Bob: I want to ask you, you're talking about rhythms and so forth; I want to just ask you about something, because real percussionists who play with electronics is a challenge, and I just want to play this for a minute and talk about it.
Thom: You want to get to the part where it breaks out, don't you?
Bob: Yeah, that but I also just want to listen to that 'd'd'd'd' which is that arpeggiated sound that is on... maybe its a Moog, or maybe its an Arp Odyssey.
Nigel: Yeah, it's not bad, is it? 
Bob: Well, my first instrument was an Arp Odyssey, so I'm partial to those in open sounds. But one of the things that always drove the drummer in my band crazy was where I would do something, like, that he could never play along with the pulse of a synth, and it was just like the hardest thing on the planet, and you've all sort of licked that. So I'm wondering two things. I'm wondering, did that pulse from the synth come first and the percussions play on top of it? That's question one.
Thom: It all comes in different directions.
Bob: In this piece, do you remember?
Nigel: Well, I mean... 
Bob: And I guess I ask that because it's so hard, and you do it so well, to play real percussion on top of something that's so stilted. 
Thom: Should we tell him?
Bob: I knew I'd get there. Come on, tell me. 
Nigel: There's times in there where we're blurring it so you can't tell what's electric and what's not, so, I mean, you have to guess. Where's the real percussion come in at?
Bob: Well, I don't know if you're hitting on rubber that's triggering electronics or what's going on here. 
Nigel: No, that's just the original beat. 
Thom: Programmed. 
Bob: You say programmed? Who said that?
Thom: This has been programmed, this bit here. Because we found that a lot of the time that it was better, it was like no matter how tight Joey, because Joey and Marou can play that, no worries, but it was actually the sound would be the reasons. So we choose it because of the sounds .
Bob: So where do they come in?
Thom: They come in at the end of this tune. 
Bob: Ok, you want me to just skip ahead, because I want to hear that ...
Nigel: Now he's in there, that's Joey playing in there. That's Joey. 
Bob: Oh, yeah.
Thom: And Mauro's doing this like sweeping-up sound.
Bob: On what? What is he playing?
Nigel: Oh, yeah, there's a break and you hear him... he's like, 'whiiiip, whippp.' He's got this thing that looks a little bit like the inside of a washing machine — here it is. Let's listen. It's a bunch of kitchenware, right? 
Joey: Basically, yeah. I think there actually is a name for that thing, like "Rakko Rakko."
Bob: Kitchen sink?
Joey: Yeah, it's a Brazilian instrument, but it's basically it's just a spring. 
Nigel: Oh yes, yes, yes, with the horn on the end. 
Thom: A spring with a horn on the end. (laughter)
Bob: He plays with Forro in the Dark, I think I know that name. Anywhere else I might know him from? He's not with us today in the studio. 
Thom: He played with David Byrne for years and years, he started there and he stayed. But to be fair, like Mauro for example, when we did the initial recording, there's so much stuff that gets sprayed liberally on it all, and you just happened to pick a song where he wasn't on it and Joey wasn't on it for the first part, but actually you know it's kind of all over everywhere. That song, I think it's because that sort of existed for a while, it had a beat and then you correctly pointed out that the arpeggio keyboard was the way into writing a vocal melody. We needed to put some music on it, because all it was a beat. 
Nigel: Every single one is different, that's the thing. It's difficult, because the thing that I am most excited about is that there is a band to this, and it's not just Thom with his laptop and [me] putting it together and that's that. There's much more energy and much more.. .
Bob: Well, it's fun; there are people in a room.
Nigel: Yeah, you've got a goal, as well; do you know what I mean? You've got a thing that you're heading towards. And I think I should say, as well, the other thing about that, for example, is even if, for example, it just ends up being, you know, a programmed beat for like a couple of minutes in the song, not because we didn't all play on it at one point, and that didn't inform what happened, it became formed as sort of a result of things. And sometimes you take a step back, because you realize that something is overdone, or you add things that aren't there. And it's really a mixture of the whole thing. Really, we were making a record, you know? And really, we were making a record to play and one that had, you know, when we first started working on the new material, it was after we did the first couple shows and realized we just didn't have enough stuff. We could only do like an hour show, so we went away and sat down and started sort of sketching out things that we could then take to the band, you know? And that's how it happened. We took it back to the band and we started playing these things in the room in rehearsals and stuff, and we did a recording session. But then we ended up having a sort of complete electronic version of something, a complete analog version of something, and the fun bit was, like, working out what works the best, but with the knowledge of knowing that it came from that; from that brainstorming session with everybody together. So whatever we end up with is something that is going to work. That's the really exciting part, the idea of playing it.
Bob: But can you imagine, you're on stage and somebody just starts an idea, and you do what you did in some of these sessions. Could you imagine having something unfold and you had no idea where it was going to go? I mean, you're going to do a concert. You're going to do these songs that came out of these long sessions. Can you imagine as a band doing a piece of music that was just... "Let's see what happens?" 
Thom: You talking about jamming?  
Bob: Well... I mean. ..
Thom: There's rules about that s--.
Bob: Well, tell me about those rules, because there are two things that happen as an audience person. You talk right at the top about what you want to see when you go see a band. You want to see a surprise, and even as a player on stage, one of the most amazing things is when something happens that you don't expect to happen. Granted, that can happen in the format of having the song that you know beginning, middle and end where it's going to go. Those surprises can happen, but jamming has such a terrible connotation to it for so many people, right? But there's something amazing when you're an audience and something happens and musicians suddenly start communicating on something they had no idea was going to happen. 
Thom: To me, it's like, rhythmically, jamming is great. You know? Jamming when it means some guy with a guitar and a distortion pedal, you know, I'm not down with that. 
Bob: All right, but we have other instruments.
Thom: Yes, no, exactly, it's kind of, um...
Nigel: We get to see that we have that experience when we rehearse, you know? There's 10 different ways of doing things, and the joy is like playing it and figuring stuff out.
Thom: Flea is arch jam-meister, like, literally every time we get together, the first hour is like, well, that's what we do. But like, to me, I'm like, maybe sometimes actually stuff I could see it maybe coming out. But to me I'm like, no, you're limbering up. That's truly what you're doing.
Boilen: Just clearing your throat .
Thom: Just like you being in the gym. Yeah, you're warming up.
Nigel: Also, the amazing thing is like, listening to Mauro trying to play something impossible. Like, he can play him some crackly white noise, and he'll try and play it. And that's when he, to me, he's an amazing percussion player, but he shines at that. And that's the stuff when we talk about going to a gig and being surprised, I mean I feel like originally when we got a band together, it was Thom who had this idea about getting a band together to play The Eraser. You know, an album that was made, like, four years before. But he just sort of said, "I'm just obsessed with this idea about getting like Latin percussion, and getting Joey specifically, you know because...
Thom: I want to play with Joey! 
Nigel: No, because Joey and I played together for a long time, and Joe and I met when we were recording [Beck's] Mutations. You know, it was a long time ago and, you know, I just left that whole experience absolutely ranting about him to Thom, for years. He's like the best drummer I've ever worked with, you know? He's just incredible.  
Joey: Aww, thanks so much. 
Bob: Can you guys give each other a big hug?  
Nigel: Yeah, we're actually sitting on each others' lap. But anyway, so what happened was when the process of trying to play... it's a genius idea taking something very electronic and playing it acoustically. And what we found was that the sound of them doing that is something I've never heard before. Something that no one has ever tried before. So, you can jam, but in a way more interesting stuff is when you have those... you know, you give Mauro a beat, and then when he's jamming in inverted commas. It's not like a jam, it's not like he's just going off on one. He's just trying to play something, but what he plays is not the thing, it's just something else really, really interesting. 
Thom: Sorry, Joey, do you remember that time in your studio and I just played that bleepy thing?
Nigel: And you played that beat on top?
Joey: Yeah, it's a element of just, kind of reinterpreting sounds. It's definitely improvisational, and there's something transcendent about, you know, just jamming of course, but yeah, to me that's exciting when there's a little more structure. I mean, I kind of like the best of both worlds personally. And going back to when you see a show, that's when it's really, really exciting.  
Bob: When you go out and do this as a tour, this record, at some point you're going to do that, how much will you leave free? How much does, I don't know, do you have a sequencer running behind you so you're locked into something?
Thom: Never. 
Bob: Never.
Nigel: Because people say to us, they say, "Oh, yeah that's cool, man." People think we play to tracks, and it's not, it's because...
Joey: Yeah it's a crazy experience for me as a drummer. You know, I've definitely dabbled with that because, you know, I'm just interested in all the different ways of doing it. But playing with Mauro and all of us, we're all trying to do as much as we can to serve the music and it just ended up sounding kind of enormous. 
Thom: Well, to me, it's like going back to what we were just saying before, about the whole jamming thing, and improvisation thing, the whole key to it, for me, really, is the tension you get between the machines and the human response to them. And how these guys, they work very fast. They'll just hear something and they're on it, and Joey especially is. I'm able to just play a bleep with no "one" or "two." The running joke in the band is "where is the 'one'?" But I get that everywhere I go now. But Joey will just spark up on something straight away, and one of the tunes I'm working on, which is not on this record or anything, it just completely stuns me the way he just responded to this little pattern, and made something small, poxy, and laptop-y into something ridiculously enormous, simply in the act of his human response to what it was. As it's formed and we are doing The Eraser thing, this was around the same time I'd started DJ'ing, and discovered that I liked the ideas around the dubstep thing, but it was really annoying me that there was no human element to it at all. And it was also really obvious, the crossover between it and the whole Afro beat rhythms. So, it was all just sort of jamming in my head quite a lot. When we discovered there was this, quite a lot of energy that, when we play together there's this crazy energy and how actually the one thing we all really identified with kinda the Afro beat thing, I thought "Whoa, we're really onto something." We went to Flea's house and played pool all night and listened to Fela Kuti and it was like, this is good. I couldn't ask for anything better than this. It was just really a good jumping off point, it started off with like a laptop album, all made in headphones, confined beats and confined structure, and then suddenly it's become this other thing completely. But yet, it's always kind of informed by that. 
Nigel: It's unusual. See, it's panoramic. It just becomes something, like, very colorful.
Bob: And [Fela Kuti's] performance live was like this, monster machine behind him. His rhythm is unbelievable. Once you have that base going on, b-a-s-e or b-a-s-s, once you have that base there, anything could happen on top of it. There was so much freedom for all the other players to do stuff.
Thom: Yeah, except you do those keyboard solos that go on a bit long .
Bob: It was the 1970s, I couldn't help it. This may be a silly question, but I think about this sometimes when I hear musicians that get together that I never would have imagined getting together. And anybody tackle this who cares to. Is this just sort of happenstance? Did it happen because you desired it to happen? Or do any of you believe in fate? That you all in some way, shape or form were fated to play together? 
Thom: Maybe. Each musician kind of came to it in different ways. I mean, obviously Nigel and I knew each other. And actually, we'd hung out a lot, and I'd met you [Joey] playing with R.E.M. right? We rehearsed together with R.E.M.
Joey: Yeah, that's absolutely right.  
Thom: When [former R.E.M. drummer] Bill [Berry] left. 
Joey: Yeah. 
Thom: That was very surreal.
Joey: Yeah, quite awhile ago. 
Thom: Flea was one of the things that got me thinking about doing it properly, was bumping into Flea and him and John were going on about The Eraser. And I was like, "Really?" You remember? Because we had both went to see them and they were like, "How did you do that?"  
Nigel: We're like, "Oh, well. It took us hours."  
Thom: We were sort of like, "Wow, they really like it." 
Nigel: And it's funny, isn't it? Because Flea is a big fan of electronic music as well. It's funny, you know he's like a massive Aphex Twin fan, and he's really up on all that kind of stuff. And I know that the thing about The Eraser is that album, and you've said this to me before as well, is you're thinking about all the bass lines and all those things that you think are bass lines even if they're not. You need to have that aggressiveness, that sort of attack to really try and be able to.
Thom: And how many bass players do you know [who] like lead lines? Not many.  
Bob: But they're the best ones. They're my favorites anyway.
Thom: With this record as well, there's sort of a link with the whole reggae thing as well. The chord structures or whatever, the filling out of the chords of a tune. Fairly minimal and melodic lines to the bass line and blah blah blah. And again, with the same sort of Afro beat thing where like, the bass lines are the melodic lines a lot of the time even though they might splinter into guitar lines where you're really setting something off and you're setting a trance off. So then you have a link with the dance music thing where again the bass lines are the lead lines and the chords are all like... I'll shut up...
Nigel: No, it makes sense. It's true, I mean it's a line running through it and I think that Flea has those influences in droves as a player. But then he also has that aggression so he can translate the stuff originally from The Eraser and then, it's just, it's kind of interesting because it's kind of the way that you think about when you write bass lines. You write those kinds of parts.
Thom: I'm trying to be flippant. 
Nigel Yeah, exactly. You're trying to do an impression of him and he's trying to do an impression of you.
Joey: Hilarious. It's true, though. When I go back and listen to The Eraser, to those lines, it's like, wow. Flea was really the perfect. Like, kind of the only person I can imagine doing it.
Bob: It sounds like this music for all of you in some way, shape or form is doing something for you that music you play, what other projects you might have is just bringing something out of you that doesn't happen than whatever projects you've been in before. Is that fair?
Thom: Yeah, I mean, personally speaking, I'm very conscious of trying to maintain it as, you know, for kicks. So that it doesn't become, like, "Okay chaps, we have a career. We have to do this, this, and this in order to open this door and this door." It's like, nope, we're going to be completely selfish about it, have a really good time, and then, take a break.
Nigel: But also, the other thing is talking about a bunches of musicians getting together and just doing whatever they want for fun, it is that, but it also does have a... something valid happens. I mean, I feel anyway. It's not just, you know, a "super group" in inverted commas. It comes together and something happens that is unusual and special. I really think that. And I really think that's the reason why it's happening. If it's got to be substantial, it wouldn't work. I don't think any of us or the people involved would want to be involved in anything like that.
Thom: The whole "super group" thing is just because there's me and there's Flea and there's blah, blah, blah. I mean that was one of the weird things when we initially started out, like loads of Chili Peppers fans were like "NO! He can't do this! NO!" And I had the same things, like, "How dare he!" What? What's wrong with you people? 
Nigel: When people saw it I think they totally understood, you know, and I've never had so many people come up to me and say, "Oh wow, I thought that was the weirdest idea but actually there's something really amazing about it." You know, because of the energy between you two.
Thom: But then it's just a personal thing, it's like hanging out with Joey for years and finally getting to work with him.
Nigel: And you sort of manufacture that opportunity, actually, is what happens. Isn't that great? That we're able to do that? 
Bob: Well, I look forward to seeing y'all live.
Nigel: Yeah.
Bob: And hopefully you'll be back to the states for that.
Thom: We will.
Bob: We're going to lose our studio time in about one minute, so otherwise I'd sit for awhile. Anyway, sorry I couldn't be in New York for you to do this in person, I really wanted to.
Thom: Next time we'll meet in person, yeah?
Bob: Yeah. 
Thom: Okay. 
Bob: Cheers all around.
Nigel: Thanks a lot.
Thom: Cheers.