You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Phoenix is a Grammy-winning band from Versailles, France.
They started putting out music in 1999, and in June 2017, they released their sixth album, Tiamo.
In this episode, singer Thomas Mars and guitarist Laurent Bronkowitz break down the song Tiamo,
the title track from that album.
Practical details are very important in art.
A few art critics get it, but the ones that do,
they understand that Renaissance is linked to the pigments, the oil they were using.
All those things, they make a difference in the end.
I'm Branko, Laurent Brankovitz, and I play the guitar, usually.
But this time, on this album, less guitar, more keyboard.
Our process is based on a stream of consciousness.
So we are all sitting in a studio.
It's a place called La Guette Lyrique in Paris.
It's an old operetta theater.
This song, it started with a loop, a percussion loop.
This album is the first one we did with Ableton live.
We wanted something new because the routine is what we are trying to escape.