3:14
Hi, my name is Phineas and this is
the wired complete interview.
These are questions from Reddit, not usually a
place I look up myself on.
This is from Yinyang.
Am I the only one who feels as
though Phineas Billy's brother does not get
enough credit or they both should be seen as a duo?
I've seen that comment
before, so you're not the only one, but I disagree with you.
I think that I get
more credit than almost any producer deserves.
I get so much credit, and it's
purposefully not a duo.
I think that what you think of as an artist is uh
more than just the music that is written and recorded in a studio.
It's the live
performances and it's the visual representation of that
artist and it's how they move through the
world and
their fashion and those are all really entirely Billy.
We sit around together
making albums and then she dreams up these
great, you know, album covers and
uh music video ideas and even when I
used to play every show with her, she's
out there commanding the room.
I'm just trying not to up the baseline.
But yeah,
I'm very happy with how it's all panned out.
I'm I'm uh I'm having such a better
life than I thought I would have.
It's really great.
Um why you trust me?
What genre of music does Billy's Chihiro fit in?
I'm very
genre illiterate.
So, you'd have to tell me what genre Chihiro is in.
What it
felt like to me when we made it was it felt synthy and cinematic.
And I've seen
a lot of videos of people like running
through fields in slow motion on TikTok
to that song.
And I'm like, that's exactly what you're supposed to feel
like doing when you listen to that song.
>> Do you remember how the baseline came about?
>> Yeah, I played it.
But to explain it, I'm a better pianist than I am a basist
by a mile.
you know, to use this guitar as a reference.
Like the bass is the
first four strings of a guitar.
But if you play a baseline, you're playing
these little and you might play little octaves
to pop it on.
And you can make it sound pretty fun,
but on a piano, those notes are all
laid
out right here.
And so I loaded up like a synth bass patch which sounds very
realistic.
It sounds like a person playing bass really well.
And then you
play it, you know, hopefully uh uh in a melodic way.
And I played this crazy baseline
that kind of meandered through the whole song.
And I felt really good about it.
And um I thought about re-recording it, but I thought the tone was so cool.
And
I'd already recorded Billy's vocals and stuff.
And I was like, why am I trying
to fix something that isn't broken?
You slash awesome O01.
Do you think it is okay to use
AI programs or song generators to write and
produce music?
I have never talked about this in an interview, I don't think.
And
so why not talk about it?
I grew up the beneficiary of all of this music
technology, right?
Like I always say that like Logic Pro, which is what I
produce music on, was like $7 or $800.
And right when I was saving up to buy it, they made it like $200.
And so
suddenly I could afford it.
And then you go in Logic and there's built-in synth
sounds and there's loops and I didn't record
a real drummer for like the first
6 years of my career because it's expensive to record real drums.
So I I
think about AI not through the like candidly, I've never used it.
I've like
downloaded the apps to see what's up and
I've been like confused and I've I've
deleted them.
Like that's my current relationship with it.
But if I were
broke again and 17 again, I would be
figuring them out and I'd be figuring
out how to get something juicy out of him.
I I think because it's free.
So I
don't want to sort of poo poo a
thing that I think is accessible to everybody.
And if it inspires you, I think that that's that's cool.
But I think that
having ownership over like I didn't invent I didn't invent those chords.
A million
times those chords have been played by a million different people.
But I'm
playing them right now.
Here I am playing them.
And if I make a mistake, it sounds
kind of cool.
And I think that if I was relying
too heavily on thinking up an idea, by
the
way, I'm not thinking about what I'm playing.
I'm just on the keys.
I know
the shapes, but I'm not I'm not premeditating this.
And I think that the premeditation being the
the key ingredient to AI is
I'm dubious about because I think that always
having to think about what you
want to hear would not inspire me to be honest.
So if you find a way for it to
inspire you, that's awesome.
But then do you feel like you made it?
Radics 69.
How did Billy Isish's Ocean Eyes accelerate her
into popularity and fame?
Well, funny you should ask, Reddit.
Billy and I loved listening to music on
Soundcloud and we started making music
and then we started uploading it to Soundcloud
and Ocean Eyes was the third
thing we uploaded to Billy's Soundcloud account.
And then people started texting
me the next day that it was on a blog called Hilly Dilly.
And at the time it
was this very big buzzy music blog and
Chad Hillard wrote this little thing
about how much he liked Ocean Eyes.
And then that was enough momentum to like
draw more attention to Soundcloud.
And then other people saw it from that and
then other blogs wrote articles about it and
people played it on the radio and
stuff.
It was amazing.
And I said to Chad, I finally met him and like took
him out to dinner to thank him for like kind of giving us a career.
And I was
like, "How did you I was like, nobody even followed us on Soundcloud.
How did
you hear Billy's song?" And he was like,
"Somebody posted on a Reddit thread."
And I was like, "What Reddit thread?" And
he was like, he was like, he was
like, "I'll never reveal my secrets." And I
was like, "Lame." But whatever.
That's where Chad heard it was some Reddit thread.
So, thank you Reddit
poster for taking a break from whatever strange
thing you were posting to be
like, "I like this song.
It's very cool of you." Anita Rangel is how I'm reading this.
Creative folks of Reddit, what's the weirdest or
most unexpected place you've
ever had a creative idea hit you?
Um, I've woken up with some ideas that have
all been terrible.
I have some like really embarrassing cuz I wake up and in
my dream the idea was fantastic.
And so then I wake up and I grab my phone and I
record into it and I go back to sleep and I wake up again.
I'm like, "This
sucks." >> Have you heard Paul McCartney's origins of Let It Be?
Uh, I haven't heard Let It
Be.
I know about Scrambled eggs.
>> Oh, he dreamed Let It Be.
He dreamed Let It Be.
Maybe a little more.
>> He's a better songwriter than me.
I heard a really good Paul McCartney
story, which is my excuse to do my
Paul McCartney impression, which is that he,
a friend of mine was at a studio
in LA and Paul was like in one
of the rooms.
And so they're all taking their lunch break
and he there's Paul McCartney and
somebody was like, "Can I ask you a
question?" He's like, "I'm trying to
write a song right now and I'm feeling
uninspired and I feel like I'm not
writing the best thing I've ever written.
What do What should I do?" And
he said that Paul was like, "The just songs." And I was like, "Gas." So cool.
Um,
Flimsy Mango.
What makes Frank Ocean music so unique and what can I learn
from it as a producer?
I feel like very few people I've been more inspired by
than Frank Ocean.
I love his music and I love his voice.
So many artists are
influenced by Frank Ocean and I feel like
you can tell that they're
influenced by Frank Ocean because they sound kind
of like an imitation of him.
Um, and I heard years ago that his favorite artist is Dolly Parton.
And
that's not who I would have guessed was
his favorite artist, but it's such an
example of how gifted a songwriter he is
that he's absorbing things from Dolly
Parton's music without trying to copy Dolly Parton,
but he's taking those
ingredients and he's making them his own.
I just was like, "Oh, that's
probably one of the reasons that he sounds
so unique is that he's able to
listen to something completely different and make his
own thing out of that."
This is from character log 6775.
I wonder if that's the gate code to his house or something.
What is your
favorite song from newest album uh for crying out loud?
I wrote a song about my
sister on that album.
It's called Family Feud.
And that was important for me to
write cuz it was like at this sort
of point in our lives where we were
no
longer uh touring together all the time.
I was off on my own tours.
she was on her tours and it was really about her
kind of going off into the world without
me and sort of saying good luck and
being like you'll probably make you know you'll
do things you regret and make
mistakes and that's okay.
Um Dr.
Trey, what is the one riff you wish you wrote?
There's so many great riffs.
I wish I'd written so many of these great riffs,
but Seven Nation Army comes on at a
baseball game or, you know, a grocery
store.
Equal opportunity riff.
Unbelievable riff.
And also any riff that a crowd, especially in a place like
England, just sings.
That's sick.
That's really cool.
Singing the instrumental riff and not the vocal part.
Very cool.
Anxious art hoe, what do you think about the pitchfork ratings?
How much do you agree?
Pitchfork ratings are funny because I basically am never thinking about agreeing with them.
I am I am just
looking for the tall poppy.
I am just like, damn, they gave that album a two.
That's cold.
And I'm kind of enjoying how mean the review is.
or I'm like,
"They gave that album a nine.
That's ridiculous.
That album's fine, but it's
not a nine." Um, and then if it's
my own album, I'm like putting my fingers
in my
ears and closing my eyes and I I
don't want to I don't want to um
know about
it.
How about this?
Go look up some of your favorite albums ever on Pitchfork.
Some crazy scathing reviews of the most important album of your life.
And you're
like, damn.
Okay, well then never mind.
Because when you love something like that, a
review is not going to make you
disavow it and hate your favorite album.
Let's see.
Uh, slash terrible Main 3379.
Who's your dream collab as a producer, Dead or
Alive?
Very inspired by Elliot Smith's music as of late.
And I actually think
the recording techniques are pretty sick, even though
they're very minimal.
It's like very cool doubletracked vocals and like
really spooky guitar tones and
um I love the drum tones.
So I think that what would be fun about that as a
producer would be like just setting up those
mics around him and experimenting
and trying stuff.
I don't think I'd have to do a big lift.
Songs were so cool.
>> Can you give me an example?
>> Say Yes is so amazing.
First of all, I'm obsessed with song titles.
Best title
for that song.
Say Yes.
There's so many things in that.
So that song could be
called the morning after.
There's so many things that that song could be
called and say yes is like coolest title.
Um but he has that like bridge
thing like like does a little spooky thing
on the bridge >> turned around.
>> So cool.
very impressed.
This question is from Vasso the Serb.
How is the
process of writing TV film music different than writing concert music?
Is
film music easier?
Easier and also harder is my answer for it.
Right.
So,
what is easier about it is maybe the scene is 45 seconds long.
What's hard
about it is just making sure that it's
matching the emotion of the scene
correctly and the timing.
oftentimes if you're working two picture, which I did
a lot on the season of Beef that
I worked on, you gota play everything to
like line up right when the character says
the thing or turns to leave the
room.
So that could be very challenging, too.
But they make you better at the
other thing, which is why I keep doing both.
Girl in Aura, what's an album you consider
a 10 out of 10 with no skips?
Honestly, The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance
is a no skips album for
me.
Yeah, I'll leave it at that.
How about this?
If I'm in the mood for that
album, I'm in the mood for the whole thing.
That was all the questions that I
was uh allowed to answer within the time frame that I'm here.
And I appreciate
Wired for their time.
Have a good one.
