ifitbeyourwill S06E12 • Alexei Shishkin

What happens when you book four days in a studio with no songs written and trust your gut anyway? We sat down with Alexei Shishkin to unpack the making of Good Times, a record born from instinct, loops, and a shared “don’t overthink it” pact with producer Bradford Krieger at Big Nice in Rhode Island. Alexei walks us through the thrill of showing up empty-handed, improvising with friends, chopping bass lines into new shapes, and committing to sounds fast so inspiration never goes cold.

We dig into the long arc that got him there: early experiments with Sound Recorder and GarageBand, the way loops taught him arrangement and structure, and how his voice drifted from hidden texture to focal point as space, gear, and confidence shifted. Alexei explains why direct-in guitars, stock tools, and minimal mixing rounds weren’t shortcuts but creative choices that kept the project fluid. He also shares an unfiltered take on modern music careers—why he loves recording but refuses to tour, how he handled radio sessions with covers instead of acoustic stand-ins, and what it means to keep music in the passion lane while video work pays the bills.

This is a conversation for anyone fascinated by process over perfection, indie production that favours momentum, and the quiet discipline of knowing what you want from your art. Along the way, you’ll hear about influences like Microdisney, High Llamas, and Pavement, and the layered catalogue Alexei is building for deep-diving listeners. Press play, then tell us: do you value a flawless performance, or the spark of creation captured in real time? If you enjoy the show, follow, rate, and share with a friend who loves indie music stories shaped by instinct.

Chapters

• 0:38 Montreal Banter And Tape Club
• 3:38 Early Experiments And Sampling Roots
• 7:10 Finding A Voice And Changing Gear
• 12:01 Writing Alone And Letting Ideas Go
• 17:36 Good Times: Four Days, Blank Canvas
• 22:05 Process Over Perfection In The Studio
• 25:05 Covers, Sessions, And Not Touring
• 28:30 Two Lanes: Passion Vs. Career
• 31:58 Influences, Longevity, And Layers

Transcript

colleyc: 0:38

Listeners of indie music, here we are, another episode of ifitbeyourwill podcast coming at you. Um today I have uh a really interesting artist who's been making music for a long time. He's got a lot of songs under his belt. Uh Alexi Shkin uh is coming in. Um Alexi, where are you coming in from, by the way?

Alexei Shishkin: 1:03

I'm in Virginia right now.

colleyc: 1:05

Nice.

Alexei Shishkin: 1:06

Good old Virginia. And you're up in in beautiful Quebec, I think, right?

colleyc: 1:10

That's right. I'm coming to you from Montreal. Um I say the city never sleeps in the north.

Alexei Shishkin: 1:17

Yeah, yeah. That's my uh, you know, I think it's maybe my second favorite city in North America. So you know, it's home of the legendary uh is it called the Green Spot? There's like a like a weird yeah, the green spot.

colleyc: 1:29

Yes. The green spot is very famous for their hot dogs. Not not a a grilled hot dog. These are all steamed with water, um, and they make a beautiful putin, which is our native machination of fries and sauce.

Alexei Shishkin: 1:47

Yeah, that's I think I think I had both of those things when I went, so I got the full experience.

colleyc: 1:52

There you go. Well, anytime you want to come back up, uh you know, the doors always open. Um, us Canadians are a little less um ready to go down south at this point in our history, but I'm gonna do it.

Alexei Shishkin: 2:05

Hey, I I don't blame you. Of course, of course. I don't blame you at all.

colleyc: 2:10

We want to come home and not end up in some prison somewhere. So I digress. Alexi, thank you for this. Um, Alexi just by the way had a uh new record came out September 5th called Good Times. Um, and that came out on rue defense, eh, or rue défense.

Alexei Shishkin: 2:28

Yeah, yeah. It's it's true. I never thought about the uh the French connection there. But yeah, it's so that's my friend Graham's label. He started that a while ago, and um he him and I met in Portland, Oregon a long time ago, and then um we lived in New York City at the same time. He ended up moving to Houston, Texas, so that's where the label's based right now. And um last uh winter I convinced him to let me start a crazy uh idea that I had, which is called the Root Defense Tape Club. So we we ship out these like custom cassettes, they're like these little compilation cassettes, and they're only uh there's no digital versions of them, it's just that that's it. It's the analog press. So that's it. And um that's cool.

colleyc: 3:11

Yeah, shout out to I would like myself uh be able to purchase one of these. Is it something where you get in touch with you guys?

Alexei Shishkin: 3:17

Yeah, tapeclub.substack.com is where all of that is. And then um, yeah, you can also you know, you'll find links there to sign up. And if you want to email us, you can and ask us questions. You know, we're we're pretty easy to reach.

colleyc: 3:31

Yeah, that's a great idea. I'll put the link in the um in on the blog when I post uh this cast people. So don't be frantically trying to rewind things because you can't right yet. Yeah, it's in the link box. So don't worry about it. We got you guys covered. So Alexi, I always love to start these off with a little bit of uh a skip down memory lane. Um and kind of like drilling down a little bit some of those moments that kind of brought you to where you are today. Now I know that not you're not only a musician, but you're also a what do you call them? A filmatographer?

Alexei Shishkin: 4:06

No, yeah, a film film filmmaker, I guess is what I would say.

colleyc: 4:10

I was trying to do choreographer film. That's a good idea.

Alexei Shishkin: 4:13

Yeah, well, you know, people say people would say videographer in some cases. I don't know. I I I filmmaker is a good catch-all. I mostly focus on editing. That's kind of where I shine, editing and writing. Um I hate I hate actually holding the camera. I like telling people where to put the camera and I like to deal with what comes off the camera, but I don't want to hold the freaking camera. So yeah, filmmaker is a good catch-all.

colleyc: 4:34

I like it. I like it. So, I mean, just to say that you're a very creative person. You have very like a lot of different creative outlets that you um that you that you deal in. What where did all this start with? Like, what were some of those early recollections that you have where you started to think about this day and where you would be and how you were gonna get here?

Alexei Shishkin: 4:59

Well, I don't think I ever really thought about where I would be. I just kind of thought about what I was doing at the time and if it was fun or not. And that's kind of just how I how I still approach things, I think. It's it's uh it goes beyond my hobbies like music and stuff into my career as well. Like I, you know, I freelance and I run like a little video production company. And uh the few times that I've I think it's maybe once or twice I've tried to take a job in-house at a at places, and I I think I was maybe I'm ready for it now, but at the time I was just too young for that sort of uh discipline in my life. And I I was like, Oh, you want me in by 10 a.m., which is to be honest, a great time. And I'd be like, I'll come in by 11 and I'll leave at four. And then I was like, why'd they lay me off? But um yeah, so no, but to answer your question, I don't know. It's just kind of I always found it um it's it was fun to try and make music, and um, I just always wanted to give it a go. I I think when I was uh uh maybe like a teenager at some point, I started to take an interest in um just trying to record things. That was it. I was like I had a little microphone that I plugged into my computer, and at the time there was a a thing on the Windows machines called Sound Recorder, and it allowed you to record up to one minute of sound, and I would just basically sample random things and you know make some random sound collages, and that ended up turning into making hip hop beats, and then that ended up turning into making uh music with me singing on it. So here we are, uh I don't know how many years later.

colleyc: 6:37

And I heard uh I heard a previous podcast where you're talking about this beat, and I was quite fascinated about it, um, sampling. What what what how did that all begin? Like what door opened that you suddenly were interested in in creating samples and stuff? Because they come from somewhere, right? Somebody creates all these little things that you hear on everyone's songs. Yeah. Um, it's cool. I I'd love to understand how how that came to be.

Alexei Shishkin: 7:04

Yeah, so for that, for the sampling stuff, I think my earliest uh experience with that was um this was back in the day. I I don't know if this was high school or middle school, I can't really remember, but it was either early high school or late middle school, but so eighth grade, maybe ninth grade, something. Um, there was a friend, uh friend of mine, I guess, or an acquaintance at the time. He went to like a fancier school than I did. And he went to one of those fancy private schools where this was like a crazy thing at the time. Maybe this is normal now, but they gave uh laptops to their students. Like when you registered for classes, you got a laptop, and you know, this is like an eighth grader with a laptop. It's crazy. Um, but they were given the MacBooks, which was nuts. I was like, wait, they gave you a laptop and it's a MacBook, and it has GarageBand installed on it. And uh we started, we would just play with GarageBand, go in there, grab little loops, drop them in. Um, and that was probably my first kind of introduction to a sampling. And you know, when it comes to guitar, I actually have Guitar Hero to thank for that because I was so obsessed with playing Guitar Hero that I eventually was like, why don't I just try to learn real guitar? And um, yeah, it's just technology has been my path into music.

colleyc: 8:21

Right, right. And I mean, when you're creating a loop also, it's not like you're like you're having a it's like creating a song, but a little snippet of a piece of a song, right? Like it still has that mindset in it where you're trying to find the right beats that work together and the timing and the tempos are all like you're dabbling in what you would later d dabble in as a musician.

Alexei Shishkin: 8:44

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean I think the one thing that starting with like sample-based music making or whatever, uh or like loop-based composition, what's what's really interesting about that is it starts to develop your uh ear and and your just conceptualization of a arrangement more than it does. Like, yeah, of course you learn stuff about melodies and about chord progressions and stuff like that, but really you start learning structures more than anything. So, like, you know, you yes, they are like little snippets and little loops, but then you know, let's say you've got five loops and you have all five of them, all five of them on, maybe that's the chorus, and then you mute two of them and three of them are on, and that's the verse, and then you leave one of them on and that's the bridge or whatever. So um it started to uh make me think about structures, and it ends up kind of being uh weird because now I barely use real structures at all. I just sort of like make these like minute and a half long songs. So who the hell knows where it's gone?

colleyc: 9:49

Well, it's interesting. I was on your bandcamp page uh page just like it's like a feast of music. Um and I really enjoyed your some songs I made. Now, this is the first one that you put up on Bandcamp June 11th, 2013. So I mean 12 years ago. And then as I progressed through your catalog, I started to realize your voice becoming more and more um present. Like those early recordings, your voice is kind of in the back like a part of the instrumentation almost. And then slowly you can start stepping out. So my question is what was the process of you finding your voice?

Alexei Shishkin: 10:31

Yeah, that's a really good question. Um so I think there's um maybe one answer that is a very like logical answer, and it's that uh I s kind of started living in places where I was more able to sing loudly because I stopped having roommates and stuff like that, or or I'd maybe go to a studio and really record so I could actually sing. I didn't feel like I was disturbing people. Um but you know, more than that, uh I think it it just I would I would go back and listen to it, you know, because I I like to go back and listen to my own stuff sometimes. And I would go back and listen to songs and I'd be like, man, my vocals are really buried in there. It was just about my evolution of listening. I started listening to it with a more with a different perspective, I guess, and I didn't feel like burying my vocals as much, and I felt like I need to put them a little bit more forward. But now I feel like maybe moving forward I'll I'll start burying them a little more. I don't know. Like that's that's honestly something I was thinking about because there's so much stuff that comes out now where you know, or I go back and listen to older stuff where the vocals are like buried, and I'm like, man, I need to like experiment with that a little bit moving forward. So yeah, well, I don't know, we'll see. But hopefully that answers it a little bit.

colleyc: 11:51

Yeah, totally. I mean it's it's I I love the evolution or the you know, evolving, and I mean, all of that craft that you have, you've already, you know, you got it in your tool kit so you can kind of pull out what you want when you want. Um have you found that your sound how have you found that your sound has developed over all these years? Like it started very, you know, do it yourself, very bedroomy, um kind of distancy at times, and it seems like it's it's evolving towards a closer, more intimate uh experience with you as a singer-songwriter. Is that does that speak to you? Yeah, Alexi, yeah. Can you like um it's probably an evolution?

Alexei Shishkin: 12:38

Yeah, sure. So it probably has to do with uh man, the sorry, it's another boring answer, but it probably has to do with getting different gear and like learning different techniques. Um I think on like the very early stuff, I was singing into like so through filmmaking, I had like um a shotgun microphone, which is the kind you put on top of a camera. It's a long, skinny microphone. Um, and I would I had a thing called a dead cat on it, which is like uh a windscreen basically. You put it on, it's a big fuzzy windscreen. So if you ever will see like news cameras, you'll see they got this big fuzzy mic on them. I had that, and I would sing right into that big fuzzy mic quietly, so it was always real muffled. Um and I used drum loops that I kind of just made myself. I'd have like these drum samples and I'd trigger them whenever they needed to go. And it came, it came, it came to be a very sparse sound. Uh and then as things evolved, I just started either calling up friends who played drums and like lay down some drum tracks for me, or I'd start getting in the studio and having like an actual, you know, a friend record me who like actually knows what they're doing, or I'd get a new microphone, or I'd start using it, I'd start being closer to the mic, you know, whatever, learn mixing techniques, uh, start using drum, actual drum backing tracks that like were recorded in real studios. And I think all those things put together just kind of m makes it a bigger thing. Although I again I do want to revisit some of that sparse stuff, you know. I think it could be kind of cool.

colleyc: 14:08

Yeah, totally. Not um not a boring answer at all, very interesting, actually, because your process is so different from any other process I've heard, so um super interesting. And have you found that um your songwriting process has changed over time? Like how you go about approaching writing songs music, like a song? Um I'll frame it this way when do you know a song has legs to it? And when a sh what you know will go on the shelf behind you where you just kind of need to put it there for a while and maybe it will come back out. But like when do you know you're onto something when you're in your process of writing music?

Alexei Shishkin: 14:49

So my my process is a little bit uh it's very um solitary because uh I kind of just do all this stuff in my room for the most part. Even when I do go into a studio, uh well that that some things are sometimes different. I don't know, but I'll I'll speak to you know, my mostly my process is me in my room doing stuff. Uh so I generally will open a session in like logic or whatever I happen to be using to be tracking at the time. Um and I pretty much just kind of start random stuff. I mean, sometimes I'll like start with a just a tempo and pick a drum loop. Other times I'll maybe have a progression that I want to explore and I'll just play that and then chop it and loop it. Um but generally like the songs kind of start with no I I I very rarely am like, oh man, I got an idea for a song. It's more like I got some time and I want to have some fun. Let me just open this program and see where I end up with it. It's almost like you know, maybe when people are like, I don't know because I'm not really a painter, but when people are painting, maybe sometimes they'll just have a canvas and start painting and see what happens. You know, they don't always set out with uh an image in mind. So uh in terms of knowing when it's good or not, um I guess after I am done with it or getting near done with it, I'll listen back to it. And uh there's the the the it's different. It's all it's always different. There's sometimes when like because you're playing it back as you go, and there's sometimes when you'll sit, I'll have worked on something for like 30 or 40 minutes, and I'll play it back, and I'll just be like, nah, I got nothing else. The inspiration's out on this one, and then that one just uh that session just sits there, and eventually I'll revisit it and maybe try to do something. But I have like this uh backlog of old demos, I think there's like 70 of them, and I was like, Oh, should I do a MacDamarco style thing where I drop like a 200-song bullshit album? But uh I think Graham, my friend Graham, who runs the label, talked me out of that one. He was like, don't do that. And I was like, All right. The next week I was like, I'm really glad he told me not to do that.

colleyc: 17:09

You'd probably still be working on parts of it. Well, in in essence, you work pretty quickly. Um is that accurate to say?

Alexei Shishkin: 17:17

Yes, I think so.

colleyc: 17:18

Yeah. And I want to kind of drill down a little bit on the on on how you like your process to be kind of a private, it's an intimate uh process for you, in the sense that it's not a space where you're welcoming other musicians in and it's like a co-creation. Um and again, correct me if I'm I'm overstating myself here, but what if we look specifically at Good Times, your latest release, I heard that you recorded it in four days. When you brought the stuff to the studio, were you pretty set on the arrangement of it and how you saw it uh playing out?

Alexei Shishkin: 17:55

No, there was no stuff. I just showed up and then we kind of did it. Yeah, like I um my friend Brad runs that studio, Bradford Krieger. The studio is called Big Nice, and it is in Rhode Island. It is an incredible studio, and Brad is an amazing musician and producer, and if it wasn't for him, this thing would not even remotely sound like it does. Uh he he really can bring it. Um, but yeah, Brad and I are good friends, and so when I the I usually so at the time I was living in New York, right? And I just every so often wanted to just take a break from the grind. And to me, like booking time with Brad and just going to play music was like a great vacation, right? So I would just go, hey, um, what's your schedule looking like for the next six or eight months? What do you got? And he'd tell me what dates he's got, and I'd go, cool, let's book some time in May or whatever. Let's book these four, or I think this one was in July, I don't remember, but let's book these four days. I'll come up there and then we'll play. In the past, I had come up there with, like you said, with arrangements, with ideas. This one I was just like, well, me and Brad are at this point so locked in and we can kind of just like have fun and improvise. I'm just gonna show up without even my guitars or anything. I just came, I just got on the train with my laptop and went up there. The laptop was for work, it wasn't for the show, or not the show, for the record. Uh, and I got in there and we just started like improvising basically. That was it. It was just all improvised. We had Dave Kahn come in and play bass for the first uh half of the first day because he had to work, and I forgot to tell him that I booked these days. Uh so he was like, I can come in for half a day. I said, Okay, great. Like, here, let me play you some drum loops, and you just start improvising over them. Then Brad and I took his bass lines, chopped them up, arranged them wherever we wanted, and kind of just made an made a record. So it was yeah, there's to to answer your question, there was no there was nothing. It was a blank canvas when we walked in.

colleyc: 19:55

Well, so I mean it it it's recalling me to the story you told about the loops um in the sampling where it's you know, we were piecing things together and finding the structures as we're going, kind of like curing that, putting that there, yeah, repeat that over, stuff like that.

Alexei Shishkin: 20:11

I I think that the reason that it was able to come together so seamlessly is because both Brad and I have a very uh similar approach to music where we're not super precious about it. Like we're our goal is to just like move through it and make stuff, and we're not gonna really want to sit and I I don't want to speak for him, but I feel like he would agree with me. Uh there's no need, there's this point of like where you're spending more time on it than what you're getting back out of it. And I don't want to sit and remix a thing. You know, I was listening to a podcast the other day where I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not, but they were talking about how like U2 goes through like 170 rounds of mixing their shit, and it's just like I get it, you're you too. You that's a big that's a different story, right? But like for little little ol' me, like I don't want to make someone sit there and mix my music for a whole day while we figure out like let's let's just record it and move on. Um, one thing that was really great in our process was that you know, I again I like to just be agile and just keep moving. I don't really care about what amp we're setting up, what guitar I'm playing, what mic I'm using. So for a lot of that shit, we just took the guitars and we plugged them directly in and just used like whatever was on the computer because it was it's just m easier that way, and right we're more flexible and more fluid, and we can just kind of go wherever we want. Because what's worse than like having an idea and then having to wait to set it up, you know, then the inspiration goes, we might as well just have it ready, just start playing, you know.

colleyc: 21:43

Right, right.

Alexei Shishkin: 21:44

That was it. It was it was that.

colleyc: 21:45

I mean, so are you saying that these 12 tracks that make up good times uh again came out September 5th, 2025. People check it out. That it would be almost impossible to run through this set list live. Like I would have to, I mean that improv nature in the I don't know what I did.

Alexei Shishkin: 22:08

If I could if I if I got together um with a group of talented musicians and uh let them show me how to play the songs, I'm sure we could get through them. So I'll tell you a quick story. Like with part of this rollout, we had to um or I had to play like do do these sessions, I guess, right? So like uh a radio station would be like, Hey, can you record a session for us? And at the beginning of it say, Hey, this is Alexi, and I'm doing this exclusive session for blah, blah, blah, blah. Um most people, when they do them, they'll just like grab an acoustic guitar and play three of their songs. And I was like, Well, I don't know how to do any of that. Like, I don't know my songs. So um, what I ended up doing, I I had to learn a couple of them. So I took the wave files and I like put them through a stem splitter and started isolating the bass, trying to learn the bass. So I did that with a couple songs, but for the most part, I was like, I'm just gonna record covers, man. Because like when I go back and listen to old like John Peel sessions, right? Like with you know, pavement or micro Disney and stuff like that. Like, I love when those bands that I loved are playing covers of stuff. There's I think a pavement peel session where they play um Killing Moon or something like that, Echoing the Bunny Man. And it's like that's cool to me, because that's like I'm not only getting I'm getting my one of my favorite bands take on a favorite song of theirs. It tells me stylistically how they would do it, but it gives me an insight into what inspires them. I think there's nothing cooler than a cover. So all that is to say that's what I did for a lot of them because I don't know how to play my own songs.

colleyc: 23:45

Right. So it must also, if one plus one equals two, you touring with this record would be slim to no chance.

Alexei Shishkin: 23:56

Out of the question. Zero chance, zero chance. I have zero, zero, zero desire to tour ever in a musical capacity. Touring and doing like a show on on stage, like a podcast or something would be really fun, or even being a part of like a theatrical production or something would be really fun, I think. But not not doing a music thing. I'd like I've just been around it so much at at such a at a small, like a low level, you know, that I I've seen and I've heard stories of how like the tours are and shit. And if I was like 23, cool, that would be amazing. But it's like I'm gonna be 30. Yeah, I'm gonna be 36. Yeah, I'm gonna be 36 next year. I don't want to go sleep in a in the van or like lay on the floor at a friend's house or something like that, it's not for me.

colleyc: 24:46

Right, right. And was it always like that, Alexi? Like when you started recording, if you know, back, you know, again, just referring to your bandcamp page 2012, like digital started to happen, started to come forward. Um like was that always the idea that I would never I don't want to be a performer, I want to be a crafter and a maker of music, but listen to it on on on you know Spotify or whatever. Uh don't expect me to come play you or anything like that.

Alexei Shishkin: 25:18

Yeah, and it's it's it's just like it just my personal f enjoyment comes from playing the music. I don't really care, no offense to anyone who might enjoy the music. Uh I thank you and I love you, but I also don't really care if they like it or if you like it or not. Like I don't, it just doesn't bother me. Like I would I just like making the music, and my favorite part is recording it. Like I I love the recording process, I think it's so much fun. And especially when you're in a studio with like two one or two other people who you're just like mind-melded with, there's nothing more fun because it's just like a group art project. It's so much, it's so cool. Um you know, again, I I get like I've always called myself a hobbyist musician because like you can't achieve a career in music without, I mean, for the most part, without touring at some level or playing live, you know. Yes, you can potentially figure out a way to cobble one together, but very it's very rare. And you know, music to me is one lane, that's my passion lane, and then I have other skills that make my career. It's right video.

colleyc: 26:31

And you've always you've always been aware of those two lanes that you that you set up.

Alexei Shishkin: 26:36

Like it's and uh Yeah, yeah.

colleyc: 26:40

I respect those lanes, I like those lanes, I'm staying in those lanes because that's what I want.

Alexei Shishkin: 26:46

Yeah.

colleyc: 26:47

Yeah.

Alexei Shishkin: 26:47

Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think early early on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Early on, I wasn't so sure of it from the career perspective. I knew that music was a passion. I wasn't sure if what I wanted, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do career-wise. So for a long time I thought it was to work in music doing video stuff, like doing music videos and like any, you know, whatever, all that kind of stuff. And I did that for a little bit and um I hated it. I hated it. I I don't really enjoy doing video stuff for money that is creative. I just don't want to be burdened with that. I think that's a lot of pressure. I don't want to do that. I'd rather like put my skills and the craft that I've mastered towards like just very black and white corporate work where like here is your boxes, check them off, get it done, get the paycheck, go home. That's what I like. Um I like doing video stuff if I if it's for me and it's passion and I can control everything about it, then I'm in. But I don't want to do uh I don't want to like really have to answer to to to people in that regard, I guess.

colleyc: 28:03

I love it. I mean and I you know I mean you and I are no spring chickens, right? Um it's good to come to a state in life where you are happy with where you're at and you're not trying to recreate yourself, you know. Like I mean, you can like little nuances and stuff. Sure. I mean, I'm gonna stop drinking coffee or shit, I'm gonna give jazz a try again, or whatever it might be, right?

Alexei Shishkin: 28:28

Yeah, yeah.

colleyc: 28:29

But at a certain age you kind of like start to understand who you are and what you want.

Alexei Shishkin: 28:38

I I just think it's uh to me, a lot of my favorite artists are ones who have always who have continued making stuff and have never been afraid to sort of just do anything they want. So like Martin Newell is one that comes to mind. He had an act called The Cleaners from Venus. He like kind of does anything he wants. It's not like it's not a you know, he doesn't try to chase some sort of image or something. He just, if he's inspired by something, he'll make it. Another guy whose stuff I really love is a guy called Sean O'Hagan. He was in a band called Micro Disney in the 80s. Uh and then he was a part of Stereo Lab. He formed the High Llamas, he's done work with Tim Gain from Stereo Lab doing other stuff. But all that is to say, like, if you go and listen to his work from 1980 to present, you're gonna get such a wild ride of different stuff, but you can still see his influence in it throughout. I've always thought that shit was really cool. I think like I, you know, thank you for listening and going back to some of the old stuff, because I think I described it this way on a different show that I did, but I always say like this is the stupidest thing, but music my music like discography, whatever, is like a shawarma where like I'm just stacking like slices of meat on the spit. And just letting it marinate, and it's it's a product of time, you know? It's like in an ideal world, one person goes back and goes, Whoa, there's so much to dig into here. That's what I did with the high llamas, that's what I did with Martin Newell. Like, even guided by voices and stuff like that, I'm like, oh my god, like there's so much to dig into here. This is so cool. So hopefully someone can have that experience.

colleyc: 30:25

Well, I love too that illusion you just made with layers, because the cake on good times kind of brings that to mind as well. You know, the multiple layers of stuff.

Alexei Shishkin: 30:36

Didn't even plan it. Didn't even plan it. But that is a beauty, a happy, a happy accident, as we said.

colleyc: 30:43

There you go. Well, Alexi, this has been really cool. Thanks so much for taking a bit of time out of your day and sharing some of your thoughts and the process and how you got to where you're at. People go check out uh Lexi Chishkin's uh I hope I'm saying your name right, right? Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

Alexei Shishkin: 31:01

Um just as it's spelled.

colleyc: 31:03

There we go. Great record. Um it's got a lot of fun, a lot of variety to it. Um, and I really appreciate uh this chat, so thanks a lot, man.

Alexei Shishkin: 31:12

Yeah, thank you.

colleyc: 31:15

Cool.

Alexei Shishkin: 31:48

I'm gonna look to walk to the mirror There's the expression that it's true. Expression that won't disappear it won't disappear Reptilian brain, reptilian brain, reptilian rain It's getting harder to remember Brain and Blender blending all the ring.