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Beyond The Eclipse With BILLY GOULD · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  My name is Billy Gould. I am a composer. I'm in a band
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  called Faith No More. Talking Book. Uh just worked on a soundtrack to
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  a film called The Eclipse, which is coming out next month. Beautiful Billy,
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  thanks for joining us today, Buddy, glad to be here. Well,
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  So, as you said, I met your project, which Jared Blomb
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  called Talking Book Releasio Lights raised The Eclipse on November the twenty fourth. So
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  how you feel about it? Good? I mean, you know, we
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  never really worked on a full feature film before like this, so it was
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  the first time. We didn't know if we were doing it right. But
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  it came out all right. I mean, the director was really happy.
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  I think I saw it on a big screen and I was really happy with
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  how it all came together. It was a it was a nice relief it
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  was it was a little intimidating it we first decided to take it on.
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  That's your what have been? And as you say, it's actually the soundtrack
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  to a film by Natasha Evans. How did you come to be involved?
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  Uh? Well, I'd known her for a decade and a half before.
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  She has made a lot of other films that were very interesting. She made
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  a film, uh and a Paul following a young girl and how she how
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  she grew up kind of like a different stages of her life and what happens
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  to her family. And and I just kept in touch with her. You
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  know, when I worked in earlier talking book records, I sent her a
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  copy of them and she liked them, so she kind of knew the kind
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  of stuff we did. And she's really individual. She's obviously she's a director,
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  she's a visual person. She sent me some photos when she was in
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  this place called the Valley of the Moon in Uganda, and uh, we
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  almost use that as our cover for an album back in like two thousand and
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  I don't know, uh eleven actually, uh and uh. So we kept
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  in touch and when she decided to do this film, I mean she just
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  said we were I was the first person that she really could would want to
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  do it. She kind of knew the aesthetic that you know, I take
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  towards things like this. And we saw some clips of her film. They're
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  very what's the word evocative. Some stuff's filmed in Super eight. Some of
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  it's very textured, and it's very saturated, and to me, it's it's
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  like with her visuals was kind of what we like to do with sound,
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  so we thought it would be a pretty good match lightly music, soundtracks and
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  things. All this, I mean might off have a heap of different bands
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  in their songs, but this one just fased. Talking books must have made
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  a pretty big project fade on to Tyke. I mean, it wasn't.
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  It wasn't. It's an hour and a half film. You know, people
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  that do this, you know they probably have a nice template that they work
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  on. The big part of it really was that, you know, how
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  can we make something that feels consistent, it all fits together, that follows
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  the line of the story and the narrative, and make it feel like it
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  all belongs there without drawing too much attention to itself, because you know,
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  it's really about the film and not about the music. The music is just
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  there to support, So you have to look at things a little different way.
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  It's not like being in a rock band, where you know you're trying
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  to keep things exciting all the time. It's the opposite that you're actually trying
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  to be invisible. Describe the process to a rotting for a soundtrack or a
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  score to a movie like this. Decided you sit down and watch the movie
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  and do it. Yeah, man Or. We tried a couple of different
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  processes. I mean, my first approach was I saw the movie and I
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  saw a clip of it or a rough cut of it, and I had
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  some music that I thought could fit with it that was very structured. It
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  didn't work at all. It didn't work, and that was really scared the
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  shit out of me. Jared is a little more of a little more comfortable
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  working with abstract stuff because that's really what he does. It's his forte.
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  He does it all the time. I do it, but I don't do
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  it all the time. I come from a kind of linear music background of
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  being in bands writing songs, structured songs. So once I kind of learned
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  to let go a little bit and kind of relax and just see where the
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  film took me without without having to have an exciting result, it seemed to
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  come much more naturally. Press really says that, you know, it's sparstory
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  sound work with dramatism and curiosity to write the rotting Can you elaborate on that.
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  I got a bit deeper into that for us. I mean, really,
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  it's just the way, I mean, the way I do things.
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  My My approach musically is always, you know, neutral stuff is really the
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  worst stuff. If you have, you know, five minutes sixty minutes to
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  make a statement, you want that statement to connect with somebody, They could
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  hate it. That's fine. Hatred is a form of connection. It's it's
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  neutral stuff. It's it's taking doing something that does nothing neutral imagery. Neutral
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  effect, to me is the biggest sin you can have. So I approach
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  everything I do that way. I mean faith the Mormon was that way.
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  We were. I would like to think that we did a lot of different
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  things, but it was never neutral. And I think that you know,
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  that ideology kind of goes into what I did with this. It's just that
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  it just sounds totally different. Expanding on that a bit more my life.
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  You've written albums by them all, But how different is it rotting for a
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  movie? Absolutely one million times different. Uh, you don't really have a
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  map. I mean, at least we didn't. The director is not a
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  musician, and she just said, here's a rough cut of my film.
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  Come come back with something basically, and we're like, okay, what do
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  we do? Where do we start? I mean it's the blank slave And
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  yeah, I'm surprised we got through that in one piece, to be honest
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  with you, because we really started from zero. We kind of figured out
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  our own way. So further to that, the personal release also says that
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  it took you to a whole different mental place. Can you explain what I
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  mean by that just that? Well, first of all, it's her movie,
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  not ours, so we had to kind of go where the movie took
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  us. And the second thing is I mean the stuff I do with Jared
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  is always as a visual component to it, and that you know when you're
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  when you're listening to it, I think it's successful when you're visualizing things as
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  you're listening. It brings up visual images in your mind. So that's something
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  that was very important. It's sort of you've actually got that cinematic field of
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  the music on this, like I would faith by more like you export a
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  lot of different soundscapes and didn't successfully, But how do what's good is it
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  actually get that cinematic boom in that cinematic field. I don't know, it
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  just happened. You just you know, with stuff like this, you know,
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  you just keep working on it until it feels right and it feels like
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  it's the right thing for that right moment, and it's there. And it's
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  actually you know, with rock music, to be honest with you, you
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  know when you've got the song written, when when it feels right. You
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  know, you might change a guitar part here and there, small arrangements,
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  but you basically know and you've got a solid, intact song. With something
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  like this, you don't know it's done until it feels like it's done.
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  And what does that mean? You don't know until you get there. I
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  mean we got there with these, but you know that we did a talking
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  book record like you know that we released about three years ago that took about
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  four years to make because it never felt done. We just kept working on
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  it. So that's just the way it is, you know, with abstract
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  music. Yeah, I was in Spiked about the music, which is you
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  a pot of over film? But tell us more about the Eclipse of the
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  movie, Like, what was it actually about. Well, it's a very
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  intense move even though there's no real action and violence in the movie. It's
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  about someone growing up in a place where their family, their grandparents all were
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  as exposed to a certain amount of political violence and just violence in society and
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  kind of just they didn't take part in it, but they were part of
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  it. They were part of that environment. And the director actually where she
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  grew up in this part of Serbia was very close to her. There was
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  some really bad fighting and for whatever reason that she didn't even know, I
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  think she had to leave eventually. This It was just there was an atmosphere
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  that she wasn't reconciling with herself, and making this movie was kind of her
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  way to come back and speak with her parents and her grandparents and try to
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  find out what happened and why she wanted to leave and what they went through
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  and if all this was going on, what did you do? And so
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  it's a very heavy movie of me. Actually, it's it's not a passive
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  movie in any way at all. And it's very visually beautiful. It's just
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  gorgeous and gorgeous shots of uh, just rural Serbia, but but you know,
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  it can be a really beautiful place. You would have seen the scenes
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  in the movie without music, and then obviously you're seen him off you've added
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  your music, So how much how much of effect do you think? What
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  do you ned had at the end of the day. Well, the director
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  thinks it had a big effect, So I'm happy. I think it did.
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  I think it did. Uh. I mean you have to think about
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  it, like, you know, all the things that I tried that didn't
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  work. Right, if you look at You're Still a movie like that with
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  those failed songs, you you'd see that what we ended up doing did make
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  a big difference. I think, I think in a positive way. That's
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  the important part. That it made a positive and that it made the actual
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  visual material more engaging, and that was its job. But for those I'm
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  familiar, we're Talking Book, Mike tell let's a bit more about that project.
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  Like a lot of people just night them, but this is yeah,
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  right, totally, this is different exactly. Jared is Jared is a guy.
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  And there's another member of Talking Book that didn't work on this soundtrack.
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  His name is Dominic Dominic crap. And these guys I met Jared waiting in
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  line for a Hamburger. Oh well, and you know it's funny we start
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  talking about industrial music, like from the eighties and stuff like that, and
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  I kind of used to listen to a lot of experimental music growing up and
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  going to experimental shows in LA in the late seventies and early eighties, and
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  so we bonded over that, and he had a label called Gigante Sound,
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  and I brought him into my studio and I helped him master some stuff and
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  got some technical stuff together because that's kind of something that I could add to
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  what he was doing. And you know, we just kept working. You
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  know, he needed something that needed some listening to on a nice paramonitor and
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  I'd bring it over my place. And we had a point where we knew
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  each other pretty well, and we just thought, what would happen if we
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  put our heads together, what kind of music we can come up with?
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  So we put on an album in twenty eleven called The Talking Book, and
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  I love that record. I think it's it's freaking awesome. It's it's something
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  that I've never worked on before. I never saw I never thought I could
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  work on something like that. Though it is like music that I would be
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  listening to, I just never ever had a chance to actually play it.
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  So we did that. We did a little touring, We did some shows
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  in the Bay Area, We went to Brazil and did a tour there,
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  two tours of South America actually, and then we worked on a second album,
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  Talking Book two that came out about four years ago and here we are
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  today. That's about it. But yes, very very different from Faith the
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  More. But you know, you can hear it. It's all in all,
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  you know, in Spotify and Apple Music and all the streaming services.
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  What's next? The talking book off for this? Might he gonna go on
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  to album number three? Are you gonna have a bit of a break?
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  I do not know. Actually, I mean, I'm the kind of person
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  that's always collecting ideas all the time. Just what I do. It's like,
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  you know, like riding a bicycle. I just do that. I
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  might hard drive is full of stuff, but you know, taking it to
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  the next step, that's a good question. Yeah, I don't know.
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  I don't know. We'll have to see this spice. What's this spice?
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  To stay with the future? Yeah? Right right, Well, so the
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  soundtrack Say Out on the twenty fourth is a film coming out of the same
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  day. The film has been out of film festivals for the past year.
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  It actually won a bunch of awards through Europe, and I think it was
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  just the reception that it got. It was so good that we decided I
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  have a label, Cool Hour Records, which I'm releasing the song that it
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  just seemed right, you know, to release the soundtrack for this film.
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  The director was happy the film, didn't you know, did really well.
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  It was a great statement and it's just great to have a document of it.
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  Billy Will thanks very much. If it's wrong that I mustually made an
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  absolutely pleasure. The soundtrack to The Lips comes out on November the twenty fourth,
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  so wrap your ears around it and see how you go. Thank you,
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  I appreciate you being interested in it.