Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien

0:10Ed O 'Brien spent the last few decades crafting some of the most textured, expansive guitar and modern rock music. From the fragmented beauty of Kid A and Amnesiac, to the experimental layers of King of Limbs, even back to the more straight-ahead sounds on OK Computer, Ed has expanded the guitar's palette. But over the last few years, he's been exploring a universe parallel to Radiohead, one where he's at the center. Starting with Earth in 2020, which he released under the moniker EOB, and now with Blue Morpho under his birth name, Ed O 'Brien. As the album's title hints, Ed found himself in a transformative period of the last six years, and not unlike the striking butterfly the album's named after, came out the other side a new, perhaps even better person, with a gorgeous album to show for it.

0:55On today's Broken Record, Ed takes us through some of the journey of making this album, starting in solitude, playing guitar figures just for his own edification, through writing and eventually connecting with a crew of talented friends to bring the songs to life. Ed also discusses the evolution of his playing over time, the impact Brazil's had on him musically, and which producer he wishes Radiohead had worked with in the 90s. This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations.

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3:19Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Here's my interview with Ed O 'Brien from Amazon Music Studio 126. Sorry, I should have had this test before you got it. No, it's all good. I like that.

3:45cool who's that uh that's the burundi black wow have you heard that no sounds great i put this together it's um the original comes from here

4:09wow

4:17Wow. Burundi drummers. Burundi drummers, yeah. And then it got picked up by this boy. You know Malcolm McLaren. Malcolm McLaren, exactly. And Adam and the Ants. Adam and the Ants. Yeah, that's what McLaren said to Adam and the Ants. You've got to take the Burundi beat and put pop music on the top. And I always wondered if Gary Glitter, did he get it from that? Because this is fucking glam. Oh, hey, rock and roll. Yeah. It's different, but it's not sampled. And it's not quite the beat. But even the hey, it's similar to the original record. It's tribal. Yeah. It's crazy. He's, of course, Persona Non Gratia in the UK.

5:06Well, yeah. He's got some great records, though, that's all. But the sound, right? The sound is great. Unbelievable. I thought it was really corny growing up. When I was going to, like, you know, whatever, games or whatever, and they would play that. But that Kanye track, Black Suedehead? Oh, Black Skinhead. Skinhead. That's obviously, he was listening to, well, there's something going on there, cross-pollination with Gary Glitter. I think he just sampled it. Did he sample it? I think he just sampled it. Oh, did he? Probably. I'm pretty sure. Of course he would. Could be wrong. Yeah, Joni Mitchell did it too.

5:39Did you ever hear that? No. Well, she sampled that. She just took, yeah, she sampled it actually. Gary Glitter. Not Gary Glitter. Burundi. The Burundi. Oh, wow. That's cool. What is that? Hissing a Summer Lawn. She did it on Jungle Line. Wow.

6:01Wow.

6:05It's so cool. Really wild. I don't know this. So beautiful. It's really wild. This album's wild.

6:17I need to listen to this record. Yeah, you'll dig it. Hissing the Summer Lawns. Yeah. It's out there, man. I know of it, but I don't know it. It's out there. I didn't really know it too well until recently. Yeah. It's one of those records. There's a lot of records like that. I know. I love that. I try and I try and I try. I don't know. And then all of a sudden it opens up. up yeah right it's amazing the gift the music yeah which that happened for for i was reading a bit you that happened for you a couple of times right yeah zeppelin you didn't really even get i didn't zeppelin until i remember we were it was that we were touring the bends and i was living on my own came back for christmas finished that and i never heard let zeppelin and i had a girlfriend and she lived in monmouth i went to see her and monmouth is the studio where you know um robert plant used to live in monmouth and i think zeppelin recorded there and i suddenly suddenly zeppelin opened up because we were so tribal growing up i was in like in the alternative goth smiths and you know in the 80s the kids who were listening to zeppelin were all in denim jackets uh leather jackets and you know rockers yeah and it was so you just didn't cross those lines which was such a shame and then zeppelin opened up and i'm i still i mean i i i love zeppelin i mean you know i understand zeppelin in a way i feel it like the spiritual element of zeppelin like i mean is there a better big track ever than kashmir no i mean that's like that's a spiritual like that's a that's like a that is like a himalayan track in terms of you know a peak of musical and sonic power yeah you know it's why i uh i re-listened to that recently i hadn't heard it in a long time and it's just really bugged out you know that live version that they did when they played that one-off gig the armor urtigan they did at the o2 in london in 2007 yeah yeah it's fucking unbelievable i dare i say i think It's got a vibe.

8:19It's more powerful than the record. Really? It's unbelievable. Wow. It's unbelievable. You know, and, you know, just, yeah. What a track. It's like. It's insane. I'll have to listen to that. Yeah, it's really good. I kind of avoided, I want, you know, I was young at that time, but I was like, man, maybe I can get some money and get out there and go see that or something. But it was so, it was insanely expensive. I had a friend out here who won, somehow won tickets through the radio. Yeah. And went, like, won a full trip. it got flown out and i was like so jealous i stopped talking to him i think you know it's pissed i and i i i wanted to go but i didn't pull i didn't play the radiohead card which i probably should have in hindsight as was kind of reluctant to do that and i should have done that yeah maybe i'd still not got a ticket who's to do's to know that that would have done anything well you know i'm sure there i'm well you know and i wonder too to what degree um and maybe you'll know more and i didn't realize that the uk because in america was definitely that segmented um if you were into alternative music or punk or anything like that or even like hip-hop like it was it was hard to cross yeah over into like things that felt more commercial or but i wonder if it cut the other way too like for those guys if they were like who gives a fuck about radiohead in a way you know i'm sure it does and it i mean i think what's what I love about now you know a lot of people kind of it's very easy in the current age to be a naysayer about the culture of music and what's happening now but I see it in my kids and what I love is there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure we grew up with this concept of a guilty pleasure like I remember having to hide stuff that I loved I remember when I was at university when Madonna Vogue came out and I was doing my finals and I was into the stone roses happy mondays pixies by the way and they sort of semi-hit the fact that i love that song but but what's great now is that kids are just like i like that i like that there's no that doesn't seem to be those divisions there's really not and there's a ton of benefit to that dars i think there's some drawbacks what are they that's interesting what do you think the drawback to me is you know i thought about this recently when when um like when uh recent quentin tarantino got in trouble for like shitting on a couple of actors recently oh was it paul dano paul dano yeah yeah that was so cruel it was cruel but you know part of me i started thinking about it yeah irrespective of what you think about paul dano who i think was great and um and and there will be blood yeah it's sort of like you know i started thinking about like miles davis he used to do that or diss people just cuts cut people the fucking ground you know friends even you know and then i started thinking about um do you think people are too nice maybe people i mean i don't want to say that but sometimes the job is to draw is to make it is to make it is to take a stand and to say how you feel and to say how you feel yeah no i get you we were talking about this yesterday about music publications when we grew up we used to have these publications these music mags called NME and Melody Maker and NME was ruthless yeah and they hated Radiohead in the early days they called us a lily-livered excuse of a rock band I'm quoting but you know you'd read that review and it had an impact and it was like it sharpened your act in a bit you go like fuck okay fuck you or I'm gonna fucking show you so yeah there was definitely a little bit of gnarliness or just speaking the truth you're right I think a lot of people are it's interesting it's finding that balance i think you can i think you can what i found for me i like to speak the truth but i like speaking truth with kindness yeah because you know you can also you know like miles is miles he grew up in a toughest toughest era right yeah so he has no it's like only the fittest survive you know in this and there's something to that but also you can lose people along the way and you know it's like i'm really into sport particularly soccer and the generation of soccer players now they're not like 30 years ago which you had that fittest survival it was tough the the great managers very much like i think they follow people like your man phil jackson who coached the bulls right yeah they know how to massage the lakers and the lakers and the lakers yeah oh yeah i'm sorry um but they they're more enlightened and they go okay that guy needs that that girl needs that you know and and i i kind of quite like that i i like i like that we've kind of moved on a little bit more but having said that i you know there it was funny it was but you can bring people down and i listen i'm one of those people as well i need you know i grew up in a tough love era but actually i thrive more when i'm given a bit more support and in my own music i i need that i need i need to know i can do it i'll say i'm that i'm the same way i'm the same way so i i struggle as well yeah and i think the trade-offs are largely probably worth it you know but i do i do think about that i'm like there's probably sometimes you know like the gate the idea of there being no gatekeepers now sometimes is a little like, you know, we're going to arm it again.

13:38Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, maybe some things didn't get through that should have, but I mean, thank God he was there. Thank God. You're right. You're right. And we do. Yeah, it's true. Mo Austin. Some of those old guys. All those old guys. Chris Blackwell, Island Records. Yeah. All these people, like real music, music guys. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of miss that. Yeah. We'll be back with more from Ed O 'Brien. My kids' favorite place in the entire world to be is New York City. They want to go any chance they get, even if it means just accompanying me on a two-night business trip. And this time they want to go to Central Park because we missed it last time.

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16:41sort of a is on the okay compute right the start the okay computer and he traditionally did the he did like the tv and radio uh that went out and one of the djs marianne hobbs who who who's sort of always been a champion of the band she and him were watching that performance and he said he said afterwards to her he said oh i think i need to revisit radiohead and we were really keen when kid a came out we were like please can peel play and i think peel did we never got to do a visit to peel acres which we never did a peel session you didn't do a session no because i think we would have subsequently but he died but i think that we were just we were just not you know the first album was a bit confusing for a lot of people not the least us and we were on a major label he always gravitated towards independent labels and we had a monster hitting creep so that kind of we're immediately nope not having that yeah so it took us a lot it was just i think we just kept on knocking at the door and you know but we could have got in there but yeah but that's okay was was the first record confusing because it was such a hit out the gate and that was confusing no it was confusing well there was that i mean that was a blessing obviously in hindsight because i think otherwise we would have been dropped it was we just didn't know what we were doing that kind of the level of commitment and what it took to the level of seriousness that it required to to do what we were doing and i think i think inevitably i mean some some bands come straight some artists come straight out the box right yeah but we were one that we were still trying to it's trying to find our voice collectively and also Tom lyrically, I think, was trying to find his voice.

18:31So we hadn't got our shit together. Those things can just take a bit of time and you need people to knock you down to find the way as well. You need to find a robustness and you need to look at a few photo shoots you've done and go, like, we look really crap. And you go, okay, we need to wear black. You know, all that stuff. Because you're just saying yes to things and not quite knowing. Yeah, and you don't know what you're doing. and so you you you make these mistakes very publicly and as long as you learn from them and evolve from them that's fine it's the you know so i think we did yeah and we just worked really hard it made us knuckle down even more so the second album comes along it's like okay because people said we were one hit wonders and uh in a way that album is it kind of is that and we were like why every single song on this next album is going to be a it's going to be a tune yeah and it was thank you well it was you know you know you're talking about kind of finding yourselves as a band i'm curious about finding yourself as a guitar player yeah leading up to talking about your new record if you had to look back at the various eras of your playing from the beginning when you first pick it up to now can do you see distinct eras in your playing yeah definitely i mean the first album is really it's very simple i mean we had a we had a we had a if you like a formula which was quiet verses and loud choruses so the loud choruses meant that all three of us tom johnny and myself would stamp on distortion pedals and then the verses would be minimal and also i think in a way that it was very much it was in a way supporting my role in that was very simple i didn't play lead so it was supporting johnny in that respect and it was that was the thing but i always for me it was a little bit one-dimensional you know in terms of my own playing and it was that's the kind of music we were doing then i mean there's a track on their blowout which i played some got a sound and that's when i first sort of got a crazy sound or a sound that was different and sort of riffed on that um and i remember it was on it was really on the second album it started to open up with me we were sort of more interested in you know you get bored of things so that that guitar distorted onslaught became something we use less and less we still used it but it wasn't as it was just we were more interested in textures and sounds and that for me was really I remember we worked on um Planet telex and those guitar sounds were all things i programmed i had you know i had a rack unit a corg rack unit and so i was really into that and then you know okay computer for me it really flowered and it what was interesting about that was that because when you're playing clubs that kind of quiet verse loud chorus thing with distorted guitars works really well yeah you know bang it's in your face yeah well you start getting more success you're playing bigger venues And I remember by the time we're touring 96 between the Benz and OK Computer, I mean, we did these shows in Canada that were essentially our first arena shows.

21:46And these songs, that kind of thing doesn't work so well. And we were sound checking stuff off OK Computer like Let Down. And suddenly, you know, a delayed, clean, delayed guitar sounded so beautiful in these bigger spaces. So I think the sound developed as the venues changed. and because we always road tested new material that was always the point like sound checks just to alleviate the boredom of the road and playing the same songs we would sound check new songs and we would also play them in the set so as the venues got bigger we could use the acoustics of the room and and for me that's when it really you know I think for me okay computer was the moment I really felt like as a guitarist i was sort of finding my stride i think it was very obvious what johnny did um from in a very early stage this incredible lead this powerful lead thing and you know he was able to do stuff that i couldn't i couldn't do that stuff that wasn't in me i i didn't i just didn't do it but as we changed like i became just sort of obsessed with sound and it just sort of developed from there and and you know and a kid a was a another another leap and then you know yeah it was it's been great it's it was great sort of laboratory and the the great thing about radiohead was it was you know the weirder the sounds the more encouragement you got yeah from from the from from everybody you know and it was always trying to i mean lots of the weird sounds never got in but it was trying to get this stuff sounded i mean i i've always loved sound i you know you realize what makes you tick and sound is something that i sound for me is very visual you know and when i connect with something i connect sonically but i connect it very visually and um that's what yeah that's what that's what floats my boat really did you always know that was was it always clear to you the sound it's interesting yeah looking back i mean like why did i want to pick up the guitar i mean i heard the beatles i've you know they've had amazing music exposed to in the 70s through top of the pops this british uh this tv show it's amazing weekly tv show but it wasn't until i heard the police and it was specifically the track walking on the moon by the and andy summons guitar playing and the sound of the track has got this all this reverb delay and it was suddenly what i loved about it was that track sounded as if it was recorded on the moon how i imagined it would be i could feel like the moon and so i think it had that lilt yeah like whatever yeah they did the role in space echo famously you know and also the the the echoplex stuart copeland put put delay on his drums the the the space echo believe and andy somers had an echo put it on his drums yeah i didn't know that yeah he did he went there's a great i've seen this lovely footage though they went to manny's in new york and bought a load of gear and he bought a space echo and you know stuart copeland's drumming with a space echo on man it was like killer that's wild yeah really wild and he played in live so he must have played differently yeah that's right but he had the monitor he'd have it with him so in the studio so he was actually the monitors it was coming through so it's just extraordinary stuff yeah and of course they would have got that through the reggae and the dub influence right you know the space echo being a really important part of the you know dub and reggae arsenal so yeah i think it was it was those and then and then i was very lucky because i grew up in an era of post-punk which was really um so creative yeah and you had players like john mcgeoch who was this he played with you know magazine and susie you know susie and the banshee's great you know juju all the spellbound and stuff like his he was next level and then he went on to play with leiden and pill and and all that stuff and then he played with public yeah he he i think he joined he was in a band after after susan banshees he went to he formed a band with richard jobs jobson from the skids called the armory show all right not great and then but then he joined what a letdown yeah but then he joined an incarnation of pill and he did there was that album is it with happy on it and really good it's like the um really good yes it has that's like the is everybody happy yeah he played on that yeah he played on that yeah and it's mcgill it's like classic mcgill playing um did you ever get to did you ever susie and susie and the banshees is a there's such a mystery to me but i love them yeah did you ever get to meet he passed away but did Did you ever get to meet him?

26:32No, but I think Susie, Tom said that when we did the shows, the radio shows last year, Susie came to the London show and thinks she's friends with Tom. I mean, she's just the queen. Yeah. The queen of punk. Absolutely. Yeah. One of my favorites. Yeah, no, and she did that, had a beautiful, you know, she graduated from the school of punk and went on this incredible journey. So, yeah, again, deeply creative. Yeah. so back to so sound turns you and it's tech it's and when you say sound is what does it for you it's more tech it's all music sound but it's more it's the texture yeah the texture and the texture of it and i'm really i don't like i mean one of the things on my album was i don't like i'm always trying to un-digitize it i don't like it when it's too clean my particularly on this record i had this i was really sort of kind of obsessed with that era of recording from about 68 69 to 73 74 and particularly for me what characterized that was you had the move from sort of analog but you were getting transistors in the amps and some of the components which gave you clearer top end so i'm thinking in terms of recording so miles in a silent way you know mini ripperton any of the you know charles stepney stuff you know we were with earth wind and fire yesterday were you yeah oh my god they were here yesterday wow wow right we're talking i played i played them the demo that charles stepney did of um that's the way of the world that's the way the world that's where the world chart like it was a charles stepney demo first and i played they were like kind of like they hadn't heard it way back then wow philip bailey was like i think it had like a like a latin kind of flavor to it and then like i put it on he's like oh yeah that's the thing i heard way back before we cut it it was it kind of was like it was nuts well they were like i mean i mean earth wind and fire there's there's there's a lot to say they were the greatest group ever you know i know a lot of people say like the beatles were but i i would i would hit back with earth wind and fire and slime the family stone you know something about those three not too dissimilar either and just though like you know the greatest you know they they they're like stevie wonder maybe stevie wonder Oh, well, you know, he was a solo act.

28:46A solo act. Listen, I was saying this just now at KCIW. Has there ever been an artist who's had a greater run of albums than Stevie did from like 68 right through to hotter than July in 1980? Yeah. Nobody has. Hotter. People forget about hotter than July 2. That's unbelievable. It's a killer. Unbelievable. I remember seeing, what was the single of it called? Well, there was... Jammin'. Jammin'. Jammin'. Master Blaster. Master Blaster. Holy shit. when that was on top of the pops i remember like and stevie had the the dreads with the beads yeah and like like i didn't know all the stevie's i was a kid so i didn't know stevie's stuff before that but you know i i remember actually the joy of discovering stevie like in properly in 1992 and like inner vision what there talking about for you know first fulfilling this first finale you know it's just unbelievable so yeah i mean i think in terms of bands though yeah i mean sly and earthman and fire the beatles like i mean just you know take your pick on whatever mood or day you want right yeah and not sit not just because you're here yeah radiohead might slip in there somewhere it may not have been long enough if we're in the b-list we could the c-list the d-list of that lot i'd take that as long as but there's a there's a similarity i guess the the parallels would be really tight i don't even want to say that but just really great songs just great songs like just song songs seem to come first yeah and then i mean not just i was talking to earth when fire about that yesterday it's because yeah it's like their arrangements were so wild on earth wind and fire songs but the songs did not get lost ever like you were you knew even as a lay person you knew exactly what was happening and where it was going yeah but but there was something way crazier happening underneath and that's the beatles that's sly that's that you know the other ingredient yeah family that we're all family you know like my my radio heads band of brothers sly family stone family yeah earth wind and fire family how many whites you know yeah they're family they become families and like families they argue and they do all of that but there's a lot of love and and i think that i think that is because music is magic you know that the medium we work in is it it's there's you know as quincy jones used to say like you know you wait for god to walk through the room you know and there is that and that's what there's the magic of that how do you summon god well first we have to work hard spirit that's a given but the second thing And I think spirit comes through you when it can see the love.

31:22And the love doesn't have to be your old Pali. The love is just, it's there. It's like a brotherhood, a sisterhood. Well, Maurice, why? I mean, like, what was he trying to do? He was trying to make sacred music, essentially, right? Move, shift the consciousness of the world. Yeah. That's spirit. So we're all conduits. That band, when they're in it, they're working as once. I mean has there ever been a tighter band than than Earth Wind and Fire they didn't have any click tracks and they're in it but they were they were co-creating with Spirit yeah so I think and and the Beatles you know definitely were as well I think there's that element is as I understand it kind of from the inside that's a huge part of now my brothers in the band might go what are you talking about okay you know but that's what i feel and that's kind of i know i feel these are really good i hate i hate segues that are too good but incantations is the first right then we're after so i feel like maybe we should listen a little bit yeah

32:40Thank you.

33:09Here comes the fear And the ghosts of long ago

33:23And all these years I'm still running from it all

33:36And all fall down Falling deep into the hole

33:49And with the words Can't feel anything at all

34:04It's a cool change.

34:41Good sub.

34:50Nice sub on that, Sistan. It's great. It sounds so good. I'm hearing stuff. I'm hearing stuff I didn't hear before on the stream. It's amazing, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Talk about textures. There's all kinds of textures. There's so much. The range, the dynamism of that is wild. How did that song come about? That comes, that was when the first shoots of this album were really from a very dark place. and I fell into this this sort of very dark depression which I sort of have reframed it and it was like a dark night of the soul and that was one of the songs during this process one of the things I did I had a daily practice which was literally just pick up my guitar and play go to this little room it was in the second lockdown and I would play for three hours and it was just therapy and that was one of the songs one of the musical motifs so the the cyclical guitar riff sort of emerged in one of these sittings.

35:59And when I heard it, I was like, oh, that's the place that I am. I felt like I was in this labyrinth. I was stuck in this labyrinth. I didn't know how to get out of this place. And you know the story of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Theseus gets thrown in the labyrinth, which is this maze that was constructed by King Minos of Crete, Midas of Crete and there was a beast in there and in order to get out he had to slay the beast but you'd get lost so nobody had got out and the king's daughter had fallen in love with him and her name was I think her name was Ariadne and Ariadne had this thread that she gave to Theseus as he as he was descended down and so he had to follow this thread out but on the way he also had to slay the minotaur this half man half beast so i that was literally so that it's funny with music what i've kind of what i think is extraordinary about the medium music is that you know music is essentially maths it's mathematical intervals in patterns yeah and that this music can come out that of of of you or it's you know i don't know how it happens and it somehow manages to capture the emotion of where you are at that time so that was a a really dark place and for me that was always the opener of the album and you know the whole idea of incantations was i had this feeling that i i spend a lot of time in in in wales in our houses in wales and it's in the hills there and it's it's it's very wild countryside it's very ancient and there's a power in this land you can feel it and I had this image of like so a lot of the time I go walking in the in these ancient old trails that like thousands of years old and you could feel it but I could feel the power of the land and I felt that was healing me so I felt incantations like spells and ancient you know it's very Celtic a lot of you know Celtic spirituality they invoked spirit and and my image was of that Shakespeare play Macbeth the three witches around the cauldron in this wood and the cauldron's bubbling and there's a fire and they're they're they're delivering spells like a total total bubble and trouble and i had this thing of like the earth is going to heal me you know she's going to heal me and so that's that's what i was sort of throwing into the mix of this dark place and it was yeah it's sort of you know it's funny how these things emerge and it wasn't a conscious thing i wasn't like the thing about this record was it wasn't I wasn't controlling it in a way it just comes out and my job was to not get in the way my job was what is this yeah I didn't know what I I knew I kind of didn't know where we were starting and I didn't know where we were finished but I knew when we were finished yeah you know I knew it's okay this is but that was what's so beautiful about this whole process was just letting go what is this so but it started with just you in a room yeah and a guitar yeah and slowly became a little more yeah it really got to a stage whereby and i was working with paul epworth and riley mcintyre and paul's a brilliant co-writer and so we would sort of work stuff up in my studio and in his studio the three of us and then it gets to a time when i need to get musicians in i need to get a band in so my great he's my brother deva kumu he's a solo artist in his own right he played on my first record i've known him for a while i went to see his band play at the roundhouse in london his band the seven gens david kuman the seven generations seven gens and it was mesmeric and i saw it it was just at the time that we were i think i need to get a band together and you finding a musical family is not easy right yeah and it's okay so i was like dave can you put a band together and he said how about the seven gens i said i'm in so these incredible players eve fernandez on bass dan c on drums crispin frown percussion nick ram on keys and esca who became a she's she's a vocalist for for dave as well she became a really important part of the whole project so i sort of borrowed his family and we had three days of recording and it was just kind of a utopian recording experience these guys are so good and they got the the vibe was the song we would i remember that song was the first song we we did and we so i think we did it on a monday everybody gets and we start playing 11 and i remember riley because i kind of primed i said listen and he knew the musical references i said i i want it to sound like you know i want it to sound like that era 68 73 i don't want it to sound too digital it's not be clean i kept on saying there's you know this there's got to be dirt under the fingernails here you've got to feel the earth yeah you know you got to feel that you know you got to feel the saturation i was really influenced you know who does it obviously really well is um inflow and danger mouse all the work they did with michael kiwanuka right i love the saturation i love the sound of those records great records right and so riley knew and so i remember just we we've gone through a couple of takes and just you know settled down everyone have a cup of tea and riley played me monitor mix i was like shit okay we've got the sound the playing's good it was amazing and in paul's studio which is which is an old church yeah a holy space was just kind of magical wow it's an old it's an old church that he yeah he's on his property well no it's in crouch end in london it was originally owned by dave stewart of the arrhythmics he owned it and then and actually radiohead we recorded some Voco computer in there back in 97.

41:47Wow. And then he sold it to David Gray. And then Paul bought it off David Gray, I don't know, in about 2013, 2014, when Paul, because Paul was a co, you know, he worked with Adele and co-wrote Rolling in the Deep and produced that. Right. So he put all his good fortune into this amazing studio and has got the best gear and has just made it this incredible space. Wow. Two studios there. And he came from Block Party? Yeah, that's right. Paul came from that background and then he found himself to be, he like was producing Florence and the Machine, Adele, you know, and then went on. He became like the A-list producer.

42:27Yeah. You know, and went down, plowed that furrow for a while. Must have been nice to get back to this a bit though. Yeah, I think it was good. You know, what was lovely about it was we connect. I mean, you know, when I worked with Paul, I wasn't working with him because he was the A-list producer. Yeah. I work with people, I realize this, I work with people that I love. You know, I can't do it with people I don't love. Why? Because it's such a personal thing making, you spend so much time with them. And I'm just like one of those people. I'm a heart person. So Paul and I connected, you know, you know those moments in life when you talk to somebody, we spoke on the phone before we'd ever met.

43:08We were, we're off and running for an hour. and and it's like a it's like a soul connection and so i think it was great for both of us it was great for me because he's an incredible songwriter so it was great to bounce stuff ideas off him and he you know he he solfegeo the track solfegeo he started that he initiated that so it was really you know because when you work on when you're a solo artist you need you need people to riff with that the more ideas the better yeah so yeah it was really amazing working with him did it ever did you ever find it getting too far from where you wanted it and you had to move it back or i didn't know i didn't know where we were going so i was embracing it all and i it was very much i very much i'm gonna use that word leaning into but i'm really leaning into serendipity and synchronicity because i have a i have a very strong spiritual practice and what's been beautiful about this journey is that i have this utter conviction and i know that you have everything around you're given everything around you in order to evolve you have all the circumstances all the things you give so when you meet people and chance seemingly chance happenings or occurrences you know are given to you there's often things there So I really lent into that.

44:30And if the music wanted to take a left turn, we just followed that. And I didn't worry. What I was good about was I would flag out, I would say, okay, I'm not feeling this. But again, what's been really, I had a, again, one of the things I learned on this record was in the past and certainly where I've come from, if you flag up saying, I'm not feeling this. the the onus is to find a solution it's go i'm not feeling this but we should do this yeah and i i was just like i was like not into that i was like i'm not feeling this but i don't know what to do and leaving the space that you don't know you don't have the answer yeah because i think the ego wants to go i know how to sort this out this is how what we do this is the way forward But what I do is I would just like, I'll go, Paul, Riley, I don't know why I'm just not feeling this.

45:27And it's almost everyone can tell in the room and go, well, I don't know. And what was so amazing was within an hour you'd found the solution. But the solution, like the rift that emerges, it comes through you. So what I feel like it is, is you're leaving room for spirit to go, OK, I've got the solution. And you just pick it up. OK, it's that. So it's all part of the process of letting go. And that for me is why I mean, I've gone up another love in in creativity and recording because the less I know, I feel the richer it becomes or the less input or the less I have solutions. I just it's like, oh, it wants to go this way.

46:11And I love that because that's where you get surprises. Yeah. Rather than like imposing your own rigid idea of what it should be. i'm not into that i'm like i don't know what this is let's see what it is you have the things that you resonate with like you point out like i love this sound and you know and we did a whole thing spent a couple of days like listening to music that you know from that era and also kiwanuka and a lot of salt stuff we're going like i love this i love the sound of that and so you build up like a a mood board of sounds and kind of flavors and then you go but that again is intuitive and what's intuition it's like following another thread yeah so it i i i really love that whole kind of yeah like i said letting go is just it's just amazing it's interesting listening to you talking and i'm just i'm realizing as i'm thinking this through i mean art really is one of the few spaces in life where getting lost is a virtue yeah and i think what you know when i heard a someone say a definition of an artist it's like it's really following your intuition yeah and i think that's so amazing because you know the mind can go what's so interesting the mind will go the mind is the some some parts of all your experiences so your mind says you can do this you can do that you can't do that so it's kind of limiting but your intuition i was this intuition though and your mind can only see what's in front of you the intuition can see around the bend and And the intuition can also see your arc, your journey of life.