it's such a thing that was not obvious at all but people be like look at this nice bench with a view 100 out of 10 windmill windmill by gorillas okay whatever also like the scale of one to ten it's 100 um this tiktok trend is basically people finding their own little windmill island a bench a trail a view just a moment outside the matrix and these data centers that we're all going to be slave to and then sharing it on a screen which is very good i know and i think look the same way the gorillas continues to release music uh i think that damon is not finished with this band and thankfully we get to you know we get the benefit of getting new music all right as always you can find us on socials you can find me on instagram at diallo dia lol and on instagram at diallo riddle and you can find me on instagram at lux and on tiktok at luxury xx you can also watch full episodes of one song on youtube and spotify just search one song podcast we'd love it if you'd like and subscribe also be sure to check out the one song spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes you can find that link in our episode description i don't know why i said it like that but that's where i'm going to leave it because we also have a patreon now that's right patreon.com slash diallo luxury that's right and if you've made this far you're officially part of the one song nation show us give us five star review if you can and uh send this episode out to a fellow music nerd it really helps us keep the show going all right luxury help me on this thing i'm producer dj songwriter musicologist and every friday night from 10 p.m till midnight kcrw dj luxury and i'm actor writer director and sometimes dj diallo riddle and this is one song we'll see you next time this episode was recorded at kcrw headquarters engineered by katie gilchrist produced edited and mixed by the one and only andrew gilchrist Eric Hicks.