531 - Risks that Land Big Jobs, Be Your Own Client & Find Your Sound with Composer Oli Julian

0:00Being an artist, a lot of it is about having a point of view, having something to say. However, that is kind of easier, harder than it sounds, actually. Easier said than done. How do you know what you want to say? How do you pick something? How do you find something that resonates deep enough with you to put it into some art that you spend time and energy on? This is especially difficult for those of us that got our start in more of a client work capacity. How do you move from someone kind of telling you, this is what it needs to say and you got to bring it to life, to you got to start it from scratch?

0:40It can be, even if you're used to that, it can be easy to get to a point where you're like, I don't even know what I want to say. Today on the show, I've got Ollie Julian. Ollie Julian is a composer for TV shows like Sex Education. He just did the soundtrack for the movie The Twits, which is based on a Roald Dahl book, and it's on Netflix. We just watch it with our kids. The soundtrack is just so good. It's super silly. And a lot of cool, fun stuff is going on in that music. And also David Byrne from Talking Heads did two of the songs on the project, which is kind of nuts. I was pumped to talk about Ollie because he's coming from this background where he is making work.

1:24He started working in like jingles and advertising and stuff and moved into TV and movies and finding his way both as an artist and then coming to making his own album and working on that and going back to square one where he has to start it from scratch so we talk about that a little bit we get into taste and sensibility how you get in touch with the things you've always loved and then push yourself into new territories we also talk about interpreting your daydream because he's worked on these projects with people like nick cave and david byrne and that's like some dream level stuff, but it didn't play out in the way that he might've thought it would when he was a teenager.

2:03And so if you struggle with this feeling that you're not living your dream, you're not doing the thing that your childhood self wanted you to do, there might be something in that that you can interpret and make into reality and make make sense. And I think there's some, I think Ollie's path speaks to that a little bit. So tons of really great stuff in here. Hope you love this chat with Ollie Julian And also, I will be back at the end with our creative call to adventure. Of course, our CTA is called Make It Brief. And it's a little exercise and activity to help you find out what you want to say in your work.

2:40So stick around for that. But without further ado, here's my chat with Oli Julian. On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk

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3:42Still loving my Quince button-down shirt. I feel very legitimate when I wear it. I have been eyeing their affordable cashmere collection for Sophie's birthday that's coming up. Don't tell her that. And we got Quince's European linen sheet set. And let me tell you, nearly every night when we go to bed, Sophie says, I love these sheets. It's like our new nighttime ritual. They're soft, cozy, and the material just feels real and whole and homey. Very cozy for winter nights. Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash pep talk for free shipping on your order in 365 day returns now available in Canada too that's q u i n c e.com slash p e p t a l k free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash pep talk as I was kind of diving into your story I found out that one pivotal moment in your creative journey was Eternal Sunshine, right?

4:49Oh, yes, it was. Yeah. When I was, I can't remember when that movie came out. I feel like it was like 2001 or something, or maybe around then. Yeah, I think it was in like 2000 to 2005. It's in that era. Yeah. And I just remember being, you know, I think I must have been about 18 at the time and just thinking that was the moment that I I realized that film scores didn't need to be like all John Williams and orchestras and yeah which I love obviously but um they it reflected a bit more my sensibility and what I can do musically and I just had a thought oh hang on a minute I can I might be able to do this and obviously we take it for granted now that film scores are uh or anything instrumentationally anything anything you like um but i feel personally like that's fairly in the last 20 years that's happened i don't know i think i feel like a lot of scores if they weren't orchestral in in the in the 80s and 90s then they they weren't necessarily that good or they were you know what I mean yeah and so um yeah I feel like it's it's great that I've sort of grown up in an era where that can happen and that yeah um so yeah that was that was a pivotal moment for me realizing that this this career path was was possible with my skills as it were and the composer on that did you already know about John Bryan entering that or was that your first kind of introduction to him?

6:31Exactly. Yeah. That was my first introduction to him. So yeah, it was all, it was all new. I feel like he should be a household name and I, because he's just so brilliant and I, that that's probably my favorite movie. It's probably my favorite soundtrack. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of ridiculous. I'm all time. Maybe. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan. It It was a pivotal moment for me too, because I was probably like 16 or 17. And I also feel like I saw Ace Ventura too young. Like I was probably like seven when we went to the movies and saw that. And that like defined almost the whole, my whole childhood up until around seeing Eternal Sunshine.

7:14I was like, oh, okay. It wasn't that simple, but I do think it ushered in a more creative era of like, you could be interesting, not just a dumbass. yeah so i had that i also thought i could just grill you on like why does elephant score or row or elephant parade why do these things make me feel so many feelings but um i know you probably can't answer that can you i can't really answer that i think yeah it's it's it's always specific to the person isn't it but um um but yeah i just think it's all our internal sensibilities and and and what we respond to. But did you, when you were watching that, was it really like a thought that occurred to you of like, this is different?

8:08Yeah, I think so. I think I thought, I think it's because of the, the production style. And I think it was because up until that point in movies, I haven't really heard the kind of production style that I was starting to do in my own music also reflected, you know, messing around with tape machine sounds and slowing things down and just just and also things being incredibly simple and almost childlike in their delivery. it was just a world that I was like oh yeah and because it was only around when I was about early 20s that I realized that you you know you could even um you know what writing music for picture really was um and how less is so much more often when it comes to scoring to picture and I think it's still a lesson that I'm still learning to do less.

9:14Might not necessarily want to listen to a soundtrack of that over and over again, but it really works creatively with what's going on on screen. Before this, like growing up as a kid and a teenager, did you have music or creative dreams before that kind of side quest? oh yeah i mean i wanted to be a rock star yeah uh like every kid probably you know i was started off as a as a drummer um and i played in all of the school bands and things and as a drummer at my school anyway you were in um you were in demand if you were a drummer because i think that was only me for a long time so i was in all of the bands the jazz band the brass band the orchestra and everything and so i i i got a lot of experience playing and i was in my own like bands in school with friends and so yeah i had ambitions i started writing around that time as well so i got i had a four track and i used to just overdub myself i taught myself the guitar and i'd overdub myself singing and playing guitar and playing drums and any instruments i could find and so the kind of production thing which is probably as part as part of what I do in terms of how I create the soundtracks that I do just as much as the writing is it's kind of all what all is one that started off when I was at school as well when I was a teenager I I was writing and I guess producing myself fairly early on and friends and things.

11:02And so that was what made me think, oh, yeah, I'd like to actually be a musician or a performing artist of some kind. But then I ended up not doing that for a while because I thought I'll get a real job and went to university. but then after university I kind of realized that I couldn't not do music as a career so that was when I did a music production course and then I ended up working in London in a music production company doing jingles and adverts and that kind of thing. And what did you go to university for? Originally to do languages I was I did German and Spanish and then but I just I got to the end of that and thought i don't want to be a translator or as much as i love language and i just couldn't see a path that was uh that was gonna be you know for me personally interesting enough yeah and i just had and all through that time i'd been performing writing recording and i was like i still want to do it and so i i thought yeah i'll you tried to get it out of your system and you're like no i can't i gotta yeah yeah i've just got to give it a give it a shot you know and see if it goes anywhere um and so i yeah i just went to london which is where you have to go unfortunately a lot of time this is a leap but it kind of relates to what i was going to ask you about interpreting translation that those are the things i was thinking about where i think a lot about in my own path and then the paths of creative people that I really respect and watch how they get to interesting places.

12:51And it feels like there's an interpretation of a daydream in the same way that your dreams at night don't make any sense unless you had an interpretation of them. It feels like your childhood dreams are kind of similar to that. Because if I could show Ollie at an early age, like, hey, you're going to do projects that are, that involve David Byrne and Nick Cave, you probably would have had a pretty specific idea of what that would have looked like. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. I was funny. I was rooting through, uh, some old boxes the other day of my old, like school things, like from about 30 years ago, when you do like a careers advice thing and it told me what I, what I should get into.

13:42And it was like the three, the three things it said was music, media and marketing. And now I was like, all right, well, turns out that's pretty much what I've done working with music in media and currently talking to you about it. Yeah. Kind of prophetic. So I guess my first question is about this is like, how do you go from studying languages to getting into jingles and doing that stuff and then then that is still a huge leap from what you're doing today how does that happen well it was kind of like a uh a u-turn after the after the languages degree and i i did my master's in music production uh but I came out of the masters and essentially had to start from the you know the bottom as it were start from square one and I became a runner a sound studio in London just a mixing studio I didn't do any um sort of writing or anything like that and and I just still didn't really know what i was doing um but then i ended up getting an interview with a uh a company called soundtree who do a lot of um adverts and and things and i became a runner there making tea and you know doing doing starting at the bottom um and eventually i managed to crack an advert pitch and became a staff writer, as it were, on full-time staff writing and was there for about six or seven years.

15:30It was great because I could afford to live in London and work as a salaried employee writing music, which was, you know, the dream. I got my first TV gig with a director called Ben Taylor who ended up has gone to direct um sex education and catastrophe and all these great shows and renegade now and i've worked with ever since that was the moment i went freelance and then just essentially started focusing on tv and i did a load of sitcoms in the uk um yeah it's quite a small industry in the UK and, and everyone kind of knows each other. And so you, you'd get a job on the back of another job. I spent a few years doing that.

16:18And then, and then I've slowly got into like doing longer form and more films recently and more into drama. The two things that I'm still questioning or don't fully have a grasp on are uh one how you go from creatively how you go from making stuff on your own being in bands to being able to score a movie and and do like that just seems like this huge evolution i know it probably there are a lot of ways in which your sensibilities are similar or they they you know kind of evolved over time, but that's, it seems like a huge leap. And the reason why I want to like drill down on that is sometimes when I'm, uh, talking to music friends, they get really, they feel very entrenched in the original dream of being the rock star.

17:18And they don't really see a path for them to do anything else. And you saw how these things could happen in a different way. A lot of people I think have a closed fixed mindset about what's possible like i don't think a lot of people in your shoes that had the background that you had could see that path and maybe it was incremental and it didn't feel crazy or or what but did you have like yeah maybe you could speak to that yeah i didn't know that I was going to get to this point I didn't even think I necessarily wanted to get to this point I I mean all I knew was I well on one hand it was great that I started off in ads because it's you have to be so versatile and it becomes less about you and what you write and more about you having the skills and as a craftsperson to to write in any number of different styles and turn out turn out music quickly of quality standard that's kind of that workman like sort of sensibility was drilled into me over a long period of time yeah but and then on the other hand i think i just wanted to do longer form things every time because creatively i wasn't satisfied doing a 30 second piece of music yeah after doing you know hundreds of those you're like I really want to do something that's at least a minute or I really want to do something that's three minutes I want to do something that's like a half hour sitcom or whatever like you your your expectations grow and your ambitions grow for me it was like that anyway I just creatively wanted to do longer and bigger things um to the point where now I've just done the twits and it's my the biggest most ambitious thing i've ever done in terms of the amounts of music i mean i counted it up there's like there's 66 minutes of my music in that film yeah it's quite a lot yeah and then um and it sounds great by the way oh thanks very much it's full and fun and and yeah i love the love the sound yeah well and and also it's it's biggest in terms of instrumentation and orchestral scale and all of that stuff that I've never had the the budget or the or the canvas to do before yeah um so so yeah I think for me personally it's just it's every step stage of the way I've just seen a little bit further over the creative hill as it were and gone oh that looks interesting over there I'll go there and yeah that's how it's progressed I love that.

20:11There's kind of two things that I think are unusual about that, or maybe not in the cliche of what a creative does, but I think that they're inspiring. inspiring one is um i was just listening to this episode of cal newport's podcast uh and it was called the lincoln protocol and he's talking about how abe lincoln how his journey from where he started like working on the farm to being the president and being this famous president and that really it was not a huge vision it wasn't this huge goal it was literally like okay if i read these books i don't have to work on the farm anymore and then they quit working on the farm If I read these books and do these things, I could be a lawyer and I do that.

20:54And then I could actually run for Congress. And then it's just this little incremental thing that happens over time. And I like, I don't, I think it's probably the first time I've ever heard a musician kind of quantify their music contribution in minutes. Like, you know, it's so funny, but it works. Like it worked for you. Like to think about like, Hey, I want to do something a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. It works for me. Cause I'm, I mean, I feel like in this business, there's, there's people like me who maybe works at it for a long time. I kind of split people up into like the craftsman approach and then the, the artist approach.

21:38And I'm very much, you know, if you want me to build you a table, I'll make you a table and I'll, I'll, I'll do it well. And you'll light the table. might take a few rounds of comments from you but i'll make you a really nice table there's skill involved but you're not there's like that's kind of where where i've come from musically yeah um whereas you get obviously you know composers like johnny greenwood for example i'm just thinking of artists who are established artists already recording artists who you'll go to because you want johnny greenwood for your movie and and that's a very different thing like people do come to me because of me but that's usually because they know who i am and they know my sounds now and that kind of thing but it's a slightly different approach and i think there's a lot of people who present themselves as recording artists who then want to score a film and they might be thinking how on earth do i do that how do i get into that field yeah and for me it's been a it's been a long road and one which is you know only been a bit at a time as it were I think there's different ways of getting into this industry and and doing this job um and then both are valid it's just um I can only really speak to one of them sure and and I think that my perspective on those two routes that you just laid out are the you know the artist versus the craftsperson and then the mix of both I think that being a Johnny Greenwood my only issue with that as someone to try to learn from is it feels like trying to financially plan by winning the lottery because you happen to be a genius or you happen to be in the right place at the right time and all these different you know it's not a thing that's easy to really take many takeaways from and that's why i think like when a lot of people watch like music biopics and that sort of thing creates all of these yeah and like an occult kind of like witchcrafty i don't know just like this is superstition about the way that this comes together versus uh what i like about what you're describing with crafts like having a craftsmanship attitude um like i've thought about how that for me creative state is similar to like a sleep state like it's not a thing that you can force, but you can do things that allow it to happen, to be more likely.

24:26And I think one of those things is things we think of as creative. Like I think of drawing as creative, but really it's like an act I'm doing. And then sometimes, or it's a craft I'm doing. And then sometimes that, and that is the space where I'm likely to slip into a creative state, but I don't actually need it to happen to make something because I have the craft side. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, I mean, I've got young children and one thing that really kills my creative state is tiredness. Me too. And I can't write music when I'm tired. I just, I really can't. And that's like a prerequisite for me to be able to write new things is to not be knackered um I can come in turn the computer on move some things around the screen and and turn some things up and down but that's that's just that's just technically doing my job it's not really creatively writing if you know what I mean there's yeah writing is literally five percent of my job and there's there's so much other stuff to being a composer because you're essentially running your own business your own head of department doing all these other jobs at the same time the actual essence of it is very is a very small percent but you need like say you need to access that and create the conditions for that to happen um otherwise you don't have anything that's that's that's your usp yes exactly um yeah so i i i definitely i'm always trying to make sure the conditions are right for for my creativity to me it sounds like a kind of creative hero's journey where you start in pop rock music and artistry and then you go into this world that's maybe foreign or not really what you intended in the jingles and the crafts and you know that sort of like like you said getting outside of yourself and learning the instrumentation and all that do you feel like like listening to the twits soundtrack now and knowing the stuff that you're working on now it seems like it's a full circle in terms of now you have this space where your artistry is coming into the forefront does it feel like that do you feel like that's where you're at a little bit in a way yeah i mean i'm i'm incredibly lucky and incredibly privileged to be able to say that yes i feel like that yeah um i've had imposter syndrome since the beginning and i still have imposter syndrome right i don't think that ever goes away me too um but the i have confidence enough now that i've been doing it long enough that that i know that imposter syndrome is just me and it's I can still I can I can do my job I can write things that people want to listen to and want to buy so yes whether or not I see myself as a an artist or not I don't I don't know I still I still see myself as a I see myself as a very creative you know hard-working craftsperson who can who can deliver what you want i mean it's funny i'm trying to write my own album at the same time at the moment that's a real full circle yeah it is and it's and it's because i've been doing you know music to brief for so long um essentially that uh and now i've got yes i've got space to write my own stuff and i'm like what do i even sound like when i'm not writing to picture or to someone else is brief like what is and it and it is very similar to what I was doing when I was 15 and that's that's kind of funny um but also unsurprising in a way yeah um but it yeah but it's hard because you like it's a whole different mindset to to write your own music without anyone asking you to do it in any way um and i know a lot of people friends of mine and composers who work in this industry also find writing their own stuff quite a struggle and that again that's the thing about the the two different routes into the industry if you're already a recording artist you do your thing you know your thing uh and that bit of the and then when you get asked to like hey write to this thing a lot of people in that scenario are like i don't know how to do this no and then they get fired and people call me exactly yeah and that's which happens quite a lot so um it's kind of um yeah it's two different skills and you have to it's quite hard to be really good at both of them yeah i think there's a temptation i see a parallel there to where i was when i was trying to i'd spent my whole career working on illustration as like client work.

29:48And then at some point did a shift to start writing my own books and working in picture books and stuff like that. And so there was a real crossroads moment. And I think there's a temptation to be like, oh, this is just a different person that knows how to do this. Like, and I know a lot of artists that start in design or illustration or in music on the ad side or the licensing side or whatever. And then bridging that gap feels really impossible. But at the same time, I found now that it's, now they like, they play off of each other. So a lot of my books end up getting me different client work and I'm bringing that kind of sensibility there.

30:32And there is like a, it kind of reminds like, like the client stuff got better from being able to do that in a, in a way that I relate to when an actor writes a movie and writes their own role and kind of says like, this is who I am. Um, then they start getting cast as that kind of thing because they've, they've put it in their mind. That has happened a lot for me when I'm able to find authorship in my own side projects. Like I get better jobs. Um, but finding when you haven't been used to being the starting point it's pretty difficult have you found have you found your way in do you feel like yeah i mean i've just it's funny i i've just done a tv show um they called leonard and hungry paul on bbc which is narrated by julia roberts yeah she's a big fan of the book i was noticing how the kind of thing that i was doing for that is actually very similar to what i would normally do for me anyway and uh and i'm so i'm quite keen to get that soundtrack out and put it on spotify and apple music and everything just so it's there and the more the more stuff that's out there that is a bit like what i do anyway feels then like there's more of a of a shop front for me for me as a sound and i won't be getting i'll be getting new work perhaps of people who see that and want that rather than where i've had work before which is often on from returning clients who know that i can deliver whatever they want because they've worked with me before and i've always delivered what they want so it's kind of yeah that's where i'd like to get to in the next year or two is just having more of a shop front like you said with your side projects and how they represent you a bit more just just sort of having a bunch of stuff that is more emblematic of of what you do it kind of it kind of reminds me of like there is a there they're like creative seasons of going with the flow and kind of taking the next opportunity and then there's creative seasons of making your own waves it reminds me a little bit of like you're reminding me of matthew mcconaughey how about that for a kind of weird compliment but um he talks about this moment in his journey where it was like he was just getting rom-com after rom-com after rom-com and eventually was like hey i'm not doing this i'm going to tell my agent i'm not doing those i'm going to wait for a role and try to find a role where i can show off this different side of me.

33:22And some people get stuck there and he got lucky because he got some chances there, but some people get stuck and they really have to write their own role. Um, go ahead. I was going to say, yeah, cause obviously you've got to earn a living as well. And if you, you know, and if the only work, not all Matthew McConaughey, okay. Sitting on millions and millions of dollars. And if the only work you're getting is the stuff that you're known for and you know, it's very hard to turn that stuff down. Yeah. Like, and it might not be necessary you might not have to put a period on the end of that sentence you can also do like you say like this other side thing where you're working on your own album and doing that kind of thing yeah do you what so just to get because i like to get into a little bit into what people are wrestling with in the moment rather than just reflecting um so are you you're in the process of making this album?

34:16My own album. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've done, I've done about four or five tracks. How did you find your start there? And maybe you feel, I mean, hey, maybe you're like, I don't know, maybe these are going on there. Maybe they're not. I don't know where you're at emotionally in your relationship to it. But the reason I ask is because I think so many, there are so many people that are stuck in that waiting for the phone to ring to know what to make. and I'm just wondering, even if you feel like you haven't cracked it, what has helped you get some stuff down? Well, a couple of years ago, I started divorcing my wife.

34:59That'll get the creative juices flowing, right? Yes. So that was, yeah, it was kind of that. I was, you know, obviously I can laugh about it now. Yeah, sorry for laughing about it. No, it's absolutely fine. So like, yeah, there's a particularly sad, emotional moment that happened to me a few years ago. And that was the kick-starting thing that happened. And it was almost like I had to do it. It wasn't really like I had time to do it. although I had I was sort of in a gap between projects as well so it did work out obviously it was all incredibly bleak music um and um and but it's you know what the weird thing was is that when that happened it wasn't not in terms of writing but in terms of listening I couldn't listen to any new music for a long time I had to go back and listen the only music I listened to was music that I had listened to 20 years ago before I got together with my ex-wife it was so weird um it was just like it was like a psychological thing that that was all that was all my brain could take and it's like I regressed 20 years um it was it was really strange it's not like that anymore thank goodness but it was for for a while I that was that was all I could do it was like a comfort thing or a defense mechanism or something um which I found quite interesting and the other thing about that is that yeah I write I wrote a lot of bleak music immediately and then i'm quite keen on not needing that emotional disaster in order to create trying to figure out how to how do i make these creative dishes without turmoil and suffering yeah yeah exactly yeah

37:30I wondered if when you went, you had this return to grounding in a previous sensibility, maybe did you, were there anything, maybe you're just trying to like, I mean, part of it is probably more psychological, but creatively, I wonder if there was like a getting back in touch with I think a lot about, uh, I think about a taste a lot and sensibility as like very key components of guiding your internal kind of creative compass. Um, and I think two components are like, you have your acquired tastes that you get over time. And I think they're super important for like expanding your palate and all that.

38:14But then you have the guilty pleasures that say something about who you, your taste on a visceral level. Like these things are like, I almost wish I didn't like these, but it's so true. I can't help it. Um, as you were like diving back into that stuff, do you, do you, do you want to talk about who, who you're listening to? You know, I'm always fascinated by how I like, I try to stay listening to new stuff, But I love when something old that I went through a period of time of hating sounds great. Like a few years ago, maybe five, six years ago, it was like Alanis Morissette. I was like, nothing sounds better than this.

38:56This sounds so good. And then it was like TLC. And then lately I've been listening to, I'm going first, by the way. I'm telling you all my weird stuff that I listen to so that you feel comfortable. but um lately i've started listening that like strummy 90s american rock stuff that was radio rock like matchbox 20 and google dolls stuff that i really did not like for 20 years maybe and i'm like there's something about this i try to be open to it you know because i think it's it's interesting it's honest if you're just like reacting to something so yeah i don't know if you want to out yourself or anything but yeah Well, I mean, I don't think there's a particular genre or necessarily any particular style that I was suddenly went back to.

39:42I just went back to listening to like I just had to listen to the albums that I was listening to 20 years ago. And that might have been, you know, Damien Rice or Badly Drawn Boy or like, you know, I don't know. nick cave's album of the time like the liar of orpheus or you know things that things that were out around the the 2000s 2005 and you know um it was just just that that that period um and so it was just like a purely psychological thing and i think it did it probably spoke to the fact that I was listening to a lot of emotional music at the time when I was back then as well because I was you know I was probably a fairly moody angsty teen and then early 20 something you know so um and like you say I think ever since then I've acquired a lot of other genres and styles and tastes through especially through work because I've had to listen to so many genres in order to you know write in the styles that are necessary um so that's when people say oh what music do you like i i really can't answer that question because i i like a lot of music and i i would really like to answer that question um but i find it very reductive and very difficult to answer that question that makes sense and i almost wish that I was really just into one thing.

41:26You should just say like, just that what I've learned is if someone asked me like, what do you do? I've learned to be like, I'm a graphic designer. I'm not a graphic designer. But if I say I'm a picture book maker, they're instantly like, I've got a picture book idea. What's the thing that I can give you that just makes you satisfied and we can kind of move on? You got to just find that genre answer. Yeah. Do you, as you're moving into this album, I'm curious if this commercial art journey, if you had any elixir that you took from that, that you feel like you're bringing to this solo stuff that you couldn't have put into if you'd made this album when you were 18.

42:06I think I've learned to try and do less. And I know you don't necessarily need to when you're not working to picture, but I still think it's valid that you can do a lot with less um that so yeah that's probably the only thing i mean i don't know because i haven't done it yet and no one's really listened to it and i don't know if it's any good and so it's it's hard for me to say what i would have learned from my working to pitch because i haven't haven't really completed the task yet if you know what i mean yeah the other thing i wanted to ask you about was, you know, when you're, when you're making work for a brief, it's hard to, it's hard sometimes to be, to slip into that creative state and make unexpected choices.

42:57One choice that I know that you made that was kind of seems unusual from my perspective was that you brought a saw to your Netflix meeting. And which is, which is not, you know, if you're not a woodworker, That doesn't make sense to most people. For me, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes. If I'm doing a job, I might get a job for the biggest client there is. I'm going to have to overcome my desire to try to play it safe. And so I'm just curious how, maybe you could talk about what that means, what happened there. And then what do you think allowed you to reach for stuff that maybe, it wasn't even inside of your wheelhouse, it sounds like.

43:40no it wasn't i mean i'd so what happened well for full disclosure i'd already sent them the tracks when i had that meeting so okay okay so they'd already heard the saw in context um so and i had basically taught it you know i say learned the saw i i made some noises and sampled them and uh You made some music with a saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah. So they'd heard it in the context of they, and they, I had this big, you know, zoom call with, with all of the execs and they, they would seem to be into it and, and, and I, and the saw was just over there and I was like, I can, I can show you if you want.

44:27Yeah. And they're like, yeah, yeah, get it out. And then as I went to get it, I was like, should not have said that. You're walking back to the Zoom call with a saw and you're like, dude, no. And then I was like, oh, that's enough. You know, just played on my little note. Yeah. Do you have a saw in the room right now or is that gone? Yeah, it's hanging up there actually. Don't ask me to play it. You still got it? Yeah. That's amazing. Well, yeah, I was just curious. And do you just feel like you you're always even on these commercial projects thinking you're constantly like pushing what you could bring into it?

45:12Yeah, definitely. Instrumentation, always. The first few projects I had, there was always like an element, a sound or an instrument or something that made it unique. and I've kind of taken that on board to for all of the projects I just need to be able to it's almost like I need to be able to point to something and go that's what this project is um and um yeah so I did a show called Catastrophe uh which had like a yodel as a as a as a sound and then I did a show called plebs which was a kind of a sitcom set in Rome but it had like a Jamaican scars soundtrack um so everything has always had a musical identity um that that I've tried to yeah rather than it just being you know piano and strings or just just to have something a little bit quirky or a little bit unique about it um and yeah so with the twits it was definitely the saw was one of the first things that me and phil talked about i think we were talking early on about tom waits a lot and it just sounding really grungy and kind of like dirty swampy swamp swampy yeah that's the right word and and then the brass like the sort of balkan brass sound was was something that we talked about uh early on as it being a good sound for mr twick because it was sort of low and flatulent and um also linked to his kind of northern british his character's backstory did you feel offended by his you know stereotype in the movie no i i mean it's lovable it is but yeah johnny vegas is a is a legend legend yeah totally uh gone so yeah so there was i mean the twits is very much a an ensemble of various different instruments and you know kind of wrapped up in a orchestral sound so yeah there isn't you can't really point to one thing on the twits and say that's the sound of the when you talk about um creating these different identities for different compositions to me it sounds almost like brand identity.

47:59It feels like a branding artist kind of thinking or branding designer thinking about what are the marks? What's the like, what's the piece that is the centerpiece of this thing that's kind of set the tone for everything else. And for you, it seems like it could be a particular little genre or instrument or something of that nature. Do you think that I'm only going to do this once, I'm going to go back to the album out of curiosity, but um do you think that you have a sense of that for your album of like this is a thing that is an identity for me yes although if i say if i say it out loud it doesn't sound like much but i um it's kind of i use my voice a lot as a writing tool and um i i never i always it's almost like an afterthought but i've been told by my agent many times that i should talk say that i'm a singer more um but like um i use it as a a writing tool and it as and as a drummer and a singer and a bad guitarist you kind of it it creates a a vibe or a way of writing that's quite although it's you know, conventional sounds that is quite unique and, and definitely sounds like me, the kind of harmonies I do, the, the, the kind of guitaring I do, whether it's with an acoustic or a ukulele or, or whatever.

49:37And yeah, so that's, that's kind of where I'm going with the album and that's a bit more where I'm, where I'm at. I mean, I often say that my music is kind of rhythmic led generally. Like I often start with rhythm rather than melody, which, you know, a lot of other instrumentalists might start with melody and worry about rhythm later. But for me, it's definitely that way around. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think it informs, you know, the piece that you make quite strongly and the style that you have. That makes sense. I had one other question, which is, if you think about where you're at now and how you approach creative work, and you think about where you were at maybe 18 or right out of school or in the jingle era, do you feel like there's one thing that you got wrong about creativity that you have changed your tune on?

50:40i suppose i always thought that it might run out and um and i might i might just have a limited amount of sort of music in me and i don't that might still be the case but uh i haven't got there yet i haven't got there yet yeah uh so the i definitely feel like i'm still producing good stuff and and the stuff i've done recently is some of the best and you know not always the best but some of the best and it's so I'm quite pleased with that diagnosis or that sort of you know how how it's progressing I think I wouldn't have had the confidence to say that I mean yeah I wouldn't have had the confidence 10 years ago to say that I would be doing the twits film at all who knows where where my career goes from here but it's like I feel more confident to say that yeah i can i can do this job to a satisfactory level i yeah i you can uh the soundtrack sounds great and i also i like totally agree feel like being precious is something you have to unlearn like really hard you feel like oh i don't know i don't know if i should should i make a thing today and you realize like oh every time you make something it is almost generative it almost like leads to a tree of other decisions and possibilities.