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.
Tom Feck has released four albums under the name Tobacco since 2008.
He's also the frontman of the band Black Moth Super Rainbow,
and he created the theme music for the HBO show Silicon Valley.
In this episode, Tom breaks down his song, Gods in Heat,
from his newest album, Sweatbox Dynasty, recorded entirely on cassette tape.
I'm Tom Feck from Tobacco.
I don't know any instruments.
Like, I never learned, but my parents got me a four-track.
when I was in high school and I just played around with it so much until things started making sense.
I borrowed a MiniBrute synthesizer and I came up with that bass line.
I think I was just trying to hear how dense it could be.
So I was trying to find the best, the coolest bass sound I could get out of it.
that was it and that was like hitting record right away
because i didn't want to lose it the drums are mpc straight into tape i have this uh tascom cassette recorder and i play the mpc straight into the cassette without quantizing sequencing anything like that
because i like the sound as real as possible and
because i'm not a drummer it Usually does sound pretty human for better or worse.
The drums have that crunch mainly from the tape machine because I just run everything really hot.