sometimes your music has an insanely kind a slow release before it actually connects with people and then when it does connect with people they really get it like acid yeah exactly it changes their minds completely acid that works in 10 years legal acid [Music] music it's like um what five six years since virtue came out but it doesn't really feel like The Voice s were missing in that period I feel like every kind of six months or so I've been playing a song that's come out or there's been a video or some kind of collaboration
or you've been on the road but no album until now what changed how did we get to this bit where there is a new record I think our idea was that we were just going to do singles for a while and have a couple of uh songs in the tank and record it and if ever it was time to kind of put out an album we would and so I guess now is that time phase two who decide is it a collective thing of everybody being like y God decides the Universe I don't know I
just uh I think we wanted to I think you work on an album and it's such a intense long process so many songs songs so many children which one to love more than the other and then you put it out and in the internet age you know people can kind of forget 40 hours later so it was almost I think the thinking was maybe one song at a time and we can build things around singles but anyway yes so album I guess we decided uh people would probably pay more attention so we put them all
together that idea of a song or a med coming to you for the first time how does that happen do you have to have an instrument in your hand in order for that to happen or can it just be there and youe at any given point I get ideas all the time they can happen without uh an instrument but generally developing the harmonic structure of things and is is with an instrum strument so I think traditionally I would write with an instrument but over the years it just you know sometimes you couple of times I've
had a dream where you know sometimes they can be wonderful and sometimes I've had dreams like that where it's like wow this guy came to me or maybe it was some other famous person or like you know someone that I was a fan of that you know played a song in my dream and I would wake up and think wow that was a cool song and I'd be like oh wait wait a second that doesn't exist I just I made it up so so you're kind of like ripping off songs from your own dreams can
you remember it though it's always the problem with dreams isn't it yeah I have a pretty good memory with music stuff so that's happened a couple of times then a couple of songs have been born from fragments of dream you have that's cool there's definitely a a law that voids fans have with your band where people are obsessive about it in quite a cool away you know like the comments and the Reddit threads and the my friend sent me a soundcheck video that you did in like Toronto five years ago and it's got like 200,000
views and it's just you on autotune doing a mic check but people love it do you know what I mean like I feel like you've tapped in over the past 10 years or whatever it is you have kind of cultivated this world that people are now living inside for one of a better word do you know what I mean that's cool yeah it is I mean we you know I think we kind of are trying to do something you know it's like it's got elements of kind of like jazz improv thing that you kind of
want to go see it's not like you know cookie cutter pop song thing but I think it's got new things and it's but it's kind of also kind of classically trained with new technologies so just a mixture of a lot of things and I think we're still kind of honing it in and exploring it and trying to make it kind of catchy and palpable not just experimental weirdo art for art sake so this this kind of I don't know thing that I think people that are craving what the promise of the internet could have been
but is not quite can kind of access I guess is there a battle of the mind inside your head and then the band collectively about making music that is easily accessible and then making music that like you just described as people have to invest time and think about it more because I would say that you're you're a song we know from the last 20 years with you you can you can write Melodies that clearly connect with millions and millions of people well thank you I think I think we're getting there because you know we sometimes
you just you you you approximate and you make a mistake and you go either too weird and then you go back and think what I don't even want to listen to that or or you go too kind of oh people are going to like this and then you go why did I try to make something for what I thought other people would like it's not even that good so you can definitely kind of you know make mistakes but I think the goal is to just do something that you feel artistically is powerful and inspiring like
if you were watching it it's interesting though because I think with the voids people are if the Tyranny which came out in 2014 it's 10 years old I feel like people are it's quite overlooked that album and people are only really just getting what the idea was behind that record and what the music is it's like sometimes your music has an insanely kind a slow release before it actually connects with people and then when it does connect with people they really get it and you've had it both ways acid yeah exactly it changes their minds
completely acid that works in 10 years legal acid musically acid for the years things on all levels eventually like you know whether it's Star Wars or thriller you know just kind of things that are popular and kind of Cutting Edge I think are very inspiring to everyone and it kind of moves things artistically politically consciousness of a society wise in Positive Directions even if it's marginal you know and it's like weird protest music on the margins coming out of it have you ever done it completely differently where you are sat on your own with no
other input from other musicians and you just write a song from start to finish and you know I don't even want to change anything about this let's just record it that's probably happened more with The Strokes but that happens sometimes yeah do you like both diff both ways because to me as a non- songwriter they it's like one is Venus and one is Mars on one sense you could be in in the room with five other people throwing around ideas and in other sense you could be completely on your own nobody else saying this but
the irony is the stroke songs I was I was on my own those demos I did all by myself they sound very close to the record yeah and so and then the void sometimes a lot of it is just now stuff that my dream has always been to just work on like kind of Harmony Melody and then kind of someone else writing the drum beats because someone should be better at the drums than I am you know what I mean type of vibe and someone else kind of doing kind of complicated chord structure I can
do that I do both But the irony is that people the weird thing that I feel the frustration that you're feeling is not like in the reality of doing both it's it's in the perception that like that I'm always fighting that it feels like almost like the voids is like me alone and The Strokes was like me filtered through other people when it's kind of the other way around there is something with your music that I love and as a listener I can't work out how you do it but Flex assist I think is quite
a good example to me there's a lot going on inside that song and my brain can kind of unpack it but I have to really think about it different time frames you know a shift and the song suddenly goes off into another Universe completely those moves aren't us trying to kind of do something crazy it's things that happened naturally that we did just reflexively organically and we thought oh that was a cool thing we did and so you know they're kind of you know you can trace them back to like these live moments but then
when people hear it it almost sounds like we're trying to do so yeah but just like us playing it's just kind of that's just us like jamming and it just like sounded really good and we're like cool that should be what the verse is it was like a weird part where kind of we were like mismatch playing some clashing chords and it was like o this is a really I think those are the bits that I mean the bits where it's like this shouldn't work but it kind of does well that's the thing is it
happened we played it it happened where it happened naturally in the song and we were like whoa that's cool it wasn't n like the song is too normal we need a weird thing play some wrong chords and let's just jam it in and I don't know I hope it doesn't sound like that but when it's when I hear it described I feel like that's what people are kind of caricaturing But the irony is can't caricature that it's a lot it's like it's like live exploration it's natural it's kind of how we bounce off each other
we play we listen and talk about these kind of cool weird things that are like but we think are really mindblowing and powerful and inspiring and then we kind of are doing our version of it and it's Hit or Miss but ideally the hit ones make it to records I don't know there's that song uh rushan Coney Island which is not on the new record but there is a live version of it floating around and it's like a 10minute live song that I feel like is full of those little mistakes because you're literally you're Road
testing it at that gig and you you can kind of hear it in like your vocals and things you're singing you're kind of testing out Melodies um I did see that in an Instagram post the other day written on a whiteboard behind you so clearly it's like in it's in the it's in The Ether right detective doing a little bit of detective digging here um yeah that's it's funny that you mentioned that cuz I was literally working on that yesterday serious yeah no way I'm kind of like tired cuz it was our last kind of
Studio day before we got a I got to ship out and I was trying to it's almost almost done there's a there's a bit in that song talking about what you mentioned before about little mistakes that might happen live that you sometimes carry through to records there's a there's a lyric right at the start that you sing where you you mentioned being too tall or something like that on the hit my head yeah cuz you're playing in a room with a tiny yeah yeah a low down ceiling did that make the cut in the recorded
version you know what no but it's not finished so that's thanks for reminding me I feel like with the voids you are very relaxed like I've never seen a void show or seen footage of a void show where you have seemed tense particularly I think that's an act but Co I guess maybe in some ways it's where I want to be but I think you're always kind of just you have to I mean some natural performers I'm sure you know I've heard you know some people I'm just I feel natural on stage that's not me
well you know you're being judged it's hard to just even walking across a stage you know yeah man I can understand that well I'm just saying the analogy for just walking you know we all you don't you walk down the street you don't think about it but you're walking on stage and you're like the legs in my muscles I don't it's like I've never done this before and there's like that element in general we need to talk about the uh the flex assist prophecy video am my in trouble just the Mac we need to talk
about this prophecy situation I've been getting calls from corporate and uh we're going to need to take that down not surprised how long did that take to film it's like 15 minutes long you have M DeMarco dressed as the devil your character is like this what how would you describe your character oh man this it it took it was like 4 14 different Journeys that converged into this kind of double header there's been comedy sketches where it's like the devil is writing a song I think there's been like a will farell one like a so
I just thought I could really write some songs and be like you know people are trying to to sell their soul and like the devil is offering these kind of songs and I had these like goth songs in mind and I made like a fake kind of quick goth I think actually we used alien Crim Lord like a fake to the very start yeah yeah and like a fake you know Drake like you know I know you know that kind of stupid like whatever some of the lines in it that Max says cuz there a
whole bit there like the script as well oh man that was yeah that was just that was all him that was we was it him the middle part oh yeah yeah really yeah he was just ripping it was that's some of the most I've ever heard in my entire life Wow M De Marco I know it was pretty magical there's a definite sense of humor going through your writing in the voids there are some moments there are some lines that you sing that just that make me laugh and I don't know if they're intentionally funny
or not whether I just interpret them as funny but it comes to life very much in that video you know there is Darkly comic do you know what I mean but then there's a really serious political side to your music as well and that song when will the time of these bastards end which is on the new record the vocals on that song are really interesting when I I had to ask Ben I was like is Julian doing all of the singing on that song because there's there I there's so many effects and pit shifting
and faux coder and stuff like that it's just a pedal I was using that I actually don't use it anymore cuz it has a tendency it has one flaw that it goes half a step in the wrong key randomly so it's kind of created like a nightmare on stage sometimes and it sounds terrible when that happens like like no this canot happen well it's like I'm singing in the I have autotune to the wrong key yeah no it's it's caus cuz that could be one of those things I was going to say or is that
actually one of those live mistakes where actually it kind of works out and it sounds all right but evidently not I think it happened on a stroke show too because I was using it on like a couple of the new things or some I like having it sometimes when we Jam honestly but I think it was like there's like a male and female so there's like the and the Chipmunk yeah and I I think it was like accidentally someone had like it was like so the first I think we did a show and they were
like was that on purpose that hard to explain was like chipmunk voice I was just like oh Jesus Christ what is it about the effects on the vocals that you like so much when it comes to Melodies certain Melodies are benefited by real uh sing like for example you know especially I don't know why I was coming to mind is like those British kind of like like hit me with your Rhythm stick you know like those kind of do you know what I mean you can't if you put autotune on that it'll sound like garbage
cuz it's like the the personality it's almost not a note you know and then um but then certain Melodies on the flip side of that I noticed you know years ago is when it started they wouldn't even be that good but then somehow like broad weing them like autotuning them was just like whoa that actually has its own thing so I kind of run every Melody almost through the test and some are good without and some are good with no way and so it's just kind of like a a coin flip it's hard to predict
interesting process it's funny that you just that hit me with your Rhythm stick bit that you just sang to go back to Russian Coney Island when I watched that I was like man they should do the drums like hit me with your Rhythm stick on that song that kind of like it's so soul and disco but you look at them and they to look at they look like the least Soulful people on are you a producer or would you oh yeah okay let's do something of course let's yeah let's I'll have my people contact yours
Overlord executive producer yeah come in just your new moniker yeah all right cool thanks Jules thank you man good chatting enjoy that see you in the studio yeah I'll be down 3 p.m. today need your help get to work on your lycs I like the ideas take them from anywhere
