Mandatory Music
Welcome to Mandatory Music! A podcast about the craft of music.
Join Mike and Sebastian as they unravel the depths of song writing, musicianship and great artists. Each season centres on one particular band, with a deep dive into specific songs that delve into their creation, sound and complexity. It is within song and harmony, melody and rhythm that our emotional heartbeat echos.
It has been said that "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. - Plato
So, come for the ride.
Mandatory Music
Episode 59 – The Beat Goes Blue: Blue Man Group x After Cooking
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This week on Mandatory Music, we dive into an unexpected but seriously cool collaboration — the Blue Man Group is back with a brand-new single, “Things,” featuring the incredibly talented After Cooking. That’s right… Blue Man Group! It’s all about rhythm, vibe, and groove in this episode as we explore this hypnotic, beat-driven track and what makes it such a standout. Sit back, press play, and enjoy the ride through this chill and creative sonic experience.
Mandatory Music is proudly hosted and produced by Michael Heide and Sebastian Kwapich
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Thanks for listening and keep on rocking
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome back to Mandatory Music. I am here as always with my buddy Mike. Mike, how are you? I'm well, sir. Good evening. Happy
SPEAKER_00:Monday to you.
SPEAKER_01:Happy after Mother's Day, too.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, happy Mother's Day to all you amazing ladies out there with children. Because being a mom is the hardest job in the world. And everyone should have
SPEAKER_01:wished your mothers a happy Mother's Day yesterday, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right? Yes. Well, obviously. So I'm sure you all, like I did, I phoned my mother and told her I loved her and all that stuff. Yeah. I'm sure you did the same thing with yours.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I talked to my mother for four and a half seconds before my dad ripped the phone out of her because he wanted to show me a building that they were walking beside. I'm like, it's not about you right now, dad. It's about Mother's Day. It's like, you gotta see this building. It looks like an armadillo. It's an opera house in Valencia because they were walking on the street when
SPEAKER_00:I called them. Yeah. Oh, man. That is the funniest thing ever. For those of you out there that don't know, Seb's dad is, that is who he is. He's a legend. He is an absolute legend. He is one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life. He gets so
SPEAKER_01:hyper-focused on things that he wants to share with people that everything else disappears and he just needs to share it with somebody.
SPEAKER_00:He needs to share it. It's a pure thing, but yeah. It's amazing. It is absolutely amazing. So yeah, so Mother's Day came and went and my kids were, we had a gardening party and they didn't complain. So that's... Oh, amazing. Yeah. Do
SPEAKER_01:not complain on this day. It's not about you. It's about your mother.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, there's that. Teenagers, we were teenagers at one point in our lives a long time ago. Teenagers tend to think inward a little bit and don't consider the outer world outside of their ears.
SPEAKER_01:When you get to the age of like 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, until you're like 21, 22, there's a swagger of arrogance that you think you know everything. I lived it massively, right? And it's all about me. It's all about my soccer days. It's all about my music. And it's hard to like think outwardly. And then you at some point get humbled when you become a young adult because things don't exactly go your way ever. And so you learn really quickly as a young adult that like, yeah, things don't go out the way you think you're going to.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you realize quickly you don't know everything. much of anything about the real world, to be perfectly honest. They don't teach you any of that in school. But I will say, I've employed my son to cut the grass every week, and I pay him pittance of money to do it. But he took the initiative and said, Dad, I know you do the weed whacking. I want to do it. I didn't ask him to. He just did. That's
SPEAKER_01:amazing.
SPEAKER_00:And he took his time. He I showed him. I gave him the it's an electric. It's like a battery powered one. Like our lawnmower is is battery powered. And so is the weed whacker. And I just I show, OK, here's how you use it. And I said, you know, don't kill yourself and don't stick your foot in the thing. Don't hit yourself with the wire. Right. Don't hit yourself with the wire and just don't wear
SPEAKER_01:sandals. Cause you're
SPEAKER_00:going to hit a rock and it's going to come off of your toe. Yes. And I'll make your legs going to be very green when you're done probably. And, but he did it and he didn't complain. He was outside for like over like an hour and a half and he, he did it and he wanted, he made sure he wanted it to look good. Cause we've got family coming this weekend. So he's like, I wanted to make sure I took extra time and care. Perfect. amazing yeah and then and the other one takes a little more prodding to get to do
SPEAKER_01:she's younger though so
SPEAKER_00:she's only 13 so yeah that makes sense give her a bit of a break but she did cut her hair nice and short which was what yeah like short short yeah i'll send you a picture um offline when okay it's not going public but it yeah it was a big change because her hair was quite long and she just was tired of it and i think she looks she looks fabulous I love her. She's such an amazing child. She's even cuter than she was before. That's not possible. No, but the attitude is...
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for those that don't know, Mike's daughter has a bit of a spicy attitude sometimes,
SPEAKER_00:but she's adorable, though. Yeah, she likes to fight with her mother. It's a mother-daughter thing. Apparently, she doesn't do it with me. Daddy's a
SPEAKER_01:little girl. course yes
SPEAKER_00:but i can also lay the law down and she'll stop right good and it's a little bit different with mom so but hey everybody everybody parents different and maybe i parent out of fear i'm just kidding i do not uh with an
SPEAKER_01:iron fist no
SPEAKER_00:iron fist yeah no i don't think so i uh i love my kids dearly anyways we're right here to talk about my parenting yes
SPEAKER_01:yes today Why are we here? Why are we here today? We're doing something way outside of our normal box that you guys probably aren't aware that we even listen to this type of music. I'm a massive fan of these guys. Mike is as well. We're doing the Blue Man Group. Yes. They just released a new song called Things a couple weeks ago with an artist named After Cooking. So... It's a collab between Blue Man Group and this artist. I think his name is... I had it pulled up here. His name is Jonas Holland. He's a Dutch electronic house musician, producer known for his innovative approach to music production. He has gained recognition for blending dynamic rhythms with intricate melodies, often incorporating unconventional instruments and found objects into his compositions, like rocks, like things. So for those that don't know, the Blue Man Group is a Vegas... I think they started in Vegas,
SPEAKER_00:I believe. I believe so,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. Yeah, there are three guys that are basically, the shtick is that there are three aliens that have come down to play music on objects that are not normally played on. Most of the time they play on PVC piping that is all designed for different notes and melody lines, and it's massively percussive. It's like percussive house music is the best way to describe it. I would agree.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's very progressive, very percussive. If you don't like drums, you're probably not going to like them because it's all about the drumming patterns and the rhythm and there's melody lines. It's very deep. It's awesome. I have fallen off Blue Man Group. I've stopped listening to them for a while until the song came out. I'm like, I should really dive back into these guys because when they first came out, I was a massive fan of them. And they're... They sound great. Have you even seen them live? Amazing experience,
SPEAKER_00:by the way. I really wish I could see them live, just because when we got married, and not me and you, but when my wife and I got married, we got married in Vegas almost 20 years ago, and I really wanted to go see Blue Man Group, and she's like, no.
SPEAKER_01:What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00:She's like, I'm not going to see Blue Man Group. I'm like, oh, man. So next time we go back, I want to go before they are done doing whatever, however long they go. I definitely want to go see them just because I love the percussive. You're the house music guy. Because you love Tiesto, all that stuff, right? Yes,
SPEAKER_01:Tiesto.
SPEAKER_00:All that stuff. And I dabble in a little electronica here and there, but it's still rooted, for me anyway, in real instruments, not pure yeah like like edm it's not it's not like where i kind of i don't gravitate to that at all so that's why i like the blue man group because it is a good middle ground it is a good middle ground sure it is almost electronic except for the pvc pipes and all that
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_00:but it's yeah it's like a good intro into house music that i'm not sure i i want to dig any deeper into I like some. Some of it is
SPEAKER_01:so extreme. There's some DJs I listen to on Twitch where they do hard style trance and hard style electronic and it's way too extreme where it's just so aggressive almost and so raw and loud. I like this song particular things because it's so mood based. There's a real vibe to it. It's a vibe. It's You know, there's not a lot of changes in it. There's subtle subtlety changes, but they hit a rhythmic pocket and they stay in that pretty much for the whole song and everything kind of shifts in and out. So they layer instruments, layer out instruments, and it's like a descending melody line. Very percussive. So this is a kind of a good song if you're ever interested in listening to the Blue Man Group to like as an entry level song to their music, I think. I think so. And it's current. So... What is your initial
SPEAKER_00:thoughts of the song? For me lately, I have not listened to anything remotely close to this. That's
SPEAKER_01:why I thought it might
SPEAKER_00:be an interesting thing to... There's some synth pop I'll put on once in a while, but this is out there because it's four and a half minutes, like you say, of... Impressive drumming. Impressive drumming with the descending rhythm. There's not a lot to this song. It's actually... pretty neat how simple this song really is. It's all about the
SPEAKER_01:layers.
SPEAKER_00:It's all about the layers, and you have to sit in a dark room and just listen, and just turn it up and just put some headphones on and just listen. That's what I find with electronic music. I've got to have headphones on, and it's got to be dark. That's just the way I roll. You know
SPEAKER_01:what this sounds like to me? Sorry to interject real quick, but this sounds like the intro song to a band coming on stage.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know what I mean? It's just like, this is what they would play before the, like, as a band is hitting the stage to, like, amp up the crowd.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, like, you know, Metallica uses the good and the bad and the ugly theme or whatever. I mean, it's not the same as that, but, like, it sounds like something that is there to, like, play right before a concert starts.
SPEAKER_00:Kind of. Or do you remember in Matrix Reloaded in the rave scene? Yes. Yes. That's, that's the
SPEAKER_01:perfect analogy for
SPEAKER_00:that. Yeah. It, it, it gives me like, I'm not into that kind of thing, but it gives me that vision of slow motion of people. Like the whole race is mostly slow motion. And that's what this gives me. The vibe of is that everybody is just in their own little world and they're like, they're in the pocket of this song and the song is moving them and not. Yeah. That's a
SPEAKER_01:great analogy.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And that's sort of, that's the first thing I thought of when I heard this might go interesting. Cause it's got that slow build.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The music in that particular scene in the matrix is so fitting because it's very tribal and you're basically looking at a civilization that's built out of tribalness for the most part, because they're the last civilization, you know, they're against electronics for the most part. So, but yeah, I don't know if you watched the video for this, but the video is interesting. I mean, it's just a performance video and it's, I
SPEAKER_00:think he might have sent me the YouTube link, but I'm going to put it on while we talk, just so I can.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. A lot of focus is on the Dutch guy, the after-cooking guy. It's an interesting name, after-cooking. I'm not sure exactly why he used that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was trying to think of that. And even the picture in the Apple Music, he's got some sort of casserole dish on his head. Yeah, he's an odd
SPEAKER_01:individual.
SPEAKER_00:Which seems a little strange, but yeah. But I do like tribal music yes we've talked about this before whether it's metal or not folk tribal metal yeah whatever if it's you know all of that combined yeah medieval whatever and but this fits right in the right into that wheelhouse of a different kind of like sort of a subconscious like it's really reaching into your into my well to my subconscious anyway um yeah how did you how did you find this song Like, did it just pop up on like a... It
SPEAKER_01:popped up on YouTube and I'm just like, Blue Man Group? I'm like, what is this? You know, because I haven't seen them for a while and I just clicked on it and I'm like, oh, this is actually pretty sick.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it was... I don't know when it was released, but it was... I guess I can
SPEAKER_00:ask. You can ask the future leaders of our world that question, which I mean is obviously AI.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Uh...
SPEAKER_01:It says 2025. It doesn't give me a date, but I'm sure I can deep dive it, but it's, it's a month or two ago. If it
SPEAKER_00:says a month, it says a month ago.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, you know, middle of April, probably.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It says this, I was going to read this one guy, his name, Chris Chandler. He says the blue man group feet after cooking is a match made the ethereal heaven cook to absolute perfection. That's kind of what this is.
SPEAKER_01:I like the reference to after cooking cook to perfection. Nice. Yeah. I know, right? It's got such a great vibe. The song just makes you want to bob your head up and down. It does. It's got this positive, energetic feeling to it. It's motivating and it gets you going. This would be a good running song, I think.
SPEAKER_00:You know what? That thought, like a running, working out song, this actually completely popped into my head just now. I was like, I should add this. It's
SPEAKER_01:got a good rhythmic pace to it, right? Like you can, you can step with each of the beats, you know, so to speak. I don't know. Do you run with like beats in mind? So like, do you, when you, do you feel like when you're running and you get a good song, that's in a good BPM that you're actually stepping with the beats of the song? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I do. Oh, totally. That's
SPEAKER_01:probably a lot more common than. I
SPEAKER_00:think so. Like I'll put on, A lot of times in my playlist, there's nothing complicated about any of the songs. It's always 4-4 straight ahead. Stuff that's easy to move to, if you know what I mean. Not to dance to. A lot of times, if it's complicated, say I put on Tool, and it's whatever... Or Dream Theater. I cannot run.
SPEAKER_01:There's
SPEAKER_00:no rhythmic way to... Actually, I find it throws me off. If I have music on. I've been trying to not listen to music when I run lately, but this is the kind of music I really like to run to. Either synth pop or this kind of electronic where it's just this driving beat.
SPEAKER_01:That's a good point. It's a very driving song. It drives you forward. It drives you you know, you're not in this like folk depressed state. I don't even want to say it that way, but you know, some songs are like, like a lot of slow Nevada songs, like are moody in a negative space. Not even negative. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Something in the way, take that song in particular. It's retrospective. It's introspective. When you, you're, you're, you're go inside of yourself and think this one is just moves you. It just moves. It just makes you want to like get up and move.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm watching the video right now and the blue dude are playing their PVC pipes and I noticed they're all colored. They all have obviously the colors represent what sounds they make. Talk about math rock. I'll guarantee you there's so much math involved in what these guys are doing.
SPEAKER_01:How do you design that PVP saving for a certain pitch
SPEAKER_00:or frequency? Different lengths and all this stuff. So much goes into that. And just looking at the colors going, okay, so they have to map out, okay, you know, red, red, green, blue, yellow, whatever they're hitting. And they all have, the three of them, they're all doing it at the same time. It's fascinating. I wonder if it's
SPEAKER_01:like a piano, and I assume it is, where it's like each of the colors are coded to a certain note. So like the green one will be A, the blue one will be
SPEAKER_00:B, or whatever. Yeah, right? Yeah. And maybe it goes by like the, or like, simplified to being a kid, it's like Roy G. Biv, and then you start at A, And by the time you get to Violet, it's the end of the scale. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The song definitely
SPEAKER_00:has
SPEAKER_01:a
SPEAKER_00:groove
SPEAKER_01:that I
SPEAKER_00:really, really adore. Yeah, this song's cool. This song's really cool. But no, it's something different. This is the kind of music I kind of want to explore more. Maybe we
SPEAKER_01:can get back into it.
SPEAKER_00:Talking about music that is a little out of our... Because talking about metal and rock all the time kind of gets...
SPEAKER_01:You want to diversify and explore other things, right? Because it opens up the mind for different things. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then maybe we can have our, our rooms and have a black lighting and we can be blue and.
SPEAKER_01:They do that in every one of their videos or even other concerts. It's like, as they live in black lighting, cause they want, they want those neon brights to really reflect and stuff. You think it's the same three guys for the last like 30 years? It's not. It's not. I didn't think. Because I, I, I, Okay, when I went to... Last time I was in Europe was... Oh, man. When was it? 2012, I think, was the last time I went to Europe. Okay. So the Blue Man Group had a Vegas show then.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:And we were on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, and the Blue Man Group was playing on that cruise ship. So it's obviously not the same three guys.
UNKNOWN:Two.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So there's, there's many versions of the blue man group that play in different areas of the world. Right. And they just get three guys that know the songs that dress up as the blue man group guys. But obviously initially it was started by three men or three. They don't have to be men, but three
SPEAKER_00:people, three people. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so, but yeah, the blue man group at its whole is like the definition of a vibe, right? oh like you're either in it or you're not right but it's so
SPEAKER_00:good it's it's so yeah it's like my better half would be like dude turn this off this is stupid and
SPEAKER_01:well
SPEAKER_00:she's a
SPEAKER_01:country gal man all
SPEAKER_00:day all day long he does not like songs that don't have singing either and that's like another bane of her existence is my love for instrumental anything love instrumentals are great
SPEAKER_01:yeah they're
SPEAKER_00:right
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:they're an acquired taste it's not for everybody especially her she likes to sing songs and and i don't i'm always like with my hands if i'm not playing air guitar i'm i'm drumming on stuff and i drive my family nuts and i'm not like i just i just i can't help myself like i just my hands and feet just go to the rhythm of song like could you seriously like in the car like i'm tapping the dash i'm like i'm like mr drummer man like neil pert playing the drums there's my hands are going everywhere and i'm driving and they're like seriously can you not i'm like not what they're like can you stop doing that i'm like i'm not doing like you're drumming stop can you know and i'm like okay then my hand starts tapping something i'm like i can't like i just i can't i can't stop
SPEAKER_01:sometimes where i have like restless leg syndrome and i just like have to like my legs just bob it up and down and then you know my partner will be like can you chill out you're just moving your leg non-stop i'm like i didn't even realize i was doing
SPEAKER_00:it you just don't know and like yeah or even i'm upstairs and we're watching like sometimes we turn like the uh the retro video channel on and if something comes on and i'm i'm drumming on the couch and it's just like they're just like
SPEAKER_01:that's a that's a idiosyncrasy of yours i think
SPEAKER_00:it is terminology that works yeah yeah it's like people who chew loud i don't chew loud but i drum everything oh my god don't even get me started on loud chewers oh my god i was uh yeah let us know
SPEAKER_01:fan of loud chewing or not i'm sure everyone hates it but um there's not much else really to say about the song i just want to highlight one other thing and i want to break the song down because it's literally in two parts right so there's part a and part b and so part a starts where it comes with the melody line And then it just layers and layers on top of that. And then at some point, I think like halfway through at like the, almost just before the two minute mark or like just after the two minute mark, everything goes quiet and they relayer the instruments back on top for like
SPEAKER_00:a round two, but it's slightly different. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And then the payoff when it hits, which is like, I guess it's, it's at like the three, 320-ish mark where everything lands at one time and all the instruments come in at one time. The drums come in, like the actual drums. It's such a good build. Yes. The drums come in at 355 and then at like 358, everything... comes in at one time all the instruments and it's just i love that build it's like a minute and a half long build and it's just such a good payoff and so and it's a well-constructed song
SPEAKER_00:oh there is there's even like some venue yeah there's subtle guitars in the at the two minute like it's like whatever hold on at like two minutes
SPEAKER_01:oh yeah there there's
SPEAKER_00:guitars throughout the song but even when it slows down guitar kind of continues and you can hear
SPEAKER_01:it you can hear like them playing like chords and sometimes single bended notes and stuff and it's very subtle but it's there yeah
SPEAKER_00:sounds like a wah pedal going on and it's just it's just that attention to detail that really i think gets both of us
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:gets the uh
SPEAKER_01:we like layers man we like layers
SPEAKER_00:you just yeah that's that's part of music is you build these songs sure you can have drums and bass and guitar and vocals but it's the stuff that's underneath all that that really fascinates me is is the yeah is that attention to detail and like okay oh i can hear like four different guitars and there's keyboard under there and well i'm just
SPEAKER_01:gonna say if you if your head doesn't bop to this music i don't even know what we're
SPEAKER_00:doing man like you're not hearing what we're hearing you're not right like it's just Yeah, like I literally could put this on upstairs and all three of them will be like, no, this is boring. No, it's not boring.
SPEAKER_01:It's more about the subtlety of the changes in the song that are very precise and very wonderful. So if you allow yourself to like, this is a good like end of the night where you're meditative and you just want to relax and just close your eyes and put these on. It's nothing too complicated. It's nothing complicated. overtly taxing it's just very moody very vibey like i've said it just allows your brain to absorb it and just yes yeah flow i dig it i love the song i love this is on my regular rotation on
SPEAKER_00:playlist group and after cooking mr the dutch what's his did you have is he had his actual jonas holland jonas holland
SPEAKER_01:yeah yo it's probably jonas not jonas
SPEAKER_00:probably jonas yep and he's dutch and his last name is holland so that's kind of cool Yeah, that's hilarious. That's actually his real name.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it says After Cookings is a statement of Jonas Holland. But that might also be a made-up name, so I don't know. But yeah, great song. Highly recommend. It's something outside of the box from what we normally do. Check
SPEAKER_00:it out. The video's cool. It's on YouTube. You can watch Jonas do his thing. He's hitting all sorts of broken cymbals and weird... He's crouched down and he's playing his thing a whole time it's very strange like it is yeah like my legs would be numb if i sat in that position for more than about two minutes so hats off to that guy for being flexible and having good circulation because i don't yeah um yeah but yeah no blue man group i dig it things is a really cool song it was released a month ago so yes um we dig it i said turn me onto it so it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's neat. And
SPEAKER_01:again, it's not a complicated song. There's not a lot to it. It's just all about layers and all about... This is a good lesson in how to layer a song properly because they add texture to it. You play a melody line, then they play it again, and they just repeat the same melody line over and over, same rhythmic patterns, but they just keep adding... nuanced elements to just elevate it even more and more as the song progresses. So yeah, great song.
SPEAKER_00:Great, great, great song. Absolutely. So yeah, so that's our, uh, that's our show for this week. Short and sweet. We went, we went electronics. So that, uh, look at us. We're growing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We'll stay tuned next week. We'll be back with something, you know, something, you know, something good as always. I'm thinking the way.
SPEAKER_01:No, something.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so yeah, and this is the way. So good night and goodbye. Bye.
